No.

 Can you see those grooves in the top of the bottle? Do you know what they were made by?
A dragon? A crocodile? A Jabberwocky or something equally fearsome?

 No. My dear friends, these were created by the power of teeth alone. My teeth, to be specific. This curious situation arose when I first got this bottle and could not, for the /life/ of me, open it. I tried everything. Towels, opposing hands, oil, water and sheer brute force were all used in my attempt to open it. Zilch. Nada.
Perhaps I should have given in and handed it to my Dad by this point, but me, being ~forever proud~ decided to utilise my teeth.
Meh. It worked.
Do you like my handiwork? I felt proud in a slightly perverse way for managing to damage the bottle such. The grooves are all the way around the lid.

This polish sucks harder than the last one (Big Hair). Bubbles more. Takes longer to dry. More watery and...yeah. All round crap. Even the colour is decidedly generic - I have about three this colour, honestly. I hate it.

The last of the Nails Inc Autumn/Winter Collection, and to me, the most disappointing. I'm disappointed that it's disappointing (how many more times should I use that word?) because the colour looked so promising in the bottle. Sadly, that just didn't translate to the nail.

 This first picture has a topcoat with sparse amounts of hexagonal glitter on it. I added this because sometimes the extra gloss provided with a topcoat improves the look of a polish. Unfortunately, this didn't do much for the polish. The blue threads inside failed to effectively transfer that "lit from within" look which I assume Nails Inc were going for, judging by the bottle appereance and some of their previous polishes.
 You might think that the lack of depth in the photo is due to the abscence of natural sunlight but it's not. There's only a marginal difference between the polish viewed under artifical vs. sunlight. I would have taken it outside anyway but this is England. There is no sunlight.
Perhaps I over exaggerated somewhat, haha. But seriously, even at say seven in the morning, you look out of the window and the whole neighbourhood is pitch black. 
This polish just wasn't a winner for me, especially as it went on incredibly weak and pathetic. It needed three coats to reach maximum opacity, and chipped a lot quicker than the other three in this collection.

Overall, I think the collection is a hit. Three out of four is damn good.

Have you guys heard that Nails Inc are starting up the Diet Coke/Free Polish promotions again? I personally detest Coke in all it's forms but will purchase it anyway because some of those shades look lovely. The light pink and the blue in particular. The red is take it or leave it and I don't really like the "Cool Caramel" shade. It's reminiscent of the "London" polish that they were giving away last time which everyone went crazy for. I supposed they'd make good nude polishes if you had a light skintone.

Just imagine a leopard with this sort of colouring. How awesome would that be? Very awesome, me thinks. Not very practical, camoflauge wise and all that, but awesome nonetheless.

This is ASOS Olivia and the dots are Barry M's Cyan Blue. I find it to be the second best, application wise, of the Nail Paints I have tried (with first place going to the ever flawless, amazing Raspberry). I outlined the whole thing with a nail art pen I ordered from eBay.
 Had no idea whether this suited my nails but thought it looked badass anyway :P
I do love my leopard prints, they're an easy way of spicing up a manicure when you're too tired/uninspired to do anything else. I think I've done quite enough now though, time for a change of pace. I need to showcase some of the "designs" (read - sticker application) I've made with the cheapo kits from Poundland and then try my hand at freehand again. Pathetic pun was intended.

Lately, I've been failing so hard at water marbles, but I felt the thumb of this one was passable.

 For a base colour, I painted (from the thumb) Barry M Nail Paint in Cyan Blue, ASOS Paints in Olivia, Blue, Orange, Blue lol. I reversed the order for the other hand (not pictured).
 I also suck at photographing marbles clearly. Sorry about this, y'all.
While I was doing a water marble not so long ago (not this one, the offending marble involved the infamous Miss Sporty Clubbing Colours Yellow nail polish) something interesting happened. A ball of the yellow nail polish sank to the bottom of the plastic cup. I wouldn't have cared but about five minutes later it had actually managed to eat it's way through the cup and there was nail polish filled water /everywhere/. Messy cleanup, that was. Anyone else found anything similar?

Barry M have redeemed themselves in my eyes.

I will admit that I was seriously doubting them. I don't know if you could see that in my blog posts...I was thinking that the varnishes were a tad overhyped for what they actually were. The meh/ew formulas of Bright Purple, Spring Green and Mint Green had really turned me off them (especially when I'm paying £2.95 a bottle. Not that that's expensive, but when nail polish (MUA) that costs a pound kicks your £2.95 ass, it's not exactly a hard decision is it?) even though the colour range is serious love. <3

Anyway. Look at the pretty!
My new BFF polish. Barely chipped after two days of wear (I get that two days isn't a particularly long time, though :P) dries pretty quickly, and pretty opaque in one coat (though I did two, to even things out, the opacity wasn't affected). It's geniunely my favourite Barry M polish after Raspberry. (I can't help comparing all the Barry M's to their big sister Raspberry) It's got a formula that's almost as good as Raspberry, too. If you like blue cremes, check it out. It's not quite as neon-y as the MUA polish but it's pretty uber nonetheless.

In other news: My friend and I were busy lemming the Barry M Ice Cream collection in Maths today (SO GORGEOUS) and also Barry M in Mushroom and Grey. Better start saving up now...:P Oh, and also, I'm going on our second D of E expo tommorow. I'll schedule a post but you might not get one on Saturday, because it's overnight. Depends what time I get back :D

So, MUA.

Em YOU ay.

Doesn't it sound gorgeous in your mouth? Like, I dunno, a delectable praline. Or any food really.

No, seriously everyone. I'm in love.

So I picked up "Shade 9" (yeah, I guess naming them would have broken the budget) at Superdrugs. It's a gorgeous, squishy, jelly blue. Yum. Anyway, so you get about 6.2ml of varnish, which isn't much but the bottles look uber cute and for only one pound, I approved. First coat is meh, just like the Barry M's (apart from Raspberry, which is basically a one coater) and nastiness, but two coats - heaven. Gorgeous. Words cannot describe, but the pictures can. Blue, jelly squishiness. I love it. I LOVE IT. Dries quickly. Brush is pretty odd (or maybe it was just my bottle) but trust me when I say you can live with it.

One beef, though - when I went to Superdrugs, there was almost no choice. And I went to TWO different Superdrugs and both only had the black nail polish, the clear one, this blue and a couple of greens left. Clearly hoardes of crazed fourteen year olds (we all know what the Superdrug crowd are like, poking their grubby hands into everything that's not taped down) were just too much for this innocent makeup counter. Anyway.
Buy this. BUY IT. Don't believe me? Check out this review by the lovely Rebekah at For The Love of Nails...and then have a good nose around the rest of her blog, it pwns :P
http://fortheloveofnails.blogspot.com/2010/05/mua-9-squishy-jelly-blue.html

Love,

September Lena

So I heard about this nail art contest being held at Charming Nails and I decided to enter. Here's my offering:

It's a beach with sun and some palm trees. This is completely picture heavy, you have been warned!
The contest is here: http://charmingnails.blogspot.com/2010/03/kansainvalinen-kilpailu.html
I used the Avon blue with the Chinese nail art pens in dark yellow, dark green and a brownish/reddish colour.

Quick one as I'm off hiking tommorow with Duke of Edinburgh. This is the Boots No 7 colour I've been raving about. I'm going to do some nail art on it, but isn't it PRETTY?
Goodnight!

Goodnight all!

Here we have: two Maybellines, three Avons and one nail polish from Boots.
This is what looks like a glittery purple topcoat (from Avon).
Here's the topcoat again with it's buddies - Avon Minimilastic Peach (which I showed in an earlier post) and Flash. Both look like they'll be good colours for school. The formula on Minimalistic Peach is absolutley gorgeous. The ball bearings literally fly through the mixture yet on your fingers it's not runny at all. Good coverage. I haven't tried Flash or Glittering Purple yet but I'm sure they'll live up to expectations.
The Maybelline colours really caught my eye! There's an orange (Tropical Peach, hmm, a lot of peaches hanging around here!) and a turquoise (Jelly Bean). The colours are both lighter than they appear in this photo. Again, haven't tried these out yet but expect swatches soon! Both of them look like they have very interesting hints of shimmer in them.