So So Skullicious.

I know, I know, Halloween is still roughly a month away, but aw hell I just don't care. These polishes are just too cute to keep them hidden away for that long! Now I must let it be known now that I am a complete sucker for anything with a skull on it, an in particular anything sugarskull (hence my inclusion of these super cute sugarskull note holders, aren't they lovely? I just couldn't leave them out of this post, too appropriate). I just think they're the most beautiful things, and when I saw these polishes I was in an absolute frenzy! I looked high and low across the internet and the best price I came across was here, fairly reasonably I feel for these little O.P.I cuties, and they came next day. Always a bonus. I have never really been a big buyer of O.P.I, mostly because I buy most of my polishes off the high street on total shopping binges and also O.P.I's tend to be over priced and hard to come buy where I live. Having said this I needed to have these. I already have the Nicki Minaj mini collection and I found myself surprisingly impress with the gloss and finish of those I thought why not? Four cute polishes and some sugar skull decals, can't go wrong.

♥♥♥Let's start with A-Rose from the Dead, shall we? A beautiful deep pink creme, with a crazy high gloss shine. A really nice pink to add to any collection, not a truly bright Barbie pink, but not boardering on a purple shade either, so a really versatile shade. I would definitely recommend a quality base coat with this polish due to it's high pigment nature, but if you're wearing as a one off for say, a party and you're maybe in a rush, I'd say you could maybe skip a top coat, because the shine you get from the polish alone is ridiculous, from what I've seen it does last a few days before chips and peels normally begin.
♥♥♥

♥♥♥hi, Pumpkin is a delicious, rich orange with an equally lovely finish to its pink counter part. I can't say that orange is always the first colour my eye is drawn to when polish shopping, but this one is adorable. If you want to mix things up and move away from the typical peach or coral shades that are increasingly making an appearance, opting for something like this really does stand out, but in the best way! It's a little twist on a current trend and one that I really like. It looks very chic contrasting with blues, pair it with a navy polka dot dress and keep things a little more modern than the classic red nail accompaniment.♥♥♥

♥♥♥Every nail polish collection should include a high quality black varnish, and Mourning Glory is exactly that. The formulation of all of these polishes is some what thin, but they are super pigmented and this black is totally a one-coat wonder. Again I recommend a base coat, but the super shine and quality means you could maybe skip out a top-coat. Really lovely to wear on its own, or with the decals next to a colourful outfit, a floral playsuit maybe (something super girly), for contrast, or it provides a gorgeous base colour for Metallic 4 life (a black and silver glitter found in the Nicki Minaj set).♥♥♥

♥♥♥Normally a bright yellow is something I would not buy. The reason for this being that I did buy one, a cheaper polish from Claire's, and it really put me off. The cover was awful, and I have to use about three/four coats to cover the bald spots on the nail, meaning it took an age to dry. Candlelight however is lovely! Currently reforming my opinions of bright yellows this polish's formula is complete different from that awful little cheapo polish. You definitely, 100% need a base coat with this, purely because of it's colour not because of brand or quality of it. I tend to wear this one of miserable rainy, winter days to brighten up my life, and it really does make you a little happier ♥♥♥

Before I forget, a little note to the cute little sugarskull decals that come with the polishes. They're very easy to apply, soak them in water for a minute or two and remove the waxy paper back. Then slide the decal on to the nail and press down gently. Leave them to dry for a couple of seconds, if they start to curl up dab a small amount of water on them to flatten them back down. Once they have dried you can either continue with a little nail art, like I have above, (I think the few polka dots really set them off, I do love anything over the top, to do this I just used the white, black pink and yellow Models Own Wah nail pens) or topcoat them to keep the decal in place. Overall a really cute little nail set from O.P.I, that I definitely recommend. What's your favourite O.P.I mini set? Xxx.

Iridescent love.

Sometimes us ladies (and maybe even some men) like to dress up our digits with a nice mint, or a cute little pink polish, and the simplicity of that one shade sets off your outfit in just the right way, and we feel like most sophisticated woman to walk into where ever since time began, but sometimes we want to feel like fancy bitches and shower ourselves in shimmer, with a sexy little polish that makes you wiggle your finger tips in another lovely's face until they notice how sick your nails look, and their face express nothing but jealousy. For this I look to duochromes and iridescents. Duochromes and iridescents are two of the easiest and cutest ways to jazz up more ordinary polishes. In this post I'll look at three of my favourite iridescents, ways to wear them and why I love them. Now I do realise that if I totted it up, the majority of my current posts would be about Models Own polishes, but there's a reason for this. I adore them. I am also aware that the Beetle Juice collection has been out for quite some time now, but I feel that the age of a polish should not stop me from posting about it if I feel that there is something to say, whether that be quality, value or new ways to rock that shade. So I have picked my favourite Beetle Juice gems, rather than posting on the whole collection, and this post is dedication to them.

Now the shades I have picked are fairly sheer when painted on a bare nail. Which I love. Quite a few of the Beetle Juice polishes are darker in colour and more densely packed with pigment on the nail, and in my book this pushes them over the boarder line into duochrome territory and when condensed in the bottle, the three polishes I'm looking at appear to cross that line too, however when worn in the way shown below I tend to class them more so as iridescent, because of the subtle nature of the colour change in them. The sheer quality to theses iridescent polishes makes them super versatile allowing us lovely ladies (and maybe men) to get more looks for our bucks! The three polishes I am looking at are the glorious Tropical Sun, Indian Ocean, and Pink Cocktail, and to demonstrate their versatility in the best way I have decided to swatch them on multiple base colours.

The first of these beauties is Tropical Sun which I bought for £5 from Boots. A wonderful warm pink with orange and peach tones running through it. To bring out the best features of this shade I have swatched it on a bright white from Essie called Blanc, a very yummy peach from Nails Inc by the name of Wellington Square and three lovely little Topshop polishes, the purple Parma Violet, a lovely baby pink called Day Dream and War paint, a fabulous coral red.

The chosen colours really do make Tropical Sun look great. To me it creates a wonderful vision of beautiful Saree fabrics. Packed with a great richness of colour that gives and gives. With each movement it hints at more colour and depth, and you can enhance this with the base colour you chose to layer it on. By choosing both complimenting and contrasting base colours you can create multiple looks for all three of these beautiful iridescents. Personally I'm a bit of a sucker for anything purple and my favourite colour combination is the contrasting lilac and orange, I feel the two polishes just transform each other and look fantastic next to say, an all black outfit.

The second polish I'm looking at is the gorgeous Indian Ocean, again £5 from Boots. Now you may notice at this point that some of the base colours I swatch against are repeated, but that's just because they're yummy on their own and look even better next to these three fab polishes.

Indian Ocean itself is a lovely pale blue with hints of lilac and green shinning through. Making it only fitting to swatch it over purples, greens and blues! Again using Essie's Blanc to showcase it polish alone, then we have another three cuties from Topshop, Easy Breezy mint, Parma Violet purple, and the delicious Celestial blue.

These swatches remind me of two things. The purple and white based swatches make me feel like a fairy princess, I don't know why, but I feel like Tinkerbell just went and sprinkled a crap load of fairy dust all over my mani and made me look super swag. The green and blue swatch though create a beautiful sense of mermaid chic, if nail polish worked under water, we all know, The Little Mermaid would be rolling with these shades.

The final polish I want to look at is the perfect Pink Cocktail. A polish so beautifully pink that it would turn Barbie into a clepto! I Acquired this little lovely in the Beetle Juice mini's set and it's rather beauts! £8 for a set of three polishes bringing its individual price down to around £2.66, bargain!

It's vibrant pink with micro pigments of lilac and pale blue hidden within it, and my favourite way to wear it means pairing it with equally girlie base colours. Keeping this in mind I've coated it over Blanc, Day Dream and Parma Violet. These pastel shades provide a lovely even base palette for the shimmer and shine of Pink Cocktail, picking out and complimenting each aspect of the shade.

I can appreciate that such a sweet candy pink polish and its variations may not be for everyone, but if you are feeling particularly femme, this is a really nice addition to your chosen outfit, I will say though, they the perfect purpose for these pink pretties is to help little girls, and girly girls at that, stop biting their nails. They see it, think "Oooh Disney princess" and immediately stop themselves from nibbling away. Mission accomplished!

All of the polishes in this post were originally bought from Boots, however you can also pick them up here! What are you fave iridescents or duochromes? Xxx.

Matte Madness.

So every now and then I get a little bit obsessed with a certain brand of polish, or type of product, at the moment I'm developing a little something for matte polishes and top coats. It started off with my purchase of the Models Own - Hedkandi collection's "Hedonist" polish (£5 in Boots). It is gorgeous! It's a really bright neon pink (or orangey coral depending on the light)and I bought it thinking it was a standard, shine finish polish. Oh no no! When it dries it's the most beautiful matte finish you've ever seen, and this really makes the polish pop. It moves it on from being another bright summer neon to something with a little bit more style and edge, needless to say I LOVE it!

So that's it, now my eyes have been opened to mattes and I'm on the hunt for more, like a nail polish Predator. At the same time though, I do like a cheeky bargain, so you know I'm looking for polishes to test and play with that won't break the bank, and boy did I find one. During one of my massive cosmetics binges I was searching E.L.F, for new eyeliners, foundations that sort of thing and came across their "Matte Finish Clear Nail Polish", so I take a look, and then I take a look at the price... £1.50! So I order it, along with a million other things, and it's awesome!

For that kind of price you expect it to be a super little bottle, or to not quite work or a lot of chipping, and that's so not the case. It's a decent 10ml bottle, it's really quick drying, and you can obviously see when it's dry because it's transformed to matte, and it's actually pretty chip resistant too. The best thing about it? Now rather than having one matte polish, I can have hundreds!

So with my sick new top coat in hand I've been playing around with one of my favourite nail art patterns, the little leopard print on a nice summery pastel shade.

Step one, base coat. I used the Models Own "3 in 1 Base coat/ Top coat & Gloss"

Step two, pick a base colour. I chose Models Own "Lilac Dream", a beautiful pastel purple with great coverage.

Step three, matte coat. Like I said this time I was playing around with my new E.L.F "Matte Finish Clear Nail Polish".

Final step, leopard. For this you can use the branded nail art pens like the Models Own - Wah Nails pens, but I used some Nail Star pens that I bought of Ebay for cheaps, love those bargains! I tend to use a rule of three for the print, using three sides, whether connected or not seems to be the best way that I've found to get the leopard to look just right.

The shine finish of the black really sets off the matte lilac too, making it look super slick! I definitely recommend this matte coat, give it a try, it won't rinse your wallet and it's a top coat like this is a great addition to any collection.

Nail polish can't make you fat.

So we all have our weaknesses and mine, clearly, is nail polish. When I am bored, sad or stressed I like to buy polish or paint my nails. After a couple of stressful and generally shitty days I wanted to cheer myself up with a spot of shopping. Fair enough right? Well I think so. So I went shopping with the intention of buying maybe two or three cheaper end, standard polishes. That was until I saw three for two... EVERYWHERE.

I went into meltdown.

If I had been left unsupervised in that shop, there's a very real possibility that I would have bought everything in there.

No jokes.

Luckily I wasn't unsupervised, my lovely friend Rebekah was there to calm me in my manic state, and make sure I didn't go too overboard. In the end I came out with ten new Models Own polishes for myself and one for her, branching out into a whole new brand of polish. I got a few from the pastel collection, a couple from the headkandi range as well as one full sized beetlejuice and three baby mini beetlejuicies too! I think that's a great investment. Now in financial terms that's still around a weeks worth of food, but hey, nail polish can't make you fat!

I also came out with one hundred false nails. Yay! Now I have something to play around with, and practice different styles and designs. So with my new kit I had a little play around with stripes, aztec and some glitter too!

Mint aztec.

Sexy melons.

...because I don't normally get my five a day!

...and also because I wanted to do some quick keep nail art.

Cheeky student price nail art.

Start yourself off with some base coat, that dark pink will stain your nails like a bitch, I use the Barry M base coat, nail hardener and top coat. It's the only one I've ever used to be honest, and it's always done a good job, so I've never thought to use anything else.

When that dries, apply a nice dark pink colour, I used beauty uk - glam nails "Mauve flash - no.34", never really used beauty uk until this year, there was a sale on in Superdrug so I went a little mental about six shades of their polish, and was quite pleasantly surprised. The light green theirs it's the "Soft Green - no.46" shade. Pop that all over the tip on your nail leave it to dry and then apply a stripe of darker green to the very tip of your nail. Mine is from one of those job-lot eBay nail-art brands, I bought something like 24 pens for £8.99 if I remember rightly, the brand on the packaging is something like Nail Star. Add a white stripe beneath the light green, add to the cartoony look. I use a Barry M White, I find that it covers up darker colours better than some of the slightly lower price options, not to say that it's expensive though, because it's still a pretty cheap brand. Then draw on the melon pips in black, you can use nail art pens if you have them, but you don't have to, just use an orange stick and some black polish, you can even use the end of a bobby-pin if you want to, it's all good, again for this I used a Nail Star pen, no real reason why though, it was just the closest thing to hand. Hope you like them.

Here's a cheeky little compilation of leopard nail pics.