I'm a hipsta too

Yes, I'm one of those dicks who has succombed to the Hipstamatic app. Been addicted for a while, but not posted my snaps on here before - it's very predicatable, no? But I thought the lovely colours matched the vintage shade of my nails.
This is the first try of my Wah! for Model's Own Nail Pen, and I'm seriously impressed. Great pigment, easy to use (on my left hand) and the level of control over dot/line size is good. I don;t think I devised this design... I'm sure I've ripped if off from somewhere but I can;t for the life of me remember who/where. Sorry if it's you - please let me know so I can credit you!
The polish is Collection 2000 Mint Mojo - streaky, watery and with a pretty naff brush (thick bristles = patchy coverage) but for the price (£1.79) what do you expect?

Riva Fever!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Chanel Le Vernis Riva. This beautiful baby blue is part of the up-coming Cote D'Azure Cruise Collection. Get your names on the waiting list, it's limited edition and will launch on 1 December - just in time for my Christmas stocking!

Pics courtesy of the incredibly awesome lacquerized.

Grunge glam, thank you Maam!

The Topshop Heavy Duty Limited Edition Make Up collection is right up my alley - especially the polishes. I almost left with three, but as I'd bought Chanel's Paradoxal a mere half-hour earlier, I thought this might be a bit excessive. I soul-searched for a good 20 minutes before settling for Grunge, but I can't promise I won't be back for Lead.

Grunge is a beautiful black base/gold mettalic combo which looks kind of khaki green in the right light. It goes with absolutely all my recent A/W aquisitions, including purple, nude, terracotta and especially camel.

It's totally opaque with two well-applied coats, and super glossy due to the amazing gold shimmer that adds a little understated glam to daytime. And 48 hours in with CND Stickey basecoat (review to come) and Seche Vite, it's chip-free.

Well done Topshop!

Mavala holla...

For years now I have been scouring the shops for the perfect peach tea nail varnish. Every time I thought I'd found it it turned out to be too safe, too muted, too pearlescent or just too plain pensioner. I came across this jackpot of a colour, Mavala's 'Sweet', in London's free women's mag Stylist, and when I read about it Elle a few weeks later I took it as a sign and started to hunt it down.

Mavala isn't a brand I'm massively familiar with, its only really stocked in John Lewis over here and they didn't have the right shade. I found a great store on eBay - Revival Beauty, and it came to a pretty respectable £6 including postage (the RRP for this brand is £3.95).



To cut a long story short, its BRILLIANT. The shade is exactly what I was looking for, it goes on perfectly and last time I had it on it lasted for eight (eight!!) days without a chip. You can even get away with just the one coat. Apart from the slight hassle of getting hold of it I would heartily recommend it. The bottles are on the small side but when do you ever use a whole bottle anyway?! Its the perfect summer polish.



(Apologies for my blurry nail photography - basically its the exact shade it appears in the bottle.)

Not quite spot on

With a gloomy Saturday afternoon to fill, a friend and I decided to give the leopard nail trend a whirl, and I learned a few lessons along the way!

Nails Inc Satin base (two coats)// Essie Splash of Grenadine spots// Pilot fineline permanent marker highlights// Seche Vite topcoat.

• This took me an hour and a half. I'm sure the more you do it the quicker you get, but attempt number one took me forever
• Using a permanent fineliner wasn't the great idea I thought it would be. It didn't like writing on the Nails Inc polish, so I had to do a coat of Seche Vite on top of the spots, then the fineliner highlights, then another coat of Seche Vite to seal... but...
• It turns out, Seche Vite shrinks the polish slightly as it dries, so after 24 hours the polish started coming off an entire nail at a time. I have whole nail-shaped sheets of leopard polish to prove it! 

So, lessons learned - buy a black nail pen (or use the black liquid eyeliner trick) and never use two coats of Seche Vite! 

Despite the fact that two hours of painting my nails didn't even last two days, I really loved the effect and would do it again, without repeating my rookie mistakes!

Humpday Hello III

My nail addiction has become fully-fledged since I started blogging, and I sometimes feel like curveinthemode is turning into a nail blog itself. That's until I realise I could just never compete with experts like the fabulous HayleyBee.

I mean seriously, where does she she find the time? These are just beautiful.

I've always just been a block-colour girl on my nails, until I started seeing leopard print nails a couple of years ago (I'm an unashamed leopard addict). Now I'm not very arty, so attempting such delicate work myself is something I'm still working up to. But plans have been made to attempt such finger magic this weekend, and Hayley, you've inspired me!

The lovely lady has also popped a roses how-to on her tumblr, so be sure to check it out. Oh, and how cute is she?!

Resort yourself out

Sorry is supposed to be the hardest word, but I'll use it with wild abandon here to apologies for yet another nail post. I just couldn't resist testing these babies as soon as they arrived. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the Essie Resort Collection 2010.

From left to right: Lapis of Luxury, Splash of Grenadine, Playa Del Platinum and Turquoise & Caicos.

Now, one gripe I have with these is they don't come in a set of minis, so this haul (which came from America through the fabulous Major Sam Dexter - thanks Sam!) set me back a cool £24 ($32 to be precise). But you can't put a price on my excitement at ripping off their bubble wrap.

So last night I settled down with wine and Mary Queen of Shops to play with them, and I was more than happy with the quality after three coats.

Coat one was pretty insipid. Coat two was slightly streaky (though that could be my poor polish performance) but three was a wonderfully vivid coating that, despite what the hundred pictures I took in different lighting conditions might suggest, is actually the same as how it looks in the bottle, for all four - pretty rare I tell you! And these are basically my four favourite colours in the world for clothing, interiors, everything... all though not, at first, my nails. 

The blue is that beautiful shade you see in hydrangeas...

 

This was certainly my favourite, so I've been sporting that today and have had a couple of compliments.

This weekend will be the turn of Splash of Grenadine. It's a rare punchy-purply-blush-pink (if you can imagine that) - not too girly. I often find paler pink polishes a little eighties, but this is gorgeous and refreshingly different.

The Playa Del Platinum was probably the least exciting, but then I suppose that's the point of a nude. It's somewhere in between stone, cream and nude, and would be an excellent bridal shade this season.

And Tuquoise and Caicos is a great, more grown up alternative to my Nails Inc Satin, It's more turquoise than mint - I'd love to do a comparison between all the turquoisy minty greens on the market (I'd also like to get my hands on Isadora Vintage Mint - anyone know where stocks it?)

So, in summation, these polishes will pretty much set you up for summer. So what's my reservation? At first I was a little underwhelmed, because I'm so used to incredibly bright strong nails - strange because everywhere else I love exactly these colours. But on reflection, they are all beautiful shades that definitely have a place in my repertoire. They will certainly suit those who want to try colour, but aren't quite ready for ridiculously bright nails (or whose work environment doesn't approve of them) and they go with almost everything in my wardrobe.

Incidentally, I tried them all in matte too, but really struggled to take a picture of my right hand without a tripod. Here's my best effort for reference - I'm keeping it small!

Take matte

During a fleeting visit to Superdrug to grab some painkillers, I was momentarily distracted by the kaleidoscopic Barry M counter.

A friend had mentioned Barry M's Cyan, and once I saw it, I couldn't resist. It helped that she lives a few doors down from me, and we can effectively share a nail polish collection, so in my mind I was doing a public service by picking up this little beauty. (£2.99)

I hope you ladies (and gentlemen) are sitting down because what I'm about to tell you could knock you off your feet... this is only two coats! This polish is a flippin' gem. Regular readers will know I'm a three-coat addict, but there was absolutely no need with this creamy, opaque beauty. And the colour is great. (Coated with Seche Vite here for extra gloss)

Then I took things to another level. I picked up Topshop's Matte with my other items last Wednesday, and although I was pretty dubious as to whether I'd take to matte nails, on a vibrant colour like this I'm sold.

Don't get me wrong, I'll always love that shiny manicured look. But for the crazier colours in my repertoire this gives a more casual edge I'm a real fan of. Would rather like to try it with some of Barry's ice cream colours, and definitely with Topshop's Gypsy Night, just to see what it does to glitter polishes. Either way, it's a fun product for a fiver, worked well here on top of my topcoat, letting you change it up on a whim, and dried in seconds with no brushstroaks. Go forth and mattify!

All that glitters

I couldn't resist this. I know others have blogged about it, and you're probably bored of hearing of it, but it's just such a fabulous concept. Topshop Make up's Gypsy Night Nail Polish.

Now it's obviously not the most summery polish, but it's like having a little slice of outer space on each nail.

Multi-coloured glitter mixed with gold flecks in a stormy black base? Yes please! This is going to be my go-to colour come colder months.

I would have liked a slightly thicker consistency - there's no way you could get away with less than two coats; I did three here and even considered four. But the polish is much more magical than these pictures suggest. (Note to self, work on photography skills!)

Now some say size matters, but when it comes to polish I must disagree. These aren't big bottles - about half the size of OPI, but I've never personally used up more than half a nail polish anyway, so I don't see this as a downside. Especially as nail polish is, now more than ever, a trend-driven purchase rather than an investment.

The brush is also worthy of comment. It's a nice size, matching the small bottle. Am I the only one who finds OPI's large brushes, and the amount of polish they pick up, a little unweidly? I may be on my own here, as they are a professional favourite so can't be hard for experts to use, but with my amateur painting skills I prefer a more accurate tool.

Either way, I'm looking forward to Topshop restocking the bright blue colour. They're out of stock at the moment and I'm pretty happy with this for £5.

Humpday Hello!

There's nothing nicer in the blogosphere than connecting with a fellow blogger, so I thought I'd launch a weekly feature I'm calling the Humpday Hello.

It gives me a chance to profile someone whose blog has caught my eye, and I'm starting with the lovely Gem Fatale

Lady is fabulous for a number of reasons... she does some bitchin' DIY nails...

She has fabbo hair...

She has a jumper with zebras on...

And she's also running the most immense competition in all of blogland - there are seven seperate giveaways! Get yourself over there to check it out.

Happy humpday!

A nail in the coffin?

So, sometimes in this consumerist game, something arrives that makes you happy for the rest of the day. That was my ebay OPI haul from the states. enchantedbeautyspot on ebay is such a bargain compared to UK Essie, OPI and China Glaze prices, but you do have to wait a while for them to arrive. In this instance, it just made me more excited when they dropped through the letterbox.

The bulk buy that included the hallowed Seche Vite was supplemented with 3 OPI shades, and I couldn't wait to try them...

From left to right: I'm His Coral-friend, Coney Island Cotton Candy, Alpine Snow.

Now, I chose the first as I wanted a classic coral for summer, the second as I'd heard it was 'like Louboutin nude' (amazing, I thought) and the third because... ok so I got carried away. But franky, two our of three seriously let me down.

I'm His Coral-friend is more or a pinky-red than a true coral. None of that slightly neon zing I'd hoped for.
Coney Island Cotton Candy was the most subtle shade I've ever bought. I think it's safe to say I prefer what Cheryl Cole calls 'happy nails' - something bright and eyecatching that makes you feel done. It was more pink than I'd expected, and took a whopping FOUR COATS for an opaque look... and even then, look how similar it is to my bare pinkie!

And finally, Alpine Snow - bizarrely this was my fave of the three, and the one I've been sporting all week. It goes with everything, and although it's a bit like Tipp-Ex, three people have complimented me on it this week - makes it a winner in my eyes!

Ended up slapping Coral-friend on the toes too because, well, I'd paid for it, then I realised something magical - it's an EXACT MATCH to the M&S geranium lipstick I bought recently, also expecting an amazing coral. Spooky.

Quick dry or die

Today is hectic. Between my own work, my colleague-who-is-on-holiday's work, and nipping off slightly early to watch Shooting Stars being filmed at the BBC (I know!!!), I'm up against it, so just time to tell you about my new best friend... let me spin you a yarn...

There was once a time when my nails were forever smudged. It became a joke that no matter how long I left them to dry I would at some point, somehow, forget I'd applied three coats and load the washing machine, fall over, run my hands through my hair or need a pee and destroy that perfect shiny glaze.

Until I met Seche Vite. This fast-drying top coat is outstanding. After your final coat -- even before it's slightly dry -- pop a slick of this live-saver on and your nails are rock hard in about a minute. It's saved my life! (OK, not my life, but my manicures certainly).

I picked mine up at enchantedbeautyspot on ebay - a bargain basement for polish addicts, thanks for the tip-off lollipop26!

Sparkle motion

Thursday 20 June was an exciting day for the UK high street - H&M Fashion for Aids line and Kate Moss's biggest collection yet both hit the shelves, to much elbowing and catfighting on Oxford Street, I can tell you.

Managed to picked up a couple of beauties on a whistlestop tour after work - more about them over the weekend - but one particular find has made this beautiful day even more sunny.

It must have been the return of summer that made me want to take something about my outfit to the next level today... but after over-experimenting with neon clothing in my uni days, I decided to limit my crazy brights to the fingers... so embarked on a glittery journey.

Now, let me preface this by saying I thought my glitter nail days were over long ago (except perhaps at Christmas), until the little gem above caught my eye in ToShoOxo lat night - Barry M nail polish in number 228 - oh the possibilities to add a subtle shimmer to any shade!

With nails already slicked in Nails Inc Satin (my personal fave of the turquoise family), I added a quick layer of this sparkly beauty and the little fellas were transformed from a basic look to something with another dimension. The silver sparkle makes the polish seem shimmery metallic, rather than like something from Claire's Accessories, and instantly more expensive!

It's the closest to Minx I've had at home.

Another bonus of this perfect polish is it sweeps on smooth, rather than scratchy or raised like some glittery polishes, which means less chance of chipping... everyone's a winner!

(Sadly this effect didn't quite translate in the images above - first shot is a before, second is the after - obv.)

Hard as nails

Anyone with a well-manicured fingure on the fashion pulse will know nails are having their moment.

I've recently ordered a whole host of new polishes to see me through summer, but until then I'm fantasising about some seriously fancy talons.

The Miu Miu-inspired nails above from stop it right now blew me away - they are some incredibly skills (and spare time)!

And those cheeky chanel sparklers from the genius that is sophy robson would go with absolutely anything.

Unfortunatley I don't have the artistic talent for panting tiny little swallows on my (pretty short) nails, so I'll have to settle for a sweep of amazing all-over colour... when my recent ebay haul arrives from America.



I've been wanting to try out Wah! Nails in Dalston for such a long time... in fact, I've wanted a seafoam leopard look like their beauties above for about three years, so that's definitely on my Summer to-do list - when I get an hour to myself. But until then a friend and I are about to book a summer-ready mani pedi to reinvigorate our tired tootsies after a looooong winter... somewhere a bit more budget along Stoke Newington High Street I think. Will post the results!