Fun Friday Mani: Purple and Teal Hearts

Good evening my loves

It's time for a super fun Friday mani. I cannot get enough of these two colours together and who doesn't love a bow accent nail? I have so much planned for the next three days and I cannot wait, girly lunches, sister sleepovers, vampire diaries marathon catch up sessions, girly day out on Sunday and brunch on Monday. In between I need to find time to change my nails as often as possible ;-)

Purple, Teal and a cute bow

Happy weekend loves

How are you all doing? I have had a really lovely day. I woke up super early, made myself a cuppa, fed the dogs then all three of us got back into bed to catch up on Instagram, read my favourite blogs and of course just totally relax as its the weekend and it has been a tough week.

Spots and a Bow: Galahad and Bright Purple

Happy Good Friday loves

Have you all had a wonderful day? Mine was a little different to the way I had it planned out... In a nutshell I went for a dog walk this morning with my friend Debbie and then when we tried to get back into the house once we were done I realised I had lost my keys! Neither of us had our phones with us so after much searching and then banging on neighbours doors to borrow a phone my little sister arrived like a knight in shining armour and somehow found my keys in the middle of the field that we had already searched three times!

Phew! Time for my nails of the day...

Swatch: a-England: Galahad

Good evening lovelies

I am so excited to add this polish to my growing collection. Thank you to a recent online sale I ticked a couple of absolute lemmings off my list and this is one of them... a-England Galahad...

All My Favourite Things: Skittlette

Good evening lovelies

TGI Friday! Its been an incredibly busy week for me. I am extending my team by 9 people and in order to find that many amazing people I have so far held upwards of 35 interviews and only picked 4 so far! I am sick of the sound of my own voice and definitely bored of the 10 interview questions I picked. Oh Well!

At least my nails are looking fabulous though... ;-)

Fairy Teal and Pretty Pink

Good evening lovelies

Tuesday already! Please excuse the paper cuts you can see in this mani, but it was too pretty for me not to share it but I had obviously had a clumsy day at work!

What a Stunning Pair: a-England

Good evening lovelies!

How has your weekend been? Over too quickly I bet :-)

I had a nice family day on Saturday and got to spend time with my little niece Millie. On Sunday I had a marathon nail day and did three full sets of gel nail extensions as part of my quest to become a qualified nail technician. To be fair being a beginner and doing all three sets in a row at someone elses house was a bit of a mission and I am exhausted! However I am very grateful that those ladies were willing to let me practice on them, not to mention Jamie, Becky and Faye who also kindly let me put extensions on them last week.

Onto my nail of the day...

I could stare at these gorgeous polishes for hours and never get bored! Aren't they stunning?

I started with a very easy two coats of a-England Saint George. Quite simply the most stunning teal green holo polish ever and I would put it firmly at the top of my current list of favourites.

Then using a-England She Walks in Beauty I added glitters tips. This is described on the a-England website as an intricate and complex mix of large and small rose-coloured hexagonal glitters in a shimmering pale golden base that colour shifts with light and movement. I could not have said it better myself :-)

Look at the amazing holo's in both of these polishes - LOVE!

If you dont own Saint George then you must go and purchase it now. Its amazing!

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Orly Perfect Pairs: 5: Blackened Teal

Good evening lovelies!

Another Orly Perfect Pair for you tonight... this one features another first for this blog and another pet hate of mine... bar glitter :-(

I have never liked how it looks on me and do not own a single polish that contains bar glitter, however as with the other Orly Perfect Pairs (including the brown polish!) this sparkly little number won me around!! I think mainly because it was beautifully rainbow coloured and holographic. See for yourself...

Check out the multi colours in this glitter...

For this Perfect Pair I used Orly Le Chateau which is a blackened teal jelly. I have featured this polish before here but I didnt include a swatch picture as the one I took at the time looked plain black. In the below picture you can see the teal showing through this blackened jelly base.

On my other hand is one coat of Orly Sunglasses At Night which as you can see is made up of blue holographic bar glitters. This is one of my least favourites from the collection but I have to say it layered really well and looked very effective.

Here are the polishes side by side...

I couldn't resist the sunglasses prop to match the name of this holo bar glitter... Sunglasses At Night :-)

I honestly like this bar glitter so much more than I thought I would and might even be tempted to purchase it and make it a permanent addition to my polish collection.

Here is a picture with the flash on...

Finally here are a couple more pictures from the promo shots I put together...

Do you like bar glitter? If like me you were a bit of a hater would you actually be converted after seeing this?

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Orly: A Pair of Teals

Good evening lovelies!

Tonight I am going to show you the gorgeous Orly Go Deeper from the Glam FX collection. It is rare that I wear a polish with no stamping or nail art of any kind but this glitter way was too gorgeous to mess about with. See for yourself...

I took some pictures with my camera flash turned on and some with it turned off. In all honesty this polish looked beautiful no matter what light I captured it in but I thought I would show you both so you can see the depth of colours in Go Deeper.

I started with a base of Orly Le Chateau which is a blackened teal jelly. The application was good and as you can see it really is very blackened and quite hard to see that it has any teal in it at all. If I wanted to wear this as a stand alone colour it would need three thin coats.

Le Chateau is a such a beautiful dark teal base for this awesome green glitter...

I absolutely love this polish. Honestly I could wear this for days at a time and not get bored of looking at it!

One final picture with the flash on...

What do you think of Go Deeper? Stunning isn't it?

Also what do you think of my pictures - are they better with flash on or flash off? Fellow bloggers do you use a flash when taking your nail pictures?

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

My First A England: Saint George

Hi lovelies!

Hope you are all doing well? I mentioned in my last post that I had been very spoilt by family and friends this Christmas, in amongst all my wonderful presents and gift vouchers I got 28 bottle of nail polish :-) !!

I was not expecting anywhere near that many but as you can imagine I am beyond excited! Not only is every single colour gorgeous but I got lots of new makes to try such as: A-England, Layla Hologram, Nails Inc and Tecnic.

There was no chance this stunning glittery teal was going to stay untried for longer than a day or so...

This is just ONE coat of A England Saint George which was a present from the lovely Faye B. I had no idea she would pick such a perfect colour for me and it certainly made me feel like I have some of the best friends ever. Not to mention this was not the only colour she picked for me. Princess Tears will follow very soon :-).

I could not bring myself to stamp over this beautiful polish so I just added a few simple petals to my ring finger as a simple accent nail.

The formula of this polish was amazing. It was stunning in one coat, dried quickly to a glass finish and looked beautiful under any light. Lucky Me :-)

Louise xx

Should Blue and Green Be Seen?

Happy Thursday!

My weekend starts here as I have Friday off on holiday... :-)

We have got so many fantastic plans for the weekend which I will tell you a little more about tomorrow night but in the meantime... should blue and green never be seen?

Has anyone else heard this little wives tale or quote? I can remember as I was growing up my Mum telling me that as I have bright green eyes I should never wear blue eye make up, hence me thinking that blue and green should never be seen.

I love this mani though...

I started with a base of Revlon Ocean which is a frost finish light teal. This was mega easy to apply and dried in super quick time. I am really impressed with my three new Revlon polishes.

I then stamped this simple geometric design using Barry M Denim. Super simple but very eye catching. My Nan loved it and even asked my Grandad if he would like her to wear her nails in this colour combo! Cute!



Revlon Ocean swatch

I usually steer clear of the more geometric designs as I prefer the girly flowery kind but on this occasion and with these two colours, I think it was the perfect combination :-)

Take care

Louise xx

Zig Zag tape manicure

Welcome back lovelies

I am so excited about tonights manicure. This is my first attempt at using striping tape to create a pattern and also my first attempt at a sponged gradient. The two techniques combined created this fab looking manicure.

For this look I used Barry M Teal as my base colour. I then layered one stunning coat of Color Club Metamorphosis to create a pretty shimmery look.

I then cut lots of little pieces of striping tape and added them to each nail in a zig zag design. With the tape still in place I sponged a thin layer of Barry M Shocking Pink and a thin layer of Color Club Wing Fling.

Two thick coats of Seche Vite even out any raised surfaces and bought out the sparkle in theses polishes even more. My inspiration for this look was taken straight from the amazing Carolina of Colores de Carol. If you havent already checked out her fab nail art blog then you should do so right now! Many of Carolinas manicures are saved in my 'to do' folder.

I hope you enjoyed this manicure, I am really looking forward to trying this again with darker colours

Louise xx

Ruffian nails

Good evening lovelies

Tonight I decided to try something a little different. I have seen lots of these manicures on the many nail blogs I follow and decided it was finally time for me to experiment with the ruffian technique.

I wanted to use my matte top coat so I reached for my only true matte nail polish - Orly Iron Butterfly. It looked really pretty in real life but my camera hated taking shots with a matte finish so I dont have many pictures for you today :-(

For this look I started with a base coat of Barry M Teal, which is a frost finish green polish. I am not a fan of the frost finish so was glad to cover most of this polish up with a ruffian style manicure.

I used Orly Iron Butterfly to create the ruffian look. This polish dries to a total matte finish but the last time I used it for a manicure I had to add my usual glossy top coat to prevent it chipping so much. This time I added one coat of Essie Matte About Me and stepped back to admire.

So that I could take some better pictures of this matte mani I added a layer of glossy top coat and ended up much preferring the way it looked. Iron Butterfly looks like polished granite with the glossy top coat and my camera loved it again!

Barry M Teal swatch

It just goes to show that my original idea of keeping things matte was certainly not the best idea for tonights manicure.

See you again soon

Louise xx