Viva La Nails Black Friday Sale!

Hey guys, a quick PSA, Viva La Nails is having a Black Friday Sale! Better still, it applies to EVERYTHING on their site!

Use this coupon code BLACK for a 25% discount on anything in the shop!

This is valid for the whole of this weekend ( 23/11/12 - 25/11/12) only, so if you're interested, get cracking at Viva La Nails!

Valentine's Day Nails with Flowers and Gems!

After my Valentine's Day nails with no pink at all, as well as my Anti-Valentine's Day nails (gasp, I know!), I decided to be nice and do a proper Valentine's Day nails - with a little of my style added, of course. I did do a nail look with flowers and girly colours, but it's also something I would actually wear out, that's not puke inducing (you know, all pastels and stuff).

Basically, for this Valentine's Day nail look, I used Nails Inc Queens Park, a gorgeous deep pinky-purple with a shimmery, almost-metallic-y, duochrome-y finish. I really love this colour, the jewel tone of the shade just makes it so striking, and very gorgeous! I can't think of very many colours I love more than this, and if purple is your thing (as it is mine) you know you HAVE to get this shade, even if it's only sold half the world away.'

On top of Nails Inc Queesn Park, I added some flower stickers, to give that girly touch. And if I were a little bit more normal like most people, I would have been happy to stop there, and it would have been a perfectly fine Valentine's Day manicure for a night out. But nooo, something inside me was crying out for more bling. So I added on some flower-shaped gemstones! So now my nail is so blingy right now. Both the nail art stickers and gemstones were bought from Viva La Nails.



The first thing I did after I had done this nail look of course, was take it to Twitter (if you follow me on Twitter you would have seen this) and Facebook (ditto the friending me on Facebook), to ask professional opinion (by professional I meant "other awesome bloggers and whoever was online then") if I had really over-blinged my nails. Fortunately, noone thought I over-blinged my nails. I guess there's worse out there, for sure, but I don't think I've ever worn so many stickers and gems on my nails at one go...



Anyway, since noone thought my nails were too blingy, I wore them out to work the next day, and to my surprise, the world didn't crumble. So there you have it - my overenthusiastic attempt to add some flowery girliness to my nails! I think, though, next time I wear Queens Park, I'm going to wear it alone. I feel like the colour is stunning enough to deserve a whole mani by itself.

Viva La Nails 3-Day 25% Off Sale!

Just a heads up for those interested, Viva La Nails, the online Europe-based retailer of nail art products, is having a 25% off sale for 3 days! This discount applies to ALL the products in their store, and you need to use the code BLACK to get the 25% off discount. They sell a huge range of really cool stuff, including nail stickers, rhinestones, fimo canes, decals, and so on, so if you're itching to stock up on more, why not check it out?

I've had pretty good experiences with Viva La Nails so far, and I've previously gotten stuff from them without delay, and I've also previously done a grey and black nail art with their products that actually turned out pretty nice.

(I am not affiliated with/compensated by the company.)

Nail Art Fun: Essie Chinchilly and Viva la Nails!

I love nail stickers and nail gems, because they can really dress up a manicure, and they accommodate people of all sorts of inclinations. If you don't have much time, simply slapping on a sticker will do. On the other hand, if you want to do intricate little designs with nail gems, that's also perfectly possible!

For this NOTD, I wanted to make a girly, yet not all pink-and-swirly NOTD, so I dressed what was otherwise a boring grey NOTD. I used these nail stickers and nail gems from Viva la Nails. Aren't they absolutely adorable? I used a pack of nail stickers that had teeny tiny little rhinestones on some of the stickers, and a pack of black gemstones.



For the base I used Essie Chinchilly, which by the way is the most gorgeous grey creme I've seen. It's grey, but it doesn't have much blue in it, and in fact it does seem to have a tinge of green compared to other greys, so it's perhaps the most ideal grey I've seen for warm-toned people. I love this one because it's not too cool-toned. And application and pigmentation was excellent, to boot.

Then, using a pair of tweezers, I picked up the black gemstones one by one and stuck them along my smile line on the nail, parallel to the free edge. Or at least attempted to, since not all my lines were perfect. And then I stuck on some flower nail art stickers for interest.

This is the final result:



I don't know about you, but I'm absolutely in love with it! I loved how the Viva la Nails art stuff totally glammed up my grey mani. And I love how it's fun and feminine without being OTT, you know? It's a very happy medium as far as nail art is concerned.

I wore these for a good while before I finally decided to remove them, and I didn't have any problem with them falling off or peeling off my nails. I applied two coats of topcoat (one slow-dry and Seche Vite on top of it), so I think that really secured them.



I'm totally enjoying the Viva la Nails nail art stuff, I have a bunch of their stuff, and it's really good quality - no tacky stuff that falls apart here! I love that they have individual gemstones, stickers, and even some less conventional items like feathers! (I'm still trying to figure out what to do with a feather on my nails, but if I ever do, you can bet you'll be hearing about it!) They're UK-based, and shipping is cheap (2.95GBP and up) and fast when I placed my order, so if you want to get anything from them, I highly recommend it!