Illamasqua Venous and NailVenturous Lacquer Rainbow Fish

Sorry for not posting a lot lately. I spent nearly 3 weeks cleaning my house before my BFF, Oriana, came over from NY for a visit. She was here for 10 days and we went to Wales. Here's some of my favorite pictures from there!

Sunset in Llandudno on May 22nd.

Street in Caernarfon 

Conwy Castle 

Church in Betws-y-Coed 

Sunset on Lake Bala on May 25th.

I took a LOT of pictures. It was really hard to pick out just a few to show here!

Anyway, on to the mani! This is Illamasqua Venous with NailVenturous Lacquer Rainbow Fish. Here's a sorta blurry picture of Venous with Flash. The following night I put on Rainbow Fish and I LOVE it!

with flash.

Illamasqua can be purchased at their site or at Sephora in the states. NVL can't be purchased any more except in some auctions and groups on Facebook.

Rebel Rainbow Fish Blue - Owen is here!

This weekend's collaboration is a kind of spontaneous because my friend Jacki at Adventures in Acetone (go like her Facebook page as well!) had a baby boy on Monday, July 16th! We're welcoming Owen James by painting our nails blue. Because how else would we welcome him? Surely he's going to appreciate this when he's a teenager (yeah, right haha)!!!!! CONGRATS to Jacki, Wes and Hailey (who is going to be a great older sister!)

I've used L'Oreal Rebel Blue with NailVenturous Rainbow Fish gradient tips. When I showed Gary he said "why did you only do the tips and not the whole nail?" And I said that I wanted to be able to see the shimmer in the blue (although it's not very apparent, not sure why, maybe it's the 3 coats of top coat). Gary responded with: "so, is it gradient because you messed it up and went further down than you wanted to?" HOW DARE HE! Of course I did it on purpose and didn't mess it up. I'm awesome like that. *rolls eyes* Anyway, this took many days to capture on camera since we've had nothing but miserable weather here for a week and hardly any sun. This is day three of the mani and it's holding up well on my left hand but not looking too great on my right hand. I think this is mostly because a few of my nails are damaged and peeling.

*click to enlarge!*

L'Oreal polishes can be purchased at Boots and Superdrug (and I'm sure a few other places as well). NailVenturous is another indie brand. Amy has decided she won't be selling publicly any more so, therefore, they're really really difficult to get a hold of. But go like her Facebook page in case she decides to open shop again.

3 Week Long Haul Post.

I have another haul post. I was in Scotland for a week and I haven't felt up to doing a haul post until now. Here's some beautiful polish and a cosmetic bag.

This is a nail polish cosmetic bag!! I thought about this before I went to 

Scotland and found some online. I've never seen anything like this before. 

I think it works okay. I think it might be better if it had a solid bottom and sides. 

The partitions in the middle are removable and are solid enough when they're in the bag 

but they feel really flimsy when you're putting them in the bag and I felt like they were going to rip.

Nails Inc Park Lane, Primrose Hill, Pembroke Close and Endinburgh Gate.

Just noticed all the purple polishes start with P! How weird is that?

Dior Czarina Gold and Purple Mix.

Sonoma Nail Art Sonoma Sunset and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Kiko 397, 235, 300 and 298.

Top Shop Nails Razzmatazz and Ice Crush.

Glitter Gal Light As A Feather and Hits Dreamer

NailVenturous Robin Laid An Egg

The cosmetic bag was purchased at Roo Beauty and were pretty reasonably priced. They do ship internationally but it does cost a lot since they use a courier instead of Royal Mail.

I have been placing a lot of Nails Inc orders lately to help out numerous people on Facebook. They've gone crazy over it! Park Lane and Edingburgh Gate were purchased at QVC when the set was on sale a few weeks ago. I didn't like the other two the came in the set so I've put those aside the sell. Primrose Hill and Pembroke Close came from the Nails Inc site.

I got Dior Czarina Gold from Amazon but they have since sold out. I got Dior Purple Mix from Boots.

I got the Sonoma Nail Art polishes from my friend Ana. For more info on this brand, check out my blog post here.

Kiko is an Italian brand and can be parchased here in the UK. There are a few stores in London that sell them but I don't live near London.

I purchased the Top Shop polishes at my local Top Shop. I don't think they sell the polishes in the smaller stores but I've only ever been in Top Shop twice in the 9 years I've lived here. Don't take me on my word there. They can be purchased online here.

I purchased Glitter Gal and Hits from Llarowe.

My friend Sheila, from Pointless Cafe, sent me the NailVenturous because she loves me and she knows that I've been NEEDING it for ages and ages and kept missing it when the NailVenturous shop opened.

That might be way too much information ;)