Nails Inc - Sprinkles - Topping Lane & Stamping

This is Topping Lane from the Nails Inc Sprinkles collection.  It's a bright pink base colour with blue pink and silver glitter.  These pictures show 3 coats, as with the others in this collection the glitter is nice and dense and the polish applies well.

Over the top I have used Bundle Monster 306 to stamp a sweetie design.

Nails Inc - Sprinkles - Sweets Way

Here is Sweets Way from the new Nails Inc Sprinkles collection, for me this is the true stand out of the collection and the one I was most keen to own.

It's a milky white base with silver, pink and baby blue glitter through it.  It's subtle enough to wear for pretty much any occasion but still lovely and glittery and very girly.

Application was fairly easy, the glitter spread well and is nice and densely packed, these pictures show 3 coats, without top coat the polish is slightly textured but not too lumpy.

New Stamping Plates!

My new Dashica plates arrived today.  I can't wait to try them out, here is a quick sneak peek of what I bought.

 

 

Aquariums, beach scene, nail polish, lipstick, shells and reeds!

 

 

*****

 

 

Acorns, forests under a night sky, hearts, shooting stars and snowflakes!

 

 

*****

 

 

A full nail festive design, clouds, cocktails and some pretty fern fronds.

 

 

*****

 

Apples, cherries, teapots and bees!

 

Nails Inc - Special Effects - Sprinkles

Ever since I first started seeing blog posts about Nails Inc's new Sprinkle collection I knew I would have to order at least one of them (Sweets Way caught my eye immediately) but when I saw an offer on QVC for 3 of them for under £20 I couldn't resist.  They arrived today, so here are some quick bottle shots to be going on with until I have used them for a full manicure.

These two pictures also show W7's Mosaic which I think is a pretty good dupe for the 4th Nails Inc Sprinkle polish, Pudding Lane.  More on that W7 polish here.

I can't wait to try these polishes out the colours are even more lovely in person than they seem from the online swatches I've looked at, expect full manicures with them all very soon.

Topping Lane and Sweets Way can be seen in more detail by clicking. 

W7 Mosaic - Nails Inc Pudding Lane Dupe

As promised, here is the first of my full manicures using the W7 polish from my recent nail mail.  I decided to use Mosaic first which seems to be a pretty close dupe of Nails Inc Pudding Lane.

After reading several blogs which mentioned these W7 polishes and how they seemed to be similar to Nails Inc Sprinkles I decided to test them out, they're available here on Nail Polish Direct (who I can't recommend enough for fast delivery, great packaging and excellent prices) for £1.99 each, quite a bit less than their Nails Inc counterparts! 

Mosaic applied beautifully, these pictures show 3 coats but you could get away with two if you were careful.  On the second and third coats I moved the polish around my nails a little to make sure the glitter was evenly spread but on the whole this probably isn't necessary and you can just paint as you normally would.

The polish is definitely well named as the effect on the nail is like looking into a swimming pool with a coloured mosaic at the bottom, absolutely gorgeous.  I'm so pleased with this polish and can't wait to try out the other two in the range.

As you can see, it's definitely a similar finish to the Nails Inc Sprinkle collection, but at a fraction of the cost!  Hats off to W7 for creating such an excellent polish. 

One word of warning though, removal is messy, the glitter gets EVERYWHERE!!

Barry M Black Multi Glitter & Pirates!

This is Barry M's new Black Multi Glitter, it's an opaque black polish with holographic glitter through it, unfortunately although it applies well and looks quite pretty on the nail it's not very exciting or very glittery:

It's a little better under strong lighting but still not as glittery as I'd hoped:

I decided to use it as a base for stamping and added a pirate theme with my new QA stamps, 5 and 8.

 

Which fitted in nicely with Adventures in Stampings theme for his week which was 'Favourite New Stamp'.

Nail Mail!

Some very exciting nail mail arrived for me this morning, more posts featuring the contents soon but here is a sneaky preview...

GOSH Holographic

All the talk of GOSH re releasing this polish (it's due back in stores from August 1st) made me want to wear it again.  Unfortunately the crappy weather in Glasgow means that it isn't showing to it's full potential but I do still love the level of holo-ness you get from this polish.

Application isn't great but I think if you apply it properly and take your time it's totally worth it.

Here's the only decent shots I could get, under artificial light:

And one in direct sunlight, when it appeared for 5 minutes, try and ignore the fact my camera makes everything go wavy in strong sunlight:

And finally, one in dull natural light which show the subtle rainbow you get out of bright light or full sun:

It's such a hard polish to photograph without a decent camera, or any idea what you are doing, but hopefully these give some idea of the holo goodness.

I'm a bit annoyed at how chunky my nails look with this manicure on but that will be down to applying it over yesterday's polish to see if have a smooth base helped application (it didn't really), I suppose it's to be expected they look chunky when I am now sporting 11 layers of polish. :D

My Stamping Set Up.

Just a quick post to show how I set myself up to get ready for stamping. 

I find it easiest to have everything set out in front of me; polish, top coat, image plate, stamper, scraper, cotton wool and cotton bud (both soaked in remover).  I also like to have a piece of kitchen roll down so I don't need to worry about any of the polish coming off the plate and getting on other things.

A lot of people like to work at a table but I prefer to lean on a large hardback book and cushion while sitting back on the couch.  As much becasue of laziness as a lack of space for a table. ;)



Cloudy Stamp.

Today's NOTD matches the weather, cloudy (and wet, again), I used Kiko 340 as a base and then stamped with Bundle Monster 312 and a nail art pen to make the clouds.

Easy Nails Fast & Fruity Nail Polish Remover

A while back I reviewed Pretty Perfect Twist and Out Instant Nail Polish Remover which I had picked up in Savers.  A few days ago my friend sent me a little pot of a similar product to try.

On first impressions I would say that this one is better than the Twist & Out one, the pot is slightly smaller which means that it's easier to reach right down to the bottom of the sponge and get your whole nail cleaned off.  The smell is pleasant too, there is a definite peachy scent after you have removed your polish which is nice, if a bit artificial.

Removal wise, this little pot made fast work of my polish and only took a few twists of each finger to completely remove all the polish - I had 4 or 5 coats on the day I tried it. 

Unfortunately, I think this little magic remover pot came from Home Bargains which we don't have very many of in Scotland so I may have to put an order in with my friend for a few more pots when this one dries up.  For 89p per pot it really is a great deal.

Stamped Hearts.

Barry M Denim with Barry M Silver Foil Effects stamped over it, Bundle Monster 317 for the hearts image.

Precious Stones Stamping

This is my attempt at the Precious Stones (15th July) theme on the Facebook group Adventures in Stamping.

I used No 7 Dollar with Max Factor's Fantasy Fire over the top to make my nails look like sparkly precious gems and then Bundle Monster 316 stamped in Barry M Foil Effect Gold, I was trying to get a sort of jewellery effect of the stones set in gold or with gold chains around them, not sure if that really worked but I do like how the nails have turned out

Stamping Plate Storage - Bundle Monster, Cheeky etc.

I have three full sets of Bundle Monster plates and I'm hoping to add the new Cheeky collection to them as soon as it's released so I have quite a few plates to store.  Initially I kept them in a little pot but now that the collection is mounting that was getting quite awkward and didn't give me a good view of all the plates and images I had.  So I started to look into solutions and that led me to order this little book from Amazon.

There was quite a bit of talk about using a business card holder to store plates and in the end I chose this one because of it's pocket size, 9cm by 6cm, which was slightly larger than some other card holders.  I'd measured my BM plates and they were around 5.5cm across which seemed to be the standard size of a pocket in most holders, this one's 6cm width meant that there would be a little bit of wiggle room for the plates, hopefully making them easier to get in and out.

On to the holder.  The cover is a little dull so I think I might personalise it somehow, ideally I would stamp on it so that it showed some of the images that were on the plates it was storing but I think that might be tricky as any polish would rub off pretty fast.

Inside the book has 60 little pockets, 3 to a page.  If you put the plates in back to back so one shows out each side you can store 120 plates.  The plastic sheets seem pretty tough and should stand up to having the metal plates stored inside them.

As you can see three plates fit neatly into each section.

And once both sides are filled up it's easy to flip through your whole collection, page by page.

There is plenty of room in the book and even now I have 3 full collections (71 plates) in there it doesn't make looking through the selection any more difficult.

The pockets are deep enough that the plates are well secured in them and although they move around a little they haven't yet fallen out when I have been using the holder.

The plates slide in and out easily whenever you want to take them out for a closer look or use them.

The one downside is that my (slightly larger, differently shaped) QA plates don't fit into the business card holder so I am still looking for a way to store them, if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

However for Bundle Monster, and similarly sized, plates this is definitely a great, cost effective solution and makes flipping through your collection so much simpler.