Tropical Punch NOTD with Seventeen and OPI and a Few Haul Pictures

And now it's time for something summery. This is Seventeen (17) Tropical Punch over OPI Mediterranean Moonlight. The glitters in the Seventeen polish are matte, so they give a great contrast to the base coat. The OPI polish is quite dull on its own, but the topcoat really cheered it up.

I also have a few pictures of a recent haul featuring drugstore polishes, including Seventeen and some TKMaxx finds. I love TKMaxx, but the only thing I hate is how they plaster the products with the price stickers, I mean look at that poor Nails Inc polish!

See more pictures of my TKMaxx finds after the jump!

NOTD: Nails Inc Shepherds Market

I believe this was a limited edition colour, I bought it as part of a set in TKMaxx, so not sure, but it's not on the Nails Inc website. Shepherds Market is a silver glitter polish with lots of multicoloured glitter. The glitter in it is very fine, and the coverage is very good, the pictures show two coats.

The formula was nice and easy to apply. It did show up the imperfections on my nails and sadly chipped within the first 24 hours, so I wasn't pleased with that. It was fairly easy to remove at least.

Nails Inc polishes cost £11 and you get 10 ml for your money. I find the quality variable, some are nice, some aren't that nice. To be honest, I don't think they're worth £11, so I try to buy them in sets in TKMaxx instead. They do have some lovely colours though.

See more pictures after the jump!

NOTD: Nails Inc Park Lane and OPI Purple With A Purpose

There are two things I love very much are combined in this mani: purple and glitter. I wore Nails Inc Park Lande over OPI Purple With A Purpose. I did 2 coats of the OPI polish and then one coat of the Nails Inc glitter polish on top.

To be honest, you probably can't even see the OPI polish because Nails Inc Park Lane has a fantastic coverage in just one coat! Although in the pictures it looks like the base polish is peeping through, but it's not really, just how the light falls on my nails.

Both formulas were lovely and I had very minimal chipping in the first 48 hours. The glitter polish was surprisingly easy to remove, so that was a bonus.

Both of these polishes are permanent, I believe, so you should be able to find them quite easily. I think they both cost £11 each, the Nails Inc being 10 ml and the OPI 15 ml.

The colours in the pictures are not at all accurate, so I included some I took with my phone camera, which are worse quality, but the colours are much truer to life.

See lots of pictures after the jump!

NOTD: Nails Inc Garrick Street

Sadly, the pictures don't do this gorgeous polish justice, it was so much prettier in real life. Absolutely stunning duochrome from pink to purple to blue and a bit of teal at certain angles.

Taken without flash in natural daylight

I used 3 coats to achieve opacity, but it was good on its own, rather than needing to be layered over black polish like many duochromes do. The formula was nice and easy to use. It did start chipping on me fairly quickly though, so that's not great, but it was pretty while it lasted.

I bought this as part of a set from TK Maxx, but Nails Inc polishes normally retail for £11. You get 10 ml for your money which makes them pretty expensive, but I do like the sets in TK Maxx very much as they're great value (usually better than half price).

See more pictures after the jump!

My Nail Polish Stash and Storage Video (and Lots of Pictures!)

I've spent a couple of days re-organising my nail polish storage and creating a spreadsheet, so I know exactly where every single one of them are, so I though I would show you the fruit of my hard work. Also I enjoy looking at other people's stashes, so hope you enjoy it too.



I have also taken pictures of the contents of each box and separate packs, so if you're interested, have a look! No individual pictures, but I did do a rather extensive series on my nail polish stash last November, so click here if you'd like to check it out.

See lots more pictures after the jump!

Is It Possible To Have Too Much Of A Good Thing (Or The Same Colour Nail Polish)?

Question: How many different nail polishes am I wearing in the picture below? Yeah, I know, it looks like the same colour on every finger nail. The truth is, I'm wearing 4 different polishes form 4 different brands ranging from £6 to £14. Confused? Let me explain.

I now have a ridiculous amount of nail polishes (over 500) and I managed to fall into the trap of buying the same colour several times. Partly because I didn't know what I had, although partly because I do have a tendency of buying colours I like over and over again. But even so, I never would've thought that it is possible to buy 4 nail polishes from 4 brands that will look EXACTLY the same. Similar, maybe, but exactly the same? All these polishes are fairly recent releases, so it seems that some brands are copying other brands here. Anyway, let me tell you what I have here.

On the index finger I have Deborah Lippmann Private Dancer. This one costs £14 for 15 ml. On the middle finger I wore Nails Inc. Cheyne Walk polish. It costs £11 for 10 ml making it the most expensive per ml. On the ring finger it's China Glaze No Plain Jane, around £7 in the UK (although BeautyBay are selling this for £12.75?) for 14 ml. I got mine on eBay for $4.50 plus pretty reasonable shipping, making it the cheapest per ml. On the pinky it's Topshop Amethyst nail polish, £6 for 8ml. 

So are they any different? I'd say there are very slight differences, but not enough to justify paying over double the price for the higher end brands. In fact for me the Topshop one had the nicest formula which is the second cheapest per ml (or cheapest per bottle, however you look at it, it's still one of the cheapest). The Deborah Lippmann polish is a tiny bit pinker, but really, noone would say you're wearing 4 different polishes on your fingers, they are that similar. The duochrome effect was about the same with all of them (not overly strong and a bit muddy).

I can't comment on how longlasting they are because I only wore the Deborah Lippmann polish on all my other fingers, the other 3 I only wore on one finger each, and I wouldn't compare the ring finger to my index finger, because the pinky and ring fingers are always the last ones to chip and the index finger is the first, whichever polish I wear. The Deborah Lippmann one lasted on me for 2 days without major chipping, but buy the end of day 2 it wasn't looking its best.

I would like to apologise about the application, but I was in a big rush to take pictures because my middle finger nail was actually slightly broken (you might be able to see it in some pictures), so I didn't have time to clean up properly. Also apologies about the picture quality, I took all pictures with my phone because my normal camera cannot handle purples and turns them into blues, but this is such a pretty shade of purple, I really wanted to show you the true colour. The pictures of the bottles turned out the worst, sorry about it.

Right then, onto the pictures!

NOTD: Nails Inc. Burlington Arcade + Zoya Chloe

I picked up loads of Nails Inc. polishes from TKMaxx over the past couple of months, one of them was Burlington Arcade, a pretty burgundy shade. I decided to spice it up a bit and layer Zoya Chloe, a sheer pink flakie with orange, green and pink flakes. Here's the result:

I did two coats of Burlington Arcade and one coat of Chloe. This manicure lasted on me for the average 2 days without chipping. I love how the light catches on the flakes, it's very pretty.

Nails Inc. polishes normally retail for £11 for 10 ml and Zoya polishes cost around £8 (or more like $8 in the US) for 15 ml. The sets in TKMaxx cost £12.99 for 3 or £14.99 for 4 polishes, a bargain! I buy all my Zoya polishes on eBay from US sellers for about $7 a bottle (obviously you have to factor in the shipping cost and possible customs duty as well).

See more pictures after the jump!

Finished! The December Edition

Another month over, another post about products I've finished. There are a few included that I have reviewed a few times on here, so I will just link them to some earlier reviews instead of repeating myself.

First up - a confession. I'm probably the only person in the blogesphere that doesn't know what the big fuss is about Clarisonic. I got a Clarisonic Mia a couple of months ago and I've been using it religiously, but in all fairness, I just can't see what it does to my skin. My skin isn't clearer, my pores are still clogged up, nothing has really changed to be honest. I don't hate it, but I do wonder what on earth I spent all the money on. Okay, there, I said it. Let the stone thowing commence. Right, onto the products. I got this cleanser with my Clarisonic and I didn't like it. Luckily it was only a small sample, so I used it up, but it smelled funny and it did nothing to my skin. Won't repurchase (I don't even know if you can).

 See what other products I finished after the jump!

Finished! The November Edition

I managed to finish a lot of products this month, so I'm pretty pleased with that. Of course most of them are skincare products as usual, but I did finish two pieces of make up, so it's alright.

First up is the most expensive face cream I've ever owned, it's Guerlain Orchidee Imperiale Exceptional Complete Care Cream. This is a 50 ml size and it currently retails for £255. No, I've not gone mad, or maybe I have! I didn't pay nowhere near as much as this was actually a tester that I bought on eBay and the lid actually looks pretty worn, although don't know why because the cream inside was untouched. I've had this for quite a while, especially as I tended not to use it in the summer as it doesn't have any SPF. Also you really only need a tiny bit, so it does last forever. It's really lovely, but I don't know if it's 25 times better than my Nivea face cream that I've also finished. So I won't be repurchasing this for now, although I do actually have about 15 samples of it as well for travelling, so I'm okay for now anyway.  

See what other products I've finished after the jump!

My Ever Growing Nail Polish Collection Part 2 - Zoya, Color Club, Mac, Nails Inc.

Here's the second part of my nail polish stash post, if you missed part one, you can check it out here. And don' forget to come back soon to see part three!

As you will see below, a lot of my nail polish sets are still in boxes, this is partly because I haven't used them yet (Color Club), or because they are actually more convenient to store like that. I apologise for being too lazy to remove them from the packs. If you really want to see detailed pictures, let me know in the comments and I'll see what I can do.

First up are my magnetic polishes, I only own these 3, and actually didn't like them much, so won't be buying more of them. I might just sell thm actually.

Nails Inc and 17 magnetic polishes

See more pictures of my stash after the jump!

Finished! The July edition

Here are the products I finished in the month of July. Not to shabby, although sadly only 3 make up items.Still, my collection of cleansers/scrubs need using up as well. Let's have a look at what I managed to finish last month, shall we?

First up is Maybelline Dream Satin liquid foundation in 020 Cameo. I have reviewed it already, you can read my review here. I don't love it, it doesn't really work for me, it's greasy and leaves my face quite shiny too, so won't be repurchasing this. I still have another half a bottle though, so you can expect that to appear in another Finished! post soon. Available from Boots, Superdrug, etc. £8.19 at Boots with a 3 for 2 offer currently on.

Keep reading to find out what other products I have finished this month!

Another Glitter Crackle Polish NOTD: Nails Inc The City

You might remember my recent very bad review on Nails Inc The Westend crackle polish. This time I have a middling review, although The City is similarly very runny and not very pigmented, at least this one does crackle. Not that well, but it does crackle. In this look I used a pinky white nail polish under The City (Mac Frayed To Order), but I'm wondering if the cracks would've shown up better over a black base.

With flash

Ignore the index finger, the crackle polish went on very thin, so I tried doing a second coat, and well, this is what happened. You definitely need a good amount of nail polish on the brush because you need to do this in one go as much as possible. This is still not the easiest polish to work with, it is very runny and hard to achieve opaqueness with one brush stroke, but at least it does crackle and it is a really really beautiful shade of purple. Hopefully Nails Inc will tweak the formula a bit and then it will be even nicer. £11 for 10 ml.

See more pictures after the jump!

Nails Inc. The Westend - The Glitter Crackle Polish That Doesn't Crackle

Title says it really. Very disappointed in this, because I was really looking forward to a pretty blue glitter crackle topcoat. I ordered this and The City (review to come soon) at the same time as Farringdon which has a different texture to this and The City, much smoother and more opaque. Sadly this in particular is a very runny polish with not a very good coverage, so it's hard to have an even distribution of glitter on the nails and it just doesn't crackle.

If you look really close at the pictures below, you can just about spot some very very slight cracks, but since the glitter is so uneven anyway, it's hard to say what really caused the gaps. And for £11 a pop that is pretty poor. Shame as it is a lovely colour, and it looks pretty cool over a black base (I used Barry M Nail Paint in Black under it), but it doesn't crackle.

I have notified Nails Inc. about this and I believe a lot of other customers have too, and they have offered to replace my glitter crackle polishes with their regular crackle polishes free of charge, plus I don't even have to return these glitter polishes. Still, I would've loved to have some nice glitter polishes...

See more pictures after the jump!

NOTD: Nails Inc. Aldwych and Farringdon Crackle Topcoat

Firstly, sorry about the messy application, but I was very keen to try these nail polishes out as soon as I received them and happened to have the time to actually take pictures before the chips appeared, so I decided to post them anyway.

Nails Inc. Aldwych with Farringdon Crackle Topcoat (with flash)

Farrigdon is the gold crackle polish I had been waiting for for a long time, ever since British Beauty Blogger wrote about it a few months ago. I ordered it from the Nails Inc. website a few days ago together with The City (glitter purple crackle) and The West End (glitter turquoise crackle).

Aldwych was a free gift with purchase and I'm really delighted with it as it's a gorgeous shimmery peachy pink. It is so opaque, it almost looks perfect with just one coat, but two certainly does the job. It's very shiny and looks really beautiful. I think it's lovely under this gold crackle topcoat as well as alone.

Farringdon is the thickest crackle polish I have tried and it was a bit tricky to apply quickly as I would run out of polish halfway through my nail, so had to go back to pick up more onto the brush. It took a while to dry too, even with a quick dry top coat and I managed to smudge it while cooking. But it is a gorgeous glittery gold and it especially looks amazing in sunshine. I can't comment on staying power yet, but nail polish chips on my nails quickly regardless of brand, so it probably wouldn't be very helpful anyway. The crackle topcoats cost £11.00 each and available from Nails Inc. and other retailers.

See more pictures after the jump!

Finished! The April edition

Despite thinking I might not have many empties this month, I still managed to finish 7 products, so that's pretty good. My first one is Avon Clarifying Toner Pads which are basically pads soaked through with toner that's supposed to help keep your skin blemish free. They were okay, but I always forgot to use them, it took me probably more than a year to use up 45 pads, and I don't think I'll bother with buying them again. I don't normally use toner and these pads didn't seem to make much difference to my skin.

See what other products I used up in April after the jump!

Mission: Nail Rescue part 4 - The Conclusion

This is the fourth part of my nail rescue mission report and unfortunately the results are not as good as I would have hoped, especially based on what Nails Inc promised me on the box of their treatment pack. According to them, by 6 weeks I should be seeing a big improvement in the condition of my splitting, weak nails. Unfortunately this is not the case. My nails have stopped splitting further, that's true, but even after 7 weeks they are still weak and very bendy. They break easily and the nail polish still chips off them in a matter of hours because they are so bendy. 

I was also unimpressed by the amount of cuticle oil included in the set as it ran out within 4 weeks or so. I'm still only halfway through the base coat, yet I have no cuticle oil left. Mind you, the cuticle oil didn't seem to make much of a difference anyway. 

I will keep using the base coat and top coat (the latter is really fast drying) and keep taking the food supplement, so hopefully there will be some more improvement. I have also invented in Mavala's Scientifique which is a nail hardener that you put on the tip of your nails only and I have to say, that has made some difference. I haven't done anything with my nails lately as I haven't been well for the last 9 days, but will persevere. The only thing with that is if you get it on your skin, it hardens that too, so you have to be very careful. I don't know if that's the reason why, but the skin next to the tip of my nail on my right thumb has cracked twice over the last week or so. Maybe it's because of the weather, I don't know, but it is pretty painful. 

Anyway, here are some more pictures of my miserable looking nails. I think you can agree that the mission has been unsuccessful.

Mission: Nail Rescue part 3

Following on from my post 2 weeks ago, here's another update on my Nail Rescue Mission. I'm now 5 weeks into my Nails Inc treatment and to be honest, although there is some improvement, it's still not great. My nails are in a bit better shape, there's no new peeling, although I'm still waiting for the very thin bits to grow out, and growth is very slow. I have switched to Tesco's nail supplement (simply because I was shopping there when I needed to stock up) and I've also started wearing nail polish again as I got bored with not being able to wear any, as a result I'm only applying the base coat every 2-3 days now. None of these seem to have an adverse effect on my nails luckily.

Well that's all for now and I will update you again in a couple of weeks' time.

Week 4

To see more photos of my nails and the new supplement I'm using, continue to read on!

Mission: Nail rescue! Part two

I didn't get around to posting an update last week as I was extremely busy, so I've decided to show you 2 weeks' progress in one post. Unfortunately there isn't actually that much progress to talk about. My nails are still peeling, bendy and week, and are still very short. (If you don't know what I'm on about, check out my initial post here.)

I have been religiously using the Nails Inc treatment and taking the food supplement I told you about in my first post. I forgot to say that I've also swapped my cheapo nail polish remover to a Sally Hansen one, hoping that that will make a difference too. So far, nothing. I will persevere and hope that eventually there will be some improvement.

For now, here are some not very pretty pictures.

Week 2

Week 2

Week 3

Week 3

See what I mean? There's hardly any difference. :( I'll let you know how I get on next week. 

Mission: Nail rescue! Part one

I have always had really weak, bendy nails, but unfortunately lately they have started splitting as well. I put it down to either using Seche Vite top coat or the cheap nail polish remover I bought from Sainsbury's. Or maybe neither, I don't know. In any case, I needed to take some action, so I bought a treatment pack from Nails Inc and supplements to boost my vitamin and mineral levels.

I'm going to show you over the coming weeks how I get on, hopefully I can report some improvement. Annoyingly I didn't take any pictures of my nails at the start of the treatment, but I have been taking them weekly since. So here's what my nails looked like one week into the treatment (beware, not a pretty sight!):

You can see what bad shape the nails are on my index and middle fingers especially, my thumbs are the same too. The skin around them is horribly dry too despite me using hand cream all the time. To be honest there isn't really a big change in their condition since I started the treatment, but they have stopped peeling even further, so I guess that's an achievement, and I know I have to wait for the weak bits to grow down to see any huge improvements (hopefully).

What products am I using?