Monthly Round Up: September

Good evening all :)  Over the past few months I've quite enjoyed reading posts like this on other people's blogs, so I thought I'd have a go at one myself!  Let me know what you think :)

So September was a pretty hectic month for me outside of blogging, which I knew it would be, so I lined up all these rather lovely guest posters for you.  They shared amazing manicures with you - there were a huge range of techniques, including freehand, DIY decals and the one-stroke technique, and they even wrote a few tutorials for you!  Thank you again to everyone who was kind enough to write a post for me (and if anyone else would like to write one in future, just get in touch!).

I did have time to write a few posts of my own this month though.  I had the opportunity to work with a couple of new brands - my fiance must have been so fed up with going to collect all the parcels I missed!  I reviewed these four beautiful glitters from Femme Fatale, and had the chance to review these stunning glitters from BeautyUK, which I'm sure you'll all agree are really quite unique for a high street brand.  Last but not least, I produced these fun animal manicures with stickers from Nailtopia!

The most viewed posts this month were:

Zebra Print Tutorial

BeautyUK: Queen of Hearts & Gold Digger

Flip Flop #28: Recreate your favourite day

October Sneak Peak: Next month I'm actually going to finally get round to doing the series of Then & Now posts that I've been claiming I'm going to do for months.  Every Monday I'll recreate a manicure from days gone by, selected by your fine selves.  Pop on over to the Facebook album to vote - just 'like' the nail art you'd like me to have another go at.  And you can vote for as many as you like!

Femme Fatale: Noble Garden & Sea Pony

Hello all :)  I hope you've had a lovely weekend (just a shame it has to end!).  I'm feeling a little delicate today...  My parents, sister and friend all came to stay this weekend for us to go to the National Wedding Show, and obviously we had to have a tipple to celebrate and...well...if I never see a glass of wine again I think I'll be happy.  Had a great weekend though!

Anyhoo, as promised, today I'm showing you the other two polishes I was sent by Femme Fatale.  They are Noble Garden and Sea Pony.

First up, Noble Garden!

What a polish.  Super super densely packed with all different size green glitters, with a sprinkling of different coloured large hexes (think pinks and oranges) and a scattering of little glitters that flash bluey-purple.  This is all in a clear base, so you can layer it over any colour you like (bet it'd look amazing over black or white!).

I used one coat of Noble Garden (yep, just one!) over Barry M Spring Green.  Application was great, with even coverage over the nail.  I reckon you could get this to full coverage without too many coats... (Should I have a go??).

Next up is Sea Pony.

Sea Pony has red and pink hex glitters in all sizes right up to those awesome extra large ones you can see, plus some small black and yellow glitters, which I think add a really interesting twist, and I love the depth that the black seems to add.  All this is suspended in a purple jelly base, which is full of these lovely teeny little bronze glitters.  The purple base is warmer than it appears here, but you know...my camera hates purple (makes me sad).

I used two coats of Sea Pony over Barry M Berry Ice Cream.  A little clumping occurred with the large hexes and I had to spread them around a bit to get a more even look, but I think this is fairly standard for glitters like this.  I finished this off with two coats of Seche Vite, just to make sure any bumps from those gorgeous massive glitters were smoothed out.

A really pretty polish with an unexpected mix of colours, and I just adore those large hexes - I think they look so good!  This one got the thumbs up from my other half :)

You can check out the full range of Femme Fatale polishes here.  They cost $10 (Australian dollars!), which is a little under £6.  Please note, the bottles I've shown here are just samples, the bottle you buy are 12ml!

Depending on where you are in the world, Femme Fatale polishes can also be purchased from:

Harlow & Co.

Color4Nails

Beauty So Fly

Norway Nails

International shipping is available direct from Femme Fatale for any British ladies (or anywhere else not served by these other suppliers!).  It is pricey though, as you'd expect, so it's worth considering group buys :)

If you have any other questions, just ask!  I hope you all enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening :)

KKCenterHk Ebalay Glitter Polish

Helloooo!  Get on my posting two days in a row, I'm a new woman!

Today I'm showing you a fab little glitter polish from KKCenterHk called EBALAY Charming Bronze Glitter Polish.

The glitter is primarily lovely bronze hexes, with a smattering of medium and small white hexes, and a few white bar glitters (skinny enough to be inoffensive!).

I layer it over Barry M Berry Ice Cream.  I think it's perfect for a glitter gradient like this :)  And although it looks beautifully soft here, it would be really striking over a darker colour.

Application was great, no issues whatsoever with the formula or brush.  I used my usual technique of two-ish coats here, and was happy with the amount of glitter and the distribution across my nail.

You can see this polish here.  It's $7.82 for a 15ml bottle (decent sized polishes - yay!), which is about a fiver in British money.  And, don't forget, you can get 10% off with the code polishedart.

I have a bit of a hectic weekend coming up, so I may do a disappearing act again until Sunday.  Tomorrow after work there's a retirement party for one of the ladies, then my parents (plus dog) are coming up Friday night, and I'm off to the National Wedding Show on Saturday!  If anyone knows of any dog-friendly pubs in the Maidstone area, do let me know!

Guest Post: Nail Jems

Hello ladies :)  This week's guest post comes from the lovely Jem of Nail Jems.  Jem has a beautiful bright and colourful blog, with equally beautiful nails to match (and some pretty handy reviews too!), so do pop over and check it out.

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Hi all, my name is Jem from the British/Australian nail blog Nail Jems!

I would like to thank Sam for allowing me to be a guest poster, she's a really talented nail artist and it's an honour to be deemed worthy of a spot amongst her own fantastic work! 

The nail design I bring you today is not so much about the design itself, but the technique I used to achieve it.

I'm a bit of a cheap skate and hate to over spend on anything, so I like to get creative with my funds first and foremost, and try and achieve great nail art with whatever I have laying around or can buy at the cheapest price!!! 

So to achieve today's mani, I did home made, hand drawn decals with coloured permanent marker pens, resulting in this funky multi-coloured chess board design!

To make home made decals, I start by painting a layer of clear polish onto a plastic sandwich bag and I let it dry thoroughly for several hours. It must be fully dry as if you try to draw on it, it will smudge, or it wont peel off the bag when you go to apply it to the nail.

Once the layer of clear varnish is dry you then draw your design right onto it.

As nails are so small it is difficult to draw out a precise grid with tiny boxes using just your ruler (believe me, I tried it and it was a mess!), so to do the chess board mani I printed out a grid pattern with small measurements using photoshop. I placed the part of the sandwich bag that had the clear polish over the grid, and then with the aid of a ruler for straight lines, traced the design in 4 different colours for each nail onto the layer of clear polish, and then coloured in alternate boxes. I let the ink dry and colour in the boxes another 2 times to get a nice solid colour.

When its done I peel the layer of topcoat from the bag using tweezers and cut it into nail sized pieces, I paint my base coat colour, or 'undies' if you prefer! (in this photo Sinful Colours 'Snow Me White') then I attach the decals to the nail with a layer of top coat left to dry for a couple of minutes so that it's tacky. I smooth the decals onto the nail with a cotton bud, trim the edges with cuticle scissors, and seal everything with another layer of topcoat.

I really love this technique and the coloured pens are so versatile, I've traced a beautiful fish scale mermaid pattern in one colour HERE (where you can also see what kind of pens I use), drawn free hand a multi- coloured henna pattern HERE, and even drawn directly onto the nail without making decals at all, like in my mani HERE.

I know a lot of girls that don't have great luck with nail stamping (it's certainly always been very hit and miss for me!) so this method can also be a great alternative as you can trace any pattern you want onto a decal to layer over your polish, and you can easily collect a nice selection of markers from thick to fine tips, in gold and silver and even colours like mine. Purchasing these pens has certainly been much cheaper than buying 20 different polishes hoping that they might be opaque enough for stamping only to discover that they aren't!

So I hope you like my marker pen technique and that it will inspire many experiments and great looking mani's, and thank you all for taking the time to read my post! If you would like to see more of my work be sure to visit my blog www.nailjems.blogspot.com.au where I definitely wouldn't say no to a couple of new followers ;)

One last thanks to the lovely Sam for this great opportunity... and I'm out! XXX

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What a great post!  I've used this decal technique for a couple of manicures (check out the leprechaun manicure I did for Sincerely Stephanie here), and can totally vouch for the tracing!  I normally use polish though, but using felt tips is a little bit genius!  So much easier to control and such a selection of colours!  And I can't quite get over how clean Jem's lines are and how uniform she's got the colours...I definitely need to give this a go!

Thank you again Jem for a fab guest post :)

Femme Fatale: Lime Thief and Bottle of Infinite Stars

Hello lovelies :)  My fiance went back to work today, so I should be posting a bit more regularly for a little while!  I've got so many photos ready, I just haven't had a chance to write many posts.  Too many weekends away and evenings out :)

I was recently send some polishes to review from Femme Fatale.  In addition to stocking loads of lusted-after indies, Femme Fatale also produce their own range of nail polishes, and that's what I'm showing you today!

First up I'm going to show you Lime Thief and Bottle of Infinite Stars.  Pop back later in the week to see what other polishes I was sent!

Lime Thief is my favourite of the polishes I was sent.  It has a green base (perhaps what you'd call a crelly??) and then is full of all different glitters, ranging from large matte green hexes to teeny tiny red glitters with a holo flash.  There's also teal in there and some matte red glitters too.  I really like the mix of shiny and matte glitters - makes it more interesting than other multicoloured glitters - and I LOVE the pop of the red glitters against the green.

For these swatches I layered two coats of Lime Thief over Max Factor Cactus Green.  The glitter required a little bit of careful placement to ensure an even coverage, but nothing too tricky.  I used two coats of Seche Vite to make sure it was lovely and smooth with those large glitters.

Next up, Bottle of Infinite Stars.  Even just the name is awesome.  This polish contains stars in a blue jelly base, and is jam-packed with various sizes of blue and slightly greenish hexes.  I squealed a bit when I unwrapped this - I do love me a shaped glitter.

Here I used two coats over Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream.  I should say, China Glaze Man Hunt is like the perfect base for this, I just did it over a lighter base so you could see the glitters a little more clearly.  There is no fishing required here, I got tons of stars on the brush!  Almost too many!  And as you can see there's plenty of glitter in the base too.  My only complaint would be that stars from the first coat get almost totally obscured on the second coat.  I think I'd stick with just using one coat over Man Hunt in future :)

 You can check out the full range of Femme Fatale polishes here.  They cost $10 (Australian dollars!), which is a little under £6.  Please note, the bottles I've shown here are just samples, the bottle you buy are 12ml!

Depending on where you are in the world, Femme Fatale polishes can also be purchased from:

Harlow & Co.

Color4Nails

Beauty So Fly

Norway Nails

International shipping is available direct from Femme Fatale for any British ladies (or anywhere else not served by these other suppliers!).  It is pricey though, as you'd expect, so it's worth considering group buys :)

Let me know if you'd like to see any of these polishes over other undies or commando, or if you have any questions!