This is seriously generous. Over at Crystaliciousss, they're giving away loads of China Glaze, Lush, MAC pigments...and much, much more. Get over here, quick. It's ending on April the 7th!

http://crystaliciousss.blogspot.com/2010/03/spring-giveaway.html

Doesn't it look gorgeous?

At NAILSTAH, there's another giveaway going on. Yum.

http://nailstah.blogspot.com/2010/03/nailstahs-first-reader-appreciation.html

Loving the Hello Kitty :P

At Contests and Such, there's a load of nail polish too.


http://alotofcontestsandsuch.blogspot.com/2010/03/whats-in-my-purse-pouchee-something.html
Seriously guys, don't miss out on these!

WizardsOfBling are doing a SUPER generous giveaway. My mind was blown looking at all that polish. OPI, Sally Hansen, Rimmel...yup. Good opportunity to get your hands on some American polish if you live in Europe like me :P
http://wizardsofbling.blogspot.com/2010/04/big-150-follower-bling-giveaway.html

 Phwoar!

EDIT: This is ending on April the 15th. So you've got a bit of time :)

Yeah, that's right.

The gorgeous Avon "Flash" that I swatched yesterday? It chipped after about a day and a half. I was horrified. It was SERIOUS chipwear. :( Such a shame, when "Minimalistic Peach" - which I reviewed here - lasted without any chips until I took it off. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and put it down to the topcoat, which probably last saw light some time in the 90's (meh. It was free.) and was really rather gloopy. I'll swatch it again at some point.

In other news, I hope everyone has had a great easter! As I was so disapointed with the Avon I painted over it with my Chocolate Franken that I talked about here. It's practically empty now but I want to make more frankens and I need that bottle to store them in :P

Just to show off the franken a bit more. I think my skin matches the egg, kinda :P And now for the nail art. I decided to use my brown Nail Art pen to graffiti my nails so that they looked like the weird crackle/shell patterns on this egg...

I decided to swach some more nail polishes today. This was the Avon "Flash" featured in the previous haul.

I decided to open the Miss Sporty black nail polish I got yesterday and Konad with it.
I personally thought the result wasn't bad! It was a lot more pigmented than I thought it would be and all in all was quite good for stamping with.

I said those orange nails were crying out for nail art, haha.

Sorry about the lack of cleanup. Anyway, I did these with these two nail polishes:
The radioactive warning signs could have ben a little less messy, but yeah. Happy Holy Saturday, by the way :D

This is a swatch of the Maybelline "Tropical Peach" that was featured in the earlier haul. Colour was a bit of a disapointment, to be honest.

I was really hoping that it would be more opaque than it actually was. It's a yellowy tinged orange that is slightly sheer. This was two coats and there's still visible nail line. The light makes it look slightly more sheer than it is on my nails, though. It is a bit more pigmented than it appears here. Application was meh, runny but not so much that it was impossible to apply. Easily mixed. I think this is definately a good colour for summer so I'll save it until then.
This colour is crying out for some nail art! On it's own I don't think it really suits me as well as the Avon blue but yeah.

Oh wow. So today, (Good Friday) I went to Superdrug, which is a good relatively cheap UK drugstore, similar to Boots (and it's basically the HOME of Barry M, haha). I wanted to get some new polish colours and I knew exactly what I had in mind - Barry M. Headed straight for the cosmetics aisle and scoured the shelves...there it was! All sorts of Barry M goodness. However, the polishes were £2.95 and Miss Sporty were doing a sale on their own colours - (three for two) so instead of getting the Barry M yellow, I bought the Miss Sporty yellow (they looked fairly similar, not dupes but close) and got Barry M Mint Green instead. I was in polish heaven :P The choice was truly mind boggling - there was almost every nail paint there apart from the very new Ice Cream ones for summer! Even the glitters were there! Also, there was all sorts of Rimmel, Maybelline and GOSH. I did look interestedly at the GOSH having seen it featured in some other nail polish blogs - a gorgeous holo silver - but quickly backed away when I saw it was £5. Wtf? I'm a student! Why pay £5 for a limited range of colours when I could get two or even three nice ones for that type of money?

They look so pretty all lined up!


The Miss Sporty brands claim to dry in 60 seconds. I'll have to test that claim.
The black claims to last for up to 7 days. For a cheap nail polish that's really quite good but again, I'll have to see for myself.
 My gorgeous Barry M :)
I have waited so long to own thee.

I've had bad experiences with the Miss Sporty Black in the past - one completely thickened up beyond belief and seized manically after about three years or so. I had to throw the whole bottle away. Still, they've changed the bottle design since then and if the formula has changed to allow it to stay on for 7 days...there's hope. I think it feels better knowing that your colours were cheapass. Bye for now.

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.