Models Own: Fruit Pastel Collection! First Impressions!

Yesterday I was a very, VERY naughty girl yesterday and bought myself some nail polish! I've wanted this collection ever since I first saw it on the Model's Own Website. So when I saw them in Boots yesterday and had a sniff I couldn't resist... AND YES I SAID SNIFF!! These little beauties are scented! (Apologies for the horrible photo quality I am currently at home and only have my Blackberry with me!)

From Left to Right: Grape Juice, Banana Split, Blueberry Muffin, Apple Pie, Strawberry Tart, Aqua Violet

I managed to snap these up in a 3 for 2 offer at Boots, which made them eve more irresistible to me! I thought I'd do a quick post of my first impressions of the Fruit Pastel Collection! Here's what they look like on the nail:

From Thumb to Pinky: Apple Pie, Grape Juice, Banana Split, Strawberry Tart, Blueberry Muffin

I love these polishes! The colours are perfect for spring (and of course Easter!). They smell beautiful and ever since I painted them I've been sat here sniffing my fingernails like a weirdo! Some of them smell stronger than others, I think the Strawberry Tart is definitely the best one, not only is it a pretty pink colour but it smells really sweet. Also they have cute little scratch and sniff stickers on the top of each bottle so you can get a cheeky whiff before you apply.

These polishes were fairly difficult to apply, I would definitely recommend using a white base coat underneath them (which I will try next time). They went opaque in three coats but I found it a struggle to apply! I'm sure I'll get better with practice.

Anyway despite the trouble I had with the application I am certainly in love with these polishes and I think EVERYONE should own at least one of them.

Greige Gardens with added Fairy Dust

Hello rose petals! I hope you are all well. I can't believe I'm actually posting two nail posts in the same week! It's nice to finally be back. Today I bring you a polish that I managed to find in Poundland. Sally Hansen in Greige Gardens. I snapped up 3 Sally Hansen polishes in total that day. Another of which I used in my Minty Chip post. Today I finally received my own bottle of OPI Nail Envy. I've been hearing so many good things about it for such a long time and I've been meaning to buy it for so long. This week though with my nails back on the road to recovery, I decided that I wanted to keep them that way and finally bought a bottle. I ended up with the Matte one as it was £2 cheaper and I couldn't see a reason not to save the £2! Anyway I decided that I'd start my trial of Nail Envy today so natural I had to remove Minty Chip and paint my nails again!

This is two coats of Sally Hansen's Greige Gardens. I couldn't just leave it plain though so I added Miss Sporty Sparkle Top Coat in Amethyst Dust. This manicure is cute and simple and I really love it, especially the little dash of glitter that I added! I couldn't believe my luck picking up these Sally Hansen polishes for a mere £1 each in Poundland. I definitely recommend that you keep an eye on the makeup sections of that store just incase any more brilliant polishes turn up!

I know I haven't done any of my features for about a month, but I've been waiting for my nails to grow back. I'll try and get a few lined up but I expect that I'll be quiet in March due to filming commitments for My university project! I'll try to post as often as I can, but don't expect much!

Let me know what the best bargain is that you've ever bought from Poundland in the comments.

Guest Mani! Lucky Dip #2

Hey there my little rose petals. My nails are still in horrific condition and as such I am getting some of my lovely British Nail Bloggers to help me out and write a few posts for me! First up I have the lovely Emma of Em's Little Corner! I challenged her to take on my Lucky Dip mani, so let's see how she got on! To check out my original Lucky Dip mani, click here.

Hey everyone!  This is the first time I’ve ever done a guest post, so I was honored to be able to do this post for Alyssia.  

Today I’m doing a “Lucky Dip Mani” and followed the instructions in Alyssia’s previous post.  The number which came out for me was three, so I picked three polishes from my stash, one from each drawer of my helmer: at the moment I only need three drawers for polish.

The first three that came out were China Glaze Creative Fantasy, Boots No7 Totally Teal and Models Own Snowflake.  As I didn’t see much hope with this combination due to how many coats Creative Fantasy needs, I doubled up and dipped again.  The next polishes which came out were a-England Princess Tears,  Ozotic 526 and a W7 Mystery Polish which I got in a set from TK Maxx that doesn’t have a name.  I knew I had to use at least three, but managed to use all of them except the Ozotic.

I decided to do a skittlette mani, featuring a gradient using Princess Tears and the W7, a dotty nail using Totally Teal over Creative Fantasy, a plain nail of Totally Teal and layer Snowflake over Creative Fantasy for the final nail.

I was really happy with the gradient nails, I would never have considered pairing these two.  If I was choosing a purple and teal to combine I would probably have gone for brighter colours, but all in all it didn't come out too bad.

Thanks again to Alyssia for having me!

Wow I love the mani that you came up with Emma! So cute and the gradient turned out amazing! I'm kind of gutted you didn't find a use for the Ozotic polish, but mainly because it looks so stunning in the bottle! I love that you managed to use two colours that you wouldn't normally put together and turn them into something cute and wearable! Thanks so much for doing a post for me!

Be sure to check out Emma's blog here, and feel free to take on the Lucky Dip Mani yourself!

I promise I'll be back soon!

Lucky Dip Mani #1

Good evening my little rose petals! I am pleased to report that my broken nail has grown back enough for me to be able to wear false nails! Unfortunately my natural nails are a long way off of being ok, but this means I can get back into blogging!

Today I bring you yet another new feature for this blog! Lucky dip mani's! I got the idea from Lauren Luke a makeup guru on Youtube. She does a lucky dip makeup look so I thought why not do it with my nails! So here are the rules of my lucky dip:

1. Pick a card showing a number (between 1-3), this is the minimum number of polishes that you must use in your look.
2. Looking away from the polish box, blindly pick out the number of polishes shown on your card. 
3. Once you have your first polishes you may dip to find extra polishes (you can only dip double the amount shown on the card originally) e.g. if the card shows 2, you can dip 4 times.
4. When you are done lucky dipping you may choose out of all the polishes you have dipped. You must use the minimum number shown on your card for the look!
5. You may use any technique to create the look.

Those rules actually make it sound a lot more complicated than it is... but anyway, here's what happened on my first go. My card showed a 2, so I decided to blindly pull 4 polishes, here is what I ended up with and they are also in the order I pulled them:

From left to right: Barry M Ruby Glitter, GOSH Gypsy Blue, Saffron White, Unknown Purple Shimmer

You can imagine my shock when the I saw the first two I pulled out. I thought there was no way that they were going to go together, which is why I decided to pull the extra two out and I was glad when I got the purple shimmer. This being my first attempt at a lucky dip I was pretty bummed that it didn't look like any of the polishes I'd picked would go together. But I swatched the Gypsy blue and the purple shimmer together and it looked like I might be rescued. I chose to attempt striping tape again, even though the last time I tried it the results were no less than disastrous! Here is what I came up with:

I am so happy with how these turned out. They took me a long time (almost 2 hours) but I am so happy with the results! I used the Gypsy blue as a base, and then put on the striping tape. Next I used two thin coats of the purple shimmer polish, and whilst the second coat was still wet I carefully removed the striping tape with tweezers. As you can see I even snuck a little bit of the Barry M Ruby Glitter onto the accent nail!  I'm not really sure it goes but I wanted to try and use as many of the polishes as I possibly could! Finally I sealed it all in with a top coat! Today's mani definitely took me out of my comfort zone, and I'm glad to be introducing it as a feature!

In fact I'd love to see some of my readers giving the lucky dip a go! Please email your name, pictures, blog name and a small description of how you created your mani to: armslade@live.co.uk! I would love to feature a couple everytime I do a lucky dip!

Let me know what you think!!

Hello 2013!

Good evening my little rose petals! I hope you all had an enjoyable New Years Eve!

Today I bring you a swatch of a polish I got for Christmas, and my resolutions! I'll start with the swatch:

This little beauty is one of the Miss Sport Metal Flip Polishes! I'm not sure which this is, I get this and the yellow one confused, I think it's Fiery Blaze or Beetle Wings. I'm wearing three coats and I topped it with Sally Hansen no chip acrylic top coat. My sister bought me all three of the Metal Flip Polishes for Christmas and I did attempt to swatch the other two yesterday but having looked at the appalling pictures I decided I would try again another day. This polish comes out kind of purple with tiny red and orange flecks. The picture above was taken under a lamp but I'm sure that in natural light I would be able to pick up many more colours. I'll let you know when I see it in natural light tomorrow! Addition: Under Natural light there are green flecks in the polish too! I absolutely love this polish, you can see all the different colours in the bottle and it changes as you move your hands, for £1.99 you can't go wrong. You can find these in any Superdrug store that stocks Miss Sporty!

Now onto my resolutions! I did write a post about these on my personal blog, but I thought I'd make some nail blog related ones for this blog! If you want to check out my personal resolutions then click here. Now onto my Nail Resolutions:

• Finish the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge by March! I don't paint my nails every day and therefore I can't commit to do the 31 day challenge for 31 straight days! So I hope to have completed them by March the 1st!
• Reach 100 followers by the end of the year! I'm not sure how I'll go about this yet, but it would mean a lot to me to have 100 followers by the end of 2013.
• Do a Giveaway! One of the things I want to do this year is have more things for my readers, starting with Giveaways! I'm planning to do a small one when I reach 50 followers then maybe a contest/ larger giveaway when I reach my target of 100!

So those are my main goals for 2013! If there is anything you think I should be doing on this blog, or things that you want to see more of then please let me know in the comments! Also tell me your resolutions!

Grab Bag from Polished Criminails!

Hello there my little rose petals!

A few weeks ago I saw a post on Facebook from Polished Criminails saying she was selling off some of her polishes in Grab Bags for £22 with stamping plates. Of course I jumped at the chance to feed my polish addiction for another few weeks!

My package arrived the other day and I can safely say I was not disappointed with what I got!

I got my first O.P.I polish!!! I've been lusting after several O.P.I polishes ever since I started this blog, I was just waiting for a time when I had a little extra money to purchase some! So I was so glad when I received this one! It's called Come to Poppy and it was opaque in one coat!

Beauty UK is another brand that I didn't own any polish from but I really love this colour! It's called Jelly Bean, although the colour is lovely I needed several coats of it for it to become opaque and it really shows the streaks from the brush...

Another first for me, a China Glaze polish! This is another brand I have been lusting after but just haven't had the money to invest in! I was lucky enough to get one in this grab bag! This is Icicle and I think it's such a beautiful colour!

Blue is my favourite colour and in my eyes it's a colour that you simply can't go wrong with! This colour from Collection 2000 Hot Looks collection is called BMX Bandits and it's a lovely colour that I can see myself wearing an awful lot!

This was a polish from a brand I had never heard before, but I loved the glitters. It's a polish by Black Radiance and it's called Swag Rock! It's got green, silver and pinky red glitters in it! This is two coats over China Glaze Icicle! My main issue with this polish is that it doesn't dry very quickly at all and I found that I kept smudging it constantly. I still love the colours though so I'll try to make it work!

I was kicking myself that I didn't snap up the Barry M limited edition Web Effects when I had the chance but I don't have to worry anymore as I actually have my own! This is the Web Effects over the Collection 2000 BMX Bandits! I think it's really sweet (even if it does look exactly like the Croc Effects) and I will certainly be trying to incorporate it into more manicures!

This is one of my favourite polishes from the grab bag. I'm not sure on the brand, I think it's a Spanish one and I couldn't find it online when I Google searched it, I'm also not sure on the colour name. It's a cherry red polish with tiny silver specks in it. It's sooooo prettiful and I'll definitely be wearing it a lot.

The final polish I got was an indie one! My first Indie Polish! (there are a lot of firsts in this post!) It's a Shimmer Polish and it's Linna. It's a teal glitter mix with red, blue and silver glitters in it also! I really REALLY love this polish. I'm wearing two coats in the picture above and it's pretty much opaque. This polish has just made me want my indie polishes from Glitzology Beauty to arrive sooner rather than later!

As well as these polishes I also got THREE stamping plates in this grab bag!

I'm so pleased with this grab bag! Seeing as it is the first I have ever purchased I was worried about what it was going to be like and what it was going to contain. I can safely say I'd definitely order a grab bag from another blogger again, I can't believe I managed to get all these fantastic polishes and plates for £22!!!!

Thank you so much to Polished Criminails!

Have you ever ordered a Grab Bag? Were you happy with what you got?