X Men Apocalypse Nails featuring ILNP 'First Class' & Foxy Paws Polish 'Black Hole Sun' PLUS Fab Ur Nails 'Clear Jumbo Stamper' Review & Clean Up Brush Update!

Hello!

Phew, that's a long title isn't it!? Lots of stuff to show you!

Today I've got my nails that I designed to celebrate the release of 'X Men Apocalypse' that I went to see last weekend. I really enjoyed the film. We've been spoiled this month with Superhero films, especially with Suicide Squad & Dr Strange still to come. (So much excite!!!!!) I also just finished watching Daredevil Season 2 which was so good and I loved the Punisher (though he was still Shane from The Walking Dead for me for the first few episodes)! Anyway onto the nails before I start geek rambling! (Very much a thing) Don't even get me started on this weeks Game of Thrones!!!! Oh my heart!

Thinking about the design I knew I wanted to incorporate the X from X men and also wanted a black & silver theme to match the X men chrome vibe they have going on at the moment. (and last time I did blue & yellow so thought I'd change it up a bit!)

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I love love love how these turned out!

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For my silver base polish I used ILNP 'First Class' (Obviously perfect for X men) which is a gorgeous holographic silver flakie polish from the ILNP Ultra Metallics collection. Application was very good and I used three coats.

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For my black base polish I used Foxy Paws Polish 'Black Hole Sun' which is a gorgeous black holographic polish. I love this formula and I needed just two super easy coats.

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For the X design I used the Bundle Monster blogger collaboration plate with elleandish 'BM-XL201'.

For the stamping I used Color Alike 'Silver King' & Konad Black Stamping Polish which both worked wonderfully. I also used my latex barrier 'Zap' from Rainbow Connection UK to speed up clean up.

Natural Daylight - Direct Sunlight to show the Holo in ILNP 'First Class'

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I also tried my Fab Ur Nails 'Clear Jumbo Stamper' for the first time so my X's came out straight. It worked perfectly! I used a rolling motion to pick up and then pressed the stamper directly down onto my nail for stamping the image while looking through the hollow holder and clear stamper head. Thanks to it being jumbo and fairly squishy compared to other clear stampers, when pressed directly down onto the nail it wrapped around my very curvy nail no problem and the image was perfect every time! A-MAZ-ING! I'm so pleased with this stamper and I'm getting the hang of looking through the stamper onto my nail now and knowing when to press etc...

I topped it all off with a coat of HK Girl top coat.

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I really think these nails looked so striking and all the tools worked wonderfully.

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I said here that I'd give you an update on my Fab Ur Nails Clean Up Brush after a few months. It's still just like new! So pleased with it!

Apart from the Foxy Paws Polish & Konad Stamping polish (which can be found on their own respective websites) all of this is available from Rainbow Connection UK!

What do you think? Have you seen X men yet? Did you like it? What are you geeking out over at the moment? (Nail Polish Included!) Let me know in the comments!

I'm also still unsure about the new picture size so please let me know what you think if you view my blog on the computer.

Thanks for visiting,

Have a lovely day,

Helen xx

Galaxy Nails 'How To' (Picture Heavy!)

Hello!

So I've been very conservative with my nail polish buying this week and had no nail mail (Boo!) Instead I present you with this!!!

Today I have a post of EPIC proportions for you!! Galaxy Nails is something I've always wanted to try but felt a bit intimidated at how amazing everyone else's looked. But, with Star Wars on the way (Yes this post is very late) I used the Force and am so super proud with how these turned out. Hence why I couldn't resist taking pictures of them at every turn and this post could be made into a moving picture animation! I hope you love these as much as I do!

For my base I used Foxy Paws Polish 'Black Hole Sun'. A gorgeous black holographic. This was just two easy coats and no top coat!

My next step on the road to my nails resembling a galaxy was the sponging stage. I cut up some make up sponges and started with a white sponged line diagonally across my nail. I alternated the direction of this for each nail as I went along. I used my BK Matte White Polish from the Born Pretty Store but any white with good opacity would have been fine. I used tweezers to hold the tiny bits of sponge so I could get a smaller surface area of sponge to work with. And you don't want sponge messing up your other hand nails!  

I then added the sponged colours one at a time. I sponged them along the same direction as the white either side of the line. I used Virtuous Polish 'Passover' (the bright purple), 'Temperance' (the dark blue)' and 'Deborah' (the light blue).

I then went over any bits with the sponge and colour needed that I felt needed to pop more. It all dried super quick as the sponged layer is very thin. 

After this I then used my white polish again to add stars to my pointer and ring finger. I used a generic thin nail art brush to do the lines. 

I then added the small dots using my white polish with a dotting tool to create more twinkly far away stars.

I then added some hex glitter. I put a silver hex glitter in the middle of my big stars. I got these out of my Cirque Colors '1999' but any generic silver hex glitter would do. I then added a couple of hex glitters in a navy and purply maroon out of Rimmel 'Bedazzle' glitter top coat. I thought these went well with my colour scheme and added a bit of extra sparkle.

I then added ILNP 'My Private Rainbow (X)' as a top coat to make it holo. Because galaxies need holo.

It was all topped off with HK Girl Top Coat to protect the Galaxy as the ILNP 'My Private Rainbow (X)' was super glossy anyway.

I would also like to take a minute to praise my Uber Mat. Look at that mess. It made it so much easier knowing I could just leave sponge pieces and mess lying around and not be dreading the desk cleaning later!

Phew! That was long. I loved these nails and was very sad to take them off. I hope you enjoyed this post. If you have any 'How To' questions let me know in the comments! 

As always thanks for visiting and congratulations for making it all the way to the end!

May the Force be with you,

Have a lovely day,

Helen xx

Nail Mail Monday

Hello!

More Nail Mail Monday for you today. 

First up is some Rainbow Connection Nail Mail. (The best kind of Nail Mail)

From Left to Right is Fun Lacquer 'Superstar', Femme Fatale Cosmetics 'The Art of Witchcraft' and 'Femme Fatale Cosmetics 'Poisoned Apple'.

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'Superstar' is a beautiful maroon with gold flecks, 'Art of Witchcraft' is a beautiful teal gelly with teal and maroon glitter. 'Poisoned Apple' is a teal polish with tiny teal microglitter and a purple shimmer. 

I also received another Foxy Paws Polish. This is Sweetest Goodbye and is a Maroon with added holo flecks.

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Hopefully next week I'll have a Christmas edition for you guys!

Thanks for visiting,

Have a lovely day,

Helen xx

Nail Mail Monday Featuring 'Foxy Paws Polish'

Hello!

I've got another Nail Mail Monday for you today. Thanks to Christmas postage craziness I had a fairly quiet nail mail week but this made the parcel I did get extra special.

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This week I have my picks from the Foxy Paws Polish Black Friday Sale. For those who don't know, Foxy Paws Polish is a 5 Free and Cruelty Free indie polish based in Denmark run by the lovely Charlotte. All her polishes have a story or theme and 10% of all sales goes to charity. Onto the pretties!

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From Left to Right are Foxy Paws Polish 'Accidental Boob Graze', 'Mine's a little bigger than yours' and 'Black hole sun'.

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The first two polishes are from 'The Holiday' collection which is based on the Christmas rom-com film of the same name. 'Accidental Boob Graze' is a gorgeous sparkly teal turquoise holo and 'Mine's a little bigger than yours' is a beautiful grey creme with copper hex glitter. (Must have all the copper!) The Black holo is a special polish Charlotte created for Black Friday. I'm excited to try these in a full mani. From the swatches the formula seems easy to use, with good opacity and dries fairly quickly.

You can find Foxy Paws Polish on their website.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Thanks for visiting,

Have a lovely day,

Helen xx