Hello lovelies,

Merry Christmas!!! Yes, for me it's Christmas today as us, Czechs celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. We have a Christmas dinner (carp and potato salad is traditional food but I cook schnitzels and potatoes) and after dinner we go hide and wait for the presents to appear under the tree (mum & dad always sneakily put them there). You wait till you hear a bell and once you hear it that's a permission to rush to the Christmas tree and open the presents. Of course now I'm grown up & living with my OH so we don't do all this but we will when we have some little ones :) That's all the Christmas talk sorted, now back to the nails...

Today's manicure is based around the newest addition to my nail polish collection - Nails Inc Whitechapel which I got in a goodie bag from Nails Inc who sponsored the Nailartists UK meet up (read about it here). We weren't obligated to blog about the Nails Inc products but we agreed we would do a glitter gradient nails with a Christmassy accent nails. Here is my take on this:

I have started with a coat of the Nails Inc Superfood NailKale Base Coat. Then I applied two coats of Zoya Purity (white creme) and let them dry for a bit. Then I started applying the Whitechapel glitter from tips towards the middle of the nail, creating gradient effect. I have a video tutorial here. The accent finger is stamped with China Glaze passion and MoYou London Festive 03 plate. The last step, well at least I thought it would be, was to apply the Nails Inc 45 second Top Coat with Kensington Caviar. Here's where it all went wrong - first coat of the topcoat was quite ok although it smeared the white polish a bit and tinted it lightly. But because it is not very thick it didn't give that smooth finish over the glitter gradient so I decided to do second coat of topcoat. For some reason unknown to me, the tips of my manicure went matte! So now I had more tinted white which wasn't white anymore and half of the nails matte and half glossy! Could this get any worse? Oh yeah! I thought I would cover this all up if I make the whole manicure matte. I found SpaRitual Matte Effect topcoat in my collection decided to use it. If you don't know it, it has yellowish tint to it so now I have tinted my beautiful, pure white nails with pink and yellow! Lovely! I didn't have time to re-do the manicure so it has to do :D

Looks like I just wrote a mini novel..

Have yourself a very merry Christmas or any other holiday you celebrate and I'll be back in two days! Lucie x

*PR sample

Hello lovelies,

I think this is one of those posts you've been waiting for (at least I hope ;)! I have swatches of 6 new ILNP Ultra Chrome Flakies and the rest will be coming later (although I just received them so be patient with me).

ILNP Ultra Chrome Flakies collection consists of 13 polishes in total and each has different flakies in them. They are truly stunning and each is unique in its own way.

Gaia - multichrome flakie polish shifting from vibrant greens through teal to blue and purple shades.

Phoenix - multichrome flakie polish shifting from navy blue through purple to fiery reddish orange and gold shades.

Success - multichrome flakie polish shifting from light greens through olive and darker green to pink and blue shades.

Electric Carnival - multichrome flakie polish that includes insane number of colours! It shifts from purples and dark pinks to lighter pinks, through gold and olive green to darker greens and if you're lucky you'll see some turquoise ;)

Luna - multichrome flakie polish shifting from vibrant teal and turquoise through blues and purples to copper and gold shades.

Supernova - multichrome flakie polish shifting from greens through teal to blue, purple and pink shades.

These are all absolutely stunning and I'm just losing words when I look at them. I haven't seen such beautiful polishes in a while. Each shade is unique in its own way and yes, you totally need some Ultra Chrome flakies in your life! My top picks from these six are Supernova and Electric Carnival because it's a rainbow in a bottle.

All of these flakie polishes have exactly the same formula so I will just summarize it here. They applied very nicely and they lay flat on the nails so there is no rough surface. With a coat of topcoat you'll have a smooth finish. They dried fast and glossy. The flakies are in a clear base and the bottle is packed so you get a nice amount of them on the brush. In my opinion they are best layered over a polish because it takes 3-4 coats to get full opacity (although I don't doubt it would look spectacular). You can also layer different shades to get multi-coloured mix of flakies which gives you a lot of new options to try!

"Every 12ml bottle is created by hand, with love, in the USA. Each bottle of nail polish includes a stainless steel ball for easier mixing, a rubberized cap for better gripping, and a wide brush for easier application. All ILNP nail polishes are 3-Free! They DO NOT contain Toluene, Formaldehyde, or Dibutyl Phthalate."

ILNP Ultra Chrome Flakies Collection is available at www.ilnp.com for $12.50 per bottle but it's out of stock at the moment so I would suggest to subscribe to their mailing to get notification of restocks and offers.

I hope you've enjoyed this visual feast as much as me ;) Have a nice weekend everyone! Lucie x

*PR sample