Essie ~ Brides To Be ~ Swatch & Review

Hello!

I have a soft spot in my heart for sheer French polishes and, having used my bottle of Essie Ballet Slippers to within an inch of its life, I went on Amazon to hunt for something new! I ended up choosing another Essie sheer called Brides To Be, using seller Ella Gray. They also have a full website at www.ellagray.co.uk which I had to close quite quickly as it's full of fancy polishes that I shouldn't be buying!

Brides To Be is a beige-tinted sheer. In the bottle it looked more opaque than I was expecting, but one coat on my nails gave what I would class as a perfect sheer coverage - a lovely nude glow to my nails with a polite amount of visible nail line. The brush isn't very wide and was a bit fiddly to use, but nonetheless the polish applied evenly with no streaking. Two coats brought it almost to opacity, with only a hint of VNL.

Here is one coat of Brides To Be:

And here are two coats:

I am a fan of this polish; Essie polishes are slightly more expensive than the drugstore brands I normally go for but Brides To Be justifies that with its perfect formula (essential for a sheer) and feeling of luxe. Shade-wise I do prefer Ballet Slippers with its more feminine pink tint, but if you are specifically looking for this type of nude then I recommend it completely!

I am planning to use this mani as a base for some stamping nail art so stay tuned! Also, don't forget you can enter my 4 Year Blogiversary Giveaway to win some MoYou London goodies ^_^

Hugs,

Lisa xx

Literature French Manicure

Hello!

Thank you to everyone who has entered my 4 Year Blogiversary Giveaway so far, and to everyone else, do feel welcome to enter to win a MoYou gift card! I've included a couple of simple entry options which don't involve doing anything on social media so hopefully it's a super-friendly giveaway.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to promote it as much as I'd like so far - I'm in a bad patch with my health and am asleep more than I'm awake right now - but I'm very happy with how it's going regardless ^_^

This manicure uses my MoYou Literature 01 stamping plate to add something special to a French mani! I used my Charlies Nail Art guide stickers and Barry M Cotton to paint on the French tips. Once they dried I stamped a variety of texts on top, again using the guide stickers to get it right.

Hugs,

Lisa xx

Cross Stitch Manicure

Hello!

Firstly, a reminder that I am currently hosting a giveaway to celebrate my 4 year blogiversary and win lovely Moyou London prizes! It has a couple of "easy entry" options for those of you who prefer not to use social media, as this really is a thank-you giveaway for supporting my hobby.

The manicure I'm posting about tonight is inspired by my other hobby: cross stitching! Right now I'm making an elephant-themed birth sampler for a friend and wanted to transfer the sweet, simple patterns to my nails using stamping. Here is the mani plus a pic of the cross stitch in progress!

I have very low energy at the moment so am struggling to do much, but please keep on entering the giveaway ~ good luck! ^_^

Hugs,

Lisa xx

The Geordie Nails 4 Year Blogiversary - It's a MoYou Giveaway!

Hello!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

It's official... I have been blogging for 4 years! I wrote my first, tentative post in August 2011 and am still going today. That's a lot of nail polish and a lot of manicures - over 600 by my estimate!

In this time there's been one major nail art brand that has captured my imagination, and that is MoYou London with their ever-increasing collection of beautiful stamping plates, and now also hand tattoos and other nail art accessories. And so I could not think of a better prize for a celebratory giveaway than to give one of my readers the chance to have a shop on MoYou's website ^_^

The grand prize is a £10 MoYou London gift card, and MoYou are kindly also going to provide two packs of their new Hand Tattoos as runner-up prizes!

The giveaway starts today and will finish on Thursday the 10th of September 2015. This is meant as a genuine, heartfelt thanks for supporting my hobby so I will try to make it as easy to enter as possible, with "free entry" options for those of you who don't want to use social media. Please do read the Terms and Conditions below!

Here is a collage of some of my recent MoYou manis...

Terms and Conditions

- This is a free-to-enter giveaway to win a grand prize of one £10 Moyou London gift voucher, plus two runner-up prizes of a pack of MoYou London Hand Tattoos each.

- Entry is done via the Rafflecopter widget above. I will be using Rafflecopter to monitor entries and to randomly select the winners.

- Winners will be selected after the closing date of 10th September 2015. I will post the names of the winners on this blog and on social media, and inform them individually by email. They will then have 72 hours to respond and claim their prize. If no response is received, I will randomly draw a new winner(s).

- The winner will receive their prize by email. Runners-up will need to provide a physical address to which their prize can be shipped. The giveaway is open internationally.

- MoYou London have kindly agreed to refund the shipping costs of the grand prize winner once they have placed their order.

- Please remember to check the email associated with your Rafflecopter login!

- Please no giveaway-only accounts (only enter if you would genuinely love the prize!).

- Do let me know if you have any questions or if I've forgotten something!

Neon Manicure with Flamingos

Hello!

It's nice and sunny today in North East England, and I thought the coral neon Shades by Models Own would catch the sunlight nicely!

I always think it's funny that Shades is from the Polish For Tans collection because I am the palest girl on the planet. But luckily I'm also happy to wear any nail polish, however bright! And this one is so bright it's actually distracting me as I type...

For my manicure I took some arrow-shaped tip guides I bought from Charlies Nail Art for 25p and did a geometric half-moon design, placing the guide sticker further up my ring fingernails for an accent nail. To embellish my mani I added a couple of MoYou's flamingo hand tattoos - it seemed like they would suit the summery tropical colour of the polish perfectly!

Is anyone else going bright for Summer?

Hugs,

Lisa xx

Cardigan Chic Manicure

Hello!

Today I have a twee little mani to show you! I was going to do a plain French manicure but then decided to take the polishes I had out and change it up a bit.

So I started with the sheer French polish I was going to use already, Ballet Slippers by Essie (I really need to buy a second Essie sheer, this one is being used up way too quickly!). I then took my MoYou Fashionista stamping plate and stamped a knit pattern on top in white. I finished off the mani with a pearl nail charm I bought in a set from Poundland for a cardigan-granny-chic idea...

Since I cut my nails I've been wanting to try out a lot of ideas... my sushi manicure might make a reappearance soon...

Hugs,

Lisa xx

Short Nails with Attitude - Barry M Gold Mine!

Hello!

I mentioned last time that I was planning to cut my nails short for a change, and here they are! I also went ahead with taking one break from stamping, and I'm glad I did as I rediscovered how amazing one of my dust-gathering polishes is ^_^

I bought Gold Mine by Barry M nearly 3 years ago now (I remember as I'd just started an office job and the boss was impressed by my blog!). It consists of gold glitter suspended in a semi-opaque black base that gives full cover in 2 coats, yet still allows the glitter to show through wonderfully.

It looks so perfect and cool to me! It also makes me very glad I cut my nails as it's perfect for this length - short but with lots of attitude.

Hugs,

Lisa xx

Sparkling Wings & Flourished Manicures

Hello!

Recently I've been doing plenty of stamping - a Born Pretty review pack and MoYou order meant I've had a lot of exciting ideas to try - and so this post shows off two of my latest stamped manicures! I'm thinking of cutting my nails short again just to get a bit of variety in, but even then I've still got some stamping in mind. I hope this isn't too monotonous for my readers?

The manicure I'm wearing right now features a sparkling pink glitter, Rose Chic by Maybelline. This polish can be worn as a gorgeous textured glitter but here I've smoothed it out so I could add some stamping in the form of a floral flourish, taken from MoYou's Mother Nature 05 stamping plate. My base coat is Picture Polish Revolution in the hope that it will make the glitter easier to remove!

The manicure I had on beforehand was a butterfly manicure, using one of the many wing designs on MoYou Kitty 12. For this I started out with one coat of Essie Ballet Slippers for the nude part of the nail. Then I took three holo polishes - Holographic Hero by Gosh, Wistful by TopShop and Red Taboo by Layla - and used a sponge to mix and dab them onto my nails as colour for the wings. I stamped the design on and top coated! I also wore one of my MoYou hand tattoos, some origami butterflies, which I've shown in the photo.

As you can see I overlapped a bit with my colour sponging which I'd hoped I could cheekily pass of as stylistic, but I don't think as many people liked when I posted it on Instagram.

Depending on how I'm feeling, the next mani you see may be of short nails - and perhaps featuring something other than stamping, just to mix it up for once!

Hugs,

Lisa xx

Another Stormy Seas Manicure!

Hello!

My Stormy Seas idea is a manicure I've worn once or twice before, and I thought now would be a good time to wear it again while my nails are nice and long!

This mani uses the clingfilm technique and the colours light grey and dark blue, namely Sally Hansen Ion and Barry M Blackberry. For this technique you paint your nails one colour and let them dry fully. Then you paint your second colour on top, one nail at a time, and while it's wet you dab at it with scruched up clingfilm (a.k.a. Saran wrap, Glad wrap). Top coat makes it look all lovely!

After I'd worn the mani a couple of days I added some feathered gold stamping on top using my new MoYou Kitty plate, just to see what it'd look like - and it was a nice touch, although I think the Stormy Seas mani is enough on its own!

Hugs,

Lisa xx

Poop Emoji Manicure

Hello!

I wanted to make a friend giggle by replicating the poop emoji on my nails, so today I have the cheeky and questionable result to show you...

The cartoon poop comes from my MoYou Suki 03 plate (what good stamping plate does not have a poop emoji on it?). I started by painting my nails in pastel colours then made stamping decals so I could have coloured poop ~ plus one bonus glittery one.

To make the decals I painted nail-sized dashes of clear top coat onto a flexible silicon baking mat. Once they dried I stamped my design on top of them, then used a nail art brush to colour them in with my one solitary brown polish.

I have not mastered stamping decals at all. I got through the production stage but then struggled to get them flat on my nails and had to cake my mani in top coat. However, here is the result!

Well, it's poop. In more ways than one. ;-)

Hugs,

Lisa xx