Natural Collection, Seventeen, Barry M and Maybelline review.

Today I went to boots and bought these nail varnishes, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on them.

I'll start off with the natural collections. These polishes were quite cheap at £1.89 each, but they were on 3 for £5 so I only paid £5 for them all.

From left to right the colours are; antique coral, pink manicure and peach manicure

In the picture, I have 3 coats of antique coral although it probably could've done with having four coats. This nail varnish was a little thin, but wasn't terribly so and it's a very pretty colour, it looks a little more pastel in real life than in the picture.

The other two nail varnishes I had to use 6 coats! Which I wasn't too pleased about, but then it dawned on me... They're probably designed for french manicures, so I tried that out and they worked fine!

Pink manicure on the left and peach manicure on the right.

Now for the maybelline polishes, these were £2.99 each but they were on offer so I got 3 for the price of 2

From left to right the colours are; red grained, tanned and ready, turquoise temptation.

All these polishes say vintage leather, I assumed this meant they would have a leather effect, no where on the bottle does it say they're meant to and I can't seem to find these colours on the boots or maybelline website, so I don't know if they're meant to or not. They all have a matte finish and little shimmery bits which you can't see when they're on your nail, you can only see them when you're putting your nail varnish on or taking it off, so I'm not quite sure what they're there for. I was quite disappointed with these as I was expecting a leather look, but I don't know if these polishes are designed to do that, I will use these colours, but just as I would use any nail varnish, not for their leather looks.

And finally my seventeen and Barry M polishes! These are all £3.99 each, but my two seventeen polishes were on sale so I got them for £2.99 each instead!

The seventeen polishes are both from the nail effects graffiti range. The one on the right is bluetone and on the left is monochrome. The Barry M is key lime and is one of their gelly polishes.

It only took one coat of the key lime for it to be completely opaque (it was quite a thick coat though, maybe 2 thin coats). It's a lovely colour as well, very vibrant!

The two graffiti polishes are very good too! Just the right amount of little bits (not quite sure what to call them) come out and they're very pretty... Not sure pretty is the right word, but they look good! I tried out monochrome over my yin and yang mani and I loved how it turned out!

Yin and yang nails

This manicure is fairly simple to do, but I think looks really effective. It's a yin and yang symbol on the ring fingers and the rest are alternatively painted black and white with a pearl at the bottom.

To begin with I painted both my ring fingers white (easier to layer darker, more opaque colours over lighter colours than the other way round). Then I painted the rest of my nails alternatively black and white. Once I'd done that I painted the black half of the yin and yang. When you paint this make sure you start at the middle and end in the middle of your nail, if you don't it can be very easy to end up with a pretty straight line or the waves in the wrong places. Make sure there is only 2 well defined curves in the wave. 

Then I moved onto my other fingers, I got my black and white pearls and placed them on the bottom of the nails which were the opposite colour to the pearl. 

Everyone has their own method of doing this, but i find the easiest way is to put a blob of clear nail varnish or if your quick you can just put it on the colour before it dries, but that can get a bit messy sometimes. Then use a dotting tool with a drop of the clear nails varnish on the end to pick up and place the pearl. You can put nail glue on the nail instead of the clear polish if you want it to last longer, but I find it messy and I never want to keep my design on long enough for it to matter.

Once that's done use a medium or large dotting tool, depending on how long your nails are to dot white polish on the black side and black polish on the white side. 

Give it a little while while to dry... You don't want your design to smear then put on you top coat. Try to make it quite thick over the pearls to hold them on better!

Flowers and polkadots

 This design is a flowers and polkadots design that I did on my friend's nails. These nails are inspired from a Wah design and I did them to enter into a competition on instagram. The theme for the competition is flowers and polkadots and it's hosted by nubbinnails. If you want to have a look at my instagram so you can see some of my older designs my username is carysdoesnails.

For this design I used-

Barry M Matt White for the base

Models own Apple Pie for the polka dot background

Models own Strawberry Tart and Nails inc. You're a Peach for the flower

Illamasqua Smash for the leaves. I lost the top of the bottle quite a while ago... oops.

And Andrea Fullerton dot and flick in black for the detail.

To begin with I painted my friend's nails white.

That's her drying her nails with my monkey nail dryer.

 

Then I added small polkadots in apple pie 

Once I'd done that I put 1-2 blobs of Strawberry Tart and You're a Peach onto each nail.

Then I used Smash to add leaves.

And to finish off the look I outlined the flowers and leaves with the striper part of the dot and flick then used the pen to draw two curved lines inside each flower then completed the look with a topcoat.

The thumb smeared a little when I put the top coat on :(

Dotticure

For this very simple and easy design I used Models Own pink punch

and Barry M black. 

The only tool I needed to use was a small wooden cuticle pusher, you could use a small dotting tool or toothpick instead.

I started off by applying my base coat. 

At the moment I'm using Sally Hansen Hard as Nails 

Once I'd done that I applied two-three coats of pink punch and let it dry for a couple of minutes. Then I got some black on the pointy end of my cuticle pusher and made random dots on my thumb and ring finger. To finish off the design I applied a coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri topcoat.

The end result-