Happy birthday to my bestest nail friend

I love everything nail related, Love polishes and art, new collections and new creators but the single greatest thing I love about nails is the nail community. Not only do you find our hints and tips, or see new collections there is something so wonderful in being able to share your obsession with like minded people. You can break a nail and instead of the you've gone crazy looks I get at home, there are so many women who understand and empathise with me. My greatest 'find' since starting  my nail passion is not a hard to find polish, or a super technique, it's not even that amazing polish colour that suits your skin so beautifully. My greatest find is my dear nail buddy friend Natalia from Cats n Nails.

Natalia is the most generous, funny, kind lady you could come across. I don't remember what made us first 'click' but we did and haven't looked back. Natalia's responsible for making me smile on some of the toughest days when a surprise nail package arrives in the mail. She's always there if I want to chat about anything. She tries to teach me how to stamp lol and I just adore her.

So today is Natalia's birthday

Happy birthday Natalia!!!

Natalia wanted birthday nails to help her celebrate, sounds easy doesn't it? I tried to nail her down to a favourite colour and was given "I do like blue, purple, pink and teal, also black, silver and grey". Ahhh too many choices, I tried again a couple of days later and told her she had to give me just ONE - so she went for blurple lol. Only Natalia could fit two colours into one :). So blurple it is with a hint of silver and teal.

For Natalia's birthday skittles I used

Orly - Lunar Eclipse as the base colour

Essie - No Place Like Chrome is the silver used in stamping and dots

Zoya - Akyra is the teal.

Enjoy your birthday my beautiful friend xx

glitter galore on Essie Nothing Else Metals

I was too tired yesterday to do new nails so I've pulled one from the vault.

This is Essie - Nothing Else Metals a gorgeous lilac polish from the Metallics collection and one coat of Color Club - Sugarplum fairy. The Essie is tricky to apply, it likes to shows all your nail flaws and brush strokes. I found on a blog somewhere (if anyone knows who I would love to give them credit) the trick to overcoming these problems. The first is to use a ridge filler base coat, this allows the nail to be more even and stops faults from being as visible. The second is to do one coat and then use a matte top coat, then add one or two more coats. This really works!

After a day I wanted to add a little sparkle so I added the color club glitter coat. I loved this look but warning it's very sparkly in the sun and I had to remove it as I had a migraine and sparkly nails were making the light problem worse.

Have a happy Saturday!

Holiday challenge - Wreaths

I'm in a bit of a nail funk at the moment and am not completely happy with these. I love the colours as they are our Christmas colours, as you can see by our tree below. The whole design though - meh!

I decided to do the wreaths with the dotting tool and lined up some purples and blues with a splash of Orly Tiara (love that polish!). The shimmery blue is OPI See I told you! and it is a gorgeous colour!, the middle finger is Nubar, violet sparkles and the pinkie is Butter London Scallywag. I've added a few Nubar polishes to my collection lately and I really like them, they apply well and last quite awhile.

I stamped using plate mm 01 and use Essie No Place Like Chrome. The metallics collection from Essie work quite well for stamping.

My tree again because I love it :)

Hopefully I can get my mojo back before tomorrow's challenge!

Have a happy Tuesday

Please visit the other bloggers taking part in this challenge!

XOXO Alexis Leigh
Purple Castle
Iced Laquer
A Ginger's Nail
The Polished Mommy
Robyn Loves Nails
Teen Polish Junkie
Fancy Schmancy Nails
Mari522 (on Instagram)
Fairytale Charm
nailzbyroro (on Instagram)

Snowflakes

Yes the other snowflake mani :) I started with two coats of Opi My Boyfriend Scales Walls, I then added one coat of Nicole by Opi You're a Star. I made a mistake here and should really have used 2 coats. I then stamped with China Glaze Passion and Essie Blue Rhapsody  It didn't quite turn out how I pictured it in my head but I do like that it's a subtle stamping.

Please visit the other bloggers taking part in this challenge

XOXO Alexis Leigh
Purple Castle
Iced Laquer
A Ginger's Nail
The Polished Mommy
Robyn Loves Nails
Teen Polish Junkie
Fancy Schmancy Nails
Mari522 (on Instagram)

Where's my chauffeur

Above colour is before clean up but wow it's gorgeous! I think it may be a new favourite. For how wrong Essie got the formula with Butler Please they've redeemed themselves with Where's my chauffeur, it applied like a dream in two coats.

 It is a gorgeous blue-green, which is slightly bluer than Turquoise and Caicos. I then decided to stamp with Essie Penny Talk. I love the end result and know I'll be wearing this colour a lot over summer.

Happy Friday :)

May you touch dragonflies

May you touch dragonflies and stars, dance with fairies and talk to the moon. May you grow with love and gracious hearts and people who care.

Bullying is not funny. It is not cool. It is not right. And more importantly, it is not okay. Most of us are, thankfully, residents of countries that support tolerance and many of our families have settled in these places simply for that reason. Generations later, it is our responsibility to perpetuate that message of tolerance across our new social platforms, including the internet.

As members of the nail polish blogging community, we all share a love of beauty, color, and lacquer. Other than that, we are remarkably different: from our race to our religion to our hair color...even to our polish application techniques. To marginalize anyone because of those differences is completely unacceptable and today I take a stand against that. I refuse to allow other people's view of "normal" dictate how I behave, believe, and blog. 

In solidarity with a multitude of bloggers linked below, my purple manicure represents my proud commitment to the No H8 movement. Today, November 8, I dedicate my post to ending bullying of any kind and to encouraging diversity and imperfection among our colorful community.

Eradicate H8

Base colour is Zoya Suri, dragonfly wings Zoya Danni and dots Essie Nothing Else Metals.

It's not perfect but neither are any of us :)

Essie Nothing Else Metals

I'm completely in love with the Essie metallics collection  This is a divine shade of lilac that pops on the nail. It isn't the easiest polish to apply, but after reading tips somewhere (I'm sorry I don't remember which blog but if someone does I'm happy to post the link) it worked well. The secret was a base coat for hiding ridges, one coat of the metallic polish, a matte top coat then one more coat of metallics. It worked really well to hide most of the imperfections these polishes bring into the spotlight.

I did a gradient with China glaze Chroma Glitter in Prism.

Love the mauve base and the multi-colours showing through the glitter.

This collection is worth taking the extra time to do the above steps as when on they are just magical.