Hello lovelies,

As I previously hinted, I've spent a day at Nail Harmony UK headquarters training with Gelish (gel polish brand). Nail Harmony is a Gelish distributor for the UK but they also have their own brand All That Jazz (named after Jazz Smedley) with whole range of nail polish, manicure and pedicure products. There were also other bloggers attending - Alice from One Nail To Rule Them All, Sammy from The Nailasaurus, Lex from Taloned Lex, Em from My Pale Skin, Cat from Perfectly Polished and Melanie from Scratch magazine. Later on we were joined by Metta (from Nails by Mets), mobile and session nail artists and her cute baby.

The day started with a warm welcome from Ezara, a PR representative, teas, coffees and some yummy pastry for breakfast. I appreciated that very much since I had to get up early and drive for 2,5 hours to get there. The room was already prepared for us with several work stations and wall full of Gelish colours neatly on display. We could also check out All That Jazz manicure products that are stylised into silver tins and bottles with vintage-style labels.

We've had the pleasure of being taught directly by Georgie Smedley, the owner and managing director of Nail Harmony. First half of the day was about teaching us some basics about nails, their structure, health & safety and other important information we needed to know to safely do a gel manicure. There is a lot of information that we needed to know so we came home with printed materials as well to fill in what we haven't had time for. I would just like to emphasize that there is so much you should know before you decide to do your own gel polish nails safely so please always search for information from qualified technicians or do a course yourself.

Here are some pictures of Georgie Smedley in action working on Alice:

After we were shown how to do it properly we practised on each other doing plain colour, french and magnetic gel polish. It was a lot of fun although my french I did on Alice sucked!

I've put a shots of the magnetic gel polish being applied and Lex's beautiful nails! The last picture is of my right hand (the non-photogenic and 'cleaning' hand).

I've left with head full of new knowledge and All That Jazz goodie bag! In it I found Top Note topcoat, Base Line basecoat, Louise's - From Riches To Rubies nail polish, Bee Bar and Cuticle Oil in Chocolate Orange scent. I will do reviews later ;) Jazz herself stopped by few times so it was nice to see her there too.

It was a great day! I learned new things, met great people, saw my girls Alice and Sammy again and tried Gelish for the first time. I will be writing reviews on the products I got later so stay tuned for that!

Big thanks to Nail Harmony and Georgie for hosting this training day, I enjoyed it very much!

Have a lovely day and stay polished! Lucie x

Hello lovelies,

As I've mentioned last week, I have attended Olympia Beauty exhibition in London on Sunday and I'd like to share my experience with you. I go every year so the pictures of stands full of polishes are pretty much the same. If you would like to see some previous photo reports full of pictures, click here and here.

This year I was a woman on a mission so there isn't as many pictures as I would like. But I have met some amazing people! Firstly let's have a look at few snaps I took around the venue...

Surprisingly, I didn't buy anything from China Glaze this year but I couldn't resist taking some bottle shots for you ;)

As always, there seminars throughout the day on different subjects. Of course I always pick the Creativity of Nails stage. Well this year I had the pleasure of seeing Doug Schoon (and snatch an autograph) speak on top three concerns of nail pros. I found it very enlightening and interesting and Doug was so captivating I could listen to him for hours. For those of you who don't know him, he is the world leading scientific expert who has researched nails and nail products for more than 25 years. I would definitely recommend you to visit his website and follow him on Facebook because you could learn A LOT about your nails.

I also had the pleasure of meeting some other great names. One of the first ones was Sophie Harris Greenslade aka The Illustrated Nail whom I first met 2 years ago at the very same show. I couldn't believe she remembered me and complimented me on my work! I was well chuffed! Thank you Sophie, you're a huge inspiration!

Another great name you might recognize is Tom Bachik! It was quite funny - I am new to the professional nail industry so I know Tom and his work just from following him on his Instagram account. He sat two rows in front of me in seminar (his friends were presenting and demoing) and I knew I recognized him but wasn't 100% sure. So I asked him if his name is Tom and when he said yes I was absolutely shocked. I sat next to him, had a short chat. What a nice surprise! Later I've learned he was one of the judges at the Nailympia competition so I must have looked very silly being so surprised he was there :D Anyway it was lovely to meet him!

After the seminars I went to watch Gemma Lambert and Denise Wright at the Nsi stand doing nails. They are both multiple award winners so it was a pleasure to be able to watch them work. I took a quick snap of Gemma's stunning nails which she did herself...on both of her hands!!!

This year I wasn't really going there for nail polish. I went for some education and to meet people plus I finally subscribed to Scratch Magazine. They've had a special exhibition offer so I got some extra gifts with my subscription.

In the end I did get some gel polish for experimenting with gel nail art, few OPI polishes from the Nordic and Gwen Stefani Christmas collection and some Nsi supplies for my nail tech adventure.

I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition but I didn't even get a chance to see 70% of the stands. So much to see and so little time (I was there 6 hours already). I'm looking forward to another exhibition in February/March which is closer to me (thankfully!). This time journey home was terrible and exhausting because of high traffic and accident on the way. So the journey that should have taken 2 hours took 3,5 hours :( But I did it and 3,5 hours later I've arrived home in one piece.

Hope you've enjoyed my report even without many photos ;) Have a lovely day! Lucie x