Olympia Beauty 2011

Hello everyone!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend! Yesterday, Sunday 18th and Monday 19th of September, were days I had been looking forward to for nearly two months! The reason? It was the the Olympia Beauty event in Kensington Olympia, London.

BIG woooooo!

...Anyways, more about that in a minute. First let me show you guys the manicure I did for the event. Seeing as I blog about Nails, I wanted to create a really special, completely blinged out Mani for the event.
This is what I came up with:

Nail Expo Special Mani!

A close up-

Pretty, no?

For this Mani, first of all I used two coats of Orly Dazzle, then two coats of OPI Crown Me Already!, then glued a Swarovski crystal onto each nail with nail glue.
It came out pretty cool I think, I felt a bit like GaGa or something- this is one impractical manicure! Still, I got lots of compliments on them whilst going round all the stalls, so that was nice.

To start, can I just say, omg! The event was so much fun!

OPI was there, as was Nubar, China Glaze, Color Club, Essie, Jessica and more!

Here's a video I shot on my phone- as you can see, it was busy, busy busy!

Olympia Beauty Event

Some pictures of the stalls:

The OPI stall was insanely busy the whole time! -Look at those brand new, unavailable in shops Muppets Mini packs! I picked one up, of course! Swatches coming soon... :)

To prove how busy the OPI stall was all the time, here's a picture of the queue:

OPI Mania! (And yes, in case you were wondering, the queue was this long all the time! Go OPI!)

...And who can blame people when OPI was being sold at trade price!? Discontinued Lacquers were discounted to £3.00!

£3.00 OPI's!? Thank you very much!

I also had a lot of fun getting my greedy little polish loving mitts on some lemmings I've had for certain polishes from other brands:

The China Glaze stall view I

China Glaze view II

Here's the Nubar Stall:

The Nubar Stall

Discontinued Lacquers at Nubar were only £2.00!

 What a bargain!

The Color Club stall was brilliant. I was really excited to see this stall here because I've only ever seen Color Club available on the Internet. It was great to see all the shades in person...

Color Club view I

Color Club view II

And some general shots of the Exhibition Centre:

View I

View II

View III

As you can guess, I was loving every minute of it!

My Top 5 new acquisitions from the Expo are (in no particular order):

* China Glaze Skyscraper
* OPI DS Temptation
* Color Club Wish Upon A Rock-Star
* Nubar Purple Rain Glitter
* OPI I Brake For Manicures

Lots of new swatches to come soon for your viewing pleasure!

Have a great day, everyone! :)

Leopard Print Nail Art!

Hi guys and gals!

Last week, as I said on my previous post here, I did some pretty cool Nail Art! I don't actually do Nail Art very often at all, in fact, very seldom... (I should do more, right!?)... But yeah, last week I was looking at some videos on YouTube for leopard print nails and decided to do some of my own.

For this mani, I used Orly Dazzle- (one thickish coat as a base) and OPI's incredible Crown Me Already! (one/two coats, I used two) for my silver leopard base.
For the leopard spots I just dotted a thick blob of Orly's Bubbly Bombshell, and after those dried, I outlined to turn them into leopard nails!

Here are the results:

My OPI and Orly Leopard print nail art!

What do you guys think? Should I do more Nail Art?

Leopard Nails...again!

I had a practise with a nail wheel too, and came up with loads of different colour combinations! Here it is:

Leopard Print practise nail wheel

What do you guys reckon? Try it, it's sooooo easy!

:)

The Midas touch, courtesy of The Ritz!

Hi everyone!

Sorry I've been inactive with my posting over the course of the weekend. It was extremely busy, I assisted a Photo shoot and attended a Wedding among everything else going on, like shopping, cleaning and packing for my holiday!

Also, my nails are short now, (boooo!) because I broke one one the weekend! They all had to go after that, as I *hate* having nails all different lengths! :)

Anyways... I'm now down in Monaco (in the sun and just by the beach!), but still hope to do lots of posting on here- yay for broadband!

Ok, so after I got down here last night, I thought- how perfect, Monte-Carlo style, would doing a mani with The Ritz be? It seemed a fitting time to swatch it!

As I mentioned in a previous post, The Ritz is by Orly and it is EXCLUSIVE to The Ritz. I had to go up to their 7th floor salon to get my bottle... Which was worth the effort- that is a stunning hotel!

Orly The Ritz

How stunning is this polish!? It's only a two coater as well so hopefully the bottle will last for a while. I like Orly's bottles, you get a lot of bang for your buck.

So- about the polish! The finish of the polish is a foil, it's very sparkly, it just looks absolutely magnificent in the sun, which luckily for my swatching there's plenty of down here!

No need to describe the shade of gold in detail- I'll give you this: as if you just dipped your nails into 24ct Gold! -It's absolutely wonderful stuff. I've never seen a gold as rich as this before.

Seriously, take my advice and grab a bottle while they're still going!

Attention: This is completely *dazzling!*

Wow.


I was reading online and came across some information on The Ritz, Piccadilly, London.
They have a new Manicure service available:


The Ritz Orly Manicure, £75 for 60 mins (020) 7300 2435 or email salon@theritzlondon.com


It looks like this:

Now THAT's class! Would you shell out £75.00 ($120.00 USD) for a Mani? Hmm...! It's a beautiful colour, though, isn't it!? 


:)

Hmm, tasty recipes! :)

My Top 5 favourite nail layering efforts from the nail wheels I painted up are as follows...

Hannah's Top 5 Layering Recipes:

1- OPI Black Cherry Chutney (base) x2

    China Glaze Ruby Pumps (top) x1

(I am SO obsessed with China Glaze's Ruby Pumps, I ADORE it!)

2- OPI Absolutely Alice (base) x2

    OPI Last Friday Night (top) x1

3- Orly Matte Vinyl (base) x2

    OPI Last Friday Night (top) x1

4- Orly Dazzle (base) x2

    OPI DS Original (top) x1

5- OPI DS Mystery (base) x2

    OPI DS Original (top) x1

(Hello, Original MPJ!!)

6- OPI Princesses Rule! (base) x2

    OPI Teenage Dream (top) x1

(Uber girly sparkly perfection)

7- OPI Absolutely Alice (base) x2

    OPI DS Original (top) x1

    (Lavender/Cornflower blue sparkly hololiciousness! Utterly incredible combo!)

8- OPI Have You Seen My Limo? (base) x2

    China Glaze Fairy Dust (top) x1

9- OPI Teenage Dream (base) x2

    OPI Last Friday Night (top) x1

10- Orly Matte Vinyl (base) x2

      Nubar 2010 (top) x1

Which one should I swatch first!? 

Votes please! :) 

My big USA haul!

So, I went to Washington DC last month, my first time there, not my first time in the big ol' USA but my first visit to DC.

I did the touristy, the restaurant eating and shopping stuff, and with regards to the latter, came back to London with a pretty impressive nail polish swag!

IMAGE:
Top Row, L-R- Essie China Doll, OPI Turquoise Shatter, OPI Rally Pretty Pink, OPI  Absolutely Alice
Bottom Row, L-R- Orly Space Cadet, Orly Bubbly Bombshell, Orly Fancy Fuchsia, OPI Skull & Glossbones

I picked a bottle each of:

*OPI Absolutely Alice
* OPI Skull and Glossbones
* OPI Turquoise Shatter
*OPI Senorita Rose-alita
*OPI Rally Pretty Pink
*Orly Space Cadet
*Orly Bubbly Bombsell
*Orly Fancy Fuchsia
*Essie China Doll
*Milani Hi-Res

I bought most of these polishes in Mimosa Beauty Salon near Du Pont Circle- it's amazing!!! Apparently it's one of the best salons in DC, and I COMPLETELY recommend it, if you're around the DC area.

So, anyways, I bought Senorita Rose-alita, Rally Pretty Pink, Space Cadet, Bubbly Bombsell, Fancy Fuchsia and China Doll for $5 USD each, which I reckon is a pretty incredible price- about £3.00 each, whereas buying a new OPI here in London at Selfridges will set you back £10.50- roughly $17 USD!

Insane, no!?

IMAGE: My favourites, in order, L-R, that I bought in America-
Numero Uno: OPI Absolutely Alice, 2: Orly Space Cadet, 3: OPI Rally Pretty Pink, 4: Orly Bubbly Bombshell

I was so pleased to get hold of Absolutely Alice for $7, I've heard so many great things about that polish from so many bloggers. I didn't purchase it when OPI's Alice in Wonderland collection came out, and before I could say 'I neeeed me that polish!!!' Absolutely Alice had sold out, like Absolutely EVERYWHERE*.... Sorry, that one was pretty bad.

(...*Apart from Evilbay. Obviously.)

...So yeah, I was pretty chuffed to get hold of that one!

Another one I picked up, Milani Hi-Res, was a bit of a 'uhhhhmmmm' purchase to aid with the pain of not owning OPI DS Original, which I've wanted for ages!

Ok, Milani Hi-Res is quite nice, a very subtle, very scattered holo, but not a patch on DS Original.... Sure enough, about two weeks after I got back to London, I popped into my local nail shop and randomly found....

OPI DS Original!

My god! I was soooo happy! But now, being the proud owner of DS Original means that owning Hi-Res is ever so slightly pointless... DS Original's holo-awesomeness is second to none!...

....That's a whole 'nother post! :)