Hello readers! Welcome to another unboxing/review/picture overload of the goodies received in this months Meebox. Now if you don't know who Meebox are, it is a monthly nail related subscription box for the UK and costs £20. Each month there is a different theme and this time it was Blackberry Margarita.
This month you received 3 full size polishes, 1 striper polish and nail stencils along with swatch sticks for each polish. Also inside was a little money off code for A England's website if you fancy some more goodies!
Look how cute these stencils are from She Sells Seashells! I've bought loads from this company before and they are always high quality. I like that you have the option of using the outer part as a stencil or using the inner section as a sticker, 2 for 1 deal! They fit perfectly with the theme of the month, great addition!
The striper is in the colour Neon Lime and is made by Nubar. The brush has a really fine tip for detailed work, a must in my opinion as I hate that some of the cheaper brands give them thicker brushes almost comparable to the standard polish bottle size. I see this being great to use for leaves or any other design of your choosing. It's easy to use and very good quality.
Polish number one is not only a stunning shade, it's also an indie polish! I love to see a company teaming up with small indie polish makers and sharing their creations. I've purchased from 'Ard As Nails already and the polishes are fantastic.
This is Little Legs, a deep red linear holographic and only one coat at that! the coverage is amazing, the application is fantastic. I really can't rave about this enough! I'll also add that none of my swatches have top coat and you still get an amazing shine finish.
I am a sucker for anything holographic, though normally I keep away from wearing reds. This shade however is in my opinion the "right" shade and I am in love with it. You can find 'Ard As Nails on her website where she also sells other hand made goods.
Next up is A England in shade Elaine. Now this one was so hard to photograph in true light! On my nails it is leaning towards a brown shade but I promise you it is a very deep purple. You have no idea how many pictures I took in different lighting to try and get a true representation!
Ive done two coats here but you could definitely get away with just one thicker coat. This is my first A England polish I've used and I really liked it. Application for good, the polish formula was very nice. I just wish I could of got better pictures of it on the nail.
Final polish of the box is by Model's Own and is called Pink Paradise. This is packed with glitter and mylar in a pink jelly base.
For these two pictures I've done two coats of colour. You can see in this macro shot you have to be a little careful sometimes with where the mylar lies as it can stick up off the nail slightly. However I did not apply top coat for these pictures and I know you would get a smoother finish with one.
How about layering Pink Paradise over a pink base? This would be the method I would choose to use this polish. I've done two coats of my base pink, then just one of Pink Paradise and you can see how much glitter comes out with just one coat. It's a very pretty shade and I think I might just be using it for a Valentines design.
So
there we have January's Meebox contents. What do you think? Are you
subscribed or going to now you've seen the kind of goodies you can get?
I have to say that my hands down favourite from this month has to be
Little Legs. That's right I picked the red! Don't think that will ever
happen again ;)
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!
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.
Hello all, Yes, yes I'm just a tad behind on getting this post up. I blame the boyfriend for not hearing the postie at the door on Christmas Eve which meant I had to wait ages for the post office to open again to finally get my goodies. I am still loving getting these each month and can't wait to open them up to see what's inside.
Here is the contents for December; 3 polishes, a Sallly Hansen nail art pen and Elegant Touch tweezers. The tweezers lived up to my expectations in terms of quality and stay inline with the other Elegant Touch items I've received thus far.
I was very interested to try out this pen. I have always used a dotting tool or striper brush for any of the fine detail work I do so I wondered just how this would compare to it.
The dots were very cleanly placed and all came out the same size. When using a dotting tool you go from large to small dots. From the macro you can see that the dots appear not to be fully opaque, however this isn't noticeable at a standard distance.
The lines again in the macro shot appear to show as slightly sheer but at standard distance this isn't noticeable. I feel that if you were wanting super fine lines then this pen is not ideal for that as for my personal preference they are a little on the thick side. If you were trying to do an abstract design (like I love to do!) the sweeping curved lines that I like would be very hard to do with this as I like the lines to come to a point at the end and with this pen you get the same consistency all the way. Don't see this as a huge negative though. I can see this pen being very useful to newbies to nail art. The concept of holding a pen gives you a more comforting feeling of being in control of the design more then using a flexible striping brush. What are your thoughts on pens VS brush?
Check out this macro shot of the Nails Inc Blossom topper called Bloomsbury Way. This polish contains blue and pink hexes, tiny light pink hexes and shredded pale pink (possibly even white) pieces. Super pretty! You get a good amount of product from one brush stroke but you may want to use the patting method to fill in any gaps.
I applied one coat of Bloomsbury Way over the other two polishes. One "coat" gave good coverage but I did dab a little bit more on to any area that I felt was a little light. I really like this polish. It contains a great selection of "product" (not sure of the exact word I want here, but you know what I mean!) and they all compliment each other. Nicely done.
Polish two is by Morgan Taylor and has the fun name of Best Ball Gown Ever. It's a lilac but with a shimmer of gold/green. Very hard to capture on camera. I applied two coats for an opaque finish.
The shimmer comes through a little on this macro shot. Application was smooth and it dried to a satin like finish. I didn't apply top coat for these pictures. I really like this one and the name gives it brownie points too!
Last polish is Rimmel London Marshmellow Heaven. How cute is that name?! Keeping with the theme of the box being purples, this one is a pastel shade.
Once again for the picture I've done two coats of colour and no top coat. It was a little sheer on first coat but smoothed out on the second. It dried to a shiney finish but I would still always apply top coat.
So there we have it: Decembers Nailboxuk review... in January! Better late than never right? ;) I adore purple so I this box was fantastic for me. The Sally Hansen nail art pen was fun to try out and the tweezers always come in handy and are of high quality. If you want to find out about Nailbox for yourself, just check out their website here: Nailbox Website
As the title suggests I am here to talk about the website Bornprettystore.com I have had these items sent to me for review purposes but I am giving you my honest feedback on them. I love anything nail related and I really enjoy finding bargains too. You can certainly count on this website to find really affordable prices and good quality product. However you do have to take into consideration the delivery time as these items are coming from another country, they can take a few weeks to get to you. I personally would rather pay £1 for an item and wait a couple weeks for it, than pay £4 for the exact same item just because it will get to me in a few days. This company sells more than just nail art items, but I am only here to talk nails with you :)
Here are the four items I choose to share with you; full nail stencils, angel paper, chevron striping tape and shell paper.
First up is this really cool triangle full nail stencil. There is 12 in the packet which I think is great! Now you are probably thinking, why would you need 12, you only have 10 fingers? The way I see it is if you are anything like me then you like to do a practice nail or two before fully committing to a design. On the other hand, you could use a full set of 10 then at another stage use the last two for accent nails! You can find this product HERE and there are a few other styles on offer too. The material is good quality, it's not so flimsy that it would rip but it is also flexible enough to mold comfortably around your nail. Looking forward to using this soon.
Item number two is not your average striping tape, this is zig-zag style! I was excited to see this as I had yet to see it anywhere else and its different to your standard straight tape. The quality again is really good and strong and you can cut to any length. You have flexibility in the way you use the tape; either apply it on your nail for decoration or use it like a stencil and peel off after painting polish over the top. You can find it HERE in a total of six different colours.
Item number three is a shell sheet. This is like a giant sticker that you can cut to size and apply to your nail as you wish. One unfortunate thing is that when I peeled it from the outer paper, some of the glue peeled off a very small part of the design. Still though I like the idea of the product that it almost looks like Paua shell (hope I'm spelling that right....) and its much easier to apply. You can find it HERE and once again there are other colour options available to you.
Last item is what I call angel paper. This one I was most excited about receiving! This seems to be the "in" nail product right now with many nails techs and hobbyists alike using it. It's actually what I'm currently wearing on my nails, but I'll share those pics in a few. This is very thin almost cellophane like material that you can cut to any size/shape you want. You will probably have most often seen it used in "stained glass" nail designs. It's a really versatile piece and I love it. You can find it HERE
Here is how I used it. I made black and white stained glass nails. You can see when put over black you really get that green coming through but when placed over white it's the pink that comes out. I can't wait to experiment more with this in the future and definitely try it over other base colours. I have a tutorial for this design on my YouTube Channel along with the review vid for these items. (Videos go live 27/12/15) I would like to thank bornprettystore for sending me these items to review. If you do decide to check out the site then please feel free to use my 10% off code AIJW10. Until next time, Lyn
Hey all :) It's been a little since I put up a blog and now I have this backlog of things I want to talk through and share with you all and don't seem to have the time to do it especially with it being Christmas soon. Anyway, lets not get distracted with the list of things to be done and instead get on to the topic at hand; Meebox. Now you all know how much I love my nail subscription boxes and I had been thinking about trying this one out for a little while. The one thing that was putting me off it was the price tag of £20 per month (inc P+P). To help you compare this to other sub boxes Nailbox is £15 (inc P+P) and Coloristiq is £15 + £2.80 P+P. Now you can argue with me that there isn't exactly a huge difference between them all price wise and I have to agree with you, but I still took some time before ordering. I can say though that I am really impressed with my package and I do believe it to be worth that £20 price tag. If you want to check them out you can find them here: Meebox Website
Just like other sub boxes, each month is based on a theme with this one being Ice Queen. They also sent you a Christmas card. Each box will always contain 3 polish and then some nail art items or nail treatments. The art items this month is a pack of water decal snowflakes, a pot containing bar glitters and a cute pocket sized nail file that has a chain for you to attach it where you want it. The nail art items have come from the website Sparkly Nails. You also got 3 swatch sticks for trying out the polishes.
First polish is It's Raining Men by Color Club. This is a tricky one to photograph as it's a deep blue/purple like a petrol effect. It was opaque is just one coat but I applied two to hide the imperfections in my nails.
I think this bottle shot shows you the colour effect perfectly. You can see depending how the light hits it the colour effect changes. This polish really is stunning and a clear favorite for me!
You can also see it has that amazing micro glitter shimmer in there too. I can see me wearing this polish very soon, its just too amazing not to!
I took this shot with the light directly shining at it to show you what I mean by its chameleon properties. It went this deep green-blue tone. If you don't own this polish I highly recommend it for your collection!
Polish two is a brand I hadn't heard of; Crabtree & Evelyn in the colour Mica. This is a pretty gunmetal silver. Application was good but you do have to be careful of brushstrokes showing through. I applied two coats to make it opaque.
It's a really nice shade that fits well into the ice queen theme for the month. I don't have one like this in my collection as its on the darker side and most silvers tend to be lighter.
I only used two coats of colour and no top coat for all the pictures. What do you think of this shade and have you used this brand before?
Last polish of the box is actually one I have called Lotus Begin by China Glaze. I was actually disappointed to see that the formula has been changed and it looks nothing like my original bottle! The one shown here is three thin coats of the new bottle which shows it as a softer lilac shade.
Now here they are side by side. The bottom pinky nail is the new bottle and the other shows you three coats of my older bottle. Clearly different shades! I do like both of the colours but it's a shame that the company didn't manage to keep the formula the same.
This is the best picture for comparison. The newer formula also seems more creamy a finish. The polish could do with being a little more pigmented so that you don't need to do three coats but it is still a lovely colour.
So what are my overall thoughts on my first Meebox? At first I was put off by the £20 price tag but after seeing everything I got I am actually very happy with it and I feel it is worth the price. When you consider that posting something like this will cost £2.80, you are paying £17.20 for the actual products which was 3 full size polish, 3 nail pops and 3 nail art items. All in all a good deal in my opinion! I look forward to seeing what next months box contains. This is only the 5th box created by this company and I forsee them going for many years to come. Have you tried out this subscription? What are your thoughts?
I shall have the unboxing video up in the next few days so be sure to keep an eye out for that. Until next time, Lyn
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 :)
This month you received 3 full size polishes, 1 striper polish and nail stencils along with swatch sticks for each polish. Also inside was a little money off code for A England's website if you fancy some more goodies!
Look how cute these stencils are from She Sells Seashells! I've bought loads from this company before and they are always high quality. I like that you have the option of using the outer part as a stencil or using the inner section as a sticker, 2 for 1 deal! They fit perfectly with the theme of the month, great addition!
The striper is in the colour Neon Lime and is made by Nubar. The brush has a really fine tip for detailed work, a must in my opinion as I hate that some of the cheaper brands give them thicker brushes almost comparable to the standard polish bottle size. I see this being great to use for leaves or any other design of your choosing. It's easy to use and very good quality.
Polish number one is not only a stunning shade, it's also an indie polish! I love to see a company teaming up with small indie polish makers and sharing their creations. I've purchased from 'Ard As Nails already and the polishes are fantastic.
This is Little Legs, a deep red linear holographic and only one coat at that! the coverage is amazing, the application is fantastic. I really can't rave about this enough! I'll also add that none of my swatches have top coat and you still get an amazing shine finish.
I am a sucker for anything holographic, though normally I keep away from wearing reds. This shade however is in my opinion the "right" shade and I am in love with it. You can find 'Ard As Nails on her website where she also sells other hand made goods.
Next up is A England in shade Elaine. Now this one was so hard to photograph in true light! On my nails it is leaning towards a brown shade but I promise you it is a very deep purple. You have no idea how many pictures I took in different lighting to try and get a true representation! 
Ive done two coats here but you could definitely get away with just one thicker coat. This is my first A England polish I've used and I really liked it. Application for good, the polish formula was very nice. I just wish I could of got better pictures of it on the nail.
Final polish of the box is by Model's Own and is called Pink Paradise. This is packed with glitter and mylar in a pink jelly base.
For these two pictures I've done two coats of colour. You can see in this macro shot you have to be a little careful sometimes with where the mylar lies as it can stick up off the nail slightly. However I did not apply top coat for these pictures and I know you would get a smoother finish with one.
How about layering Pink Paradise over a pink base? This would be the method I would choose to use this polish. I've done two coats of my base pink, then just one of Pink Paradise and you can see how much glitter comes out with just one coat. It's a very pretty shade and I think I might just be using it for a Valentines design.
