Nails inc Black taxi & Floral street

I do love me some black polish and of course white is the perfect colour to go with it especially with the monochrome trend that's hot right now. Cue bold lines, graphics prints, contrasting colours, and textured leather effect polishes (which are definitely on my hit list when I next go shopping).

Today I used Black Taxi and Floral street on my nails and turned my accent finger into the infamous yin yang symbol which I'm a huge fan of.

 For someone with a huge nail polish collection I don't own a whole lot of Nails inc I think the £11 per bottle price tag puts me off but I do have to say I really enjoyed the application process, it was very opaque I only used one coat (could have done two to make it more even on some nails but not necessary). It makes life easier if your using base and top coats, in this case I just used a top coat and I'm very pleased with the results and the polishes themselves. I also love the look of the leather effect nail polishes- the edgy black or nude leather look with skull embellishments are my favourite.
What's your favourite Nails inc polish?
*I was kindly sent these to try out but of course my opinion is unbiased and honest.

Beaut Maybelline 862 Turquoise Lagoon Nail Polish review

I was browsing around Superdrug the other day mainly to get Revlon lip butter in tutti frutti which seems to be annoyingly sold out everywhere right now when I came across this polish.
As soon as I saw it I knew I needed it, I have been wanting a tiffany's kinda colour for a long time but never really saw one in store but alas I have found one.
This polish is from Maybelline's new pastel range of nail polish's including lavender and a light pink. It's from the Express Finish collection and it's supposed to be a quick dry nail polish only taking 40 seconds to dry. This is Turquoise Lagoon...

It cost around £4.09 for this bottle (a strange number) and has a precision brush.

The first picture is from le Iphone and the last on my DSLR, I tried my best to get the true colour, in person you can definitely see more of the green in the polish and it's a little lighter.
Application
I unfortunately found application a little difficult, for my first coat of this polish it was streaky and uneven. For the second coat it was still the same but not as bad and I found the only way round the streaky and uneveness was to make sure you have plenty of polish on the brush, almost a little too much and using less brush strokes.
I'm taking a wild guess and assuming the formulation is difficult to work with as it's quick drying. Indeed it is quick drying, I tend to get impatient with letting my nails dry and ruin them often but this polish dried very quickly. In fact as I am sat here I just timed how long it took for one normal layer to dry on my toe nail and it's true! By 40 seconds it seemed dry.

Pros:I adore the colour and that it's fast drying, the price isn't bad either, the precision brush is handy and it's easy to find.
Cons:I don't like the formulation it is a little difficult to work with, I have used £2 MUA polishes which are better, although they aren't 'quick-drying'.
Overall
I feel that the positives outweigh the negative, I can live with using this polish happily as long as I use my technique to get even streak-free coverage.

Have you used tried any of the Express Finish polishes?
<3

A quick MUA NOTD in 'U Rok' Love Hearts Nail polish

 So here we have MUA's 'U Rok' (11) polish from the Love Hearts Collection.

It's such a pretty blue toned purple/lilac periwinkle colour. (I'm great at describing things right?)

It cost £2.00 for 6.8ml.

It took me two coats to get a nice even opaque finish, with one it was pretty good but ever so slightly uneven and streaky.

 Any recommendation for top coats that are amazing and help your polish last longer than a couple of days?

<3

Matte it up.

 I finnnnnnally got my hands on Avon's matte nail polishes...

From left there is Black as Night, Inky Blue, Grey Cement and my favourite....Violetta. The only one I didn't get was red velvet. I actually only wanted the black one but they all looked so pretty I couldn't help my self eep.

I got these on ebay for £2.75 each which is a good price to say they cost around £5.00 in the catalogue at the moment (normal price is £6).

Verdict? I have only worn the black and Inky Blue on all my nails they dried fairly quick however I found the polish started to chip within a day. Last night I painted my nails at about 10pm maybe later with Inky Blue and today...it's only 3pm and all I have done is get ready and go to the gym they are pretty chipped.

I have read that these polishes last longer on false nails but in my experience they suck on real nails, I am quiet glad I didn't splash out £6.00 per nail polish... I wouldn't really recommend them to be honest.
It's a real shame.... I was really looking forward to having matte nails as it is a nice change. I'd definitely wear some of them with a top coat for instance Inky Blue and Violetta...it's such a pretty purple and I don't have one like it in shiny form. I'm not sure if using a base coat would have helped but just as they are, it has been an unfortunate fail for me!
<3

Urban Decay Summer of Love Nail kit.

I got this gorgeous little set for Christmas,'Summer of love' what a cute name and the colours definitely feel summery.

It has 7 tiny 5ml mini nail polishes.

I was quiet excited to try them but forgot to take a picture whilst they were still in the case. 

 Above picture from Debenhnams and also available to buy for £17.50

 It is said that All of our colours are formulated without toluene, formaldehyde, or DBP which is a huge plus as those are nail polish badies.

 DBP or 'dibutyl phthalate' is a plasticizer that makes nail polish flexible. Toluene is a colourless liquid used as a solvent. And Formaldehyde helps harden nails... It's also a cheap preservative used in shampoo, conditioner, shower gel and children's bubble bath.

 Skin Deep  (popular online safety guide).  Show that DBP, Toluene and Formaldehyde have the same high hazard score of 10 which is the highest. It is also said that these ingredients are linked to cancer, developmental/reproductive toxicity and allergies.

Some of them require two coats such as Aquarius (electric teal), Love Light (baby pink sparkle) and maybe even Shine On (beige sparkle) which can be annoying especially as your using more polish and its only 5ml to start off with but the pay off is worth it.

Aquarius is a gorgeous colour (I love teal!) and Hashbury is pretty nice too (Orchid purple)

 Colours in this set that I adore for instance Woodstock (bright pink) and Psychedelic Sister (Bright Coral) A downer is that they aren't sold individually in bigger sized bottles.

Overall I like that they are free of hazardous chemicals, the little case they come in is cute and great for storage and there's plenty of room to add other things into it or I'm thinking of using it for make up. I think at £17.50 there pricey but it's a great way to try new colours without having to buy big bottles.

I personally don't think I'd repurchase the set although there is some pretty colours (especially woodstock) there's not enough that make me think OHMY I neeeed. I feel like I could easily find dupes too. I really think Urban Decay should sell individual polishes as I'd definitely repurchase a couple of them but just not the set.

I'll eventually do some pictures of the different colours on my nails so keep a look out (the lighting at the moment is rubbish so I gave up on nail pictures.)

<3

Nail Polish loving.. Barry M Instant Nail Effects Review.

 I've been shopping an incredible amount recently whenever I can wherever I can, I really need to stop! Anyway I ended up buying some nail polishes. I got Barry M Instant Nail Effects  (311) after hearing a lot about it and 'Bright purple' (303) Superdrug have an offer of 2 for £5.00 at the moment too.

I decided to try out the Instant Effects polish with 'Shocking Pink' (272)

 And Below are the results!

The instructions were to apply a base coat and then the instant nail effects polish without overlapping. 

I overlapped, not sure why you can't as you can see it worked just fine, although I think the nails to the right have chunkier black bits due to my intense overlapping but I personally liked the results. I also applied a OPI top coat to give it a glossier look. 
I'm looking forward to trying it out with different base colours too, will probably upload pictures. 

I don't know why but my nails remind me of the much wanted gorgeous Mulberry Alexa Bag in Pink leopard print. :( makes me want one but in brown.

<3

Oh I just can't stop shopping!

Sooo I've not been posting as much as I've been wanting to now I'm back at university but I've of course been shopping more as I'm in Leeds more often.

I got some nail polish from M&S, I've used a hot pink from there before and it was a dupe of Barry M's so I thought I'd try out some more and I got a pastel blue and pinkypurple.

The hot pink was fantastic, I'll get some pictures up when I next have it on but this pastel pink I found to be streaky thus I needed two coats of it and I'd say it doesn't look bad with two coats. No chips yet either and I've had it on for two days today.

£2.50 a bottle but less for me as I work there, not bad really.

I also got a set of bangles from Primark which I love to wear with my Accessorize bracelet.

 

 They cost all of £2.50

Asda-George earrings, these are lovely. I've only worn them once and the back stopper thingamajig to the earring that holds it to your ear broke but I can just take it off another earring I guess.

  They cost £3.00 not bad

And lastly a couple of days ago I got this bag from a new store called Miss butterfly, it's replaced Virgin Mega Store which turned into Zavvi which turned into Head. Anywho this new shop is pretty nice, I do really like some of the things they sell. I even got a dress and top from there previously.They sell a range of styles and some very quirky designs.

So I needed a bag for Uni which would carry my books and folders and I've been looking for a perfect one for AGES. This one is perfect, I like that its quilted and studded, the straps are long enough for me to put on my shoulder without them constantly sliding off like my previous bag. The fact that the straps are joined by metal hooks I doubt immense weight of my books will break the straps which has happened to me before. The zip on the inside means I can keep my phone in there and anything I need quick access to.This cost £25.

I was wondering if many of you guys shop in Leeds often?

More International Mail And Valentine's swap haul

Okay so more international mail, I got home for my lunch break to see mail on the table for me....all international too, love it.

 

So I want to thank the lovely Moria who's blog you can check out here. She sent me these goodies all the way from Australia! Although she didn't get any of my 'wishlist' items (which I don't care) as surprises are awesome. She sent me some lovely things....like sheet face masks which I have really been wanting to try out for a while now. I also thought the heart origami was really cute.

 So she sent me these three nail polishes I love the middle one the most, I'll be trying it on very soon... it's such a lovely feminine colour and totally in right now with all the pastel, peaches and nude that I'm seeing everywhere in stores right now. Classic silver, but I like that its like a pearl and then my second fave which is like a golden yellow...gosh I'm bad with describing.

 I got a little sachet of something but at the moment I'm not sure what it is and some sheet face masks which like I said I've been wanting to buy online but never really got round to it. I got one in raspberry (one of my fave flavours!) Green tea, lemon and two others. I can imagine them being really refreshing so I'm really looking forward to pampering myself with a lush bath and a face mask followed by maybe some nail painting. 

Once again, Thank you Moria for the lovely things! I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else got in their swap.

Forgotten Nail Polish

So I decided to explore my bag of nail polishes, it's been a while since I've done this as I've had my fave colours out on my desk. There was a lot of colours I never really liked or thought of using back in the days which I quiet like now for instance this:

Without flash

With Flash

Nail Polish is by Alessandro £9.00

I bought it from a now closed department store years and years ago, surprised it's not all gloopy yet.

I believe there may be a Barry M dupe or colour similar to Alessandro as I know this brand may be hard to find.

Verdict: 

Loveeee the colour, its so bright and vibrant...it kinda reminds me of mint chocolate chip ice cream...I received many compliments at work too. I guess it's not a colour you see everyday so it defo stands out.

I only needed one coat of this polish and it's fantastic, no streaking, the first picture shows the truest colour but to me I still feel in person its slightly more brighter.

 Upcoming haul: Lush!