My first themed mani: GB colours!

Ahoy there, and welcome to my first ever themed manicure!

Normally I just apply one polish - I've not even got round to a skittles/ombre/accent nail mani yet. When Barry M Jewel Britannia arrived in the post I knew I could only do it justice by using it in a Team GB colours mani, so here we are!

For the basic ingredients, we had:
Red: No 7 Salsa (two coats)
Blue: Barry M Navy (two coats)
White: Nicole by OPI Shop Around The Clock (3 coats)

Here are my base colours before clean-up. I wasn't too neat with coverage because it wouldn't matter once the glitter went on.

I got Salsa in a set of four, probably 4-5 years ago? At that time, I was only interested in 'funky colours' for nail polish and I have never used it. Felt really good to finally use it and even better to discover that I love the colour!

Shop Around The Clock is a really awful formula to use. The colour is watery and it drags instantly if you go over the same spot twice, so it took a lot of bodging. This is what happens when I buy a white online because I need one, rather than researching. I've got a few in mind to fill that gap but any suggestions, let me know in the comments!

Navy has great coverage in two coats but my bottle has quite a goopy formula and I normally have to put thicker coats on so I have enough to play with, which means extra drying time. I put up with it because it's a lovely, rich colour and it's cheap - being on a budget means I have to live with these things sometimes.

Onto the main ingredient:

Jewel Britannia really exceeded my expectations! I applied one generous coat for all of these photos.

It's packed full of sparkliness. Small silver, red and blue hex glitters are complemented by smaller red and blue glitter, but there's something extra there too...

...you might have spotted little rainbow sparkles on my nails...

...yes, this polish is packed with tiny silver holographic glitter! I am in love! This blurry shot shows the glitter best.

One coat of Seche Vite was enough to smooth the nail - if you like a perfectly even surface I'd go for two but it's not a topcoat gobbler. Here it is swatched alone:

One coat on the left, three coats on the right. My camera did not want to cooperate today.

You should also check out Kerrie of PishPosh and Polish's manicure featuring Jewel Britannia, which she did for a guest post at Caitlin's Creative Corner.

I really love this glitter polish :) I keep moving my nails around to see the holo sparkles! What do you think of Jewel Britannia? Own already, planning to buy, or not really your cup of tea?

Rainbow Honey - The Worst Possible Thing

The promised swatch post! Rainbow Honey - The Worst Possible Thing is "A sheer layering polish, jewel encrusted just as Rarity would endorse, shimmering with opalescent flakes in purple and blue and a multitude of holographic and iridescent glitters" (official description). I think that's spot on! I can see giant flakes, large hex glitters in purple, medium hex glitters in purple, light blue and dark blue, and the promised holo/iridescent small glitters (all sizes relative to others, of course).

This could be layered over so many colours - black, purples, blues, light pinks and nudes, white...it's stunning. Here it is on a nail wheel:

Left: one coat of TWPT alone
Middle: one coat of TWPT over Avon - Licquorice (creme black)
Right: one coat of TWPT over Maxfactor Forever Strong Pro - Nude Rose (rose pink), which was too dark and muffled the smallest glitters

All photos below are layered over Avon - Licquorice because that was the swatch it showed up on the best. In future I'll try it over some of the other colours I mentioned. I'll probably share the pictures, if you ask nicely.

Some more pictures (some are duplicates of this post, can't go assuming you've all read both!):

Firstly, look at that enormous flakie! <3

So many colours!

I ordered this in the 7ml mini size, so it's a cute little bottle. The brush is short and not as flexible as I'm used to but it didn't affect application.

An out-of-focus picture that shows the enormous amount of rainbow-hued sparkle you get in bright sunshine (it was fleeting, sadly)

Application is good, I applied one good thick coat of this glitterbomb. Minimal shuffling of larger glitters was required because I am a compulsive rearranger ;)

I'm in love with this polish, I think I might end up ordering a full-sized bottle! All their polishes are 'big-3 free' and come in 7ml or 15ml bottles. What do you think? Do you own any Rainbow Honey polishes?

NOTD: Rainbow Honey - The Worst Possible Thing!

I was going wait until I'd done a proper swatch post for this polish before I showed you these pictures, but I can't resist sharing. I got three minis through from Rainbow Honey last week and only got chance to repaint my nails yesterday.

Today's nails are Rainbow Honey - The Worst Possible Thing over Avon - Licquorice. Pictures below!

In the shade it's predominantly pink, purple and blue. An absolutely gorgeous glitterbomb.

This picture is out of focus but look at that giant flake of glitter!

Here it is in the morning sunlight, just before I went to work today - you have to catch it when you can at the moment. Once you get it in the sun you realise that almost every bit of glitter, big or small, has a holo effect to it, and your nails are covered in rainbow sparkles!

Finally, a picture in the brightest sunshine I could find. Isn't it just amazing? Next time I'm going to layer it over a navy or purple to see if/how that changes the colours. A proper swatch post and review for this will be up on Wednesday :)

Returning to work made easier

I'll be honest - I don't really like my job, but I'm grateful to have one when so many lovely people don't and I try to remember that on the bad days! It helps if you come back from a week off to a haul like this too:

L-R: W7 - Glittery Red, Glittery Gold, Glittery Silver, Blue Diamonds, Green Dazzle, Fluorescent Yellow/Green/Pink/Orange, Cosmic Latte, Glittery Black, with OPI - Plugged In Plum and DS Extravagance. Huzzah, new polishes! Sorry about the photo quality, my point-and-shoot is sometimes a bit subpar. I think a better camera is going on the birthday wishlist.

I picked up these OPI minis in the Lena White sale, partly because they were also offering free postage and I'm a sucker for that. I've wanted to try one of their DS colours for a while now and I'm pretty excited about swatching Extravagance!

Glitter polishes are a bit of a weakness of mine and these minis came in a set. The poor things don't have official names! There's a pink-red sheer with silver glitter (seen over a red creme in yesterday's NOTD post), a gold sheer with silver glitter, a clear with silver glitter and a dark grey sheer with silver micro glitter. That last one is similar to my OPI - Metallic 4 Life, but the OPI polish has different glitter sizes (and more of it).

I wanted to try fluorescent/neon-like polishes as a bit of an experiment but didn't want to spend a lot of money on colours I may not wear, so I stuck with W7 as they were a very reasonable £1.66 each. I'm hoping to swatch these soon and will probably layer them over a coat of white to make them pop.

Glitters! Not much explanation needed here, I loved the colours. Both are in a clear base so I'll probably layer them over something else. The last polish, Cosmic Latte, is another gap-filler for my stash if it makes the cut - I like it in the bottle but I'm not sure how well it'll suit my skintone. All W7 polishes were bought from Katys Cosmetics.

Have you treated yourself this month? Tell me your favourite purchases!

Charlotte

Spotted: Maybelline on offer, 2 for £4

Maybelline nail polish, two for £4 at ASDA. Includes the Forever Strong Pro and Express Finish 40 Seconds ranges, ends 26th July. I picked these two:

Cosmic Flash - the glitters in this shift from green to blue to purple depending on the light. This really brightened my day, I keep tilting it this way and that to look at the colours.

Nude Rose - a creme finish light rose pink that should fill a gap in my collection.

They had a gorgeous turquoise shimmer, but I have two of those already. Most of the shades are in the pink - purple part of the spectrum but there were a few brighter colours if that's your thing. Sorry I didn't take a picture of them all, I'm feeling a bit exhausted and didn't think to snap them!

NOTD - Red and more red

After I swatched Rimmel - Ready, Aim, Paint! yesterday, I wanted to make the most of having a red creme on and added my new W7 red glitter over the top.

I like that the glitter flashes pink-red or silver depending on how deep it is within the polish, but this didn't have quite the effect I was hoping for. It might be better in the middle of a jelly sandwich.

It's also a tricky glitter to apply - you need to sort of splodge it onto the nail and then flatten the polish out. I was rushing to get pictures before the light got too bad so these are taken without topcoat, and now I've added some Seche Vite the finish is a lot nicer. Lesson of the day: don't take pictures without topcoat!

Deborah Lippmann - Stairway To Heaven

Alright, first post! Today my latest polish order arrived and I'm not gonna lie, I actually made a little 'squee!' sound when I unwrapped them. The new additions are Nails Inc - Electric Lane (which I'll show you next time) and Deborah Lippmann - Stairway To Heaven, seen below:

This is packed with tiny square glitters that flash green/blue/purple and bigger hexagonal ones that flash yellow/orange/pink. It has a sheer cream base but there's very little colour when you apply it over plain nails. I'm wearing two coats here but I did have to rearrange the glitters a bit on each nail because they had a tendency to huddle together like cold penguins. Not that I mind the extra effort for a polish this pretty!

All pictures are with one coat. On future applications I think I'll try another coat or two and see how well the glitter stacks. I'm still trying to get into good cuticle care habits because I'm relatively new at this so they're kind of atrocious. Sorry, people with nice cuticles who are wincing in horror.

I couldn't get a true sunshine shot because frankly the weather here in Leeds is dismal. Once the sun returns I'll hunt for a good spot to take these pictures in! I'm actually going south for the weekend to Cambridge so Electric Lane is coming with me in case it's sunnier there (normally we drive from rain into sunshine as we progress south so the odds are in our favour). Until then!

Charlotte

 Edit: the best sun I could get that weekend, which wasn't great!