Flash Nails Jagged

I've been sad to see a few of the UK Indie brands (including some of my favourites) shutting up shop recently, so it's great to see new ones coming in to the market! Here's a brand new UK Indie, Flash Nails, who just opened her Etsy shop last week.

This polish is called 'Jagged' and it's a mix of multicoloured shard glitter. I have a fascination with the irregular shapes in shard glitter polishes, so I love this!

I used two thin coats of Flash Nails Jagged here; the polish is easy to apply with plenty of glitter - no need to fish them out or do any special placement on the nails. The base of the polish is quite thick, but easy to handle. I found the glitters lay nice and flat on my nails; I added one coat of Gelous to smooth the mani out and a coat of Seche Vite quick drying top coat.

The gradient base is NARS 15 Minutes and Illamasqua Jo'Mina, a couple of favourite spring bright shades of mine.

I purchased Jagged from Flash Nails Etsy Shop. Actually I purchased more than one; there are lots of pretty glitters here - so watch out for more from this brand here soon. The NARS and Illamasqua polishes are old favourites from my collection.

Shell stamping - MoYou Sailor plate 7

Here's a pretty all over shell image from MoYou Sailor Collection plate 7. I really liked how this turned out, for a skinny design, the stamp worked really well. I continue to be impressed with MoYou plates. There's another nice shell pattern on this plate, one with fish that I like the look of, and several interesting swirly designs too. 

I stamped the design with Sally Hansen Whirlwind White over a base of Illamasqua Nomad. 

All products in this post purchased by me. 

Grungy dots.....

Jessica Casablanca with Illamasqua Kink

I was feeling in the mood for something a bit darker and more sombre than I've been wearing recently, I don't know if it's just the cold weather or I'm in need of a bit of a palette cleanser! This mani is Jessica Casablanca with big dots of Illamasqua Kink.

Jessica Casablanca is a black jelly with teal/purple duochrome shimmer. This must be quite an old polish, I've found swatches on line going back to around 2010 but I just bought it in John Lewis a couple of weeks ago when it caught my eye, so I think it must be a core colour. It's quite hard to catch the colour shift on camera - the polish looks great in artificial light but unfortunately the reflections seem to burn out all the interesting bits. Here it is in my 'diffuser' (a translucent bin from Ikea) and daylight lamp:

Jessica Casablanca

This is two coats, plus Seche Vite quick dry topcoat. It's a pretty polish, but not especially hard wearing; I could see wear around the tips of some of my nails after a couple of days. I think swimming in a chlorinated pool might have hastened it's demise.

Then I added some big dots with Illamasqua Kink. Kink is a rubbery finish, so I didn't use topcoat over the dots but let the finish contrast with the shiny base.

Jessica Casablanca with Illamasqua Kink

I purchased Jessica Casablanca from John Lewis and Illamasqua Kink from the Illamasqua website.

Skittles with Butter London Wellies & Illamasqua Faux Pas

Butter London Wellies with Illamasqua Faux Pas

Here's a bit of bright jolly fun! Two of my favourite nail art techniques (dots and gradient) and one of my favourite colour combinations, lime and blurple!

The base is Butter London Wellies, a fabulous lime shade from their current autumn/winter collection. I remember seeing swatches of this back in the late summer, and thinking I absolutely must have the colour, then of course I've forgotten all about it. Months later, as is always the case in the UK (well maybe just outside of London, but certainly for me), it turned up in my local Boots............. and jumped straight off the shelf, into my basket and onto my nails the minute I got it home. Here it is - wonderful!!

Butter London Wellies

I'm going to call the colour *lime* because I can't decide whether it's a greeny-yellow or a yellowy-green. I'm fairly sure it's unique in my collection - it is more yellow than OPI Who The Shrek Are You, which is the nearest  I have I think. The formula is also massively better than OPI WTSAY - Wellies is a richly pigmented creamy polish. I was surprised how good it was - I love yellows but I have no expectations that they will anything other than a streaky mess to apply, irrespective of brand.

Butter London Wellies

This is three coats with Seche Vite. I wore this for three days on its own before I added the nail art and it was still looking perfect.

So on to the skittles.............

Butter London Wellies with Illamasqua Faux Pas

I'm not sure if these really are skittles, or if the mani is a 'skittlette' - maybe someone can tell me. Every nail IS different - but my index and middle fingers are a mirrored pair...and all the nails have the same two colours. Semantics, lol!

My contrast colour is Ilamasqua Faux Pas; I choose this particular purple because of its rubber texture, to contrast with the gloss on some of my nails.

Butter London Wellies with Illamasqua Faux Pas

For the index and middle fingers, I added a vertical gradient with Illa Faux Pas, dotted over it with Wellies and added topcoat.  Ring finger is dotted with Faux Pas but no topcoat. Little finger is gradient of Faux Pas, no topcoat, then big dots of Faux Pas (no topcoat again). I really like the way the rubbery finish on the Illamasqua works with the sponge gradient!

Butter London Wellies with Illamasqua Faux Pas

The ring and little fingers are the ones I like best! My thumb is just a reverse of my little finger, I added the gradient at the cuticle end and dots in BL Wellies.

Butter London Wellies with Illamasqua Faux Pas

I purchased Butter London Wellies at Boots. Illamasqua Faux Pas was a gift some time ago but it's still available at Illamsaqua's website (currently on sale for £5 in fact!).

Blue and yellow gradient with dots.............

I couldn't come up with a snappy name for this mani! It's a blue and yellow gradient with brown dots! The colours were inspired by an exhibition of small portrait works by Chris Ofili I saw recently. In the one which really caught my eye, the subject was wearing bright blue and yellow against her brown skin and hair. Ofili is best known for his use of elephant dung in his paintings - hence my use of the brown dots.

The base for the mani is a gradient of Butter London Jasper and Illamasqua Noble:

Butter London Jasper and Illamasqua Noble

Then I added dots in a range of brown shades - Essie Case Study, Nails Inc Hampstead Gardens, China Glaze Mahogany Magic and Essie Little Brown Dress.

And a few close ups of the dots to finish with:

I really enjoyed wearing this - I wore it for about a week, until my nails had grown an unacceptable gap around my cuticles. All the polishes here are old favourites from my collection, apart from Butter London Jasper, which I purchased recently at my local Boots.

An InLinkz Link-up

Gradient with Illamasqua Collide, Obsess and Stance and Nail Laquer UK Grape Juice

Nail Lacquer UK Grape Juice over gradient with Illamasqua bright pinks

A lot of polishes to get here, lol! Nail Lacquer UK's Grape Juice is mix of bright magenta and holographic glitters, all circular, in a jelly base that looks like red grape juice. There's been a few swatches of it already - Cazzy at Special Girl Nails wore it alone to show of its super-juicy beauty and Debbie at Knitty Nails chose a lovely rich dark plum to pair it with. I decided I wanted to try it over a bright pink but couldn't narrow my choice down beyond three Illamasquas - Collide, Obsess and Stance. So in the end I went for a gradient - when in doubt, use all the colours!

Collide is a true neon pink, Stance is an almost-neon magenta and Obsess is a bright pink somewhere between the two. All the colours are on the sheer side, so not the easiest to work with for a gradient, but I was so pleased with the end results I think it was well worth the effort. I painted my nails with Collide first, then applied the gradient with a damp makeup sponge. For this mani I painted the colours directly onto the sponge, overlapping each colour a bit and then use a 'smooshing' action with the sponge on my nail to get them to blend. Sometimes I put the colours on a bit of plastic sheet and press the sponge into the colour - I'm not sure it makes a much difference which method I use. Two things that I've found that do make a great deal of difference to whether a gradient works or not are making the sure the sponge is quite damp - if it gets dry the polish starts to somehow break down the structure of the sponge and then you get bits of sponge stuck all over your nails - and allowing the base colour to dry completely before starting the gradient.

Illamasqua Collide, Obsess and Stance

OK, lets just forget these are nails for a minute and enjoy the colour in an abstract shot - I love hot pink!

Illamasqua Collide, Obsess and Stance

Back to the polish I was meant to be reviewing, Nail Lacquer UK Grape Juice is a mix of magenta and holographic circular glitters in quite a dark pink jelly base:

Nail Lacquer UK Grape Juice

There's a lot of glitter in the polish, but the big glitters are quite hard to get out without a bit of fishing. This might be because the base is light and sheer - whatever, not a problem for me as I only wanted a few glitters and quite a bit of base. Yes, you can see printing over the bottle shot - this is because I did something stupid with my bottle of Grape Juice and had to transfer it into another bottle; the only empty bottle I had to hand was a Nubar one which has printing on!

I applied two thin coats of UK Nail Lacquer Grape Juice over my gradient, letting the base of Grape Juice act like a colour wash to darken and further blend the colours in the gradient. The gradient toned down a lot, but that was what I wanted, so that the glitters could take centre stage.

Nail Lacquer UK Grape Juice over gradient with Illamasqua bright pinks

I can just about handle circular glitters this big on my nails. I have a high c-curve so I do need to make sure that they are off to the sides of my nails, where they will lay flat, rather than right down the middle on the most curvy part. It must be so nice to have flat nail beds :(

Nail Lacquer UK very kindly sent me a mini bottle of Grape Juice as an extra with my last order from her Etsy Shop. I bought Illamasqua Collide and Stance from the Illamasqua website and Obsess was a gift from a friend.

Scofflaw Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and Illamasqua Venous

Scofflaw Whiskey Tango Foxtrot over Illamasqua Venous

Scofflaw Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is one of those irresistable colour combinations! Teal is one of my favourite colours, and its complementary is orange-red, so this works a treat!

Scofflaw Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a teal jelly with red and white glitters of various shapes and sizes, and gold microglitter too. I didn't want a translucent effect on my nails though, and I wanted to make the overall effect quite bold too, so I used a base of Illamasqua Venous.

Illamasqua Venous

Illamasqua Venous is a fantastic blue-green cream. Apart from being a great colour, the application is just perfect - this is one coat plus Seche Vite quick drying topcoat. ONE COAT!

Illamasqua Venous

After a day or so I added Scofflaw Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. I used two coats, plus a thick coat of Seche Vite quick drying topcoat to smooth the glitter out. WTF pulled Venous a tiny bit more bluish, but not much. I love the finished effect - I wore this for several days until I had a little accident running - I slipped, grasped at a boulder to steady myself and snapped off the tip of my right thumbnail. WTF indeed! I had to remove the mani to check the damage; fortunately it was only a millimetre or so, so I was able to reshape the nail to match the rest without needing to shorten them all :)

Scofflaw Whiskey Tango Foxtrot over Illamasqua Venous

Here are a few macro shots to show the detail in the glitter a bit better:

Scofflaw Whiskey Tango Foxtrot over Illamasqua Venous

I purchased Illamasqua Venous from Illamasqua's website and Scofflaw Whiskey Tango Foxtrot direct from Finch at her Etsy Shop. Llarowe also stocks Scofflaw polish. Scofflaws sell out quickly, but you can get updates of restocks and new releases at Finch's facebook page.