Quirk 'Heart Shaped Music Box' collection...........

Kerrie has a new collection! They are Valentine themed, and super pretty! I was delighted to be asked to review these!

First off , here is Love Bites.

Quirk Love Bites

On first inspection, Love Bites looks like magenta squares in a base of microglitter. What's not obvious from looking at the bottle is the pink and purple semitransparent 'glass glitter' - those big juicy looking hexes. These were a complete surprise when I put this polish on, and are awesome!

Quirk Love Bites

My swatch is one thickish coat of Quirk Love Bites over Dior Mango. I used Gelous and Seche Vite to smooth the glitter out. Love Bites, like every one of Kerrie's polishes that I've tried so far, applies beautifully with no need to fish for the glitter. 

Quirk Love Bites

Next is Cradled In Love. This one is a mixture of holographic rose pink hexes, matte pink squares and hot pink bars.......

Quirk Cradled In Love

I couldn't choose a single pink to wear this over, so I decided to compromise with a gradient of matte pinks. I'll do a separate post on this mani soon, but the pale pink is Mentality Duchess and the bright pink is Manglaze Lesbihonest.  Just a single coat of Quirk Cradled In Love to get this effect!

Quirk Cradled In Love

And finally, You Give Love A Bad Name. This is a complex mix of matte baby pink and white hexes, white bars, pink hearts, small iridescent glitter and more of those fab pink glass glitters....

Quirk You Give Love A Bad Name

So first I put this over a dark base - Chanel Mysterious, a rich green-brown. I thought this would show off the white and pale pinks and make the iridescent glitter sparkle. And so it did! This is one coat of Quirk You Give Love A Bad Name with Gelous and Seche Vite to smooth the glitters and give a high shine.

Quirk You Give Love A Bad Name

Much as I loved this combination, I thought the dark base wasn't doing the pink glass glitters justice, so I did a second mani with this one, this time using a very pale shade, Illamasqua Load as my base. See the difference - this topper is two completely different looks in one bottle, depending on whether you choose a dark or light base!

Quirk You Give Love A Bad Name

I love all of these - Kerrie's polishes just seem to be getting better and better! She's one of my very favourite UK Indie polish brands :)

 Quirk Heart Shaped Music Box collection goes on sale this Sunday (2 February 2014) at the Quirk webshop. They are limited edition. You can find more information about the Quirk brand at the Quirk Facebook Page 

The Quirk 'Heart Shaped Music Box' collection was sent for review. The base colours are all from my personal collection.

Ethnic print stamping with MoYou Explorer plate 5 and Barry M Lychee

Nail stamping with Barry M Lychee MoYou Explorer plate no 5 

I love ethnic prints so I was really excited to get MoYou Explorer collection plate number 5. This is an allover pattern plate, which are just brilliant for longer nails. I'd been thinking about trying Barry M's Gelly Nail Paint in Lychee for stamping for a while, and this was a perfect test for it! Lychee stamped wonderfully over this teal base - it's already a firm favourite nail art polish of mine; I've used it as a base, for dots, freehand nail art, watermarbling and tape!

Nail stamping with Barry M Lychee MoYou Explorer plate no 5 

I used the geometric section of the plate in the bottom right corner and stamped at different angles on each nail to get this variety of patterning. The last couple of pictures are with a matte topcoat that has worn a bit 'satiny' after a day or so.......... but I like the effect this gives the stamping!

Nail stamping with Barry M Lychee MoYou Explorer plate no 5 

The base for this mani is Binky London Parsons Green and Paris Pearl, which I reviewed here (that post includes some stamping with other polishes from this same plate too). I purchased my Barry M Lychee from my local Boots and the MoYou plate direct from MoYou.

Golden Oldie Thursday Challenge - Nails Inc Baker Street

Nails Inc Baker Street stamping with MoYou plates Artist 5 and Suki 10

Debbie Crumpet set up this awesome Crumpet's Nail Tarts challenge, and I was so keen to take part - I've been collecting / accumulating nail polish for years and I've got lots of old favourites............. but then life got in the way and I missed the first two weeks! So now we're on week 3 - blue! Blue is one of my favourite polish colours, and I've chosen Nails Inc Baker Street as my blue golden oldie. It's not my oldest blue polish by any means, but is a favourite I've worn over and over again. Baker Street has been around a couple of years now, I got it pretty much when it first came out.

This is the first time I've tried stamping with Baker Street, and I'm really impressed with the results. I've been meaning to try a willow pattern mani for ages, and when my new MoYou plates arrived there were some perfect patterns for this. The tree branches are from the Suki plate 10 and the flowers and leaves are from Artist plate 10. Both of these are whole picture plates. I stamped the branches first, applied topcoat, then once dry, masked off the parts of my nails with branches on with micropore tape. Then I stamped on the flowers. 

Nails Inc Baker Street stamping with MoYou plates Artist 5 and Suki 10

Mentality Cantankerous ............. stamped with MoYou Explorer Collection no 5 plate

Mentality Cantankerous stamped with MoYou Explorer #5

I've made two fab new discoveries in 2014 already.......... Mentality polishes and MoYou stamping plates. I've been pondering and procrastinating over both for a few months now, but I bit the bullet at last and placed an ordered a few Mentality colours and a couple of MoYou plates.

I loved Nailventurous Floam and its relatives (although I've not worn any of these for ages - the only one I've used since I started this blog is Humblebee and that is ages ago!), so I was immediately drawn to the Mentality microglitters. This one is Cantankerous - a mix of black, white, yellow and red in a clear base. This shot is in the bottle:

Mentality Cantankerous

And on my nails:

Mentality Cantankerous

I just used two thin coats of Mentality Cantankerous straight over basecoat; I wanted to see how easy it was to get full coverage without undies. Although you can see my nails through the glitter in these big photos, in real life this looks full coverage.

Mentality Cantankerous

I needed several coats of basecoat to get this smooth enough, although I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to getting a smooth finish on my nails. But totally worth the effort - I love this polish and wore it on its own for a couple of days before I added the stamping!

Mentality Cantankerous

Mentality Cantankerous

I stamped this with MoYou Explorer Collection plate #5, using the banner print from the top of the plate. The all-picture nature of these plates makes them great for longer nails, when most of the 'older style' plates need double stamping or some other fudge to make the pattern fill the nail. I think they're also great fun and very versatile too - as you can use more than image on a single nail or pick different parts of the image to use on different nails o make a co-ordinated skittle mani (I did than with this plate in this mani here the other day).

Mentality Cantankerous stamped with MoYou Explorer #5

The MoYou plate was great to use, every image stamped just about perfect first time. I used American Apparel Hassid for the stamping since I couldn't find my Konad black polish - Hassid stamps just as well as Konad and is a lot easier to clean up. Maybe I'll be using this as my go-to stamping black in future!

I'm super impressed by the MoYou plates and I've already placed my second order! No doubt I'll be ordering more Mentality polishes soon, but I will wait until I've tried the two I still have waiting on my desk! I wore Mentality Brute last week - I loved that colour too; hard to say whether I like Brute or Cantankerous best so far!

Mentality are based in the US and have their own store and ship internationally (larger orders).  I purchased my Mentality polishes from Sally Magpies - Sally has a great range of indie and overseas polishes made easy to buy in the UK. I purchased my MoYou plates from MoYou London.

Picture Polish Geode

Picture Polish Geode

Just a simple mani to share today - a lovely winter glitter........ Picture Polish Geode. This is another shade from Picture Polish's blogger collaboration series - Geode is by Ami at Pretty Sensory.

Picture Polish Geode

Picture Polish Geode is a pretty light blue base with small gold and slightly bigger mid-blue glitter. This mani is three thin coats with Seche Vite; application is pretty much perfect. I've been really impressed with every Picture Polish I've tried, and this one is no exception!

Picture Polish Geode

In the UK you can buy Picture Polishes, including Geode, from Sally Magpies.

Binky London Swatch and Review - part 3

Binky London Grosvenor Gold and Pimlico Purple

These are the last four of the new Binky London range I've been trying out. Firstly, let's look at the two metallic colours, Pimlico Purple and Grosvenor Gold. I wanted to put these through their paces with stamping, since the silver metallic I reviewed earlier, Sloane Square Silver, stamped so magnificently. Here's the full mani I stamped, using a new plate from MoYou London, Explorer Collection #5. I love this stamping plate - I'm not going to turn this post into a review of the stamping plate but I will say that these overall-design stamping plates are fantastic for longer nails!

Binky London Grosvenor Gold and Pimlico Purple

To start, I painted my ring finger with Pimlico Purple and the rest with Grosvenor Gold. On their own, both of these are pretty shades; I think I'd describe Grosvenor Gold as more of a champagne colour than a full on gold. The fomula is good - very dense so it covers quickly and its easy to handle.

This is two coats (both colours). Metallic shades like these always tend to show brush strokes, so this  doesn't concern me in the least with this product - if I was going to wear a shade like this on it's own than I apply the second coat with a fine, slightly dampened makeup sponge (see my application of Sloane Square Silver for how this looks) to avoid this. As I was going to be adding nail art over this base, I didn't bother with this here.

The polishes stamp superbly - look at the small open circles on my index finger! This is Pimlico Purple stamping over Grosvenor Gold. My little finger is also stamped with Pimlico Purple; the wide band with tiny slits in has printed perfectly onto my nail! On my ring finger the colours are reversed, Grosvenor Gold is stamped onto the base of Pimlico Purple but that worked really well too.

Perfect polishes for stamping! I can see these three getting a lot of use from me in nail art in the future :)

And lastly, ...well, I like to save the best until last! My favourite colour in the whole collection has to be Parsons Green. I love teal nail polish, and this is a superb example. The colour is rich and deep, and the application is perfect. This mani is two coats, with Seche Vite quick drying topcoat to seal and shine. The first two pictures are in my diffuser, the last one in direct light from the window. What a perfect colour!

OK, that's not quite everything............. as Binky London also released a colour shifting topcoat, Paris Pearl. Paris Pearl looks like a white polish in the bottle but its actually a clear topper with a strong pink shimmer. I added one coat of Paris Pearl to Parsons Green and look what happens............

Binky London Parsons Green with Paris Pearl Topcoat

The magenta flash looks wonderful against the dark teal base, but I bet this would look fantastic over black or a near-black shade too! Awesomesauce!

My earlier reviews of the other polishes in the Binky London range are here and here. Overall I'm really impressed with the brand, the formula and brush are great. My favourite shades in the range are Parsons Green and Raffles Red, and I think the metallic shades (Sloane Square Silver, Grosvenor Gold and Pimlico Purple) are amazing polishes for stamping. I'm looking forward to seeing what the brand come up with next - I'm hoping there are some more adventurous shades in the next collection.

My bottles are press samples sent for review, but they are available to purchase from Escentual.