Tara's Talons NEW COLLECTIONS swatches

~PIC HEAVY POST~
~Items in this post were sent to me for my honest review~

Hello lovelies!
Today I have some exciting swatches from Tara's new collections. Tara's Talons is re-opening on Sunday at 1 minute past midnight and she has four new collections on offer for you. Today I have swatches of polishes from the Autumn and Return of the Randoms collections, and there's also a halloween collection based on the movie Scream and a topcoats collection featuring four different top coats to make your manis look even more fabulous.

First up is Back To School from the autumn collection. This is three coats. It's a grey crelly with what looks like at first just black mini glitters in it but when you get it on you notice that there are some blues and holoy glitters hidden in there too.

Application was smooth and easy although the finish was a little rough, but nothing that a layer of topcoat couldn't fix! This was in one of Tara's new mini bottles-still 5mls but now round so they match her larger ones-and with new shiny labels too! 

Next up is Blackberry-also from the Autumn collection. Again this is three coats, although I only needed two for opacity. It's a gorgeous purple with a fuchsia shimmer and plum coloured hexes.

This one went on really smoothly and has a really gorgeous shiny colour. It's really opaque-almost a one coater. The only "problem" (for want of a better word) I found was that as it was so opaque the hexes got lost in multiple layers and just added a strange bumpy texture to the nail instead (you can kind of see this at the top left of my middle nail-although it was more noticeable in person). I'd say thin coats or a single coat over undies would be the best way to wear this one if you didn't want that to happen. 

This next polish is Luxe from the Return of the Randomness collection. I really like this one! It's a bright aqua cream with gold microglitters throughout and the effect is so pretty! Three thin coats shown here:

This one has a slightly tricky formula in that it dried fairly quickly, so thin coats are needed and you have to work quite fast as you do so. It dries ever so slightly matte so needs a lick of shiny topcoat to bring out its full potential-but I think it's really lovely! I can see me wearing this one a lot.

Last but not least is Rainbows which is also from the Return of the Randomness collection. A gorgeous glitter bomb of every colour and size of glitter in a bottle. One coat over Back to School and two over Barry M-Crush.

Even from the mini bottle I had no trouble getting glitter onto my brush-it came out well loaded with the bigger shapes every time. I had to space them out a little given the tendency to clump together but that's how it is with all glitter bombs like this. Personally I think everyone should own at least one polish like this one because they're fun and bright and awesome. I'm loving them over autumnal colours right now too.

So that's my swatches, which one's your fave?

You can buy all these and many many moreTara's Talons from her Etsy store which will open at 0:01 on Sunday morning and she's having a 50% off sale to celebrate her re-opening! When you make an order enter the code BACK50 to get the discount, but the sale is only on for 24 hours! Don't worry though, if you miss it you can still use my blogger code to get 15% off any order after that. Just enter NailArtNovice at the checkout =)

Welcome back Tara!

~Nail Art Novice~

Tara's Talons-Not A Custom, Hook, Vegas Baby! and Cloudy Skies

~VERY Pic Heavy Post~
~Products in this post were sent to me for my honest review~

This posts comes tinged with sadness for me-this is my Tara's Talons Team welcome box which I received yesterday and I was really excited to be starting this new venture with one of my absolute favourite indie makers. Today, however, Tara announced she was temporarily closing her shop due to personal reasons, which is absolutely gutting! One way or another this has not been a great week for indie makers but boy did this one hit hard-I'm really going to miss Tara's lovely creations!

Onto nicer things though-the package! I got some lovely things-polishes, hand cream, some jewellery and some nail arty bits and bobs-but I'm just showing you the polishes today. I'm going to try and not be too wordy and just let the lovely pictures speak for themselves! I will say though that I had no problems applying any of them-they all had a lovely formula and went on great. I didn't fish for any glitters-even in Vegas Baby!-although I did place them onto the nails because they wanted to clump together somewhat-but that's what chunky glitters always do so not an issue!

OK, picture time!

Not A Custom-Accents: 3 coats alone, Others: 2 coats over Rimmel-Red Obsession

Hook-Accents: 3 coats alone, Others: 1 coat over Barry M-Navy

Vegas Baby!-So much going on in this one! Definitely managed to capture the gaudy opulence of Vegas! Two coats over Rimmel-Moonwalking and two coats over Sinful Colors-Cool Grey

Cloudy Skies-Brother to Clear Skies, made on my suggestion to Tara! Two coats over Sinful Colors-Cool Grey (for opacity)

So there you go! I really love them all, even Vegas Baby! which surprised me given how pink it is, but it's so sparkly and lovely that it totally won me over!

If you want to grab yourself a bargain and secure yourself some TTs for the last time (at least in a while) then head on over to her Etsy store before it closes at Midnight! Use the code SUMMER at the checkout to get 50% off your order-but hurry-the shelves are emptying fast!

I just wanted to say a huge thankyou to Tara for the opportunities she's given me to work with her and all the beautiful polishes she's made. I wish her all the best and hope she will return to polish making soon, because the world will be a lot less sparkly and a lot less lovely without her and her creations in it. I don't think I've gone a single month without featuring a TT polish on my blog since I got my very first one, and I certainly don't think I will in the near future either! Tara-we all love you! Thankyou for being the first UK Indie and for making so many people so happy! It's been amazing working with you (however briefly) and I will treasure all my TTs for years to come. 

~Nail Art Novice~

Rimmel Space Dust-Moon Walking

AKA that time I wore a polish on its own with no fancy bits =P

So yeah...this is the lovely Moon Walking by Rimmel. It's from their Space Dust line-textured glittery polishes and it's just so pretty! I had originally planned to do something over the top but once I got it on I didn't want to-it's too lovely. And to think when I started blogging I was adamant that I would never wear textured polishes-ha!

This went on really easily and was almost a one coater, but I used two to make sure I got full coverage. I know a lot of people dislike the flat Rimmel brushes but they work really well for me-they cover my nail well and mean I need to do less clean up (always a bonus!).

It's so sparkly and in addition to the texture has some tiny microglitters in, although my camera seems to not want to find them in the photos. I love the way the light plays across this, it's super pretty! It's not too textured either-it definitely feels rough but it isn't spiky or uneven like some textured polishes I've used previously.

Isn't it lovely! It's very rare that I put a polish on and don't feel like it needs something on top to make it more fun, but this was definitely one! I just really like it...and it's not even green! I think I need a lie down ;)

What do you reckon to textured polishes?

~Nail Art Novice~

Tara's Talons-Clear Skies

This is one of the polishes I received  in my Tara's Talons Treasure Trove box and I couldn't wait to use it! I had liked it since I saw Tara's pictures of it when she announced her Spring collection and knew it had to be mine!

It's a gorgeous bright blue jelly jam packed with white glitters of various shapes and sizes-a jelly sandwich in a bottle! This is 3 (or possibly four?) coats and there's still a fair amount of VNL in the photos, but it was hardly noticeable in reality. I think in future usage I will use a layer of similar coloured undies to reduce the amount of layers needed, though!

Isn't it pretty?! I was going to do some nail art over the top but in the end I decided I didn't want to because I really liked it as it is! It got me lots of compliments too, lots of non-nail people couldn't understand how I'd done it and it's very eye catching. Basically I love it!

You can get Clear Skies and many many other pretty polishes from the Tara's Talons Etsy shop but don't blame me if you end up bankrupt, haha!

What do you reckon? Do you love Clear Skies or is this type of polish not for you?

~Nail Art Novice~

Tara's Talons Swatches-Swim With Dolphins and Chocolate Orange

~PIC HEAVY POST~

~Items in this post were sent to me for my honest review~

Regular readers of this blog may have heard of Tara's Talons before-it's the longest running UK Indie Polish brand and often featured on my blog because I love her polishes. A few weeks ago, Tara said she was looking for some swatchers for March so I filled in her blogger application form even though I didn't think I had a chance. To my surprise and delight, she emailed me to ask me to help out this month and I almost fell out of my chair! I started squeeing out loud so hard my boyfriend asked me what was wrong, haha!

So today I've got two gorgeous Tara's Talons polishes for you, yaaay! 

With flash

First up is the very lovely 'Swim With Dolphins' which is a pale blue with a silver shimmer running through it. This is three coats, I could have used two really, but I thought I could still see a hint of nail line through it so I stuck another on just to make sure. The polish went on really nicely-there was a small amount of lifting if you went over the same patch more than once but nothing that caused a problem, and it all evened out beautifully by the second coat. It did dry with some brush strokes in but I think that's more because of the shimmery/pearly finish than a problem with the polish. A lick of topcoat and you can't even notice them. 

With flash

Normal indoor lighting

I really like this one! It's such a nice colour-I can't help but think of it as the natural brother of 'Dasher' from my advent calendar-he's green with a gold shimmer running through and SWD is a blue with silver, I think they'd make a lovely pair! 

The other polish I was sent was called Chocolate Orange and there is so much going on in it! At first glance I just thought it was yellow glitters in a browny base but no! There's actually matte yellow, shiny silver and translucent orange hexes, bright orange stars, bronze mini hexes and goldy-bronze mini squares AND brown microglitter-it's crammed full of glitters! I wanted to show this one off to its full potential, so I've swatched it over several colours -and it's so pretty!

With flash

With flash

This is one coat over Swim With Dolphins. It does dry with a slightly gritty texture (because of all those glitters!) but again this is fixed with a layer of topcoat. I didn't have to fish for any of the glitters, even the stars, and there was a great payoff of glitter per brush load. I did use the dabble technique to move some of the hexes around a bit, because they tended to want to clump, but other than that this was one easy coat. I decided to try it over a complimentary colour and also some completely contrasting colours to see how it would look!

With flash

 One coat over Maybelline-Winner Takes It All. My ring finger is 4 coats of Chocolate Orange on its own, to show that if you wanted to you could definitely wear this polish without any undies, as the coverage is fairly dense. Personally, I prefer it as a topper though, I love seeing all the different glitters spread out! This combo is so Autumnal, it's lovely.

One coat over Rimmel-Marshmallow Heaven and Barry M-Greenberry (ring finger as before). These were totally random colour choices-I was just trying to find some colours that would contrast really well. I actually love the mix-I can't help but feel that it's a really Spring-y combo over Greenberry-so this really is a glitter for all seasons!

Overall, I can't recommend Tara's Talons polishes enough-there's so many different ones out there that there's definitely something for everyone. Most of her polishes are limited editions or one off though, so if you see something you like, be sure to snap it up quickly! Plus Tara is lovely, and always goes out of her way to help out her customers. You can find Tara's Talons polishes on her Etsy shop here or through her website here. She's also just expanded to form 'The Tara Emporium' and is now selling all sorts of beauty goodies/jewellery/home items too, as well as lots of other exciting things so make sure to go to her website and check all of that awesomeness out! 

That's all from me today, big thank you to Tara!

~Nail Art Novice~

And Make It Evergreen

Hey loves! How's things? Feels weird being back on my blog again after ignoring it for a couple of weeks, but back I am, and with a gorgeous polish too! Before I get onto that though, I just want to apologise for the state of my cuticles/hands in general. I've been visiting my boyfriend (who is still in hospital!) every day and the combination of the crappy weather plus LOTS of antibac hand gel on the ward is ruining my skin-so please try to ignore the bleedy/cracked/dryness of them as much as you can!

Now onto nicer things-the polish! This is Black Cat Lacquer-Evergreen. I saw this in one of the nail-related FB groups I'm in and it was green, had scattered holo sparkles and smelt of cinnamon-all things I totally love, so I knew I had to have it! As a bonus, it's also a thermal (my first) which was kinda fun to play with too!

Warm state

Cold state

Best transition photo I could get cos my hands warm up too quickly!

Seriously, this is just stunning! It's so green and sparkly, and although the warm colour is a little sheer it's still absolutely lovely! And the smell is AMAZING-it really makes me hungry for cinnamon buns and biscuits and stuff. It has faded a little over the three days I've been wearing it but it's still there, nom nom nom.

What do you reckon to this one-love it as much as me?

~Nail Art Novice~

Nelly Polishes-Teal Holo, Bodmin and Autumn Teal

-PIC HEAVY POST-

Hello all! Today I've got swatches of the rest of the gorgeous Nelly Polishes I got the other day-Teal Holo, Bodmin and Autumn Teal (guess what colour I really like? Haha!). As before, if you want to find out more about these polishes I did an info post about them the other day here, and my other swatch post is here.

First up we have the super pretty Teal Holo...which isn't really a holo but is still lovely. Like the other Nellys I tried, this was semi-sheer but buildable. I swatched both with and without an undercolour as follows:

Thumb to little finger: One coat over one coat of Revlon-Emerald, three coats (no undies), two coats over Emerald, three coats (no undies), three coats over Emerald.

This is a really pretty combination-sort of dark green/black shimmer but it really lights up when you add some shiny top coat to it (all Nelly polishes dry matte because of the natural pigments they're made with!)

It's still not what I would consider a 'holo', perhaps a scattered one at best, but it's undoubtedly pretty! I love the colour and the glittery-twinkly-sparklyness of it. As it moves through the light there's blue and green and even some turquoise in there-it's really quite lovely!

Next we have Bodmin, which is from the Fungooms collection, inspired by characters from a children's educational website and named after places in the South West of the UK. Don't tell the others, but I think this one might be my favourite of the bunch I got-shh!

Bodmin is a gorgeous blue jelly with various sized gold pieces in. It starts quite sheer but builds nicely.

Thumb to little finger this is one coat of Bodmin over two coats of Maybelline-Dark Denim, four coats (no undies), two coats over Dark Denim, four coats (no undies) and three coats over Dark Denim.

There's still a hint of nail line visible so I would choose to wear this polish over a similarly coloured base, but you don't have to-it depends how opaque you like your polishes to be. It also looks fab with topcoat:

I love how adding a topcoat really brings out the sparkle of those gold glitters and brings them out in the other layers too.

Last but not least is Autumn Teal from the Autumn line. Now I know this polish won't be to everyone's taste but it really tickled my fancy. It's an olive greenish jelly with copper and blue hexes in and I think it's really pretty! (The swatches on Etsy are a lot more teal than mine aere, so I guess I could have a slightly odd coloured one or something.) It's neutral enough to be work appropriate (I think), but with those glitters in to make it interesting.

Thumb to little finger: one coat over two coats of L'Oreal-Luxembourg Garden, five coats (no undies), two coats over L.G, five coats (no undies), three coats over L.G.

I actually really like the look of this one in its original matte state, but I added topcoat to see what it looked like:

As I said, I know this won't be to everyone's tastes but I love it! It's got a really autumnal feel to it. I wore a full mani of this for a couple of days and boy does it sparkle in the light!

So there you go, all my gorgeous Nellys! I'm so happy with them. They all went on pretty well, although I did find that a couple were quite thick (although this is undoubtedly due to my haphazard mixing technique) and this was easily remedied with a few drops of polish thinner. They dry fairly quickly due to the matte-ness of them so you don't want to hang about whilst using them.

Overall, I think they're great! I love the uniqueness of them-I've never seen dried nail polish before and it was really quite fun making them up myself. There's also some really interesting and unique combinations of colours in their range which is fab too!

You can buy Nelly Polishes from their Etsy store here-the dried sachets of mix are £3, the mixes in the bottles are £4.50 and the pre-made polishes are £5.50 (only available in the UK). There's also a 20% off sale running for the rest of October if you use code OCT20 at the checkout.

~Nail Art Novice~

Nelly Polishes-Gumpas and Jonah's Green

-PIC HEAVY POST-

So the other day I introduced you to Nelly Polishes-the world's first dried nail polish and today I've got some swatches for you. I know this is wildly out of my normal posting zone, but I think these are really pretty and just wanted to share them! I hope no-one minds the lack of nail art! For more information on just what exactly these polishes are and how they work, check out my first post.

In this post I have Gumpas and Jonah's Green.

Gumpas is a pretty nude coloured polish, with black and white specks of glitter, along with some larger green pieces. It's a very unusual combination-I've never seen anything like it before! I reckon it could easily be neutral enough to be deemed work appropriate, but with those little green freckles to add a dash of colour-lovely! It is from their Fungooms collection-inspired by a children's website run by the creator's husband, and all the polishes in this collection are named after places in the South West of England, where Nelly Polishes hail from. Personally, I love this idea! Very British =D

Because this is a very sheer jelly polish, I used undies on some of my fingers. From thumb to little finger this is: One coat over two coats of Barry M-Lychee, five coats (no undies), two coats over Lychee, five coats (no undies), three coats over Lychee. Despite the large number of coats, there is still some nail line visible on the nails with no undies, so I would definitely use a similar colour as a base before using this polish.

Because of the way these polishes are made (using natural pigments) they dry to a semi-matte finish. I added a layer of topcoat to see what Gumpas would look like all shinied up:

Jonah's Green is from the Boy's Invention collection-named and invented by the creator's son Jonah. Jonah's Green is a lovely green crelly with gold glitter pieces. It was actually pretty opaque and wouldn't have needed a base colour underneath it. However, because it was so opaque, you didn't get that lovely sense of layers that you do with jelly polishes-it all but covered up the glitters in the underneath layers with each subsequent one, which is a shame. None the less, it's still a really gorgeous polish.

Thumb to little finger: Two coats over two coats of Cairuo-Blackberry 19, three coats (no undies), one coat over Blackberry 19, three coats (no undies), three coats over Blackberry 19.

As I said it doesn't need undies because it's very opaque, but you do lose out on some glitter. I think I'd probably wear 1-2 coats over a similar coloured base, simply because then you can see all the pretties better!

Again, I added topcoat to bring out the shine:

This isn't very colour accurate for some reason-it was actually darker than this on the nail, and I tried to get a better picture representing the true shade for you-it's a really nice tealy green:

Both polishes went on quite nicely-obviously they're a bit different to normal polishes due to the way they were made, and I can't claim to have got the formula perfect so they might perform slightly differently for you. There were some visible brush strokes, but these were smoothed out with topcoat. Jonah's Green was quite thick to start with but I think this was my fault more than the mix's, and once I added a couple of drops of polish thinner it was fine. They dry fairly quickly, which is good!

You can buy Nelly Polishes from their Etsy store here-the dried sachets of mix are £3, the mixes in the bottles are £4.50 and the pre-made polishes are £5.50 (only available in the UK). There's also a 20% off sale running for the rest of October.

So that's two of my Nelly Polishes pretties, more to come soon.

~Nail Art Novice~