Hello lovelies,

August has passed very fast for me and it's time for the monthly nail art challenge from Paint All The Nails. I completely forgot (thanks to my 2-week holiday) and I didn't have time to do any special colour block design. Luckily I've had an older manicure that I've done and that I can use. I still have my square shaped nails there but I'm sure you won't mind ;)

Today's manicure is very colourful and summery and I can show you a step by step tutorial of the design too! I've done it using Leighton Denny polishes and a Color Club French Tip white polish as a base. Yes guys, this is so far my favourite white nail polish. Here's the final look and list of all the polishes I've used:

These nails might look difficult to do but I've broken the design into small steps for you and in the end it's just painting lines. A great design to practice your line work ;)

How to:

Step 1 - Apply a base coat to clean and dry nails. Then paint them with one or two coats of white nail polish. I've used Colour Club French Tip which is very opaque so I got away with just one coat.

Step 2 - Paint the top of each nail with a different colour. I chose colours that will be somewhat dominant on the nail.

Step 3 - Add thin and thick stripes of the same colour to the nails

Step 4 - Start adding more stripes of different colours. Try to stick to similar colour families with the odd stripe in colour of the next nail to tie the nails visually together

Step 5 - Continue with adding more stripes and colours to the rest of the nails. Different widths of stripes make a really interesting effect

Step 6 - Finish up with a coat of Leighton Denny One For All (as a top coat) and admire your new beautiful nails ;)

My line work is far from perfect but all in all I quite liked this look. And practice makes perfect so imperfection isn't a fail at all, just another lesson on the path to perfection!

What do you think of this look? Would you wear it?

I'm so glad I was able to participate in this month's Paint All The Nails Challenge again and if you'd like to see what my fellow nail bloggers came up with, check out #paintallthenailscolorblock and the link up below!

Have a lovely day! Lucie x

FLAKIES!

Flakies are a huge thing now, especially the new multichrome opaque flakie polishes. I'm lucky to own six of the new ILNP flakie polishes and I can wholeheartedly say - you should get some! They look stunning and are very versatile and there's a lot of variety at the moment. Some of the flakie polishes available are:

ILNP Ultra Chrome Flakies $12.50 each

Polish Me Silly Flakie Topcoats $7.50 each

Girly Bits Ermahgerd Flerkers! $13 each

LOUBOUTIN POLISH

These beauties can't be left out of my list. The release of Louboutin polishes earlier this year caused a lot of stir and I must say one day I would like to own the classic red one too. The whole bottle is just a thing of beauty and I think it will be a prized possession in every nail lover's collection.

Louboutin polishes are available at:

US: Louboutin website, Sephora, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom...

UK: Louboutin website UK, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols...

BLING IT UP!

Nails Inc offers a special customisable polishes. You can choose blinged up caps, smooth gold cap or silver monogrammed cap and different nail polish shades and create your own combination. These polishes come with a £20-25 price tag so it would definitely be a nice personalised stocking filler. You can get them at Nails Inc website.

STAMPING PLATES

Those who stamp never have enough stamping plates, right? I see it with myself, I want more and more, just imagining the possibilities I could do with them and all the new brands and collections just leave me wanting more. I'm sure that if you buy some stamping plates for those who like stamping nail art they won't be disappointed. Plates can be bought from $0.99 upwards. Some of the brands of stamping plates available are:

MoYou London

Pueen Cosmetics

Bundle Monster

Winstonia Store

MoYou Nails

Dashica

Vivid Lacquer plates

Messy Mansion

Born Pretty Store

TAKING CARE OF THOSE MITTS!

Hand care products are another category of gifts that nail lovers will appreciate. To keep our hands nice and healthy we use a lot of hand creams, cuticle balms and oils. Also don't forget about all the lotions, soaks and hand scrubs! There's a vast array of brands and products on the market and there's no way I can list them all so I just picked some that I tried and liked.

Rituals Hand Therapy scrub & mask

All That Jazz Hand and nail care products

LUSH Lemony Flutter

Glisten & Glow Nail + Cuticle Balm

Alessandro Cream Royal Nutrifying Hand Treatment (mask)

OPI Avoplex Hand Cream

L'Occitane Shea Butter Hand Cream

SpaRitual Handprint Hand Serum

SpaRitual Cuti-Cocktail cuticle oil

Bliss Kiss Nail Oil*

THE NAIL LOVER'S NEW BEST FRIEND

I'm sure you've all seen the wonderful new 'tool' called Liquid Palisade, right? It has been around for a while but lately it seems to gain immense popularity as a 'clean up tool'. It's basically a liquid latex in a tub with a brush for easy application. Here's what I'm thinking - if you want to make 'nail lover' happy, Liquid Palisade is a great cool product to have but it comes with a $22 price tag. If you want to make yourself happy and want to save some pennies then you can buy yourself a tub of coloured liquid latex found in costume shops, Amazon or other different online stores. You can put it into old cleaned out nail polish bottle or nail art pen bottle for convenience (tip: Use a drinking straw to transfer the latex into smaller bottle).

NAIL FILES

Having a good nail file is essential so why not treat your beloved nail addict with their favourite brand's file or fancy crystal-decorated nail file? Crystal nail files are a great choice and currently there is plenty of choice out there. I can personally recommend the Mont Bleu Czech Crystal nail files which are beautifully decorated with Swarovski crystals. Other available crystal nail files are:

Mont Bleu Czech Design Glassware

Leighton Denny Crystal Nail File

Cirque Crystal Nail File

Bliss Kiss Crystal Nail File*

OPI Crystal File

THE ULTIMATE FIX

I must include The Ultimate Fix, a polish drying spray. I have been using it for the past year whenever I did manicure for 'going out' and it's one of my staples. I'm sure that every woman that paints her own nails will appreciate the saved time and smudge-free manicure with this product. I have previously written a full review here. The Ultimate Fix is available in two sizes and priced at £17 for the 200ml bottle (50 manicures) and £9.50 for the 50ml bottle (12 manicures) on Beauty Narcotix website.

NAIL POLISH GIFT BOXES

Many brands are releasing various nail polish gift boxes for the holiday season so there is plenty to choose from if you want to gift nail polish. Usually the popular ones are from OPI, China Glaze, Leighton Denny (beautiful kaleidoscope & holographic packaging this year), Sparitual and many more. Just pop into your local drug store or visit the brand websites to find them.

BLISS KISS MUST-HAVES

I simply must include my favourite brand of nail oil - Bliss Kiss. There are hundreds of others that will agree with me saying this oil is a blessing and it's really great! If you want to improve condition of your nails and cuticles then I can more than recommend this product as a gift or to try yourself. Ana, the creator of Bliss Kiss, has also brought some new other amazing products on the market and one of them is Simply Sealed Lotion stick. I like to use both the oil and the lotion stick every night and keeps my mitts in top condition.

Both Bliss Kiss nail oil and Simply Sealed Stick are available in Bliss Kiss online store*.

POLISH TAGS

Polish Me Silly brand has recently came up with cute polish tags in different styles and colours. I have purchased one straight away so I can show you how it looks in real life. The polish tags are definitely bigger than regular 'dog tags' as you can see and I will be proudly hanging mine on my car's review mirror.

This a very cute present and even better - you'll be supporting a small business! These tags cost $14.95 and will be available at Polish Me Silly Etsy store.

EDIT: It looks like there was an overwhelming demand and these tags will be available again at the beginning of next year.

LITTLE SILVER & GOLD LUXURY

Cirque has released a limited edition Ultimate Luxe Gift Set which consists of Au- 23 carat gold flake polish and Mirror Mirror - pure silver-coated flake polish. They look stunning and I'm pretty sure this would be a great gift for anyone who loves nail polish. This gift set can be purchased at Cirque website for $45.

CATCH IT BEFORE IT'S GONE!

And of course I need to include the newest addition to the piCture pOlish family - my own collaboration shade called Dragonfly (reviewed here)! There were six new collaboration shades in total and all can be found at piCture pOlish website for AU$13.

I hope my Christmas Guide at least inspired you. I'm sure there are plenty of great things that I forgot to cover so feel free to share them with others in the comments.

Have a lovely day! Lucie x

*I have not been compensated for including any of the items in the guide but it contains one affiliate link.