Revlon Colorstay Gel Envy: Winning Streak with Dry Marbled Hearts

I was a very lucky girl and I got a happy Friday present last week from my fiancé - he brought me home a pretty bottle of purple goodness!  Otherwise named, Revlon Colorstay Gel Envy in Winning Streak.

This is such a pretty colour and the coverage is amazing.  I could have left it at one coat if I wanted, but I had in mind to try out this dry marbling to create some pretty hearts.  I first tried this technique out on my Valentine's Day nail art wheel which you might have seen over on Instagram back in February.  This is so easy to do, but I love the finished effct.  All you have to do it paint on another coat of your base colour, add a row of dots in a contrasting colour whilst the base it still wet and then drag a thin nail art brush down the middle.

You can use this technique for more complicated marbled designs as well.  Madison over at Fundamentally Flawless has some great designs and I loved the swirl design she did at Christmas as part of her Advent Calendar.

The two purples I chose mix together beautifully to create the hearts.  If you don't have a thin nail art brush you can use a toothpick or a pin.  Just be careful that you don't drag the polish too hard otherwise you could end up creating bald spots on your nails.  Also you do have to work quite quickly, but if you have a bit of a practice first you'll get the hang of it quite quickly.  If you leave the dots of polish too long and they dry when you drag them together you'll end up wrinkling your polish.

Thanks for stopping by

Aimée x

Sweetheart Nail Art

Valentine's is just perfect for nail art as there are so many different things you can do - hearts, flowers, kisses, love letters, the list is endless.  I know I did hearts last week, but I couldn't resist sticking with them this week for this more girly heart print design.

I had a bit of a search through my stash to get together some pinks and reds (you can see them all on Instagram), and came across ones that I hadn't thought about in a while, including Jacava Raspberry Bavarois.  I absolutely love this colour so decided that it was going to be the main choice for this design.  It paints on so smoothly and is perfectly opaque in one coat.  I always use two coats for extra longevity on my nails.

I painted my index, middle, and little finger in pink and my thumb and ring finger in white.  Then using different sized dotting tools I created the hearts in Raspberry Bavarois and Strawberry Ice cream from Barry M.  Hearts are really easy to do, but look really effective.  All you have to do is get a good amount of polish on the end of your dotting tool and then drag diagonally downwards to form the point of the heart, then repeat the same again with another dot adjacent to the first.  There were still a few little gaps, so I added in a few little dots in both pinks.  I think they finished off the accent nails perfectly.

What's your favourite sort of design for Valentine's Day?  Leave me some links so I can see yours.  Also, keep an eye on my Instgram later in the week for another exciting Valentine's related post.

Thanks for stopping by

Aimée x

Valentine's Day Heart Nail Art

With February upon us I thought that I'd make an early start with some simple Valentine's Day nails, plus I was determined to try out one of my new MoYou stamping plates.

As we still have a couple of weeks before the day itself I wanted to stick with a darker wintery colour, but still have a base that has a Valentine's feel to it.  I chose Revlon's Vixen - How fitting is the name apart from anything else?  It's tricky to describe the colour as it depends what light you look at it in.  Sometimes it can look very deep red with brown undertones, but with two coats it leans more to a purple red.  Either way I love it; but it does tend to stain a bit.

So, back to the stamping.  The other week I had to double stamp as my chosen colours weren't as contrasting as I had hoped, and then last week I had a design in mind, but it was just fail after fail so I gave up in the end.  So, not to be defeated I picked a different plate and tried again this week.  Does anyone else go through phases like this with stamping?

I chose my new MoYou Princess Plate 10 which has loads of cute designs on it, but being a Valentine's design I chose the linked hearts and I stamped these with MoYou White Knight stamping polish as an accent nail on my ring finger.  I thought it might be a bit much on every nail in this colour combination, so to finish the design I used the same white polish with a dotting tool to create mini hearts just off centre on the rest of my nails.

Overall I am pleased even though my white got a bit smudgy in places... Seems it's not just black that drags with top coat!

I am thinking of doing my very first full nail wheel of Valentine's designs; anyone fancy joining me for the challenge?  Keep an eye out for it on Instagram and whilst you're there it would be great if you gave me a follow!

Thanks for stopping by
Aimée x 

Polish Party: Recreate Your First Nail Design - Red and Black Hearts

Hello all,

The end of the month brings around a Polish Party design.  July's theme is a good one - Recreate your first nail design.  I have been painting my nails since I was quite young and I remember painting my nails alternatively with lilac and a dark purple and I'm sure I must have painted the odd stripe or dot here or there, but I reckon we'll just go for the first one blogged about!  This works out as an especially good theme for me as my blog turned two at the beginning of the month, so it was nice to look back and see how I launched Pinkglow's Pretty Polish.

Red and black Valentine's hearts

I almost don't want to show you the original as it would be something I wouldn't dream of including on my blog now, but it does show progression...

Essence: Let's Get Lost and Magnetic Top Coat Review

Hello all,

I'm sure you will all know by now, but Essence has come to the UK!  They have stands in local Wilko shops and also a shop in Westfield.  If you follow me on Instagram you will have seen that I live near by the shop at Westfield and have already managed to visit there a few times.

I've already used Party Princess, It's Raining Men, and Roller Coaster (all from the top right picture).  It's Raining Men and Roller Coaster were featured in my Las Vegas nail art.

Today I have Let's Get Lost and I have tried it out Essence's Magnetic top coat.  I have tried out magnetic nail polishes before so was very interested in how a magnetic top coat would work as it has huge potential to mix up your whole polish collection.

The magnetic top coat comes in a standard nail polish bottle and you can get different magnets to create different patterns.  I chose Sweet Heart and Funky Check.  I decided to test our the heart one first.

Looking at the top coat it seems a bit scary at first because it's silver, but that's just the magnetic particles.  The idea is to paint your base colour and leave it to dry fully.  Then you paint on a 'generous layer' of the magnetic top coat.  Before it dries you then hold the magnet above your nail and the particles move into the shape of the pattern.  So here was my first attempt.

You can just about see the little heart shapes here.  They are not very easy to photograph, but I promise they are more obvious than this in person.  I do however think I need to practise a bit more with this magnet.  This one seems a bit more tricky than others I have used before because it's a single shape on the magnet rather than a pattern that covers the whole nail.  I don't think I held the magnet over my index finger for long enough as the edges of the heart are a little faint and on my ring finger I think I must have moved the magnet slightly as I have a bit of a double edge.  I don't have a clue what happened to my little finger... It doesn't seem to be a heart at all! Ooops!  The other thing I found with this being a single image is that you can still see some of the magnetic particles around the edges of the nail.  To see if it made a difference, I used a false nail to paint just a patch of the top coat, rather than the whole nail, but I only got half of the heart shape.  You'd have to be really certain where the shape was in the magnet to make sure you got the particles in the right spot.  Over all I am still very impressed with this concept and I am looking forward to trying the Funky Check design as it's a whole nail pattern.  Have you tried this Sweet Heart magnet and have any tips?

The colour, as I mentioned before is Let's Get Lost.  I love this colour.  It's such a pretty turquoise blue.  It paints on beautifully and has a nice rounded edge brush which makes it very easy to apply.  It was a bit patchy with just one coat, but with two it's perfect.  I also love Essence's bottles.  The lids match the polish, making them easy to find in your stash and the rounded end makes them comfortable to hold whilst painting.

In my haul pictures at the top of the post you can see that I have also tried out the Quick and Easy Sponge Nail Polish Remover.  It worked really well to take off glitter polish (the one in the picture is Party Princess).  My litter finger and ring finger show three coats and my middle finger shows it in progress of removal.  You might be able to see on my index finger that my nail is peeling/flaking at the end.  I get this quite a lot, so I got the Express Nail Peeling Pen.  It has a little rubber massage applicator at the end which helps to massage the product into the nails and cuticles.  This seemed to really help even on the first use, so I will keep you updated.  I also got, and have tried, the Express Nail Oil Pen.  I have been using a Nails Inc nail oil pen which I really liked, but it ran out and is rather expensive to repurchase, so I thought I'd give the Essence one a go.  The brush tip is lovely and soft and the oil smells fresh and... well, I don't know how to describe it, but it's nice!

So far I am loving all the Essence things I have tried, so I wouldn't think it will be long before I need (yes need!) some more.  I haven't tried it yet, but I'm really excited about the Glow In the Dark topcoat that I got as well.  It's really bright in the bottle.  My first little haul of three colours was only about £4.99 and then my second haul of 11 items (which also included a mascara) came in at under £24! As far as I'm concerned, you can't go wrong.  Which items do you think you'll be trying out?

Thanks for stopping by

Aimée x

Polish Party: Black and White - Mix and Match Nail Art

Hello all,

The end of the month is here again and that means it's Polish Party time!  This month's theme is Black and White.  I knew that I was going to do a mix and match design for this, but it was just a case of deciding what patterns and designs.

The black is Sally Hansen Midnight in New York, which has a really subtle shimmer, and the white is Models Own Snow White.  Here's a quick run through of what I went for when I took on the challenge this month.

• Thumb - Checker board
• Index Finger - Black with Barry M Confetti in Liquorice
• Middle Finger - Double dot dotticure
• Ring Finger - Half and half
• Little Finger - Black with a white heart

None of these were difficult designs and I love all the patterns, unfortunately this was a disaster manicure though! My top coat was far too gloopy and did not dry.  I now have bubbles all over the white and hair imprinted into the polish.  You know when you go to bed and think it was dry enough... alas no... It just didn't dry :-( Sad times!  I had a feeling it was going to happen, so luckily I took my picture straight after finishing my design.  This means that my clean up was not quite as good as I would have liked, but still means I could share my design and join in with this month's Polish Party.

Lets hope the other girls didn't have a disaster like me... Take a look at their designs below 

Polish Party: Autumn - Hedgehog Nails

Hi all,

Today I have my first post for the Polish Party group challenge.  I am so excited to be taking part in this monthly challenge along with some other girls from Twitter.  To find out more about who's taking part click here.

We decided that our first month's theme was going to be Autumn, so I started to think about different ideas.  I had a quick search to see what other autumn nails were out there, and I really could find that many different ones.  Most seemed to come grouped together with Halloween.  There were lots of browns, yellows and golds in the ones that I saw.  Still not really having a plan I typed into Google, autumn animals for some inspiration.  In amongst the foxes and owls there was a cute little hedgehog nestled in some autumn leaves; I had my idea... hedgehog nails.

I used Barry M nail paints to create my loved up hedgehogs.  For their spikes I used a small nail art brush dipped into Mushroom.  Staring in the middle of my nail I painted stripes towards the tip of my nail.  To make their faces I simply mixed together a few drops of Mushroom with some white polish.  Using a dotting tool I created a small semi circle for the face and two little dots for ears.  In the middle of the ears I used the smaller end of my dotting tool and Strawberry Ice Cream to make them pink inside.  Then adding the nose and eyes I used a nail art pen in black.  Tah dah, autumn hedgehogs! I decided that I didn't want to do hedgehogs on every nail so I used Dolly Mixture Confetti as I thought this looked a bit like falling autumn leaves.  I then used a pink nail art pen to draw on a little love heart in the middle of my two hedgehogs.  I am a little disappointed that the heart doesn't photograph very well; it doesn't look that bad in person, but I love how my hedgehogs turned out.

Make sure you check out the other Polish Party girls taking part using their links below.  Leave me a comment to let me know what you think of my design.  What should the next Polish Party theme be?

Valentine's Heart Nails

I made this design for Valentine's Day.  I wanted to do something different rather than the reds and pinks that you might normally expect to see.

I painted most of my nails black, leving the ring finger on both hands.  I did these using Barry M 'Red Glitter'.

Using a dotting tool on the nails I'd painted black I made two dots with the red glitter and dragged the polish together from these dots to create the heart shape.  I then repeated this step on the red nails using black polish, adding in some extra dots floating away from the heart.