Stripes!

Just a quick design/ tutorial for you all. 

For this you will need 

1) A black polish 

2) A striper

3) A white polish

4) A cear topcoat if you want it to shine

5) Or like me, a matte topcoat, to dull the nails.

What to do:

1) Paint your nails 2-3 coats of white polish (white tends to be a really see through polish, so this may take a while! Although, the polish doesn't need to be really opaque because it will be hidden partially by the stripes)

2) Dip the striper into the black polish and wipe the sides so it has quite a small amount of polish on it.

3) Starting in the middle of your nail, drag the striper from the bottom of your nail up to the top. If you have a shaky hand you may want to rest it on a surface to steady yourself.

4) Repeat this on the left and the right of the original stripe and depending on your nail shape you might want to fit in more stripes.

5) Repeat this for all nails

6) Seriosuly wait for them to dry! I don't mean sit there with a stern look on your face, I just mean give it a serious amount of drying time before applying the topcoat as (learning from experience) if you do it too soon it will smudge all of the black polish, and cause it to seep into the white! 

And that's it. As you can see, up close mine isn't perfect but when other people look at them they hardly notice. Good luck! And-a-Topcoat. xxx

Another stamping design!

Hello again! Just another stamp design from my board, which was by Nella and MoYou (they had both of those names on so I am assuming they go together!?). This design was done in a gold Nella polish and the basecoat was a rimmel London one called 'chic and chearful' which has featured in a previous post.

The picture has got an effect on it but it changed the background more than the actual photo. The design and colours I chose ended up looking really formal (not intended!) but I liked it, surprising because I don't usually go for gold polishes.

I think it would also look really good in black and white, what do you think? And-a-Topcoat. x

    

Barry M & Nails Inc! What more could you wish for?

Hello, everyone. I have returned from my long expedition to the Tropical Rainforest travelling only by camel! Not really, sorry about my sudden unexplained absence, but the good news is I'm back and I think I have quite a few posts lined up so they should be coming soon.

This is just a short (me thinks this is not going to end up being short) little review of the Barry M quick- drying polish and of the Nails Inc Floral street Mews topcoat.

As you can see from the photo, the two polishes compliment each other really well, and I added a little flower on my accent nail from the topcoat. One thing I will say about the Nails Inc topcoat, is that the flowers are very sparse, so you do end up picking them out and dabbing them on your nail. But the polish is really original and spring-like and also dries quickly.

Onto the fast-drying pink polish underneath called 'Kiss Me Quick' I didn't actually find it that fast drying (perhaps because I'm a little impatient). In fact I think the gelly effect polishes are super quick dryers as opposed to this. The colour is so pretty though and it was a tough decision out  of this one or 'eat my dust' which was a dusky blue colour and 'pit stop' which was kind of like an icing brown colour. I do also love the bottles which follow the racing theme and the names! As you know, I do have a thing about clever polish names!

Goodbye, promise I will write to you again soon, And-a-Topcoat. xx

A stamping design!

Hello! I'm going to act like I haven't not posted anything on here in about a month and just get on with the post otherwise you'd still be reading this by tomorrow but I just wanted to share with you a design on one of the boards that I got for Christmas, which has loads of nail designs which you stamp onto your nails. An effect has obviously been put on this photo but it looks very similar to the original design, as I used white and black.

I then added a little gem to my accent nail because I felt like it and I thought it added a nice little salon-ish touch to the look, although it did fall off quite quickly because it was quite big!

I have around 6 posts lined up so hopefully I'll fire them out soon, also sorry if this post seems rushed my laptop battery is dying and it is stressing me out!

All Things Nails: A Beginners Guide

Hi! So, I have done this post as it was requested by one of my loveliest friends, as she has just got into painting her nails (and is already amazing at it!) but she wanted to check she was doing it alright, and how many coats and general tips like that, as she said she'd find it helpful... and here we are! :)
Ok...

This post is going to be in seperate posts. Just, suddenly decided. It's going to be split into 3 posts:

1. How to correctly paint your nails
2. Good places to find your polish/ nail tools.
3. I'll think of the subject of this post when I come to it!

It's going to be my first series! Ok, that must mean the first one is going to be:

HOW TO CORRECTLY PAINT YOUR NAILS!

1) Lift the brush out of the polish, trying not to wipe any polish off the sides.
2) Then, on one side of the brush, wipe away excess polish. Try to make sure that the wipe on the inside and so you don't get a build-up of dried polish on the outside of the bottle as this can make the lid hard to get on and off.
3) Turn the brush over, so that the side with the most polish is going on your nail.
4) Start at the bottom center of your nail and work up. You may need to top up on polish halfway up/ near the top, depending on the length of your nail or type of polish.
5) Then go to the bottom left of your nail and work your way up again
6) Repeat this starting from the bottom right of your nail again.
7)...And there you go!
8) I need to tell you that I am not a proffesional nail painter or anything- this is just the way I paint my nails and it seems to work for me! Hope I helped. And-a-Topcoat. xx

My Nail Polish Wishlist!

Hello me lovelies!

So I thought I would share with you some of my polish Wishlist. I selected 6 of my most wanted ones to share with you guys, if you own any of these polishes I'd love it if you left me a comment to tell me what they're like! 

Ok so the first one is: Barry M 'lychee'. I don't know why I like this seeing as nude colours aren't really my cup of tea, but I just find this polish so dainty! I don't know whether that is the right word but oh well, I think you know what I mean? I saw it when 'one nail to rule them all' reviewed it (by the way I love 'one nail to rule them all'!) and I've wanted it ever since!

The next one is Essie 'bikini so teeny' a really cute light blue/ lilac colour. I saw this when Zoella recommended it on her August favourites video (I think it was her August favourites!?) and it looks so summery and pretty. And it looks really nice on short nails, which I've got at the moment.

The third one is Essie's 'bobbing for baubles' a really dark navy blue/ grey colour. I love dark polishes because they go well with my skin tone and I also love grey and blue- so this polish is basically my dream polish! Hee hee.

I like the China Glaze 'glam' polish because as the name suggests it's so glamorous and would be perfect for parties. I found this when on Pinterest and the amazing photo by glitterandnails.blogspot- made me like it even more!

The penultimate one is Wish upon a starfish by China Glaze and is part of  the sea goddess range. I saw this polish once again on Pinterest and I think I fell in love... It's like fairy dust and cupcakes and unicorns in a bottle! *no unicorns were hurt in the making of this polish* and the name ( you know I have a thing about good nail polish names!) is so clever and fitting.

Nails. Inc alexa hearts 

Aaaw this polish is so cute and quirky.. I wish I had heard of it in time for Valentines Day! This is so different and I really want to get my hands on a new nails. Inc bottle too since they redesigned them. I have a sad feeling you have to buy this as part of a limited edition collection though (which may be quite pricy!) so I don't think I'll get my hands on it soon :(

Hope you liked this post, thought it was something a bit different to do, it had been sitting in my drafts for months so I thought I'd better publish it. I was really nervous to post it because of the images used (as they aren't mine) and I don't want to offend or make someone angry... please just contact me and I will remove them as soon as I can if you recognise one as yours. I have tried to give credit where possible. Lots of love and-a-topcoat. xxx

Mondrian Inspired Nails

Hello there fellow readers!

So I love Mondrian art (if you haven't seen it before, it's basically boxes and lines using the colours black, white, red, blue and yellow) and so I decided to bring it to my nails! I only did it on my accent nails because I didn't have long (that's why there isn't a topcoat! *I know, a crime! Especially when your blog is called And-a-Topcoat...). I just painted all of my nails white and then outlined them with a striper (in black) on my accents I then did the classic mondrian design. A different one for each of the two nails. Here is what they look like!
The polishes used were:

• French White by City Color
• A black striper
• Poppy red by Miss Beauty London (it's actually a gel because at this present moment I have no other normal red polish)
• An old Claire's bright blue polish
• Last but not least, Sunshine yellow by Rimmel London

Ooh and just to let you know, 'A beginners guide to all things nails' is on it's way soon! Thanks for casting your eyes over this short and snappy post, hope to see you again soon! And-a-Topcoat. xx

You can follow me!

Hi, this is just a little notice saying you can now follow my blog by email. Just type in your email (on the right hand side of my blog) and you will receive a notification when I do each post, so you can keep informed! Thanks for getting me to 280+ views, And-a-Topcoat xx

Dainty dots!

Hello there. This is just a speedy post showing you what you can do with the nail art tools I featured in my last post... I decided to do some dainty dots (as the title suggests!) using Barry M 'Prickly Pear' on the bottom and then the shimmery purple polish for the spots. Bye for now, And-a-Topcoat. xx
Oh yeah for some reason I though the necklace I was wearing at the time looked good in the background of the photo, not realising my leg is a weird place for a necklace to be..!

Nail tools!

Eeerm... hello? *sniffle* I'm running out of weird ways to introduce each post with *wipes away tear* I just... What if there aren't an infinite amount of ways to start a blog post? Perhaps a simple hello will just have to do...

5 minutes later 

*Returns from google search of 'forms of hello'...*

Good morning/ Good afternoon/ Good Evening!

Whenever you are reading this good day to you all!

So I recently got treated to some nail art pens. They are basically a long nail tool with two sections of two different coloured polishes. Coming off from these two sections are two different tools/applicators. (Is it just me or should the next few lines be 'you need to go into the first section, break the safe and return. You have fifteen minutes before the lions are released and the alarm goes off... No? I think it's just me, but it sounds like some weird spy movie. Don't even ask where the lions came from!) 

Anyway... one of the ends is just a normal nail brush but the other one is a really fine metal point which allows you to do intricate lines, dots and designs. All you have to do is squeeze the bottle to allow the polish to come out. I think it's a really great idea and it was so easy. The only problem I did find is because I am so weak, when I squeezed the bottle it made me shake quite badly and so sometimes the polish came out a bit wobbly!

But I would recommend them, I think they come in two different varieties of packs with different colours. I got the pack with the colours: yellow, purple, orange, pink, silver and a deep red/pink. They are by JML and I got them from Asda. 

Thanks for reading, And-a-Topcoat. x

Update! (More Marbled Nails)

Hey, hey, hey! So in the Valentines Day post (hope you all had a lovely/ endured Valentine's Day by the way) I included a tutorial on marbled nails and said that the design which I featured would also look good with different colours, those being; red, black and white. So here is a quick little update with what those colours and that effect looks like. I had in mind a vibrant red instead of the burgundy colour I used instead but it looks just as good. Lots of Love And-a-Topcoat. xx 
P.s I might do a new swatch page where (over time) I gradually upload pictures of all my nail colours. I thought you might find it useful to just scroll down and see in case you were thinking of buying a certain brand or colour! I've not decided whether I have time yet to maintain it but let me know what you think.
P.p.s- Also a beginners guide on painting your nails is in the making, as it was requested by one of my loveliest friends so that should be uploaded shortly! It'll be here soon Holmes XD
P.p.p.s Everyone else, just ignore that last sentence!

Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day Eve Eve! Whether you have a date with a yummy pizza (like me) or one with a real human- I have some nails to go with it! So, here is my jumbled up, lots of writing, photo-tastic nail-aholic post all about Valentine's inspired nails...Whoo! *pops a party popper and kisses her pizza*. Hope you enjoy!

1) Number 1 is a marbled design which features many polishes, so I'll get on with it or this post will be changed to valentines day 2016:

• Barry M 'Gelly polish' in 'dragon'
• A generic white polish
• Rimmel London 'grey matter'
• Models Own 'grape juice' scented polish
• A generic black striper
• A generic clear topcoat

Ok, so this effect was created by;

1. Placing big gloops (love that word!) of polish on your nails and using a toothpick, pencil or dotting tool to gently swirl them into eachother, only do this a few times for each nail though- or the colours all mix and turn into one colour. 
2. On my ring finger I then used the striper (but you could use a dotting tool) to make a heart out of dots. If I did this design on my left hand I would have attempted to just draw the outline of a heart but I don't have a particularly steady left hand, so dots just had to do! 
3. Then, I just added a topcoat. This design would also look great with a white, black and red polish for a bit of a smarter/ more classy look. 
4. And that's it- a really easy but effective design!

*warning: this tutorial takes a while to dry because of the amount of polish you have to use, so make sure you have left enough time for them to dry!*

Next up are some really cute and girly sparkly nails which fade out from the bottom of your nail! The polishes used are:

• Bourjois Pairs in 'Rainbow Apparition' (apparition means ghost or ghost-like, so it's a really clever name seeing as there are fine glitters in every colour, along with a background pinkk shimmer)
• Technic in 'carnival' 
• Laval in 'glitter dazzle' 
• Loreal Paris in 'sequin explosion'
• a generic black striper.
• a generic clear topcoat.

Here is how you create the look:

1. Lightly paint your nails using the Bourjois Paris polish, making sure that you get most of the polish at the bottom of your nail, and then pressing even lighter as you get nearer the top.
2. Then with the Laval polish, dab on the big glitter chunks, at the bottom of your nail, which are on the brush. Don't swipe as the glitter is quite scarce,and you just end up with the clear polish instead of the silver glitter.
3. Next, with the technic polish paint up to half way (from the bottom) of your nail. 
4. The last glitter polish to add is the Loreal Paris one, just paint from the bottom of your nail to halfway up.
5. Penultimately (ooh, fancy word!) in the top left corner of each of your nails, get the black striper and pant a short, thick line down from the left. Then another one, joining the one before, from the right. This creates a small love heart. Aaaw- cute!
6. Now just add a topcoat to protect your design, and add even more of a sparkle!

Thankyou for reading. This post has been super looooong, but I hope it was worth it. Love you all, And-a-Topcoat. xxxxx (extra kisses because it's almost Valentine's Day)

Perfect Pastels!

Hi chappies! I painted my nails again (what a surprise (!)) after seeing some inspiration from Pinterest (this amazing website/app where you can pin other people's lovely pictures on different boards which you create, or post your own). The design that I saw was based around the love heart sweets, and I just borrowed the colours and the matte topcoat from it. So here we go...

 Long intro but you made it! The pastel polishes I used were:

• Rimmel London, 'sweet as sugar' polish. (pinky)
• Models Own, scented 'grape juice' polish  (ring finger)
• Model's Own 'apple pie' scented polish (middle finger)
• W7 'powder pink' polish (pointer finger)
• And W7 'lemon sorbet' polish (my hidden thumb!)
• NYC 'matte me crazy' matte topcoat

Those names are very spring-like! I also added a little black heart on my pinky with a striper, although it kind of got misshapen and failed... moving swiftly on!

I had to do 3 coats of each polish, and the two Model's own looked great after 3, but the w7 colours and the Rimmel London needed another coat to look its best, this is just because these are such light colours. Also, the w7 polishes were quite watery. I can't review the scented polishes very well because I have a small cold and my sense of smell has mostly gone, but they smelt amazing when I was doing the final coat.

 The finished look is cute and perfect for spring.Hope you like them as much as I do, lots of love, And-a-Topcoat. xxx

P.s I have a hot chocolate with marshmallows in, very happy after a long day of work ^_^. Just thought I'd share that and make you jealous. Not really, love you all my little sweetcorns. Where did that come from? I'm so crazy.. This 'p.s' is lasting ages, so I'm just going to come to an abrupt stop, right about now!

*whispers* Goodbye...

A bit late!

Hello my lovelies- I hope you are having a happy Tuesday. This post is featuring quite wintry polishes, so if you are sick of winter, skip past this one! Anyway- I know that spring is just around the corner in the UK right now so this post is quite late, but I just thought you'd like to know about the nice polishes, used in this design.

Ok, so, the first polish is called South Kensington and is by Nails. Inc. It is a metallic silver polish and it dries so quickly and smoothly- in fact by the time I had finished painting the second hand, the first hand had completely dried. One lovely comment I got was that it looked like pure silver, and it is so smooth and shiny that it does! I then added the snowflake effect polish, also by Nails. Inc, which is a glittery polish with white glitter hexagons, dots and strands in it. These polishes are actually a recommended duo, as they came in the same set and they do go very well together. However this polish is definitely one that you need to add a clear topcoat to! I found this out because I also painted my toes like my hands and when I went to put tights on, the bumpy glitter on my toenails got caught in my tights and started chipping- what a nightmare!

Anyway, have a great week and if you aren't just be glad that Monday is over- and Mondays are always the worst (well, for me they are anyway!). Goodbye friends, And-a-Topcoat. xx

Nail shapes and sizes

I'm going to try to make this post as short as possible, but I just thought that you might want to know about all the different nail shapes, so you can find one you like or just so you know the name of your shape. One thing I will say is, as these are all different nail shapes these are not my own images- which is something I don't really like doing. If you recognise an image as yours (seeing as I scoured pinterest to find them) please inform me and I will remove it as soon as possible. So here we go:

1) Squoval: These are square nails with rounded edges, which is a fairly common nail size.

2) Square: These nails are prone to breaking but they look formal and neat due to the square shape.

3) Almond: These nails are tall with a rounded point.

4) Rounded/ oval: These nails are fairly short but have a circular tip.

5) Stiletto: These nails are really tall with a sharp tip which comes to a point. I must admit these are my nail goals at the moment- I just think they look so different!

Hope you found this useful- I enjoyed making it :)
Keep coming back and checking for now posts, or subscribe by e-mail and get an e-mail when a new post comes out! Have a nice evening, enjoy your dinner, And-a-Topcoat. xxx

Review: Grey Matter

Wassup!? Sorry... bit of an informal way to start a blog post.
Hello (that's better!) how lovely it is to be writing to you again my fellow chums. I said that I'd do a review of the grey matter polish by Rimmel London since I got it yesterday and I have tried it out- so here you go!
Colour: A dark grey (darker than it looks in the bottle) with a hint of blue
Price: £3.65 (on the Rimmel London website)
Coats needed for full opacity: 2 thin ones, although you could get away with 1.
Drying time: I said I wondered whether it would actually dry in 60 seconds, seeing as that's  what the bottle promises, and I'm so happy it actually does! That means you can paint, and have your nails dry, in 4 minutes (I think! Maths isn't my strong point...)

Spread the love!

Application: Smooth and easy thanks to the wide brush. Settles evenly, so don't worry about an uneven finish or visible strokes.
Finished look: Shiny and sophisticated!
Further comments: A really nice polish, great for school/ work and speedy drying if you are in a rush (or just impatient like me!)

Thanks for reading. And-a-Topcoat. xx
P.s My arm is still sore, but I realised that the injection could save my life- so I am a very lucky person. :)
P.p.s I watched The Imitation Game yesterday at the cinema and it was such an inspiring but solemn movie. I highly recommend it, but bring tissues! ~R.I.P Alan Turing- a true hero that deserves to be
known of more.~

You are all so lovely!

Gap, I see you have returned... Don't worry. You may have won the battle but you won't win the war!

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!

200 views has finally been reached which was my February goal! I have a huge smile on my face right now, all because of you. So if anyone asks have you made someone smile today you turn round and reply. 'Why yes, I have. This blogger that I have probably never met before smiled because I looked at her blog for a few minutes today. So there!'
I don't really know what to do now- a lot of people would do a 'special post' but I don't think that I can think of something good like that.. Can you guys think of one?
All I know is that I now want 300- so keep coming back and reading!
Love you all! And-a-Topcoat. xxxxx

Cute cabinet!

Hello my chihuahua chums! The large unnecessary gap has gone! Yay! :) 

I actually thought I'd already posted something like this before, until I checked through all my published posts and realised that well... I hadn't!

A while ago, I got treated to a small vintage wall cabinet *picks up pizza slice, takes huge bite out of it and carries on typing* and it is so cute and gorgeous. It has a thin white mesh going over the main section of the cabinet and the rest is white wood, with little tiny worn-looking metal handles. As I do have quite a large collection of polishes, some had to branch out and sit ontop of the cabinet and some are still under my bed as well. Also, I did it in rainbow order! A month on however, I would be lying if I said it had been maintained. Now there are browns in the pink section and blacks in the green! It's from 'melody maison' if any of you are interested. No sponsorship, I am just recommending the product because I like it'. Lots of hugs and smiles, And-a-Topcoat. xx

In love!

THIS MASSIVE GAP IS BUGGING ME!!
*Punches a pillow and calms down, deep breath*
Hello people that are reading this, and anyone that isn't... even though I don't think that is actually possible- oh well! Before I get started with this humble post I have officially had a revelation, do you want to know what it is?

I have discovered why my posts are sooo long...

BlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBlaBla

Waffle! (And no, sorry, not the yummy kind)
I realise that I just write nonsenscial sentences that are nonsensical! I'm using nonsensical too much aren't I? Nonsenscial... nonsenscial! NONSENSICAL!

I'll stop.

So my blogging news years resolution- if it is alright with you peeps- is to stop going on and on and on. What I am currently writing may be classed as waffling so I'll stop and get on with my post!

Ok, I just wanted to say that I am currently in love with this polish. Scroll down:

And *BOOM* 

It is sweet as sugar by Rimmel London (part of the 'I love lasting finish' range. I also own 'sunshine' from this range) and I love the colour, which is a really light (almost white) icy blue/teal. It is actually more of a spring/summer shade but I thought that I could get away with it as it is kind of icy blue for winter! It took 1 thin coat and 2 thick coats. *Little confession* The coats started out thin and then as I gradually became more and more impatient they just got thicker. The polish itself lasted me only 2 days before it chipped but that's just because I am a clumsy and busy kind of chap/gal!? Also, I did not add-a-topcoat. Little pun there, guys! Seeya sometime in the near future, And-a-Topcoat. xx