Birthday Beauties

So it was my birthday last Sunday, 5th May, make a note for next year! In celebration of this I went out for a meal on the Saturday with Uni friends to Bodean's on Poland Street in Soho followed by drinks in Leicester Square. It was really quite a lovely evening. The following day I met some more friends for a day out at London ZOO! Such an awesome day.

Anyway, back to the nails, so my birthday nails were done to match my outfit for Saturday night. My flatmate Beth wanted to do the same so I did her nails to match her outfit too. So mine were Monochrome and Beth's were Leopard print. Have a look;

Mine's the left hand, obviously, and Beth's the right. For my monochrome I used 2 coats of Ion by Sally Hansen and block acrylic paint for the border which I painted on with a little nail art brush. I then topped it off with my Barry M top coat.

I've taken a picture with my Barry M black because I used it to fill in the tips which I accidentally chipped whilst getting ready. :)

These are Beth's gloriously manicured hands and my first attempt at leopard print nails. We used Barry M Mushroom for the base, then a gold crackle for the big splodges (why not, we didn't mind if it crackled a little bit) and then again using Barry M Black and a dotting tool to do the "brackets" as we called them.

And here we are in out glad rags before heading out. :D

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Gray, Gilded Lilies

So I've had a super busy week and thus I haven't had chance to do any nail related things unfortunately. It was good to have a break though, I've let my nails breathe for a few days and they're feeling much better, if not a little battered after my hands-on week camera assisting. 

I did have a lovely delivery of nail varnishes earlier in the week though so to celebrate my last day and getting to work on Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway I painted my nails on Friday night and here are the results.

This is Sally Hansen Gray by Gray with SH Gilded Lily on top. I love this. The gilded lily looks gorgeous in all kinds of light. It really shimmers but as you can see from above picture you can still really see the colour underneath when you move your hand. This would look brilliant as a gradient I think.

It's not quite glitter pieces it's lots of tiny differently shaped gold flakes, really pretty. 

And here's Gray by Gray on its own. Really nice, this is after two coats but I was impressed even after just one. Apologies for state of nails and hand, like I said a week of manual labour has caused some damage but I'm all over the hand cream now so they should be good again soon. :) I'll be back soon with some more updates!!

And a little after thought - although it did last quite well considering I worked a 14 hour hands-on day the day after applying (without a top coat may I add) it held quite well. And it's so much easier to remove than normal glitter. Perfect!

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