Birthday + Another Swap = LOADS OF NAIL STUFF!!

I had a birthday, and bought stuff from the Born Pretty online store, and did another swap with my American friend Ariadne Elise, and all the parcels arrived on the same day!



In the box are: lots of nail varnishes, peanut butter related American sweets & chocolates, socks, nail varnish, a very special personalised nail varnish planner (lol), cupcake supplies, Springsteen cds, various vouchers and more nail varnish.

Ari made me a gorgeous ring which is so sparkly it's impossible to take a photo of.

I bought studs and striping tape and lots of glequins from Born Pretty:

A friend sent me two of the OPI Germany polishes. These are Danke Shiny Red and Germani-cure by OPI. 

These are my swapsies! Look! My first Kleancolor polishes, and OH MY GOODNESS!

Look!

And more!

I am going to have so much fun with this lot!

Claire's Mood Colors!

Since I first started reading nail blogs a couple of years ago, I have WANTED the Claire's colour changing Mood Colors that you can only get in the States. 

This week, due to a very exciting swap with a lovely American lady (I sent her some Sally Hansen Garnet Lapis jewellery) I now have FIVE of these beauties!  Look! How exciting!

I haven't really tried these out properly yet, as my nails are currently very short, and I want them to be a bit longer to get the full effect of the colour change at the tips. I have had a play though, and so far, the blue one (Hyper/Relaxed) and the purple one (Calm/Wild) have the biggest colour change. They dry very matte, and cover pretty well in one coat.

Proper post coming up once my nails are a touch longer!

China Glaze Electrify

This is another of my polishes from my last American swap, and the one Hunger Games polish that I really REALLY wanted when I first saw swatches online.

This is two coats of Electrify over one coat of Riveting, the gorgeous bright orange from the Hunger Games collection. I love Riveting, so much so that I've worn it at least 4 times in the last month!

Electrify is a clear base with stacks of gold and red glitter. There is more gold than red, but there's a good amount of both. It's gorgeously sparkly, especially in the sunlight (not that we've seen much of that recently!) 

I tested this on a nail without a base colour, and three coats looks pretty opaque. I decided to layer it this time though, just because I wanted to see what it looked like.  I like that the orange shows through a bit, and blends with the red and gold. 
 

Essie Jamaica Me Crazy + Sally Hansen Lady Luck

This is the second of my Essie polishes, Jamaica Me Crazy. Oh, I do love a bad pun!

The application on this was lovely - really smooth formula, nice brush, dried evenly and quickly. This is two coats plus topcoat.

I really like this - it's a lovely bright, saturated colour, a lovely zesty fuschia pink.

After a couple of days, I decided to try out another of my American swap polishes, so I added Sally Hansen Gem Crush in Lady Luck over the top. This is two coats of Lady Luck over Jamaica Me Crazy.


Lady Luck has a darkish pinky purple jelly base, and lots of bright magenta/fuschia glitter, and some bright silver holo glitter for good measure.  It dried very matte and dull, so I added a layer of Seche Vite, and then another layer, because it was still pretty matte. And then I added a layer of Sally Hansen Mega Shine topcoat, because it STILL wasn't very shiny!

I liked this, but was disappointed in how much shinier and sparklier it is in the bottle than on the nails.  After all this, I had LOTS of layers: basecoat, 2 x Jamaica Me Crazy, topcoat, 2 layers Lady Luck, 3 layers topcoat = NINE layers. It didn't dry properly, and it all scraped off pretty easily a couple of hours later.  Next time I won't layer it, and I'll go straight for the very shiny topcoat instead of the Seche. 

It's pretty though!

I'm off to France for a week - I've got China Glaze Riveting on my fingers, and Rimmel Heart on Fire on my toes. See you in a week!

USA Swap 2 - China Glaze Riveting

This is the one from the China Glaze Hunger Games collection that I really REALLY wanted. I do love orange nail varnish!

This is China Glaze Riveting. It's a bright BRIGHT orange shimmer, packed with gold sparkle that glows like fire in the sunlight.

OMG I love this! It's just so alive! Sparkly, shiny, glowing... what more could you want from an orange?

This is two coats, with topcoat. If I was going to wear this for a while on its own, I might have done a third coat. However, I have plans for covering lots of this with some Stone Cold matte, so I stopped at two.

Application was lovely and smooth. It wasn't as quick drying as some colours, hence the tiny dent in my ring finger. I got a chicken ready for the oven half an hour after painting my nails, which is where the dent came from.

I am in love with this colour! It's so cheerful and happy and jolly.

What do you reckon?

More American Swap Excitement!

I had another swap with my American nail varnish buddy!  

I've been mega distracted by the snooker recently (only three more days to go!) but this was a very welcome diversion when I got home late from the Robertson-O'Sullivan quarter final on Wednesday night.

Look at all these goodies!

This is a FOUR of the China Glaze Hunger Games polishes that I was lusting after - Electrify (red & gold glitter), Riveting (bright orange shimmer), Harvest Moon (rusty brown foil) and Stone Cold (dark grey shimmery matte). Plus two Sally Hansen glitters - Gemstone overcoat in Ring a Ding (large gold and peachy pink glitter) and Lady Luck (fuschia and silver glitter). I am VERY EXCITED! Thank you Ari!! 

I couldn't decide what to go for first, and the two I most want to wear are Electrify and Riveting. However, I decided to go for Harvest Moon first.  This is two coats of Harvest Moon, with the Sally Hansen Ring a Ding over just the tips.

Harvest Moon is a lovely orangey browny foil, full of rich shimmer. It goes on beautifully, very smooth and even, and dries well. Ring a Ding has a clear base and lots of large hexagonal bits of glitter in pinky peach and gold shades - it's a lovely warm colour.

It was a bit fiddly trying to get out enough glitter to look decent without swamping the nail in clear base, but that's pretty normal for some glitters.  The bloody bits on my fingers are from the cat! Oops.

Ring a Ding looks awesome in the bottle! The bottle is all faceted and shiny, with a tiny sparkly 'gem' set in it for good measure.

Harvest Moon also looks very similar to Models Own Pro in Kiss My Brass. Here is KMB from last year:

Kiss My Brass seems to have bigger particles of shimmer, so it's a bit less smooth-looking and a bit more shimmery. It's also a bit darker. I haven't blogged about this one - I may have to do a comparison post at some stage.

Amazing USA Swap!

I made a new friend recently through Twitter, and based around nail varnish! The lovely @ari_kostan and I had a transatlantic nail varnish swap!  It was so much fun to do, and so exciting!

Yesterday my parcel arrived, and despite our cautious little budget, she sent me LOOOADS of stuff! Look at all the goodies!

There's a China Glaze Christmas set thing, with a sparkly bauble and a gold foil (Champagne Bubbles) and a lovely dark silver/black glitter (Tinsel Town). 

There are three amazing looking Milani polishes, a bright green foil (Racy Green), a bright purple foil (Purple Rush) and a bright blue foil that looks as though it has purple flashes in (Blue Lightening). 

There's a cute little Orly bright red (that I can't read the label of because of being blind!) and an AMAZING looking Finger Paints flakie (Asylum) with flakes that seem to be pink and blue, rather than the more standard orange. 

There are two stunning looking glitters from Sinful Colors - a bright greeny blue one (Nail Junkie) and a gorgeous gold and bronzey glitter (All About You) that reminds me of the Hunger Games China Glaze one that I have my eye on, Electrify. 

And then last but not least, there's a Wet and Wild Party of 5 Glitters, which looks like a brighter, more colourful Happy Birthday!

What an amazing present!  I'm so excited about them all!