Magpie Beauty Pretty In Pink Gel Collection - Review and Swatches

Hey everyone! It's been a while, if you don't follow me on Instagram, that's where you can mainly find me these days. I've completely fallen in love with gel polish, in part thanks to my new role as Brand Partner for Magpie Beauty, so you can find a lot of gel designs on there now too! I'm going to keep my blog for longer reviews such as this one.

As part of my role with Magpie, I was kindly gifted the brand new Pretty In Pink collection* and I wanted to give you an honest review and some swatches of the collection for you to see! If you have any questions please feel free to message me on Instagram and I'll help as much as I can!

There are five polishes in the collection, and (as the name suggests) they are a collection of pinks, with a mixture of cremes, sheers and shimmers.

I have quite ridged nails on my pointer and middle finger at the moment so I applied a coat of Magpie - Give Me Strength to those fingers in all of these swatches, but otherwise these are totally on my natural nails. 

Gelish Editor's Picks Collection - Review and Swatches

Hey everyone! I'm so excited to show you the new Gelish Editor's Picks Collection*. It's a great introduction to Spring with a selection of pinks, nudes and purples. Which is your favourite shade?

Gelish - Rocketman Collection review and swatches

Gelish - The Colour of Petals Collection Review + Swatches

Today I've got a review of the Gelish - Colour of Petals Collection* for you all. It's a lovely collection of pinks and purples, perfect for spring, and for summer. Read on for further swatches and my thoughts on the shades...

Abstract

Hey everyone! A quick design today using the OPI Nutcracker Collection*, I was having a play around with the collection and I wasn't really sure what I was aiming for but I'm pretty pleased with the result! 

Dainty pink flowers

Hey everyone! Sorry for the radio silence recently, blogging had to take a bit of a back seat while we were having our kitchen fitted, but now it's sorted I'm back and I've got quite a lot coming up for you!

To start with I've got these simple pink flowers, These were just a quick design I did on a Sunday evening so that I'd have something to wear to work in the week and I really loved how they turned out. 

Arched Studs

I've been sorting out my laptop recently to try and speed it up and I realised when I was going through my 'to post' folder that I never posted these nails using the China Glaze Chic Physique* collection. They were just some quick nails I did using the brushes from the bottle, and I'm not sure how I feel about the studs! 

Ice Cream Nails

Is it just me that really struggles to eat healthily when the weather is nice? I just can't resist ice cream, and chocolate, and ice cream, and cake, and ice cream (getting the trend yet?). So while I was eating an ice cream at the weekend, I decided that it made some great nail inspiration... and this was the result! 

Gelish - Make A Splash: Review + Swatches

Hey everyone! I had such a mare trying to get this post up. I managed to get my review done soon after I received them, and as I went to plug my memory card in, the whole thing wiped! I've no idea why. After a lot of panicking from me, and help from my boyfriend, I actually managed to receive the photos, hours before I was due to go on holiday. So I thought therefore I'd write the post on holiday, but then Blogger wouldn't work on my phone! 

We're finally here... so here is the gorgeous and fun Gelish Make A Splash Collection. I love how bright these gels are, the perfect summer shades! There's also a Cellophane Coat included with the collection, which is described as an 'iridescent overlay' and just adds a bit of shimmer, scroll down to have a look. 

Gelish Royal Temptations - Review and Swatches

Hey everyone! Hope you enjoyed the super long Easter Weekend, I certainly made the most of it with a spring clean but also a few days of chilling out. I feel much more refreshed! 

Today I've got the gorgeous Gelish - Royal Temptations Collection* to show you. I've made no secrets of my love of Gelish, and this collection is no different. I really feel that the formula of the new bottles is so much better than the old, so much so that I've pretty much stopped using all my old bottles! Read on for my thoughts on the collection. 

Heard It On The Grapevine

Hey everyone! Can you believe it's almost the end of the month? March has gone so quickly, and I can't wait to have a long weekend for Easter! To celebrate what should be the start of spring (why is it still so damn cold?) I wanted to do some light and spring like nails. I wasn't really sure where I was going with these (which is often a theme with my designs if you hadn't noticed!) I just knew I wanted to do some grape nails, but they looked a bit plain with just grapes so I ended up adding some vines and it definitely made the design work 100% better. 

Fun fact: did you know grapes are a berry? And if you did know that... don't tell me and make me feel like an idiot for having to google it! 

Detailed Pink Florals

When I posted my Gold Lilac Rose nails the other week, I said that I wanted to recreate them in pink, and I couldn't resist doing that straight away. I decided to play around with them a bit more and this time I did the roses using acrylic paints, as I never really use acrylic paints anymore and I thought I'd see how they looked. They were super easy to work with, but I think I got a bit carried away with the roses and I don't quite like them as much as the last ones - practice makes perfect I guess! I also added polka dots and hearts rather than gold foil this time, and I like how it brings these a fresh look... although I do miss the gold foil a bit I must admit! 

Emoji Dogs

There's no point in denying it, I’m a huge over-user of emojis, but I’ve never really had the urge to translate that into nails. That is until I realised the cute potential the dog emoji holds... i.e. I was stuck for inspiration one day and was browsing my phone and decided to give them a go. These started out just as a test on falsies to see what they’d look like, and I ended up loving them so much I had to recreate them. Typically, the first attempt was much better than these (beginners luck I guess!) but I was still happy enough with them! 

Barry M - Candy Culture Collection Review + Swatches

It feels like forever since I last did a full review. I find that more and more I prefer using polishes in nail art and reviewing them that way, but now and again I can't resist an old-fashioned swatch post. And the latest Barry M Candy Culture Collection* was just too cute to be able to resist reviewing. It's been so cold and miserable lately that it's nice to have some lovely spring polishes to brighten things up a bit.  These gorgeous pastel shades are from the first ever Barry M scented range. I found that they all smelt strong enough that you knew they were scented, but not strong enough that it was overpowering. Barry M claim that these shades only require two coats and dry with a soft matte finish, read on to find out what I thought...

Sparkly Burgundy Paisley

Hey everyone! Welcome to my first post of 2018, happy new year! Can you believe we're already more than a week into 2018? Which means one thing and one thing only... it's less than a week until my birthday! It also means that it's probably about time that I wrote a blog post, especially as one of my new years resolutions is to blog more. Today's nails were done using the All That Jazz - Opulance Collection*.  This was the first time that I've painted paisley in ages, so I did them as a bit of a challenge to myself.  I realised after one nail that they were going to take forever so I turned them into accent nails instead... so much for a challenge! I also hadn't done dry brush nails in forever, so I combined the two and I loved the end result

Glitter French Triangles

And just like that, Christmas is over. I hope you all had a lovely one. I'm counting down the days to the next festive period already, it's definitely the best time of the year. I'm lucky in a way that my birthday is only 3 weeks after Christmas so the fun isn't quite over yet, although it does mean that once my birthday is over I have to wait a whole year for any more celebrations! 

One of my Christmas presents this year was a wonderful new lightbox handmade by my dad. He built my last one but unfortunately it only worked with my old camera, so it was time for an update, and he pulled all the stops out this time. Of course I couldn't resist taking some photos in it, and here are the results!  I've seen this design around a few times on Instagram, but these in particular were inspired by Hey Nice Nails and I'm really pleased with how they turned out. 

Rose Gold Snowflakes

It's been a busy ol' week this week, which concluded with me smashing my car into a bollard.. so not the best. But as with all bad weeks, I've turned to blogging to take my mind off it. I have to keep telling myself it's Christmas soon to distract myself, and what better to remind myself than with Christmas nails! I have so much inspiration this year but just not enough time to do everything I want to do. I'm hoping to be able to do a couple more designs this weekend before it's too late. I did however manage to squeeze in these nails a couple of weekends ago. 

I was recently sent a wonderful Christmas package from Sally Hansen, and I knew as soon as I saw these polishes inside that I had to do some nail art with them, they just looked like they would work so well together... and they do! 

Barry M - Black Cats

Happy Halloween! Whilst I said yesterday it felt like Halloween was over, I got back into the spirit today. We bought soooo many sweets for trick or treaters because we live right near a school, and we didn't get a single one! I'm guessing the creepy ghouls we've got stuck to our windows were too much, who knows? Anyway, my final Halloween design is hopefully a bit less spooky, but still on theme: black cats! 

To the horror of my boyfriend (he definitely prefers dogs), cats are my favourite animal and would be my pet of choice, so it seemed fitting to paint them on my nails this halloween. This isn't the first time I've done black cat nails (see here), but it is the first time I've done them this way, and I love the combination of pastel and black. This was my last design in collaboration with Barry M, I hope you've enjoyed them! 

I used Barry M - Rose Hip* as my base, and then I used Barry M - Black Forest* and Barry M - Cotton*, finished with Barry M - Matte Topcoat*. 

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Alice

Shimmery Starfish

Hey everyone! To celebrate the first day of Autumn I thought it would be appropriate to share some summery nails... right? In reality I completely forgot I hadn't posted these yet, there not as complicated as I'd prefer them to be so I've put off posting them for ages and now it's getting a bit late in the year. Not that I've ever let the seasons put me off posting pastels in winter, who sets the rules anyway?

Essie Abstract Neon

Hey everyone! Long time no see, I've been so busy with moving I just haven't had a chance to post, but I've really missed blogging. We moved in on Friday and have managed to get everything unpacked already, so I finally have the chance to sit down and write a blog post. 

I actually did these nails quite a few weeks ago, using the Essie 2017 Neon Collection*. (I can't seem to find these online anymore so I assume they were limited edition). I keep seeing abstract nails on Instagram, and I've wanted to have a go for a while. These were super easy, I just splodged some colours using the brushes from the bottles, and then dotted some white using the end of a striping brush. Super quick, but I really love the end effect, and I wore these for a week or so.