Valentines Nails: Lucky me, beautiful presents

Good evening lovelies!

I love Fridays :-). Tonight we are having our Valentine's Meal and will enjoy a glass of bubbly or two! On Saturday I am spending girly time with my sister, we are having facials, massages and a nice meal in a Thai restaurant. On Sunday Mr LiPP and I are making some adjustments to my nail room and putting together a portfolio for the next part of my course.

Tonight I thought I would show you the beautiful polishes I got from my one and only valentine :-)

For this beautiful sparkly look I started with two gorgeous coats of OPI Lucerne-Tainly Look Marvellous. It is a beautiful shade of pewter grey and contains so much pretty sparkle that it appears more like a foil effect polish. It is smooth to the touch which is unusual with this much glitter in the base colour.

I then added one coat of OPI Pirouette My Whistle which is a glitter polish from the Soft Shades collection. Pirouette My Whistle contains lots of very fine silver glitter and lots of pearly white hex shaped glitters suspended in a clear jelly base. This will look lovely layered over just about any colour in my collection.

With the camera flash on

Quick picture of my Valentines gifts... the gorgeous leather carry case is for my nail supplies so I can go mobile in style and the OPI gift set contains the two polishes you have just seen and a rhinestone covered pen - the perfect accessory for a stationery addict.

What do you have planned for the weekend? Did you have a lovely Valentines or like us are you celebrating at the weekend instead?

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Valentines Nails: Pink, Coral and Gold

Good evening lovelies!

Time for another Valentine's installment :-).This one I really liked and meant I got to use two very pretty colours from my current untrieds stash. I really love combining shades of pink and orange together so this manicure was a win win for me!

I started by painting my full nail with two coats of Rimmel In Style Coral. This pretty summery colour is one of my favourite shades of Coral and a complete bargain to me as I got it from good old Poundland :-)

Then using Rimmel Be A Star I painted just half of each nail. This is a very pretty pink and I love how these two colours work together. Also having this line running down the length of my nail made my nails look longer.

Flash on

I added one quick coat of Northern Lights Gold Hologram top coat - to aid drying time and also add a nice little sparkle.

Finally using Barry M Gold Foil I stamped a line of hearts up each nail using part of this full heart design which is perfect for Valentines.

I hope you like this finished design? Have you been busy planning something special for Valentine's Day?

Mr LiPP and I are going to celebrate on Friday night so we can chill out and not worry about work the next day :-)

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

Valentines Nails: Grapefruit and White

Good evening lovelies

How can I resist adding in another Valentine's manicure when it looks as adorable as this? I love coming up with nail art when I have a theme to stick to! All things romantic, heart shaped and love related are top of my list right now and I LOVE it!

I started with two super easy coats of Barry M Gelly in Grapefruit. I forgot how much I love to wear this as a base colour and I cannot stop looking at this colour in the office today! Too distracting :-)

I stamped using several different plates, the first being the mini grafetti hearts found on Cheeky plate CH15. I haven't used this design before and after I stamped it I did think it was a little fussy and hard to see the actual hearts but I like it none the less.

For my ring finger accent I stamped this adorable I Love You symbol from BM02. I don't use the original bundle monster plates all that much as the full nail designs are too small even for my short nails however they do have some great accent designs.

Lastly I stamped this little puckered lip design from the same plate (BM02), one in Konad White and one in Barry M Gelly in Pomegranate.

The final touch was a quick slick of fast drying top coat Hologram in Silver. If you don't own this little beauty from the Northern Lights brand I highly recommend you treat yourself. I use it loads!

I really hope you are enjoying my romantically themed nails as much as I am :-)

Keep checking back for the next installment

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Orly Angel Eyes: Seeing Stars

Good evening lovelies

Tonight I am going to show you this beautiful blue glitter which has been sitting on my shelf for way to long. I treated myself to three polishes from the Orly Naughty or Nice collection towards the end of last year. I have already shown you the stunning Miss Conduct several times, tonight is the turn of Angel Eyes and I am saving Halo for something special :-).

In the below picture you will see I am holding the bottle I used as a base colour for this manicure. Sally Hansen Brisk Blue is a really bright one coater and perfect for use in this manicure as the glitter in Angel Eyes is set in a very light blue almost clear base.

Once the base was dry I applied two gorgeous coats of Angel Eyes, which is made up of micro, small and medium glitters in blue and silver.

I then used Barry M Silver Foil to stamp the star designs from Cheeky plate CH5.

With the flash on...

Same picture with the flash off...

How do you like Angel Eyes? I love it. The colour is bright and the glitters are so shiny, it really was eye catching all day long. I will definitely be using the tin foil technique to remove this tomorrow :-)

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Valentines Nails: Bright Red and White

Good evening lovelies

Love is all around but especially on my nails :-)

Time for my second installment of Valentines nail art. It is the perfect occasion for a beautiful manicure and I am loving the chance to use colours and stamps that are romantically themed. I decided to use Barry M Bright Red as the main colour in this manicure after using it on my friend Elly for her masquerade ball nails. It looked stunning with her black dress and red lipstick :-).

Here are my 'love is all around' nails...

I started with a base of Barry M Bright Red which although they look a little orange toned in these pictures is actually the truest brightest red in my whole collection.

Using Konad White I stamped the heart design onto all nails except my ring finger. It was a little hard to get it lined up in the centre of each nail but rather than obsess over it I decided to leave them exactly as they came out at my first attempt.

For my thumb nail I used a dotted heart outline pattern from plate CH 15.

Finally on my ring finger I added the word LOVE from plate BM 09

How do you like this look? I am loving the red and white together :-)

Tomorrow we are off to see my sister-in-law and beautiful niece, Millie. The doggies are away at my friend Sarah's for a sleep over. They will be spoiled rotten and it means Mr LiPP and I don't have to rush back so can have a lovely day catching up and hopefully a nice lunch out somewhere.

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Hero in Disguise

Good evening lovelies!

Are you as relieved as me that the weekend is finally here? Honestly I know I say it every week but it cannot come soon enough for me. I cherish my Friday nights so much :-).

Tonight I am going to share with you the beautiful swatches of my first ever Indie polish purchased from Carolina over at Colores de Carol.  I was so pleased when I realised that Carolina has been able to offer International shipping from the USA so I quickly snapped up Hero in Disguise, which I will show you now, and Cupcake Fantasy which I will feature next week. They arrived in super quick time and have settled into my polish stash very nicely :-).

Hero in  Disguise is a light grey jelly polish which has a subtle shimmer mixed into the base and is packed with small yellow hex glitters, larger coral hex glitters and lots of little black stars. The polish comes in a 15ml bottle and is big 3 free.

I decided to layer my Hero in Disguise over one quick coat of Revlon Hazy. Mainly so I could make this manicure perfect in just two coats of Hero in Disguise and not waste a third coat for the sake of opacity.

In the below shot you can see just how glitter packed this beautiful polish actually is...

With the flash on...

This final shot is the same as above but with no flash.

How do you like Hero in Disguise? Do you own any of Carolina's beautiful Indie polishes yet? I saw on her blog just recently that Carolina has also added some Limited Edition St Patrick's duo polishes, I particularly love Irish Night, and also the super cute Girls Night Out collection.

I will be back to buy more :-)

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P