Red Carpet Manicure Gel Polish Pro Kit : What you get, How it works, What it looks like

Hello everyone!

Yesterday was my 18th birthday, and typically I asked for some nail tech bits and pieces. I've recently become really interested in gel polish, and I wanted to know how I could do my own gel manicures at home, since getting a gel manicure where I live is £20 upwards! I thought that getting a DIY kit would be more economical in the long run.

So, I asked for the Red Carpet Manicure at-home gel polish kit. I had a go with it yesterday, and I'm very happy with it indeed!

First of all, here's some pictures of what you get in the kit:

This is the box that everything comes in. It's all safely packaged inside so that nothing gets broken or tipped over.

This is the LED lamp! It's a 6 Watts lamp. As you can see there's enough room for all 4 fingers underneath. The button above the RCM logo switches the light on for 45 seconds, after which it automatically turns itself off. The lamp plugs into the mains socket directly, so no batteries are required!

I've heard that you can get stronger lamps and I know that there's also UV lamps available. I've yet to try out any UV specific polishes with my LED lamp - I'll probably stick to the RCM nail system for the moment. However, I did see someone on a nail tech forum saying that you can use Gelish with the RCM system.

These are 59ml bottles of Purify and Erase. Erase is RCM's branded gel polish remover, Purify is used to cleanse the nail plate of tacky gel residue before gel application, and also to remove the sticky surface of the Brilliance topcoat after it's cured under the lamp.

Prep is a nail plate dehydrater that removes excess oils from the nail and prepares it for the base coat.

Structure is the base coat for this system. After it's cured, it's sticky so that the gel colour can adhere to it  beter, so it's important not to touch it when you've cured it! Also, it's best to apply this in as thin a coat as possible, otherwise the base coat tends to shrink away from the nail tip.

This colour came with the kit; it's called Red Carpet Reddy and it's a jelly-based bright red. I use 2-3 coats on each nail to get a bright, slighty translucent red. Again, I cure each coat for 45 seconds. After curing, the polish is still sticky, so you have to make sure that you don't dent or wipe your nails on anything before sealing the colour with Brilliance topcoat.

The Brilliance topcoat seals in the coloured gel polish. I cure this for 45 seconds and it's ready to go, provided I use Purify to wipe of any stickiness.

Revitalize is a cuticle oil which you can apply every day to keep your natural nail hydrated. It smells really lovely, sort of like flowers!

In short, the process of actually doing a gel manicure with this system is as follows:

1. Apply Prep to nails liberally.
2. Apply Structure to nails, using a thin coat.
3. Cure Structure under the lamp for one button-press, i.e. 45 seconds.
4. Apply a coat of colour.
5. Cure the colour for another 45 seconds.
6. Apply a second coat, making sure you don't touch the sticky layer on top of the first coat of colour. Also, make sure to swipe the brush along the free edge of the nail to prevent the nail tips from showing and to improve longevity.
7. Cure the second coat for 45 seconds.
8. Apply Brilliance topcoat, again making sure to swipe it along the free edge of the nail. This seals in the colour and prevents the gel from peeling off of the nail / chipping.

Provided that you follow these steps, this is what you'll end up with:

It's incredibly shiny and looks almost jelly-like. Best of all, it looks identical to the gel manicures that I've seen done in salons, but you can do it at home yourself!

You can buy this kit on Asos.com, and you can also buy additional colours of RCM nail polish on their website or at Sally's Beauty Supply.

I hope you've enjoyed this post, if you have any questions about the RCM gel polish system or any tips/pointers for me, please comment below! 

Amber ♫

Holo Polish: The Makeup Store's 'Siw' and GOSH Fix Base Coat

Hello!

Today I'll be demonstrating a rather beautiful polish from The Makeup Store. I believe that this brand is quite hard to obtain in the UK unless you take a trip to Carnaby Street in London, although I've heard that a Westfield somewhere in London also has a branch. I think it's a Swedish brand if I've heard correctly. Their nail polishes are all £11, and they're also all 8ml. Expensive, yes, but this is one of the only holos I've found on the UK market, and possibly the only coloured one apart from its TMUS sister, Britta, a pink holo with a more pastel holo shine (which I coincidentally also own).

This polish is a wonderful, vibrant green-blue holo. The holo is linear and very, very bright- I suppose I would describe it as fiery more than anything, it really is that bright! I find that the effect is most visible under artificial lighting, so before I get to talking about formula and longevity etcetera, here are some photos. This is 1-2 coats depending on the finger, over GOSH Fix Base Coat, without topcoat:

Isn't it beautiful? The name is apparently said 'Seev', despite being spelt S-I-W. Interesting.
It's incredibly vibrant, and is perfect for any event where you'll be under bright lights. It's not quite as bright in daylight, but still gives a pretty, fish-scaly effect. It's a personal favourite of mine.

As far as topcoat goes, I've heard that topcoat can diminish holo polishes in terms of shine, but I used one coat of Nina Ultra Pro Wet Glaze on top of this afterwards out of curiosity and found that once it dried, it made no difference at all to the holo effect - in fact, it just smoothed out the planes of the nail and made it smoother.

As with all holo polishes, this lasts for less than a day on me without tipwear and minor chips, but this comes with the territory as far as I'm concerned, so I was far from surprised at this. Holos are notorious for chipping very quickly, but I feel like the effect is worth the minor tipwear that I've experienced. On this polish, it's not especially noticeable when there's tipwear anyway.

One thing you have to realise with holo polishes is that if you want them to apply anywhere close to easily, you must use an aqua base coat. If you don't do this, then you end up fiddling around and using close to 3 or 4 coats. A normal base coat just won't do the job, and you'll end up wasting polish trying in vain to even out the polish. 
In addition, I've tried using this without aqua base coat and the holographic effect is nowhere near as bright.
Aqua base coats multiply the holo effect by a huge amount and make application a hundred times easier, trust me!

The aqua base coat that I use is GOSH Fix Base Coat. I bought this off of Ebay for £5 including postage, which was a total bargain considering that it is now discontinued as far as I know! TMUS also make their own aqua base coat called Aqua Fix, but it is more expensive per bottle and cannot be ordered online (at least, not in the UK).

Here's a couple of photos of GOSH Fix Base Coat:

That's TMUS' Siw and GOSH Fix Base Coat in a rather wordy nutshell. I hope that this has been useful, and please contact me or comment below if you have any questions!

Thanks for reading,

Amber ♫ 

NOTD: Models' Own Peacock Green with Jewelled Index Finger

Hello!

Today I've got a really simple and effective nail art look. Accent fingers are always so much fun to do, and add a little extra interest to an otherwise run-of-the-mill manicure.

Recently I took a trip to Poundland and got some really cool bits and pieces there! I picked up 3 glitter polishes, a Revlon polish in Lilac Pastelle (I'll report back on these at a later date) and 2 wheels of nail art bits and bobs.

The first wheel contains little polymer clay cane butterflies in all different colours! They're very cute and stay on well provided you use a cuticle stick to get them to sit continuously along the curve of the nail bed.

The second wheel contains little shaped  rhinestones in every colour of the rainbow! There are hearts, round ones, squares, moons, stars...even little black triangles for when I want to create a studded effect.

Anyway, I decided to use the rhinestones to create a simple accent nail on a dark manicure. I don't actually own that many dark nail polishes, but this one that I used is a personal favourite. It's Peacock Green by Models' Own, and it's beautiful!



This is a picture of my right hand - I only did an accent nail on my left, but I think I'll do the same on my right this evening. This picture lets you see the general colour makeup of this polish. It's supposed to be a duochrome, and it's a very subtle one at that, but that's why I like it I suppose. The duochrome effect means that in some lights, it appears to be a dark bottle green verging on teal. Turn your nail the other way, and it's a shimmery forest green! The nature of the shimmer is vaguely frosty and pearly but very rich, and the overall effect of the polish is extremely shiny, even without topcoat.



I applied the gems by waiting until PG was dry (2 coats), then I put on a layer of clear topcoat. Once tacky, I used a cuticle stick to pick up gems and drop them onto the nail surface. When the topcoat was almost dry, I gently pressed the gems down to make sure they stuck properly. Then, I put on a layer of an acrylic topcoat to secure them.

Again, you can see here just how shiny the polish is! It applies evenly and is completely opaque in 2 relatively fast-drying coats, but if you wanted a slightly sheerer look I think you could get away with one coat, although this would diminish the colour a lot in my opinion.

As for chipping, I can't comment yet as I've only had this on for half a day or so, but I will report back next time I post to update you!

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this post! :)

OPI Goldeneye Review and Swatches!

Hello! :)

Today my bottle of OPI's Goldeneye got here in the post from beautycow.com! (Great website by the way - it has loads of OPI stuff for cheap, this polish came to about £10.50 with shipping which is 50p cheaper than an OPI polish from the shops, not including petrol!) I was super happy because the shipping was only 2 days, very good!

So this polish is from OPI's new Skyfall collection. It's just so gorgeous!

The polish is comprised of a clear base packed full of micro flakes of gold! The gold itself is very warm, which I personally prefer...but if you're a person for cooler toned golds then this is perhaps not for you.

Either way, it looks like someone's put gold leaf on my nails! It's a stunning colour and looks beautiful in any light - artificial, natural or even in the shade.

I can't express how shiny it is in person, even more so than these photos! The second photo in the shade is a truer representation of the shine of this polish. I could rant forever about how shiny this polish is, the flakes add to this by diffracting light all over the place and making an amazing effect of complete shimmer!

Application wise, in these photos I'm wearing a good three coats (only thin ones, mind you). Each coat was extremely quick to dry, only taking about 5 minutes. It applied very smoothly and the finished product after 3 coats isn't bumpy at all. A lick of topcoat adds a bit of extra shine and longevity. 

At RRP £11.00 it's not cheap, but totally worth the money in my opinion. It's everything I've ever wanted in a gold polish - true warmth, golden-orange tones and seriously amazing sparkle! 

Like I said, beautycow.com have this for about £7.50 not including postage. They seem to have all of the Skyfall collection on there too. I know where I'll be making my OPI purchases from now on! 

Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!
Amber ◕ ◡ ◕

OPI "Nothin Mousie Bout It" Review & Swatches!

Hello everyone!

Today I'm reviewing another limited edition OPI polish. This one is from the Vintage Minnie Mouse collection from S/S '12, and it's one I've had my eye on for a while. I tried to get a bottle in many different shops, but even Selfridge's in London were sold out by the time I had money to spare! It's a very popular polish, and it doesn't help that the display rack for this collection only has 2 or 3 spaces for bottles of this polish at one time! No matter, because this weekend I took a trip to Debenhams in Southampton (which I thoroughly recommend visiting - it's never busy and there is so much choice of stuff, they have all sorts of brands including Benefit, YSL and even some lesser known ones, and of course a biiig selection of OPI) and sitting there were the last 2 bottles in the shop of NMBI! I immediately bought one and here we have some swatches that I've done below - I've swatched 2 coats of NMBI over 1 coat of OPI's Rosy Future.

As you can see, NMBI is pretty darn sheer. It's a jellyish pink flakie (flakes are goldy-orange, pink and purple, very very pretty in the light!) with pink heart glitter. You've got to fish this out of the botte with the brush and place them yourself, but to be honest it's not too much of a bother for me and I like being able to be exact with where the hearts are. If you tip the bottle gently to the side for a second the hearts should stick to the brush and you can place them as you want.

In these two photos, I used 1 coat of a hot pink jelly polish (name has rubbed off the bottle!) by 2True. It was free with an offer, but usually retails for something like £1.99. It's not super bad quality, but even so, it's going to chip quickly because it's cheap. Oh well! :) Anyway, this is one coat of NMBI, again heart glitter placed by hand with the bottle brush, on top of the pink.

I really do love this polish. It's not exactly cheap at £11, but I adore the flakie effect and the hearts are just adorable! I can get plenty of use out of this polish and the flakies are extremely pretty even on their own! It's not great to wear on it's own but I love it over Rosy Future as you can see the bluey-pinky-purple sheen of RF underneath the flakies, which makes the most beautiful shimmery effect in the light!

Later today I'll be doing a biiiig nail look roundup post, so stay tuned and I hope you like this post! :)

Pink Crystal Nails Tutorial / Barry M Jewel nail paint Review

Hello! ♫ ~ (◕‿◕✿)

One of my best friends works in Superdrug, and so I usually get to know when they have new things coming in as far as nail polish is concerned - this is really great as you can imagine because I can look forward to getting all the latest stuff!
So I was delighted to hear that Barry M have a couple new bits and pieces out. These include a Jewel nail paint range and a Gelly Hi-Shine range. The Jewel range is a gorgeous, very inventive selection of glitter polishes - the diversity of colours and textures is just amazing, and at £2.99 a bottle I was so so excited to get down to Superdrug and buy them! I have to say, the combinations of glitter are perfection in my opinion, and for such a cheap price it seems like Barry M are way ahead of the rest of the drugstore polish brands in my town. ♫ 
The Gelly Hi-Shine range is really cool too, there's about 9 shades if I remember correctly, and all the polishes dry to an extremely glossy, shiny finish, just like a gel manicure (hence the name!). These Gelly polishes are £3.99.

Anyway, today I'm going to be showing you 2 of the Jewel polishes - I've used them to create a pink crystal-themed look. (I also bought a gorgeous bright red-toned pink from the Gelly range, but I'll be reviewing that when I next do my nails!)

Firstly, here are the two polishes that I picked up:

This one is called Pink Sapphire Glitter. It's a clear base chock full of hexagonal pink glitter, super small round pink glitter, bar-shaped holo and hexagonal holo glitter. It goes on very easily, is quick drying and has a great fomula - not at all gloopy, which is surprising considering the amount of glitter in it! The bar glitter is especially beautiful in the light.

This is called Rose Quartz Glitter. It's a mix of tiny round holo and hexagonal rose pink glitter in a clear base. Again, formula and drying time are excellent and the fine holo glitter gives a lovely sheen to the nail.

Here we have photos of the finished look and what I used to achieve it:

L-R: OPI Rosy Future, Barry M Rose Quartz Glitter, Barry M Pink Sapphire Glitter, Paul and Joe Sprite

The method is very simple.

1) Put on 2 coats of Sprite. Sprite is a pale apple green and rosy pink duochrome. It's one of my most treasured polishes for a few reasons - the bottle, the very unusual colour and the price (£10.50, ouch!). In one light it appears to be an apple green pearl on the nail, in another it's a rosy glowing pink.

2) Next, apply 1 coat of Rosy Future. This is a pale, milky purple-pink duochrome, it's more sheer than Sprite and is more purple tinted. I just used this to make the colour underneath lean more towards pink in general than green to match the glitters.

3) Put on a coat of Pink Sapphire Glitter. Make sure you spread the pink hex glitter around evenly!

4) Apply a coat of Rose Quartz Glitter on top. Again, try and keep application even to get a good texture.

5) Finish off with topcoat. I personally use 17 Lasting Fix nail polish in clear - it's honestly the best I've ever used, it dries so quickly, isn't gloopy and is very very shiny. It's also £2.99!

I hope you liked this tutorial, it's very easy to do but is so lovely on any length of nail from short to long due to the gentle prettiness of the pinks used. The glitter also makes nails look a bit longer too! ♫ 

(P.S. - Just for your information, I've got a couple of photos of Sprite and Rosy Future with just Pink Sapphire on top for you to see - it's a less blingy but still very very pretty combination!)

Deborah Lippmann - Across The Universe - Review and Swatches

Hello! ☺


Today I have a review for you of 'Across The Universe' by Deborah Lippmann. This was my first Lippmann polish that I've bought, a bit of a stretch of an impoverished student's budget at £16 but very definitely worth it! Take a look below for swatches - the colour, glitter sizing and placement, overall finish and application were fantastic! ❤



Look how shiny and pretty it is! Reminds me of mermaids or fish scales...


You'll have to excuse my cuticles, this was taken a little while ago when I just started growing my nails properly! （　´_ゝ`）


Anyways, the basic lowdown on this polish is as follows: the polish is basically a dark navy blue, translucent jelly base with a mixture of fine navy glitter, larger hexagonal blue glitter and green glitter, and some silver bits too. It's not too thin and not too thick- perfect for building up those coats to get it truly opaque!
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I usually go for 2 thick or 3 thin coats of this, and I use the brush to place glitter evenly so I don't waste polish. It's not actually too tricky to do this since the polish is such a nice consistency. You just need to make sure to spread the navy blue base fairly evenly so things don't get patchy, but the glitter covers any minor patches anyway.
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I personally LOVE this polish - everytime I wear it as a super-special cheer-myself-up manicure, it sparkles all day long and I always get lots and lots of compliments! （　'  u  '  )
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It lasts a long time on me if I use a regular coat of Sally Hansen Mega Shine with Revlon Liquid Quick Dry on top of it - at least 5-7 days. However, it could probably last longer if I didn't change my nail polish so often!
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 It's a bit of a pain to remove because of the glitter, but not impossible.
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I especially like to use this on the tips of gold / duochrome polishes such as OPI's Just Spotted The Lizard (another favourite of mine) to give a pretty, mermaid-y gradient effect. This way I get the sparkle but don't waste this beautiful but pricey polish!


That's all from me for this review! Thank you for reading and please do tell me if it was useful! ♡