Chanel SS12 Nails

I was excited to see the photos from the Chanel SS12 show a couple of weeks back and an idea for some nails came to me when I saw this pic:

Mmm pearls and pretty pastels and golds on those jewels. It had to be done. Here's my Chanel SS12 manicure:

To do this manicure I first painted two coats of Revlon's "Coconut Crush" before water-marbling pastel colour polishes (see below for list). Next I applied pink and white pearls on the half moons of my nails and then added a gold Chanel decal onto the center of each nail before sealing the whole design with some Seche Vite.

Gold: NARS "Kismet"
Purple: Barry M Boots Limited Edition
Teal: China Glaze "For Audrey"
Blue: Barry M "Blueberry Ice Cream:
Pink: Barry M 119
Decals: eBay
Pearls: Poundland

I quite like these nails although I was going for a more subtle, not quite so bright look. I think my favourite nail is my left thumbnail (last photo) and I wish that all of them had come out more like that but water-marbling is so unpredictable (hard if you're a control freak like me!)

I also really enjoyed the Louis Vuitton SS12 collection so watch out for those nails coming up!

Born Pretty Store's Colour Changing Polish

This is something I've been meaning to get up for a while now (lack of internet and working shitloads will make you fall behind with blogs, so I've been told..)

Holographic nails were a go-to look for me over summer due in part to the bright summer sun working their magic on those beautiful glitter particles but now I have another go-to summer nail polish! Using the sun again to work its magic, this polish goes from milky white to bright, hot magenta pink depending on how bright the sun is.

I totally marvelled over my nails for a good few days, as did all the people I showed them to (yep, people, not just girls but boys also!) Here's a video which doesn't quite justify the super amazingness of it all:

That video doesn't quite show you just how bright the polish can turn. Here's a pic of my scraggly nails standing on the platform waiting for the tube to go to work one particularly sunny morning:

Pretty amazing, huh?

It's not all great news though. I have to be honest and say that the formula was a bit weird. And by weird I mean gloopy and taking quite some time to dry. Once dry the polish had a rather matte finish. And it chipped a lot and really easily too (hence that massive hunk that came off on my index finger in the picture). You can put a topcoat on this, it won't affect the final finish or the colour changing properties of the polish but it didn't seem to help! You'd think that because it chipped easily that it would be quite easy to remove, right? Well, no. Not at all! See, I ended up with half nails of polish, bits here, bits there. It drove me mad. So I tried to take it off. Nope, not budging. I had to get out my cheapie Boots nail polish remover which contains acetone (I found out that night that my regular remover doesn't contain acetone), soak cotton wool pads in this and then wrap my fingers in tin foil for at least five minutes before it would turn gloopy again and peel-off-able. Here's my futuristic robot fingers:

Despite all the negatives, I do think I'll be using this again albeit not for a while (what's up with these darker evenings, super depressing). At only $6-something it works out to about £4, plus there's free worldwide shipping and I think for £4 you're not going to find anything else quite like it on the highstreet! (I did see that H&M I think had some UV colour changing polishes but as I'm not a regular frequenter of clubs it's not something for me personally.)

I also feel obliged to say that I bought this polish with my own money as part of a bigger order I placed with BPS. Also in my order were the acrylic mixing system and 3d molds so look out for a review on those in the somewhat near future!

Colour changing nail polish from Born Pretty Store, $6.14.