First stop on my personal collection tour is A England! I absolutely love everything Adina produces, and have spent countless hours drooling over polishes I’ve yet to get my hands on. Pretty much every A England polish no included in this post is near the top of my lust list.
I have long been in awe of and intimidated by the one stroke technique for about a year now. I put off trying it by using the excuse that I didn’t have the right brush for the job, but since my birthday this past winter, that’s no longer valid. Even so, this past weekend was the first time I ever tried the one stroke technique and I must say I’m pretty proud of the outcome!
I started with a gradient using OPI’s Pearl of Wisdom and Lucky Lucky Lavender before adding the flower petals in each corner using Zoya’s Snow White and A England’s Lady of the Lake. Feeling like that still wasn’t enough, I added the dots around the other nail edge using a dotting tool.
Last weekend was my team’s ballroom competition, and during the set up the day before I got to paint a whole bunch of nails! I had done my own to match my dress with my A England beauties (Princess Tears and Lady of the Lake) and added a generous amount of rhinestones, because you can’t have ballroom without sparkles!
One of the other girls wore a dress whose main colors were green, red and nude, so we did her nails to match as well!
Here’s a closer view of the rhinestone gradient as an accent nail:
I also did another purple manicure for a friend named Davlyn, whose natural nails are absolutely ridiculous! Look at how long and well shaped they are! I’m so jealous.
Like me, she got two different colors of purple rhinestones 🙂
And finally, a picture of the purple princesses of the ballroom team, including me (right) Davlyn (center) and my wonderful co-blogger Audrey (left)!
Do you see what I mean about sparkles and ballroom going hand-in-hand?
We have another competition next weekend, and I’m hoping to do something different next time, so stay tuned if you love rhinestones!
ALSO! You have one more day to enter the giveaway, so don’t forfeit your chance to win the gorgeous shades of HITS Tango and Foxtrot!
I’m attending the So You Think You Can Dance auditions on Thursday of this week and obviously needed an awesome set of nails. It’s partially for confidence but also just in case I get a chance to talk to Cat because I’ll need something to say! Anyway, I’ve had my eye on this design for a while and saw Wicked Nails’ interpretation of it on Tumblr, so I thought it would be great to try out for this occasion.
Here’s how it ended up!
As you can see, I added a little extra with a rhinestone on each nail. I am a ballroom dancer after all!
I also used completely different colors than both of the above examples because I wanted the look to be even flashier. Almost everyone I’ve interacted with since I’ve had this mani has loved it. It is by far one of my favorite manis ever 🙂
Products Used:
OPI Goldeneye
A England Lady of the Lake
A England Saint George
A England Princess Tears
MASH Rhinestone Wheel
How have I not posted this before? I did this beautiful manicure towards the end of the summer and it is by far my favorite manicure I’ve ever done. And it’s a simple manicure too! All I did was do a gradient with A England’s Princess Tears and Lady of the Lake. Both are beautiful purple holographic polishes, but PT is a lavendar leaning silver and LotL is a deep, dark purple.
Sorry for the lack of clean up /: I was just too eager to get pictures of this pretty combination.
Here you can see the more silver side of PT, as well as the full holographic effect of both colors.
And a close up to see how well the two colors blend together!
I will definitely be recreating this look again because I absolutely loved it. How could I not? It combines pretty purples and sparkles, two of my favorite things!
Sadly, the weather is getting colder and the darkness is coming in Boston, so my pretty holos might have to wait.
I woke up this morning and was scrolling through my Bloglovin’ feed only to see a post by Ommorphia Beauty Bar that absolutely made my day. The woman behind a-england, Adina has incredible skill when creating colors for her collections and I am so in love with every color she has released so far.
I encourage you to go check out the post linked above, but you should also stay tuned with the a-england Facebook and Twitter pages for more news on the new collection. I for one cannot wait for the release in September and I’m already in love with every shade as well as the idea behind the collection.
I have been lusting after various A-England colors for the past couple of years and never had the opportunity to actually buy any until recently. Using a promo from last month, I explored the new The Legend collection and fell in love with almost every color! However, I had decided I was only buying two polishes and therefore had to decide. My first choice was Princess Tears because I have never owned a holographic polish before and its soft lavender shade is one of my favorite colors. I also really wanted Saint George, but sadly that color was sold out. So, I settled for Order of the Garter instead and ended up being very happy with the outcome. I will do a post on OotG later this week. As for now, I present to you my new favorite polish: Princess Tears.
This first picture was taken in a dimly lighted room, and it truly shows the silvery/gray side of PT.
Though I really liked the duo chrome effect, I loved the holographic sparkling lavender color so much that I sought out every patch of sun I could find.
Many Manicures 