Twinkle All The Way // Birchbox December 2018 Nails

Dammmnn this is soo late! I'm sorry but at the same time, my assignments have to come first. I've given myself a few days off for the holidays so I'm hoping to catch up on some nail art and do some new posts as I've pretty much just been swatching the entire of December. Next year remind me to get only one nail polish advent calendar. 

Anyway, here is the first Birchbox nail look this month based on the top design from the beauty box. I'm also going to do the advent calendar as well but whilst editing this post I can't help but feel I may need to re-do this look as well as it just doesn't look right. The colours don't match at all and I realise I probably should've used Katherine Parr by A-England as the blue colour now and left out Nail Junkie. I only added that glittery topper to give it a bit of texture like the box, however, it shines way too green. Also the gold shade is too yellow.

This is the third Christmas look I've done now where I'm just not happy with it. I think tomorrow I'll do a Christmas 'Nail Fail' post as two other designs I did just failed to win me over.

For this look though, I applied one coat of Knee Highs, followed by two coats of Nail Junkie. Then used the Scandi 10 plate with the gold shade. The actual stamp design had other smaller dots in the background however, I used a dotting tool to remove the excess design on the stamper before I applied it.

Polishes/Tools Used:

- Ciaté // Knee Highs (royal blue shimmer)
- Sinful Colors  // Nail Junkie (teal chunky glitter)

- Born Pretty Stamping Polish // #1 (gold)
- Barry M // Plumpy Hi Shine Top Coat

- MoYou London Stamping Plate // Scandi 10

Navy Spice // Bonfire Night 2018

Errr, ok. So this ended up way more Stars 'n' Stripey than I wanted. Over here the 5th November is of course Bonfire Night. The night where the British celebrate a dude who wanted to blow up parliament but got caught at the last minute. In all honesty I'm not sure if we're celebrating he got caught or wanted to blow it up anymore but we all seem to love fireworks and Bonfire Night is just such a great atmosphere; especially if you're at a public bonfire all wrapped up in your scarf waving a sparkler around whilst gorging on toffee apples. 

The look I was going for was a cold and clear night with the orange and gold glitter acting as the bonfire licking the stars but it just looks like I'm late for 4th July. 

It's not terrible but it's not what I envisioned in my head. Anyway, this was achieved with a base coat of Orly In The Navy. You're seeing just one coat because that is one opaque motherducker. I then topped it off with some stars from the MoYou Sailor 18 plate, applied a thick top coat then the aptly named Pumpkin Spice by Sinful Colors near the tips.

I'm going to get my thinking cap on for next year; perhaps I'll do actual fireworks instead of trying to recreate the atmosphere of the night. Also, off topic, but I got the Orly and Sinful Color shades recently for just £1 each...yep £1. My local beauty outlet were moving premises and sold off all the stock they didn't want to take with them...I'm not proud of how much I spent that day, all the polish was £1 or less.....

Polishes/Tools Used:
- Orly // In The Navy (deep navy shimmer)

- Sinful Colors // Pumpkin Spice (red & gold glitter)
- Born Pretty Stamping Polish // #4 (white)
- Revlon // Quick Dry Top Coat
- Revlon // Colorstay Gel Envy Diamond Top Coat

- MoYou London // Sailor 18 Plate

First Try at Galaxy Nails + Welcome!

Hey guys, welcome to my blog. I say guys, no one is reading this lol. There are literally millions upon millions of blogs on the internet and thousands get created every day and I'm just another figure bolstering that statistic. But you know what? It keeps my mind occupied.

I'm currently on the last year of my degree and I need to keep the pace going but I know if I stop, sit down and start watching netflix, I won't get back up again for 3 days, so that's where this blog comes in.

I used to like nail polish, I hoarded it quite a bit but never actually used it. My cuticle care was abysmal as well, but then, several months ago, Safiya Nygaard followed a tutorial by someone called Simply Nailogical. I went and watched that video and now I have consumed almost everything Cristine has done (in the least stalkery way possible...) Her channel and blog though really inspired something in me because I'm now obsessed (and I mean obsessed) with doing my nails. In the space of 4 months, my polish collection has grown from 100 bottles to 200 and it's growing exponentially. 

So, here is my first nail art post; my very first attempt at galaxy nails. I love space. Star Trek: Enterprise is my favourite TV show and ever since I was 5 I wanted to go to space. So, expect a lot more space-themed nails in the future.

Anyway, this particular galaxy design was inspired by when I layered Nail Junkie on top of Starry Starry Night when swatching. I loved the depth of the colours and the holo glitter chunks on top of each other and decided to try and expand it.

I started out with a black base coat (just 1 layer) and topped it off with one layer of Starry Starry Night. This in itself looks great:

I then used a small brush to dab on Alanala & Breanna in a disc-like fashion (it didn't turn out the best but practice makes perfect!)

Afterwards, I added one layer of Nail Junkie to add some holo sparkle and depth before drawing on a few stars with a white polish.  Last but not least was the glossy top coat to make it all shine.

I don't have a proper macro lens yet (it's one of the few lenses I don't have, go figure), so I'm currently using a 50mm lens (on my Nikon) and cropping in and then using a 24mm lens on my Canon (which has one of the most awful UI's in the world). Hopefully in the new year though I'll have saved up enough to purchase an 85mm macro lens.

Thanks for clicking and joining me on my polish journey!

Polishes Used:
- Essie // Ridge Filling Base Coat
- Essie // Licorice (black)
- Essie // Starry Starry Night (new formula) (deep translucent blue with sparkles)
- W7 // Alanala (blue with lilac/lavender shift)
- W7 // Breanna (pink with blue shift)
- Sinful Colours // Nail Junkie (translucent blue/teal with holo sparkles)
- Essie // Blanc (white)
- Essie // Platinum Grade Top Coat