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