ManGlaze Nawsome Sauce Swatches - and I made a lightbox!

I finally got round to making a lightbox! I can post swatches again! I think it turned out okay, the pictures still aren't as good as I'd like (the lighting still doesn't seem consistent) I think I just need to tweak the lighting and my camera angles a bit. I think my pictures look a bit better lighting-wise though, compared to old posts. What do you think? And how many times do I need to say lighting?

This is Nawsome Sauce by ManGlaze. I've said in the past how much I love ManGlaze, their polishes have fun names (Butt Taco?) and their Facebook humour amuses me.

ManGlaze are true matte polishes and the formula is wonderful, especially for a matte. I used two coats and it went on nice and smooth with no drag.

I also took some bottle pictures because ManGlaze bottles are awesome.

Do you own any of this brand? What do you think of them?

Funky Squares

Hello! I have to let you in on a horrifying secret...I haven't bought a nail polish in almost 3 months. What's worse, it wasn't even a conscious decision. (I know, who AM I?) I must remedy this before I break out in a sweat. Definitely going to stop by Illamasqua this week I think, I have my eye on something. Having an Illamasqua store in my city is both a blessing and a curse!

Anyway, I've christened this mani Funky Squares. I first saw this style on Lucy's Stash and decided to try it myself. Admittedly, I'm not a fan of my chosen colours. It seemed better in my head!

Stupid, awful lighting. MAKE A LIGHT BOX, WOMAN! 

My base colour is Barry M Indigo. The gold is H&M Golden Treasure, and the silver is China Glaze Icicle. The pink striping tape is from eBay.

I feel like doing this again but with different colours. I wanted to use black tape, but for some reason in my 10-pack of striping tape, there was no black. Annoying!

Illamasqua Nomad & Stance Cling Film Mani

Hi! I have another cling film mani today. I know it's sort of a lazy person's mani, but when you're stuck for time you can get good effects in minutes. Plus, I just had to try it using Nomad and Stance by Illamasqua, two of my favourites. They always look so good together. 

I used the same method I described in this post. 

See what I mean by how good they look together? I can't get enough of Illamasqua! Do you own any of their polishes? I think I have about 16 now. Must get swatching.

Lightning Glitter

Hi! I did not even realise I'd reached 700 followers, I'm awful. Planning a giveaway that should be up soon. Only a small one but y'know, I can only dream of sponsored giveaways!

I'd been meaning to use BM-305 for a while because it has that lovely lightning bolt stamp. I had trouble getting it to stamp crisply though, it was intent on defying me. Pesky stamp. I've said stamp a lot.

Base colour is Barry M Gelly in Blackberry. I did a glitter fade using Barry M Silver Multi-Glitter, which is one of my favourite glitters, it's so pretty. I used Barry M Silver Foil Effects for the stamp. As usual it's a Barry M fest on my blog!

Kind of unsatisfied with this, gonna need to try that stamp again!

Rio Beauty Marble Nail Art Polish - London Collection - Review

Press Sample

Hi!

I'll start by admitting I am terrible at water marbling. So bad. It's just something that has never worked out for me, and I've only ever done one that was even worth posting (and that took about 47 tries)...I just end up looking like I've fallen into a bucket of random nail polish colours. So, when Rio Beauty contacted me and asked if I'd like to review a product, I decided to give it all another go and chose the Marble Nail Art kit.

It arrived very quickly and I sat staring at it for a while like it was my nemesis. I had to open it in the end though as the pretty colours on the box lured me in! 

This is what you get in the kit - 

5 bottles of Marble Nail Art polish (Orange, Black, Green, Red, White)

1 collapsible rubber marbling pot (I was overly excited by this)

5 Practice Nails

5 Orange Sticks

Masking Tape

1 mini bottle of Acetone

1 bottle of 2-in-1 base and top coat

Instruction Leaflet

Design Chart

Step-by-Step DVD

I decided to watch the DVD first instead of just jumping right in.

The DVD is quite short so won't consume much of your time, but it manages to squeeze everything you need to know in. I found it quite helpful to actually see somebody doing it. 

After the DVD I had a go with the practice nails (something I'd never thought of doing before) as you can see my first couple of attempts weren't great, but I got a bit better as I went on! The nail polish is described as having a thinner consistency than regular polish, which didn't seem evident to me at first, but I noticed it did spread out better on the surface of the water.

The design card included with the kit is helpful as it shows you how to create a selection of patterns.

Now it was time to try it on my real nails. This was my first attempt, and I actually managed it! Sure, it's not perfect, but since my previous attempts have been so disastrous, I was really happy with the result! 

I'm not sure what it was about the kit that enabled me to actually complete a water marbling mani successfully, as I know it is possible to do it with regular polish. It may have been the fact that the polish spread out on the water better, or actually seeing somebody else do it on the DVD. If you run in to trouble, there's a handy troubleshooting section in the instruction leaflet.

Here's another couple of designs I did using the kit. I messed up my ring finger a little on the first, but we'll ignore that! Practice makes perfect when it comes to marbling.

3 manis actually worth posting, I'd consider that a success! Now I've figured it out a bit more, I'll be trying lots of different colour combinations and patterns.

I'd recommend this kit for people that are new to water marbling, or to those who have struggled with it in the past. It contains everything you need to get going and would make a nice gift for somebody just getting into nail art.

Would you use this, or buy it for someone else? Or are you already fantastic at marbling? (In which case I probably hate you)!

You can buy this kit on the Rio Beauty website for £24.99.

Press Sample