Orange Nail Varnish Collection and Swatches

Orange is one of my all time favourite colours. It always perks me up to have a pop of orange in my look and nail varnishes are ideal for this. I think orange is one of the most lively and positive colours there is and I find myself picking up cosmetics in this shade far more often than I'm willing to admit! As I was packing away some of my things for my upcoming move (nothing dramatic, just going back to Grandma's before University so we can help each other out) I started idly scanning my polishes and a few really stuck out to me. So here are my five favourite orange nail varnishes!

From Thumb to Pinky: Models Own Fluro Orange, Nails Inc Porchester Place, Essie Fear or Desire, Rimmel Tangy Tangerine, W7 Pastel 16

Fluro Orange is ridiculously bright, no camera on earth could capture it's insane beauty. I didn't keep this bizarre (but kinda cool right? No? Just me then...) mani on for long but it's definitely the one that I couldn't keep my eyes off. If you're after some seriously attention grabbing talons I can't recommend this enough. It has a semi-matte finish but you could easily add a glossy top coat for a little more finesse. Porchester Place and Fear or Desire are fairly similar but Porchester Place has a touch more pink and is a little more muted. Both perfect for holiday toes! Tangy Tangerine is a classic apricot and was my boyfriends favourite of the lot for some reason. When I first asked his opinion he replied that they were all the same (my jaw nearly hit the floor at his blindness) but when pressed he claimed that Rimmel's offering was "more subtle and pretty."  I have to agree, it's a great transitional shade for Spring/Summer and won't offend your poor blind boyfriend. W7 is such a pain in the bum to effectively track down but I do so love them! I got a ten pack of pastels from TK Maxx and this is one of my favourites. Very delicate and cool and gorgeous with a tan.

I really hoped you like this! I have a real soft spot for colour-themed collections and adore seeing them on blogs so I couldn't resist! I think I may go for pink lip products next time. What do you think?

Which is your favourite shade? Any others that I have to try?

Lauren

NOTD: Nails Inc Kensington and Revlon Sequins Topcoat

I've been waiting for a good opportunity to use these two little gems and I thought, why not try them together?

I don't think I can be sorry enough for my shoddy application. It's like as soon as I don't do my nails for a week I completely lose any control over my hands. Complex tasks become impossible. Believe it or not this was my second attempt. It was even worse than this to begin with.

I've only very recently started using glitter because something in my head was telling me it was childish. But then, what's wrong with having childish girly nails? I'm coming round to it! I utterly adore these two colours and think they work together beautifully, but I'm still not sure. It's coming across a bit "dotty" and reminds me of a very glamorous snake, when I was actually going for more of a "fairytale woodland" motif. Maybe I'm thinking about it too much.

I used just one coat of Kensington over a clear basecoat, it honestly didn't need any more. It was totally opaque and the coverage was just perfect. I absolutely adore Nails Inc polishes. They dry so fast and I haven't had a problem with any of them. I can only thank my lucky stars (and TK Maxx) that I was able to find so many for so little money! This gem worked out as only £3, which honestly, is nothing for the quality. I don't really mind that they're probably all from two seasons ago, besides, life is boring when everyone's wearing the same thing.

I picked up Sequins for free when I purchased 3 Revlon products. Bargain! Especially since they were on 3 for 2 anyway. How could I not? I imagined that I would be doing a lot of blobbing with this in an attempt to get even coverage, but it was surprisingly easy to work with. The particles are suspended in quite a thick varnish so you get a nice coating on the brush, and if you get it right with first sweep, you're done! I had to blob with a couple of my larger nails, but I'm very impressed! For a free nail varnish it's surpassed all expectations from me and if you can find it I definitely recommend it.

What do you think of this manicure?

Lauren

P.S. What do you reckon to the photos? I requested some advice from another blogger recently and she suggested my photos could be a tad better - which I absolutely agreed with. I'm trying a slightly different set up and I've edited them a bit. Do they look a bit weird and fake? or no...? Would love some feedback!

Christmas NOTD: Nails Inc, Aldford Street

As you all know I was recently very very lucky and won a giveaway from Ellie at Misellyre which included three Nails Inc polishes. The second I saw Aldford Street (a bright gold glitter) I knew it would be adorning my fingers for Christmas.

It's not quite so thick as it looks on my fingers because I painted on four gorgeous layers of the stuff. I was originally going to do just one layer over a layer of Barry M's Nude, but comically I literally could not open the bottle so I had to give up on that. Frankly I'm glad I did because I don't think it would have looked half as nice as this does! I didn't really need four layers, I just kept on painting away because it was so pretty and I wanted to see how good it could get (seriously good.) It's a beautiful multi-faceted shade that includes tiny specks of green and pink shimmer sparsely strewn throughout the polish. You can't see them straight away, in fact I've found that they can only be seen in low artificial light. It dries amazingly fast and is a lot more forgiving to smudges (I had one teensy accident on my right index finger when I put my socks on)This is actually my first ever glitter nail varnish and if they're all like this, then I'm a convert.

What's your favourite glitter polish?

Lauren

NOTD, Nails Inc: Holland Park Avenue

It's been a little while since I've given myself a manicure because I just haven't had the time to wait for it to dry properly! This is clearly also the case with the one I gave myself last night because I immediately smudged it whilst getting something out of the oven. Oh well. Here's how lovely it looked before that mishap:

Holland Park Avenue is a beautiful brown/grey shade. It's what I'd probably refer to as a strong neutral (not sure how accurate that is but it's how I group my nail varnish collection!) I've actually seen it look more khaki in low lighting and I really like the tough military feeling it gives me. The top image is before I applied a topcoat and it's still fairly shiny, but I like my manicures super glossy!

Application, like all Nails Inc polishes, was really easy and it dried much much faster than my Barry M ones. The only thing I would change is the width of the brush, it's a little on the skinny side for my liking. As you can see, the colour is really true to what's in the bottle and you get a large amount of product.

Nails Inc polishes usually retail for £11 each but I picked this one up as a part of a set of ten recently at TK Maxx for the bargain fabulous price of £29.99. It isn't a colour I would have immediately bought on it's own, but I'm so glad I got it! View my haul here.

What do you think of this colour? Do you own any Nail Inc polishes? And if you do, which is your favourite?!
Let me know in the comments.

Lauren

Nail Varnish Haul: Nails Inc and Essie

TK Maxx is bargain heaven. I have only today fully embraced this amazing fact and spent an eye-watering £40 on nail varnish. BUT. It's Nails Inc and Essie, and it was worth £149. So I can't feel too guilty. I'm trying to but I can't. Here's my lovely little haul of 14 fantastic varnishes:

Fear or Desire, Bikini So Teeny, Navigate Her and bizarrely, Fear or Desire again. To be honest I don't think I'll ever get through one large bottle of neon orange, let alone two, so I'm considering selling this or if I hit a fun milestone soon, popping it in a giveaway. (Maybe an orange themed giveaway to celebrate the colour of 2012? Let me know if you like the sound of that!) This little collection set me back £9.99 which is amazing considering you can expect to pay £7.99 for a single bottle. Bikini So Teeny is the stand out for me here, a beautiful pale cornflower with a light shimmer. Hello Spring!

Great Putney Street, Putney Bridge, Kensington, Sheralton Place, Bridle Lane, Hampstead Gardens, Westminster, Holland Park Avenue, Porchester Place, Fenchurch Street. Phew! Seriously, wow, what an amazing collection! When I first saw this I wasn't too sure on Hampstead Gardens (rich mustard, bottom left) or Fenchurch Street (caramel/terracotta bottom right) but the more I look at them the more I love them. I cannot get over how much I saved here. I bought this lovely lot for £29.99 and of course, with each bottle coming in at a hefty £11 each, saved over £80. Part of me is hoping I can part with a couple of these to sell them on and justify the spend to my long suffering boyfriend, but I'm not sure it's gonna happen! My favourite here is probably Kensington, a dark dark teal/green shade. (How very 2013.) With the fabulous neutral Holland Park Avenue as a close second.

Overall I'm absolutely ecstatic with this purchase, but not ecstatic with the tumble weeds rolling through my bank account. Particularly when I should be buying Christmas presents. Oops. Roll on payday!

What do you think of my most recent haul? Which is your favourite colour?

Lauren

P.S. Sorry there was no eye challenge today. I have a bit of a cold and my eyes don't look great. It'll be up either tomorrow or you'll get a double feature on Tuesday. Sorry!

NOTD: Nails Inc, St James

So sorry, I had this drafted yesterday but I just didn't have the time to post it. Such a busy Saturday. Luckily I have today to relax and maybe even get in a facial later!

Everyone and their mother picked up Glamour this month for the fantastic free nail varnish. I actually read Glamour regularly anyway, so I'm happy to say I didn't get it just for the freebie...but I might have.

There were four colours to choose from,

Elizabeth Street: A sheer pale pink/nude
Motcomb Street: A deep, dark navy
St. James: Blue toned red
Glamour Glitter: A golden glitter topcoat created exclusively for Glamour

It was such a difficult choice for me to choose between Motcomb Street and St. James! But I reasoned with myself that everyone needs a classic red, and it can be worn all year round. Red nails never really go out of fashion, just like red lips and black dresses.

So here it is on me!

This is the most expensive varnish I have ever used and I can honestly see why. St. James was so smooth and lovely and easy to apply. The colour was rich and bright. I even noticed a very, very light red shimmer running through which was just so beautiful and exciting to see. I've had a few people ask me what shade/brand this is and it's so great sharing it with them. This is a colour that I will be wearing all year round. I can't really fault it to be honest. Ordinarily you could expect be shelling out £11 for a Nails Inc varnish, so get one (four) right now!

Which shade did you get? What do you think of it?

Lauren