My Instagram Journey

I joined Instagram around August 2013. My account contains pictures of a variety of things from my nails to my artwork, my fashion to my everyday life experiences.

My first post was my first attempt at a water marble manicure. Not the best picture I could of chosen to post.......

 

I got just four likes for this post. I had no idea what I was doing and didn't have a clue about hashtags!

As I spent more time on there and did a bit of research I found what sort of things I should be hash tagging and simple ways of gaining new followers.

Luckily my likes improved as did my nail art.....

Slowly but surely I gained more followers and this resulted in many more likes for each of my posts. My most likes was from a picture of my nail polish collection which went from this.....

To this........

Here are a few pics of some of my other posts.

So after a fair bit of hard work and 617 posts I now have 701 followers and what I feel is quite a good, varied and interesting instagram account.

How have your Instagram journeys been?

Thanks for reading :)

George xx

 

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Stamping Success!

One form of nail art I have always found difficult is stamping! I have several konad plates but find the single images hard to place and the larger images aren't big enough to cover my nail.

Here are a couple of photos of my first attempts at stamping....

First is using a larger image and as you can see from my thumb the image misses the bottom and top of the nail.

Next is one where I tried to place some stars. It's not too bad but I added bits on to make it look better

After doing some research into stamping and reading tips on Facebook groups I bought myself a stamping plate from moyou London.

This particular plate uses a full image to house lots of stamping patterns. You can also get plates from them with single images on. The patterns on the plate are a good size and therefore cover the whole of my nail. It means I have to worry less about placing and get a pretty design with less difficulty.

Here is my first mani using this plate....

As you can see this was very successful and 100 times better than my first attempts with the other plates.

I am hoping to use my moyou plate for lots more manis. As they say practice makes perfect and hopefully on my next stamping post I will be able to offer some tips that I pick up on my stamping journey.

 

Thanks for reading

George xx

Find moyou plates at www.moyou.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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My First MeMe Box

So I have been pretty busy lately and therefore unfortunately my blog has been neglected.

Last year I purchased my first MeMe Box. I wanted a nail related beauty box so I chose their vivid pop box which is nails box number 3.

In the box came five polishes and four tubs of glitter. The polishes are by a brand called 'with shyan' which I haven't heard of before but they are in nice bottles and are a good formula.

I was really excited receiving this box, a, because I love getting parcels and b, because it's so nicely presented.

First I will show you the glitter pots. They are loose glitters in the colours of gold, silver, blue and black. They are quite good sized glitters too!

 

As there were five polishes I swatched one on each nail.....

All apart from one are very bright polishes. First is 'neon purple' which does look slightly more pinky in the picture.

I looked up the names of the polishes online which was quite a challenge as it is a Korean brand so I had to have google translate the website.

Next is 'Blue Violet'. This is the darkest of the five polishes.

'Pink lady' is a neon pink

'Red Grapefruit' despite the name is a neon peachy orange.

The last of the five polishes is 'Neon Green'. Probably my least favourite of the five and a little more opaque than the others.

Now all that remains is to decide on my next MeMe Box :)

Thanks for reading and thanks for staying loyal followers :)

George xx

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Birchbox vs Glossybox October 2014

A few months ago I unsubbed from Glossybox to try Birchbox. I have now decided to resub to Glossybox so this month I received both boxes.

 

Here is my Birchbox....

The brands in Birchbox are always more high end and the sample sizes are usually quite a good size. You also get full size products. I have found that there is only usually a couple of products in there that I will actually use, and even if there are more I probably wouldn't purchase them afterwards as they are usually expensive.

Birchbox is a slightly smaller box but inside the box is usually a material bag with the products in that you can re-use. This month the products came in this pink zip up make up bag.

The past couple of boxes have included an extra that everyone receives. This time it was a pen in the shape of a lipstick.

This month's products were: Cattier pink clay facemask, KMS California hair serum, shaveworks cool fix gel for shaving rash, pixi Shea butter lip balm and meaningful beauty anti-ageing capsules.

With both boxes I find that some products match up with your beauty profile and others don't, so I don't really know if they pay attention to them or not.

Here is my Glossybox.....

This month's box theme was pop art. This was partly the reason for me resubbing this month as I wanted the box :) I find that the products are more "down to earth" and as I am a make up novice I find this a lot better for me. I also find that I am more likely to repurchase the products as they are available on the high street and aren't too pricey.

Some of the samples in Glossybox can be on the small side but they are mixed up with full size products.

You tend to get a lot of perfume samples in Glossybox and this month's Yves Rocher one was a nice size sample. I find these samples helpful as I like getting new perfumes but never know what to choose.

My products in my Glossybox were Rimmel BB cream, Nuxe facemask, So Susan mascara, Etre Belle lip peel, Ciate nail polish and Yves Rocher perfume sample.

So from now on I will just be receiving Glossybox. If some of you are confused on which box to go for hope this post helps.

Thanks for reading

George xx

 

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Sparkly Nails Witch Charms

A few months ago I got sent some lovely Geisha water decals from Sparkly Nails. They enjoyed my review and recently sent me some nail charms just in time for Halloween.

They are these cute gold witch charms :)
When I think witch I think of purple as the colour so decided to use a light purple with an accent nail of China glaze 'howl you doin'.

I found the witch charms easy to use although they are very delicate so you need to be careful with them. The problem I had was that my nails are quite curved and small so the charms didn't lie flat and had bits sticking up on either side.

These charms are ideal if you want a pretty, simple, sophisticated halloween mani :) They are also a bargain at £1.10 a pack!

These charms can be found on their website which is

www.sparklynails.co.uk

Thanks for reading
George xx

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Nails For Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I would like to share with you all my manicure for breast cancer awareness month. The theme as always is pink :)

I used polishes by Models Own, Ciate, Nina and OPI.

The above OPI is called "You Glitter Be Good To Me" and is from the 2012 breast cancer duo called 'pink of hearts'.

On my thumb nails I did a version of the pink ribbon using pink nail gems. I saw this idea on a profile on Instagram and really wanted to try it. I used Models Own 'Sun Hat' as a base because it is nice and bright.

I used the OPI Polish on my ring fingers and a basic polka dots design on my other nails. Polka dots always seem to be my 'go to' design.

Hope you all like my design.

 

Thanks for reading

George xx

 

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