Green & Gold Glitter

 

Today's festive finger colours come from Kiko, 441 Illusion Green from the Digital Emotion Collection, and No7, Sun Rays.  Sun Rays is a limited edition polish, I think, it's sold on the Boots website, HERE.  If you see it in store grab it, it's a goody!  Totally opaque golden glitter in just two coats!

 

 

Illusion Green is a perfect Christmas green; bright and sparkly the base is a gelly type texture (meaning you really do need three coats unless you're using a base colour) jam packed full of tiny circle and strand holographic glitter.  It's SO sparkly in real life the pictures just don't do it justice.

 

Both polishes applied well and feel relatively smooth with a quick coat of top coat.  I love the combination of green and gold, it's sort of reminds me of a decorated Christmas tree, especially since it's so sparkly.

 

I think these lovely glitters could be just the thing to add a few stickers too, or maybe some stamping?  Stand by tomorrow to see what I decide to go with!

My Top Ten Festive Nail Essentials

1. I think it's important to mention that winter can be tough on your hands and nails so my first few items are nail care rather than nail decoration products.  My very first, and favourite, essential for winter is Lush Lemon Flutter, I use it every night after I paint my nails, rubbing it into the cuticles to keep them soft and moisturised.

 

 

 

2. I also love Superdrug's Cuticle Oil Pen, there's a post HERE about it in more detail, which is so handy to keep at my desk or in my bag for a little moisture top up.

 

 

 

3. Finally, I like to use Lotil cream & cotton gloves on my hands overnight for a super moisturise and dry skin buster, Lotil seems to work wonders on all sorts of hand issues so I like to apply it thickly a few times a week and then cover with gloves to give my hands a nice intensive treatment.

 

 

 

4. Now on to the decorating of your nicely cared for nails!  As you can probably tell if you read my blog last year, I love using stamps to create Christmas themed looks.  I use a whole variety, my newest set being Bundle Monster Holiday Plates post about that set HERE, Bunny Nails also do some cute plates posts on those HERE and HERE.  Pretty much all the sets of stamping plates I have bought have odd images which are good for Christmas so it's worth having a look about before ordering the first you see.

 

 

 

5. Holiday themed stickers are another of my favourite ways to decorate festive nails, you can see posts on where I get mine HERE, HERE and HERE.  They are such a simple way to jazz up a manicure and the effects can be quite impressive.

 

 

 

Now, on to my favourite festive polishes of this year.

 

6. First up a bit of a cheat, rather than using one place in the top ten for each of these I am joining them all together under the heading Kiko's Christmas releases, you can see my haul HERE.   I've already posted about two of the Sugar Mats and tomorrow's post is about the first of the Digital Emotion holographic glitters, I am really loving these polishes so far and will no doubt feature very prominently in my Christmas manicures this year.

 

 

 

7.  Models Own Scarlet Sparkle, the perfect Christmas red.  Bright red gelly polish crammed full of sparkly red glitter, I love this polish!

 

 

 

8.  Boots No7 nail polish in Sun Rays, on the website HERE, keep an eye out for a post tomorrow which will show you just how gorgeous this opaque, super sparkly gold glitter is. ;)

 

9.  Kiko Starry Indigo, a perfect cool Christmas blue jam packed full of glitter, this one works especially well under stamping.

 

 

 

10.  Revlon Emerald City, a gorgeous dark green which dries matte but looks extra gorgeous when it's top coated, prefect on it's own or ideal for a bit of festive nail art.

 

 

So, those are my festive picks for this year, what else would you add?   

Snowflakes

Nothing says winter themed manicure like some snowflakes, last year I did two snowflake manicures this one, which was OK, and this one on Christmas day, which I absolutely loved.

I was hoping to sort of recreate the one I loved but I could not for the life of me find which plate I used (I've since worked it out and added a note to the blog post from last year) so I ended up using a combination of two other plates, BM-H02 from their recent holiday collection and HB23 a Bunny Nails Plate which you can see HERE.

I don't mind how it's turned out, I love the colours but would prefer different snowflake positioning, I'd say it's better than my initial attempt but not as good as last year's Christmas day version which I loved.  Still quite pretty though.

I used a white nail art pen to stamp the snowflakes, here's a quick shot of the plates:

Kiko Sugar Mat - 457 - Royal Blue

Another of the gorgeous Kiko Sugar Mats today, this is Royal Blue, 457, from the Digital Emotion limited edition box set which was released for Christmas.

 

457 is the perfect icy winter blue.

 

 

A bright vibrant blue textured base packed full of lighter blue, lilac and even some pink glitter pieces, this polish is properly gorgeous and ideal for the festive season if you want a break from the standard red green and gold.

 

Application with this polish was slightly more of an issue than usual, generally the Sugar Mats are totally opaque in two coats and dry super fast, Royal Blue is a bit sheerer though and needed 3 coats which then took a bit longer to dry - which is why there is a dink out of my index finger. ;)  The application was still good though just not as super fast as the other Sugar Mats.

 

You can really see the shimmer in the picture above where the camera hasn't focused perfectly, it's so pretty in person and really adds something extra to the textured finish.

Christmas Textured Stamping

This stamping didn't exactly go to plan, it was supposed to look Christmassy but instead I think it looks more like flock wallpaper.  It IS in Christmas colours though so we'll let it through on that.

 

 

I used plate H03 from the Bundle Monster Holiday Collection, it looks like more Christmassy on the plate, I think it's meant to be baubles but that didn't really translate so well onto my textured nail.

 

It's still pretty though, I used Barry M Foil Effect in Gold for the stamp.

 

 

As you can see from some of the pictures I am suffering a bit from wear, the stamping on my index finger and close to the tips is wearing off a bit, probably because I can't top coat the textured polish to make it stay put, it's not too noticeable in person though.

Kiko Sugar Mat - 453 Cherry Red

453 is one of the polishes from Kiko's Digital Emotion Sugar Mats Christmas Gift Set .  I did some quick pictures and swatches yesterday but today I have the first full manicure from the set. 

As I mentioned yesterday I'm aiming to do Christmas themed manicures for the rest of the month of December in the run up to the big day so what better way to kick off than a gorgeous red shimmer polish from this Christmas gift set.

453 is well named, it's definitely a cherry red polish, as with the other shimmery Sugar Mats it's packed full of glitter, pink this time, to give a sparkly mat finish.

The red is a lovely deep, lush shade and definitely ideal for Christmas, I have some stamping plans for this lovely base colour already.

These pictures are two coats and as usual the polish applied beautifully and dried nice and fast.  If all the 8 colours in the set are like this one I will be very pleased indeed.

Kiko Christmas Haul

I posted the other day about Kiko's 2013 Christmas Collection - Digital Emotion and the Sugar Mat Gift Set which is a part of the collection and now I have them in my grubby hands to show you some more photos.  One of the best things about Kiko is that even buying online, having not seen the polishes in person, you can be fairly certain they are going to be gorgeous and this order was no exception.  Here's what I chose:

First up, 4 nail polishes from the main Digital Emotion range of Digital Nail Lacquers, they are (from left to right); 437 Intuative Pink, 440 Electron Blue, 441 Illusion Green and 442 Techno Black.

All 4 (and I presume the other two in the range which I don't have) are slightly sheer base polishes crammed full of holographic glitter, each polish also features glitter in the same shade as the base making them all slightly different from each other but obviously part of the same collection.

While they're not really very typical Christmas colours I think the glitter packed look of these polishes is perfect for the holiday season and I like the fact that Kiko doesn't always go with a Chrismtas specific colour palette.

Next up the gorgeous Sugar Mat box set, I am so delighted with this, the colours are gorgeous and for £19.90 it's a huge bargain, pretty much half price for the polishes!

The foily purple and pink box opens like a book to reveal the 8 polishes neatly lined up inside...  The colours are 451 Apricot, 452 Watermelon, 453 Cherry Red, 454 Wine, 455 Light Taupe, 456 Teal, 457 Royal Blue and 458 Anthracite.

 

When you remove the tray they're sitting in you can see them in all their glory.

From the description on the website I wasn't sure how many of the 8 polishes would have the sparkly Sugar Mat finish that I love but as luck would have it all 8 of them have a shimmer so I really couldn't be more pleased.

Again the colours aren't typically festive but they are super sparkly and gorgeous so perfect for party wear and nights out and the red is definitely ideal as a Christmas manicure.

The blue and green also look like they might make good bases for some Christmas style stamping.

I can't wait to get these on my nails, the main problem will be deciding which to use first!

And with that I am turning the blog over to Christmas, so for the rest of the advent period expect snowflakes and santa and snowmen to be front and centre.

Yes Love - Coloured Speckled - Swatches

I was (still am, really) planning on doing Christmas manicures all through December like I did last year but somehow the start of the month has sort of sneaked up on me and I'm not really ready for it!  So, before I launch into a month of more festive themed nails I have yesterday's Speckled polishes on my nails to show you. 

 

Although these polishes are far from Christmasy I couldn't resist trying these out after I received them, there was no way they could wait until the new year to get an outing.

 

 

I couldn't quite make up my mmind which to use first so I decided to just try them all out as they're nicely compatible pastel shades.

 

These pictures are just two coats of polish, it applies really nicely and there wasn't too much need to poke about and reposition the glitter which is quite often a problem with this sort of polish.

 

In the bottle the blue was my favourite but since trying them on my nails I have fallen in love with the green, it's just SO pretty, although I do still love the blue and peach too.  I can't wait to try these out as full manicures and have a go stamping over them too, I think they'll be a great base for stamping designs so look out for that in the future.



Yes Love - Coloured Speckled

These polishes are the slightly more jazzy version of the Yes Love Speckled polishes I posted about a few times after picking them up in Spain in the summer.  They have the same sort of cream base but this time with multicoloured glitter spread through them rather than just black. 

 

As far as I can tell there are 6 in the collection and I am lucky enough to have 3 of them to show you, sent to me by my very lovely friend D.

 

 

1 - A mint green coloured base polish with large blue hex, medium pink, purple and black hex and small black hex glitter scattered through it.

 

2 - A soft creamy peach coloured base polish filled with large red hex, medium red, lilac and black hex and small black hex glitter

 

3 - My favourite of the three, a baby blue base coloured polish with medium pink, yellow gold and black hex and small black hex glitter through it.

 

From my hunting online there are also lilac, pink and yellow base polishes but I think I've definitely got three of the best here!  I can't wait to try them out, I hope they apply half as well as the regular Speckled line from Yes Love as they are firm favourites of mine.

 

Neon Pink

I took a notion for something bright on my nails today and ended up choosing a bright neon pink by Easy Paris.  You can actually see much better pictures of this lovely polish on my last post about it: Easy Paris Neon Pink.  The bright Spanish light seems to suit photographing it much more than December in Scotland!

 

 

I do still love it though, even if it refuse to pose well for photographs.  It's an almost jelly like consistency and loos really squishy up close.

 

Considering it's jelly like tendencies it's pretty much opaque in two coats although I've done 3 here to be extra sure.