BeautyUK: Queen of Hearts and Gold Digger

Morning all :)  I hope you're all having a lovely Sunday so far!  I'm about to begin my Sunday with a yummy cooked breakfast!

On Wednesday I showed you two glitter polishes from the BeautyUK Posh Polish range.  Today I'm showing you the other two polishes I was sent to review :)  These are Queen of Hearts and Gold Digger.

First up is Queen of Hearts.  I thought from the bottle that this was going to be quite dark and not the sort of polish I'd like, but actually it's really pretty on the nail.  It's made up of medium matte black and shiny pink hexes, with black microglitter.  It's actually quite a delicate-looking polish.

I used two coats of Queen of Hearts over OPI Skull & Glossbones.  Great coverage and great formula.  I think this would also be really pretty over a light pink.

Next up is Gold Digger.  This is primarily gold hexes, with a sprinkling of larger silver holo hexes.  The coverage of this was much better than I expected - I used two coats here.  You could probably get this to full coverage with a few more coats (or fake it with a shiny gold basecoat).

Here I'm showing it over Jessica Ruffled Bottoms.  I think this would benefit from a few more of the larger hexes, I ended up with only 1 or 2 on each nail and they weren't very noticeable.  Interestingly though, I bought this polish a year or so ago and my version is different - the glitter is a darker gold, and it has silver square glitters instead of the large hexes.  Don't know why they changed it, but I think the squares were a bit more interesting, but then the formula and coverage with this one are much better.  I could do a comparison if people would be interested in seeing that?

You can find these polishes here for £3.49 each, or they're also available in Superdrug :)

Nailtopia Stickers

Hello lovelies :)

I'm currently sitting on the in-laws-to-be's sofa up in Liverpool (a little break between stuffing our faces for breakfast and stuffing our faces for tea) and thought I'd write a quick post!

I was recently send some products from Nailtopia to review, so that's what I'm showing you today :)  I have three sheets of very cute stickers to show you!

Each pack consists of one sheet of stickers.  The stickers are really thin, but they're almost a rubbery sort of material, so I didn't have any problems with them tearing or anything like that, and they happily laid flat on my nails.

First up, the tropical parrots!  These are so bright and lovely, that they just NEEDED a bright gradient to go with them.  I've run out of acetone though, so apologies for poor clean up!  This sheet has a lovely mixture of sizes, colours and parrots facing different ways.  You could do some cute nails with parrots sitting on branches and things :)

For the gradient, I sponged Max Factor Bright Orange over Rimmel Sunshine.

Next up, safari animals!  I do love an excuse to do animal print nails...  These stickers are all white (also available in black), and there are lions, giraffes, elephants, rhinos, kangaroos and some of those like deer-type things that you're not actually interested in seeing when you go to the zoo.  It didn't occur to me until I started sticking the stickers on though that white stickers don't show up on white polish...d'oh.

If you want to see the polishes I used, or tutorials for any of the nails, check out this post.

Lastly, silver glittery stars!  These are similar to the pink ones I reviewed from Born Pretty Store a few weeks ago, but thinner with that rubbery feel.  I did waste a few of these though as I was trying to peel them off the sheet, because they're so thin some of them creased up.  Otherwise they were easy to use though.

I used China Glaze Man Hunt and Barry M Blue Glitter for my super-sparkly base, with plenty of Seche Vite on top to make it all shiny.

All in all, I found these really easy to use. They were sticky enough that they didn't move once you'd put them on, but you could still peel them off without tearing them if you needed to reposition.  They're also thin and flexible enough that they don't stick up from your nail.  

You can take a look at these stickers on the following links: Tropical Parrots, Safari Animals and Shining Stars.  Each pack costs £2.99 and delivery was super quick!

Guest Post: Glitterfists

Friday the 13th.  Unlucky for some...  But not for me, because I have this wonderful guest post from Melissa at Glitterfists to share with you!  Melissa has an incredible indie collection, and here blog is full of beautiful swatches, so do check it out!

----------

Hello everyone! Sam was ever so kind to allow me to do a guest post on her blog and I was definitely honored when she said yes! Sam’s nail art is beautifully executed and she’s someone I look up to for inspiration when attempting to do nail art (even though I’m terrible at it!). So I just want to say thank you, Sam. I wanted to create something simple, yet fun and include some nail art as well. So I hope you all like my look!

For this look I used 3 polishes. I used Enchanted Polish July 2013, Sally Hansen Salon Perfect Hi Ho Silver and OPI Black Onyx. I’ll be honest and let you all know that this is my second attempt ever at nail art, so I wanted to do something simple yet challenging (for me, at least!). So, I chose to do cheetah print.

I first applied 2 coats of EP July 2013 on each nail. Then on my ring finger I took the smallest dotting tool I had, if you don’t have one a tooth pick or bobby pin will work great, and took SH Hi Ho Silver and drew little wobbly circles and triangles. I let those dry just a little bit then took OPI’s Black Onyx with a slightly bigger dotting tool and drew C’s around those wobbly shapes to create the cheetah “look”. I then went back to my smallest dotting tool and put in some extra black dots. I added a top coat and wa-lah, you’re finished!

I think this is a really sleek look that you could wear to work or to school without it looking too crazy and its definitely something beginners could do! I hope you all enjoyed as much as I did. Again, thanks Sam. You’re a doll.

----------

I totally love this manicure!  I'm so pleased Melissa decided to have a go at some nail art, and it turned out great!  And how stunning is that shimmer??

Thank you again for guest posting for me Melissa (and for your very kind words - you're too sweet!).

BeautyUK: Intergalactic and Twinkle Twinkle

Hello lovelies :)

I spent all night last night painting my nails (and er...drinking a bottle of wine) so I should hopefully have lots of posts coming up for you soon!

Today I'm showing you some glitter polishes I was sent from BeautyUK.  BeaultyUK is a British brand that produce colourful and affordable cosmetics.  You may have seen them in your local Superdrug :)

The polishes I was sent for review were glitters from the Posh Polish collection.  Today I'm showing you Intergalactic and Twinkle Twinkle, and you'll have to pop back later this week to see what else I was sent!

Rather than saving the best until last, I've decided to start with my favourite!  Intergalactic is a multicoloured glitter, made up of both square and hex glitters.

Intergalactic contains large hexes in gold and red, large squares in purple, green and red, medium hexes in blue, red, green and gold, as well as teeny little purple glitters.  It's pretty hard not to love a multicoloured glitter, and this is certainly no exception.  I love the little twist having some square glitters in it (and it also means you can totally justify buying it if you already own something like Technic Carnival).

Application was great - I used my normal two coat method here for this glitter gradient over OPI Skull and Glossbones.  The consistency was good, and the glitter's really dense.  Happy nail painter here.

Next up is Twinkle Twinkle.  From the bottle this looked like it was just going to be silver bar glitter, but I was totally wrong.

It's actually primarily silver holographic microshimmer, with a sprinkling of silver holo bar glitters.  Again, great consistency and glitter payoff.  I used two coats here - one was pretty enough for the microshimmer, but two gave a nice amount of bars I thought - over Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream.

Overall, I'm really pleased with these polishes - the quality is great and I think they're a bit different from what most high street brands offer.  It's nice to see brands coming up with new ideas rather than just recreating what the bigger brands have done!

BeautyUK Posh Polishes retail for £3.49 and you can check out the whole collection here.  They're also available in Superdrug, so you can pop in for an impulse buy as well!

Guest Post: Life in Lacquer

Hello all :)  Today's guest post comes from Jade at Life In Lacquer.  Jade has some absolutely stunning stamped manicures that you NEED to check out, so pop on over and have a look!

----------

Hi everyone! I’m Jade popping over from Life in Lacquer. I am very excited to be guest blogging for you today at Polished Art!

I am a very big fan of Sam’s work and I am lucky to be able to show you all some of mine!

So after taking about 3 hours to decide what to do I have come up with this beaut!

For some reason I hardly ever use greens. But I do really like green… Strange!

For this I used a fan brush to drag a different colour from each side of the feature nails. I have never done this before but I think it looks really nice so I expect to be doing it again!

Its one of those brushes you get in the brush kits and just gets put to one side. But not anymore LOL.

Products used:

OPI Stranger Tides

OPI Don’t Mess With OPI

China Glaze Jolly Holly

Cheeky Jumbo Plate Viva Mexico

Konad Special Polish in White

Fan Brush

Poshe Top coat

I hope you enjoyed reading this and seeing my work! Hopefully I'll be allowed to pop back again soon
J
Life In Lacquer x

----------

I love the effect Jade achieved with the fan brush - it looks like fabric!  I may have to give the technique another go after my failed attempt a few months back...  And OPI Stranger Tides is one of my all time favourite polishes!

Thank you again Jade for your post!