Nail Lacquer UK - Sticks and Stones RED & Sticks and Stones BLUE

Nail Lacquer UK Sticks and Stones Blue

Nail Lacquer UK Sticks and Stones Red

Here I've got a couple of interesting glitter toppers from a brand new indie maker in the UK, Nail Laquer UK.  I reviewed her polish Eat My Cake last week, and I got these two at the same time. They are a variation on the black and white splatter style glitter.......... it's about two years since I first got my hands on a bottle of Lynnderella Connect the Dots, which started this whole craze off. What a lot of glitter under the bridge since then! I love black and white glitter (and black glitter, and white glitter), and I've accumulated quite a few variants by now. Adding another colour to the mix definitely adds interest!

Let's start with the red version - here it is in the bottle. Black, white and red / pink glitter in a clear base. I'd describe the red as a cool-toned red or maybe even deep raspberry pink, and there are squares and hexes of different sizes in this colour, along with squares and hexes of a lighter pink too. Very pretty combination.

Nail Lacquer UK Sticks and Stones Red

Black and white glitter has to be one the easiest and most versatile glitter toppers to use - you can throw it over just about any colour and as long as that colour isn't so light you can't see the white glitter or so dark you can't see the black glitter, it'll look great. Bring another colour into the mix and it get a bit more tricky - those rules still apply but the base needs to *go* with the third glitter colour. 

The easy way would be to layer it over a neutral or a paler or darker pink, but I wanted to try something a bit more challenging. I used my colour wheel and worked out that green was the complementary colour to red, and I liked the idea of a teal-leaning green. I chose MAC In The Limelight as the base colour for this mani, and added a sponge gradient with Butter London Slapper. Then two coats of Nail Lacquer UK Sticks and Stones Red, just as it came from the bottle, no fishing or special placement needed. I love how this turned out! I also like that fact that there's not too much bar glitter in this polish - I think a few bar glitters can look really effective but too much can spoil the effect (there's too much bar glitter in Connect the Dots for my taste, and I don't like the background shimmer in CtD much either, it's too distracting). 

Nail Lacquer UK Sticks and Stones Red

I added a coat of Gelous to smooth the glitter out and a final coat of Seche Vite - as you can see the glitters in Nail Lacquer UK lie nice and flat and the mani is lovely and smooth. Here are a couple of macro shots for a bit more detail:

Nail Lacquer UK Sticks and Stones Red

The other Nail Lacquer UK Sticks and Stones, called *Blue* has bright blue and pale lavender hex and square glitters. Here it is in the bottle

Nail Lacquer UK Sticks and Stones Blue

This needs bit more nerdy colour theory....... blue and violet are split complementaries of yellow-orange, so I chose a mucky mustardy orange I've had lying around in my stash for years as the base for this one. It's a Helena Rubenstien shade called Saffron from the late 1990s - it's a horror to apply but quite a nice colour, which is why I've still got it! I really like how the blue stands out against this shade. I also think Nail Lacquer UK Sticks and Stones Blue would look great over a chocolately brown or a murky olive green.

And finally a couple of macros to show the detail. As with the mani above, I used two thin coats of Sticks and Stones Blue, a coat of Gelous and a coat of Seche Vite to finish with.

Nail Lacquer UK Sticks and Stones Blue

I purchased Nail Lacquer UK Sticks and Stones Red and Nail Lacquer UK Sticks and Stones Blue directly from AJ at her Etsy Shop; she has a blog and a facebook page for the brand where she posts updates about colours and stocking. The other polishes in this post are from my personal collection and were purchased by me - the Helena Rubenstein shade and awfully long time ago, the others more recently. 


Since we're looking at UK indie polishes, why don't you check out what the other British Nail Bloggers (including AJ from Nail Lacquer UK) are up to!

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