Update: Nail Pop Polish News

Hello readers,
I must apologise for the length of time since I wrote a blog here but with moving home and working, I've found myself very restricted in having time to do so.  Well today I am able to type and I figure this seems as good a time as any to talk some more about my indie brand Nail Pop Polish and some news I have in regards to it!
I'm excited to announce that as of August I will be selling my brand at a local shop that is dedicated to makers of all different items.  I cannot wait to be a part of this new chapter with Nail Pop Polish and I have a busy two weeks ahead in preparation of stock.  I am also looking into changing my logo and sticker design on my bottles to enhance their aesthetics (this was on the cards anyway, I just need to speed it up now!).

If you are a follower of me on Instagram (if not, why not?!) I have been posting lots of sneaky macro shots and #pourn vids of my upcoming new range.  I'm going to share some pictures and information on my new collection with you today so that this post doesn't turn into a wall of text.  The next theme is......

The Egyptian Collection 
This is a collection of 8 new polishes inspired by Egypt and Egyptian history.  It's my first glitter heavy collection too and after some trial and error with working out the best ingredients, I hope you will all be as excited as I am to try these out when I release them at the end of the month.

Jewel Of The Nile is a blue micro glitter holo.  I've tried my hand with this collection at making solid glitter polishes and I'm excited to see what everyone thinks.

Gift To The Gods is a chunkier orange holo glitter in a clear base.  This is the first polish I made for this collection as I fell in love with this glitter when I got my supplies through.

Valley Of The Blings is a silver and blue glitter packed concoction.  I just love the flecks of blue standing out on this one to make it different. 

Oasis is a hard one to describe and an even harder polish to capture in it's true light!  It's a bit like Champagne's sister as it has that golden holo feel but this one is packed with a green shimmer that reflects in the light.

Last one I have to share a picture of with you is Sahara Sunset.  This polish really is like the setting sun trapped in a bottle.  Holo with a strong red shimmer as the light hits it.

The other three polishes in the collection are Mummy's Delight, Pharaoh's Gold and Arabic Nights.  I've sent my samples out to swatchers so I'm sure you will be seeing plenty of shots coming soon on social media!

I'm really excited to see how well this collection is received, not only online but in store too as this is such an exciting prospect for me. This is my first glitter heavy collection too so I hope everyone likes what I have made.

I have also opened up international shipping so if you are outside the UK and would like my polishes, please send me a private message either on Etsy or Instagram for a quote.

Thanks for reading and I hope you are as excited about Nail Pop Polish as I am!

Lyn

 

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Unboxing: Meebox 010 (Ririmee)

Hi hi!
I feel like I've been neglecting this blog a bit recently but I've been busy with work and looking for a new home so I think I can be forgiven....right?  To make it up to you today I have my thoughts and pictures to share with you on May's Meebox goodies.

This months box was jam packed with nail stuff!  The box contained four polishes and two nail art items.  Now it wouldn't be a Rihanna inspired box without some silver spikes and cuticle tattoos would it?! I've never tried cuticle tattoos before so I'm going to be using these in the future for taking my swatches.  The little silver spikes have come from Sparkly Nails which sell lots of cool nail art goodies if you want to treat yourself.  The mini OPI is a nail envy strengthening treatment; not something I need to use myself but still a nice addition to the box.

Now let's get onto the polish.  My first ever Zoya, this is Leah and is from the Satin finish range.  With the trends nowadays a nude is a must have for your collection and I was happy to receive this.  

 
Just how pretty is this?  It was almost a one coater and I think if you have smaller nails you could get away with one coat.  I did two for complete opacity and didn't use any top coat.  Not sure what kind of top coat you would use on this anyway as a glossy one would take away from the satin finish.  I think it's one where you are not suppose to need a top coat but I have to always top coat as I just love that glossy finish so much!

This is two coats of polish and no top coat so that you can see the satin finish effect.

Polish two is a striking red.  Just how good is this theme?  It ticks all the boxes for things Rihanna would wear.  Now I don't normally wear reds as I feel it doesn't suit me but this one was really nice.  It seemed to be just the right shade to compliment my skintone.

Made by Wah London Nails this is called Love My Team.  A first time for me trying out this brand and let me tell you I'm impressed.  This is just one coat of colour and no top coat, perfect coverage.  Looking forward to trying more of this brand in the future.

 Sparkly holo goodness!!  I am a sucker for a holo polish and what makes this one so much better is that it comes from a fellow indie polish maker called Hayley.  I had my eye on this polish on her Etsy store and was close to buying it when it turned up in my Meebox.  I love to see companies supporting the indie makers.  It makes me love your box even more.

Higitis Figitis comes from Danglefoot Nail Polish and you can find Hayley's store on Etsy.  This is just one coat too!  I posted a live video of this polish in action on my Instagram so feel free to check it out.

There we go, May's Meebox which was Rihanna inspired.  What do I think?  Amazing.  Each month I am continually impressed with the theme and content that the girls put into each of the boxes.  Meebox costs £20 per month and has always contained items worth this price and more.  I look forward to the end of the month knowing that my new box will be arriving!  

You can check out my unboxing video here:

and my live swatches of these polishes will be up tomorrow (2/6/16).

thanks so much for reading!

Lyn
 
 


 

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Trying Something New...

Hello readers :)

I feel like I have been so busy lately and just not had time to write this blog that I wanted to do at least a week ago now.  I'm always looking for new ways to work with my nail passion and share it with all my followers on social media.  When I was sending out my sample polishes to be swatched, I sent some to Elaine who along with taking pictures also did live swatches.  What is that you ask?  Basically you record yourself painting your nails with the polish, showing how it applies and recording a voice over to chat about your opinions on it.  Then of course you take lots of pretty pictures to add in too and share on other social media.

Why do this?  I have been wanting to expand the content of my youtube for a while now and this is one way to do it.  Currently I have my weekly Friday 10am nail art upload and my sporadic review videos that come in as and when I have products to review.  I'd really like to be able to upload  two videos a week.  Now being honest, that won't be found with my live swatch series.  These will only go up when I've purchased new polishes or have some new collections from my indie range to share.  I'd really like to stop being lazy and do a gel or acrylic tutorial each week also, perhaps uploading those on a Tuesday.

Less talking about it and more doing it then!   Well this also comes with more stress on my part in coming up with designs.  There are some weeks I struggle to come up with a new nail art design and I get so frustrated with myself.  I have mountains of nail art goodies and quite often my mind just goes blank staring at them.  So that is a downside to adding a new weekly video to my schedule.  

What about the upsides though?  I think I would expand my viewer base on youtube and help grow my channel through broadening my content.  Some people might not like doing designs in regular polish as a lot of people struggle with the durability of it (though I would say most of my designs can easily be replicated in gel).  There are also some designs that can only really be done with gel or acrylic such as 3D work.

I've so far filmed and uploaded one live swatch video which was the polish that came in April's Nailbox and I am going to film a small OPI haul I bought recently today so that will be coming soon.  

What are your thoughts on seeing gel/acrylic/live swatch vids?  I'd love to know what you think or if you have a suggestion for something else I could do to share with you all I would love to hear it.  If you made it this far through my wall-o-text thank you!  Here is the link to my first Live Swatch video also so you can take a look at what I would like to do more often.

Until next time,
Lyn

 

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Making New Collections

Hi everyone,

I realise that it has been a little while since I wrote something other than a review post on here so today I'm going to fix that!  I've been working hard behind the scenes on a new collection for my indie polish brand Nail Pop Polish and it shouldn't be too much longer now until it is released.  I decided to go with the theme of Mythological Creatures and came up with six new shades.  If you have been following me on other social media you might have already seen the sneak peaks I've been posting lately.  I regularly use Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so feel free to give me a follow on there.

Let's get into the collection details.  Like I said there is six in the range; Unicorn Dust, Dragon Scales, Minotaur, Pegasus, Mermaid Tears and Phoenix.

Polish number one is Pegasus.  This pretty is a pearlescent white with some scattered holo glitter.  I've done two coats of colour and no top coat.  As soon as I made this one I knew it would be my Pegasus, the mythical sheen on the white just screams out Pegasus' wings to me.  You also know I can't resist through that holographic glitter into the mix too.  I think I'm a bit of an addict!

Minotaur is an orange-brown with scattered holo glitter.  This is also only one coat as it's very pigmented.  Naming this one was easy as most depiction of Minotaur's show them as brown furred so this creation fitted the bill.  I'd like to try out some other brown shaded polishes in the future as I feel it's a shade that is quite often avoided.

 
 Polish three is named Phoenix due to its fiery orange-yellow shimmer.  This is again a good pigmented product so you can get away with one coat.  How do people feel about one coat polishes?  Is it something that's high up on your list when you choose a polish?  Let me know your thoughts.  Personally I like any polish that is opaque in 1 or 2 coats.

Say hello to Dragon Scales, a mint green with scattered holo sparkle.  At first I went down the route of making a darker green shade but it wasn't what I was looking for.  So why not go the opposite way and make a lighter shade?  I love this mint green and besides, dragons can be any colour you want them to!

 The fifth polish is Mermaid Tears.  This blue based polish is packed with micro blue flakie glitters.  I had tried this polish first of all using blue glitter instead of the flakies but this is the one that won in the end.

I saved what I think is the best for last.  Here is Unicorn Dust.  It is a holographic topper so you can put it over a base colour of your choice and make that holo sparkle goodness come alive!  I posted a video of it over blue, black and red on my social media HERE

So there you have it, six polishes that are my Mythological Creatures Collection and will be out by the end of the month.  I hope you are excited as I am for the release and like I said keep a look out on my social media for regular teasers and updates.

Thanks for reading
Lyn


 
 


 

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Forward Thinking

Hello :)
Today's blog is going to be a little different.  It's still in relation to nails though so don't worry!
We are now half way into January and a lot of people like to make themselves New Year Resolutions.  I'm not exactly going to talk about that in this post, but I am going to talk about some goals that I would like to achieve for myself this year nail related.

My Youtube Channel
Some of you might not know (why not?!) that I have a YouTube Channel that I run under the name Nala Nails.  My first video went live in May 2013, wow that seems so long ago now.  I've come a long way since then, learning how to edit, add music and along the way get myself a much better video camera for quality!  I am really proud at how my channel has developed and grown over this time and that I have over 1200 people subscribed to me.  Now I know this is a minuscule amount compared to many other nail channels, but we all have to start somewhere.
I would like to see my channel reach 2000 subs this year.  I also want to put out more gel and acrylic tutorials and do more toenail art videos.  I love being able to share my passion with others and this is one of the methods I doing it via.

NailPopPolish
My indie polish line.  This is a brand new adventure for me that only started in November 2015.  I opened up my Etsy Shop to the public on November 27th.  There was interest in people looking at what I had but there wasn't any buyers.  I started to think of reasons for this, was my prices too high?  Is my stock not what the customer is after?  Have I not advertised enough?  As it turns out one of what I assume to be the main reason, I had managed to mess up my postage calculations and it was charging way too much!  Thankfully that is now all fixed up and I've done some sales through Etsy but also privately.
I want to make this venture more of a success.  I know that no business is ever easy to take off so I'm looking into options to promote it.  I have been using money off codes, I have sent out samples, I've sent out prizes for giveaways and I share lots of videos and pictures of my creations.
I would like to run a giveaway soon.  I don't know if I want to create a custom polish and use that as the prize, or if I should let the winner work with me to create the polish of their choice.  This is just me thinking out loud for now.  I would like to see my indie polish flourish this year.

Instagram
Recently my Instagram Page has seen a bit of a flourish in followers.  I have put this down to my #pourn videos.  If you don't know what these are, it is bottle shots of polish being poured into their bottles.  People are going crazy over these and I have to admit there is something quite satisfying about watching them.  Whenever I am making up polish I always record a video of the pouring so that I can share it.  These videos can gain much "love" from the insta community, allow new followers to find your page, promote my nail polish line and hopefully in turn allow them to find all my other social media outlets.  
Where would I like my Instagram to get to this year?  Well I'm sitting at 417 followers currently and I would love to make it to 600.  I don't feel like this is too unrealistic a goal and after all this post is all about my goals for this year.

Twitter
This social media is a mixed bag for me as sometimes I get really frustrated with the character limit for writing.  My Twitter has 318 followers and for me, gets the least engagement from all the social media I post on.  The question is why though?  It would be nice to see me reach 400 on here this year.  Perhaps I'm using the wrong hashtags to allow people to find me?  Perhaps there just isn't a lot of nail lovers on Twitter!  I'm not sure to be honest.  

Facebook
For me personally, I find my page "likes" are mostly made up of people I know, family or friends.  I guess that's to be expected as Facebook primarily is about connecting with friends isn't it? My Page was made up as a "like page" firstly for advertising and promoting my business.  Some of you might not know that I am a qualified nail tech and I do clients.
I always share any client pictures when I take them, but it's also moved on to being my advertising for my indie brand, my Youtube videos and blogs.
Again my Facebook page isn't a place of huge social interaction and so I average around 100 on my engagement stats.  If people want nails done I will end up with private messages.  I'd like to see my page reach 700 "likes" and that isn't a huge goal away from what I'm currently sitting on but I know that once again, it is not a strong source of engagement for me personally.

I realise this post is all text and no pictures but due to the nature of content I can't say there was any relevant pictures to place here.  This is just me sharing some personal nail related goals for this year so that I can come back to this post in 2017 and see how I did.  If you managed to get this far, thank you for reading!

Until next time,
Lyn









 

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Creating Indie Polish

Hi everyone :)
Recently I have been working hard at creating new polish for my indie polish line.  I have my shop on etsy you can find me HERE.  It's not as easy as you might think this polish larky, it can actually be frustrating at times.  You get this idea in your head then try to make it a reality and end up with a disaster!  I've made my fair share of fails in my journey but I take it all as experience.  Sometimes the only way to learn is by making mistakes first then going back for round two with a different tactic.

My focus recently has been in trying to create "the perfect" holographic polishes.  Now the best product to do this with is called Spectraflare which unfortunately isn't allowed by EU regulations.  I researched into finding alternatives and I did find an American seller on Etsy who sold two different options.

This is Silver Lining.  I'm really proud of this one!  It's got some really amazing holographic properties to it.  I've filmed a video of it on my nails and put it on my Instagram so you can see how amazing it looks in the light. My next challenge after this was trying to keep that strong holo effect into different colours.  Not as easy as you would think!

Angel Wings was attempt number two.  This came out a faded lilac-grey and at first I deemed it a fail.  After swatching it, I actually fell in love with the effect it has.  It's hard to capture it's true beauty on camera.

Creating nail polish is fun but can also be frustrating when you can't replicate the image in your head.  It really is a lot of trial and error.  I have a few polishes that will never be released as they turned out a disaster!

 
 My third holo try was this pinky-red.  Again these holos are just so hard to photograph without some amazing sunlight (and theres certainly none of that around here!)  This one is more of a jelly finish.  How do people feel about jellies?  I think it's a type of polish that you either love or hate.

So that's the most recent happenings in Nail Pop Polish land.  I post more frequent swatches, pics and videos on my social media so you can find me there if you want to see all the sneak peeks first.

thanks for reading,
Lyn
 
 

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NailPopPolish - My Indie Brand

Hi everyone,

Today's blog post is all about me!  Well not exactly me, but my own indie polish range.  You'll know I do reviews on here and share with you all other nail related thoughts that I feel like talking about but now it's time to talk just about my brand.
Remember an earlier post where I started to look into the world of indie polish and I shared with you the ones I found and some swatches of ones I had purchased?  That got me thinking into what you actually need to do to make your own.  I did a lot of research and found a site that sells the materials needed and after some trial and error I can say I think I've got the hang of it now!  I just recently opened up my own shop on Etsy and you can find me here trading under NailPopPolish.

I'm still new to the whole branding thing and I've been trying different avenues to get my name out there.  If you follow me on any of my social media I have been sharing a lot of pictures, videos and nail art using my own brand.  I've also sent out press samples to the lovely Mo from Pretty Quirky (Blog Here) and she shared some amazing pictures.  It is so wonderful to have such positive feedback on something that I created and I'm happy my creations are being liked!

I feel like I've done enough rambling in this first part that it's time to share with you some pictures and videos.

This is my most recent uploaded video to YouTube and in it I used my polish Milkyway (it's the bluey-purple sheen you can see).  I love the diversity of this polish.  This is actually how it looks in the bottle:

This is a topper polish so you will get a different effect over different base polishes.  If you want it to stay as close to the bottle colour you can get, apply it over white.  I also think this looks great over a french manicure for that beautiful sheen.

For the moment I have 2 collections and 4 misc polishes (ones I created and liked but didn't have a particular theme for).  You can find 7 in my Stars & Planets Collection, 3 in my Flowers Collection and 2 in my misc section.  I sell in 5ml and 10ml bottles and all my range is 5-free.

What do you mean 5-free?
You might have seen this come up in other polish collections (mainstream and indie) or even seen some saying 3-free.  This means that my polish does not contain the following; Toluene, Formaldehyde & Dibutyl Phthalate(DBP), Camphor and Formaldehyde Resin.  It is also cruelty free.

Here's one of my misc polishes, Sprinkles.  This one is a really fun topper that contains multi-coloured matte circles.  I wanted to create something different with this one and I think I achieved that.

This turned out to be a great macro shot of Forget-Me-Not as I managed to capture that golden sheen it has!  This one as I'm sure you can guess is from the Flowers Collection.  I am really pleased with this one as it comes out very opaque in two coats and when I first mixed it up I thought it might end up being a more sheer effect.  It took me a while to name this one which surprised me.  With my Stars & Planets Collection I had names picked out before I had the actual polish mixed up!

I created this nail art design recently and used Stellar over the black.  Stellar is a mix of two different sized silver holographic glitter suspended in a clear base and I can't get enough of it over black!  I am obsessed with all things shiney as I'm sure you can tell!  I have just placed an order for some different holo pigment to try out and I can't wait for that!  (That collection won't be available until 2016, so stay tuned for that!)

I don't want this post to go on for too long as I have so many pictures and videos I want to share.  Instead I will leave you all my social media links and if you want to check out more nail art and everything else nails you can :)

Facebook 
Twitter 
Instagram 

thanks for reading,
Lyn
 
 


 

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