The Walking Dead Season 7 Nails with Delush Polish 'Poisoned Vine'

Hello!

So today is the day. After a very very very long wait of wondering and discussing, the Season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead is nearly upon us! I've had to avoid all social media and news websites today to avoid spoilers from the US airing yesterday. I'm relieved the premiere is here but so scared and sad that we're going to loose someone. I really must get better at detaching myself from fictional characters (like that's ever going to happen!).

Obviously I had to do some Nails befitting for The Walking Dead's return! I really love these!

I used heaps of stuff for these. Read on for the details!

So first of all I used the stunning 'Poisoned Vine' by Delush Polish as my base. This gorgeous blackened red needed just two coats. It dried super fast and had a great formula that was very self levelling. (Excellent for the pre The Walking Dead premiere excitement shakes!) It's such a beautiful vampy polish that I was sad to be covering it with stamping.

For my walker hand prints on my thumb I used my Color Club 'Splatter' stamping plate and stamped with Color Alike 'Kind of White' Stamping Polish and my Fab Ur Nails Jumbo Stamper. I know a lot of people have had trouble with the new Color Club plates. I had hoped to use my clear stamper with this design but it just wouldn't pick the image up. The Jumbo Stamper worked perfectly though.

For my Lucille leftovers on my pointer finger I used all the same tools as my thumb and then sponged on some blood stains with a make up sponge and Color Alike Stamping polish 'Red Dragon'. 

For my middle finger I used my Creative Shop No.35 stamping plate and stamped with Color Alike 'Kind of White' Stamping Polish and my Fab Ur Nails Clear Stamper. I was super impressed with this plate as the image is very detailed but everything worked great.

For Lucille on my ring finger I used my Sugar Bubbles 001 stamping plate and stamped with Color Alike 'Silver King' Stamping Polish and my Fab Ur Nails Jumbo Stamper. I then sponged on some blood stains with a make up sponge and Color Alike Stamping polish 'Red Dragon'. 

For my Walker arms on my little finger I used my Uber Chic 'Zombie Love' stamping plate and stamped with Color Alike 'Kind of White' Stamping Polish and my Fab Ur Nails Jumbo Stamper. 

I used the latex barrier Zap from Rainbow Connection UK to help with clean up.

This was my first time using a lot of these products. I wanted to mention the Color Alike 'Kind of White' stamping polish specifically. I knew I was playing with stamping fire using a white over a dark red base as I figured as soon as I applied my HK Girl top coat everything would get a bit smudged and the stamping lines wouldn't be as crisp. I braced myself but nothing of the sort occurred. There was no smudging whatsoever! Stamping goals achieved! Applause for Color Alike!

I really enjoyed doing some proper nail art for these and think I will definitely try to do more stamping than I have been. I think its just finding the time and energy at the moment.

I'm so so so excited for tonight! I think Negan is going to bring us a lot of heartache though! I hope you love these nails as much as I do! Apart from the UberChic plate this is all available from Rainbow Connection UK!

It's nearly time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for visiting,

Have a lovely day,

Helen xx

Colors by Llarowe 'Lotus' & Cirque Colors 'Halcyon' Nail Art

Hello!

No Nail Mail this week but I do have some Nail Art to show you. Lots of pictures ahead as I just couldn't help taking a million photos of this mani! For these I used Colors by Llarowe 'Lotus' and Cirque Colors 'Halcyon'.

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'Lotus' is a gorgeous Orchid pink with gold and pink shimmer from the Colors by Llarowe Summer 2016 collection. The mixture of the pink and gold makes the shimmer lean towards rose gold which I love. This was three easy coats.

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Because of the rose gold leaning shimmer I paired it with Cirque Colors 'Halcyon' from their Holiday 2015 collection as this is my favourite rose gold polish. It's just stunning! This was just two coats on my accent nail.

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I wanted to tie the whole mani together so decided I'd use some nail vinyls for some nail art. I added a coat of HK Girl Top Coat on top of 'Lotus' first so that the nail vinyls didn't rip up the polish underneath during removal. I wanted to accent 'Lotus' with 'Halcyon' so I used some thin straight nail vinyls to create a cross at the bottom of the nail and painted over the bottom and side triangles it created with 'Halcyon'.

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I've always struggled with nail vinyls but previously I hadn't been doing a layer of top coat first. It made SUCH a big difference and I love how these turned out. I also used the latex barrier 'Zap' from Rainbow Connection UK to stop the 'Halcyon' going everywhere when dabbing it over the nail vinyl pattern. I love 'Halcyon' but it's a nightmare for clean up due to the shimmer and silver flakies. (This isn't an issue when removing everything though, just when your cleaning your cuticles etc...). After removing the vinyls (before 'Halcyon' dried) and letting it dry I topped it all off with another layer of HK Girl top coat.

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I really loved these polishes together and this design. I think I'm confident with stamping now so maybe mastering Nail Vinyls will be my next challenge. I brought these nail vinyls a while ago but I think they are the Skinny Straights Vinyls by 'Nail Vinyls' and I believe I purchased them from Picture Polish, they have their own website though.

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What do you think? Are there any nail techniques you're working on at the moment?

Thanks for visiting,

Have a lovely day,

Helen xx

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.

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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