Graceful Glamour UK

With flash. I didn't really know where I was going to go with this mani, I just sort of made it up as i went along. To start with I applied a layer of Orly Top 2 Bottom as my base coat. I've been really enjoying this and would highly recommend it. Next I added three coats of Borghese Castello Blue. If you haven't seen my review of this with swatches, you can see it here .  Now for a little stamping, so I used the crazy paving style design on my Bundle Monster BM215 with Sally Hansen Raspberry Race ( swatches here ).  Without flash, natural light.  Next was to add some french tips using the rounded Wet N Wild guides and Sally Hansen White On.  I've really been getting in to flowers recently, due to Maria from Maria's Nail Art and Polish Blog  so I decided to add some lovely purple flower fimo. I added them to each nail and then finished off with LA Girl's top coat.  That's all from me for now, I hope you are well. Take care all, b...

No flash.  Hi all, I hope you are are having a fab weekend. I'm really enjoying spending some time with my daughter and not having to worry about unpacking boxes as it is all done! My little girl (15 months) and niece ( 3 years old) were playing in the paddling pool yesterday when my niece suddenly got up and got out of the pool. She was standing with a strange look on her face when I looked down and realised she was having a wee! A couple of minutes later I asked her 'Who did a wee on the floor Elizabeth?' and she said 'It wasn't me, it was Gracie!' I had to laugh... Let's get on to the nail art shall we? The base colour is Essie Smooth Sailing (click here for review), I added two coats of her and then a layer of Sally Hansen Super Shine Top Coat. With flash.  Next I took the gorgeous S ally Hansen Metallic Momentum and used her with my Bundle Monster BM225 stamping plate to get his beautiful flower mani. I have to say, as with the ot...

With flash As you all know, I've been really getting in to nail art at the moment and I've been seeing some absolutely stunning freehand mani's on my fellow polish loving bloggers posts. It's taken a while for me to build up the courage to give it a go, and I finally took the plunge and picked up my nail art brush.  So to start with I applied Hedy's Cherry Bomb. This polish was just so, so to be honest, not terrible but not brilliant. She is a deep bergundy tinted red with shimmer. I don't think the colour particularly suits me, but I think I'd choose this colour for wearing more around Christmas time.  Formula wise, she didn't thrill me. She was more opaque than I thought by looking at the bottle, but has such a weird texture that is not at all forgiving. Drying time was reeeeaaaaalllllllyyyyyy slow and I kept smudging the same three fingers over and over again, which meant I didn't start my design until really late at night, boooo! ...

SC Starfish, 2 Coats With Flash.  I know I said I was going to show you the stamping tomorrow, but as I had it ready I thought I would let you see it a little early. I had a pretty horrible experience yesterday, I was quite innocently walking to the shops with my little girl in her buggy and a car reversed up the curb and hit us. Basically, the man driving the offending vehicle couldn't get out of his parking space, and didn't look as he reversed straight in to us! But to make matters worse when I screamed and was upset he'd hit us, he started shouting at me saying I should have realised he was blocked in and that he would have to mount the pavement and waited for him to do so. Hmmmm.  For my base colour I decided to go with Star Fish from Sinful Colors . She is a beautiful soft dusky pink with a slight lilac undertone and a crelly texture. I was actually kind of surprised by this as she looked rather more creamy in the bottle but I'm really pleased as s...

With Flash  Hi all and welcome back to my ever more nail orientated blog. I didn't actually think about the fact I'd only been posting about nails, it just sort of happened. I suppose it's because I'm really only just getting 'polish obsessed' and the things I'm most excited about at the moment are nail polish and nail art. For the base colour I used Sally Hansen White On from their Xtreme Wear line. I didn't really think about swatching her on her own as she's just a basic shiny white. If you do want me to swatch her, just let me know. To be honest, I wouldn't wear her alone, she's just a base for nail art. I used two coats for a nice opaque finish. Without Flash  For the tiger stripes I used Sally Hansen Insta Dri in Presto Pink with my Bundle Monster BM223 plate. This is an amazing polish and if you haven't seen my review on her, you can go take a look here . This mani took me a long time to do, I'm not sure if...

Right, I know this is getting out of hand now, but do you know what? I don't feel bad... It's hard work being a single Mum, especially when you live with a disease that effects you on a daily basis, so why shouldn't I treat myself to things for my nails?  Left to right, Sally Hansen Supershine, Gel Cuticle Remover, Advanced Hard As Nails, Double Duty, Continuous Treatment.  First off let's start with the Sally Hansen nail care. You know I like to try out base and top coats, plus I use them up really quickly as I'm painting my nails pretty much every day at the moment. You may have noticed as a result of me doing my nails so often, my poor cuticles have not been looking too great so I grabbed some cuticle oil and remover.  Left to right, Sally Hansen Sea & Be Seen, Metallic Momentum, Pepto Pink, Grape Going!,  Whirlwind White, Gold Flash.  Next we have the Sally Hansen Insta Dri's . I was really impressed with the others that I've alrea...

I was googling some nail art sites and I came across Wicked Nails  . There are some great nail art supplies on here and you also get free shipping when you spend over £15.00. So I thought I'd grab a few bits. Add caption Let's start with the Paint Set. I've really been enjoying seeing some great free hand nail art from my fellow bloggers so I had to grab some paints. This is the Paint Set For Nail Art Set 2 , you get the three brushes, eight paints (which come in a handy little storage box) and as a bonus you get a really sweet bottle of heart rhinestones. This was only £6.50 which I think is great for what you get.  Next up we have the Wheel Kit , they offer lots of different options for the wheel kits and this one comes with the wheel on the right, some nail glue and pin point tweezers for £5.50. The tweezers are usually £3.50 on their own so I think this kit is a bargain and I'm really pleased with it. The one on the left is the Logo Fimo ...

With flash  So here we are again with some stamping goodness. I must admit I've been really having to push myself to take the time and do stamping mani's as I've got to have all of my things cleared out of my old house and make it all shiny and lovely by Saturday (I'm writing this on Thursday). But on top of that I still have to look after a lively one year old who is in to EVERYTHING, and teething!  So to start off I applied three coats of the Borghese Milano Taupe (click here for that post) and a layer of my trusty Orly Top 2 Bottom, then waited around thirty minutes. I had a little flip through my Bundle Monster stamping plates and decided on the 'swirly whirly' design on BM222. I applied this design with the Konad White special polish then added another layer of the Orly to lock in the design.  No flash  Well there you go, what do you think? I know it didn't come out perfect, but I didn't think I did too badly. I found this d...

With flash  Evening all, sorry it's been a few days since my last post but my laptop had a slight blowing up situation. I suddenly heard a loud bang and smelt burning, then I looked down and there was smoke and a little flame! I couldn't believe it, I only recently got a new screen and charger for it. PANTS! I've ordered a refurbished Mac Book Pro, but that wont be here until at least the end of the week so I'll only be able to post when I can borrow a friends laptop.  So it's that time of the week for the We Love Nails post and this time it is a mani based on a film. I was just itching to do a mani using my Bundle Monster stamping plate with shoes on, so I thought I would have a go at doing Cinderella. Now if you read my posts regularly you will know that I'm fairly new to nail art so don't judge me too harshly! First of all I started with my normal Orly Top 2 Bottom Base Coat, two coats of Jessie's Girl Stilleto and a layer of Sally Hansen Max...

Orly Top 2 Bottom, 3 Coats OPI Pedal Faster Suzi, Konad White BM205, Orly Top 2 Bottom, with flash.  Evening all, I have to apologise for my lack of posting and replying to messages, but I had to give myself the weekend off. As you may know from my For Audrey Post ( click here to see it ) my Nan is very ill and there has been allot going on so I just didn't have time to post. This is a mani that I did last week, but as it was a bit of a fail I didn't post it until now.  For the base I started with a layer of Orly Top 2 Bottom, then three coats of OPI Pedal Faster Suzi . This polish was a little sheerer and patchy that I thought it would be, but it's still very pretty. I will be doing a review on it in the future.  I then decided to stamp with the butterfly design on my Bundle Monster BM205 plate using Konad Special White. I was inspired to use this by another blogger using it recently (I'm sorry I can't remember who) as her mani came out so beautifull...

Remember that beautiful Essie polish French Affair that I showed you? (If you haven't seen it you can click here) Didn't she look lovely all pretty, pink and shiny there on my nails? Well I wish it had stayed that way, but  oh no, there was major trouble ahead so I wrote this little post to share my fail with you. I'm so sad because in my head this was meant to be so pretty! But that's the way life goes sometimes, it doesn't always turn out how you planned it.   Now I had some massive issues but they were through no fault of the Essie polish, but more my Sally Hansen Maximum Growth Top and Base coat. Now as you may have seen from my haul ( click here to see it if you haven't ) I got two of these and one of them was a slightly different colour. I have been using one of them since that haul arrived and I hadn't really had much of a problem with it. It's now half way used and when I applied it over the Essie, it dried to a very thick bubbly ickyne...

Hiya, happy first day of June! Can you believe we are half way through the year already? No, me neither. It's scary how much quicker time goes when you get older! Today I have my second attempt at using my Bundle Monster stamping plates. As you can see I also added some rhinestones to the mix which is very exciting as I've never used them before either. I know, I know, sad huh? So to start with I Painted my nails with two coats of Essie's Sand Tropez . I'm an idiot and forgot to take pictures of the Sand Tropez before I stamped, whoopsy daisy, sorry. I really like it so I'm sure I'll be wearing it again soon. But anyways, I then added a generous layer of my usual Sally Hansen Maximum Growth Plus. I'd heard from various people on Youtube that if you add a good amount of topcoat between your colour and stamping, if you make a mistake you can just remove the stamping polish without disturbing the colour underneath. So I began to stamp, and to my j...

I was really eager to get stamping away when my new plates arrived so I waited until my little girl Gracie was in bed and got all my nail things out. I have to say that I did think I was going to get it straight away and I got very frustrated that it wasn't coming out perfect straight away until some other people told me that you just need to practice a few times. I wasn't sure whether I should post the pics as it was a massive fail, but actually it's good for other newbie stampers such as myself to see what my experience has been like. So to start off with I had a little lap tray with all the equipment I needed and covered it with some kitchen roll as I'd heard this can get quite messy. Then I picked out a stamping plate, the one I chose was BM210. Next was to decide which polish I wanted to stamp with, well that wasn't too much of a choice as I wanted to use one of my new Konad Special Polishes and I only had them in black or white, so I chose white. ...

I was sooooo excited to get my nail mail this morning, tee hee hee!! For the past couple of months I've been really getting back in to nails, and  been admiring other bloggers nail art. So there was nothing else for it, I wanted some stamping plates and I wanted them now. I asked a couple of people which ones were good and a few people recommended Bundle Monster plates. But of course I can never just stop at buying one thing so here is my small nail art haul. Konad White and Black Special Polish Now I know that the special polishes aren't essential for stamping, but as a newbie stamper I wanted something that would make things easier so I opted to buy the black and white. I got these for £6.30 each for 11ml of product. Konad Stamper and Scraper The Bundle Monster plates do not come with a stamper or scraper so you have to buy them seperately, and in fact they don't even make them! So I took the same option and bought the Konad ones. For both the stamper and scrap...