Christmas Nails

you may need to click through to the larger image!

I love nail polish and have a decent collection but I also have a mania for taking nail polish off the minute it is remotely chipped or scuffed. Be warned - this means that if you have chipped or scuffed nails I do indeed judge you!

With a small child and plenty of dishes and things like that (& I don't even do that much housework!) I find that my nails scuff really quickly so I either don't put polish on as often as I'd like or I put it on when I know I'm going to be out of the house for the day.

I'm lucky that my nails grow (and grow and grow) and stay strong and nicely shaped with stuff all effort. That's my dad's genes and I'm super grateful! This does mean I'm careful about the colours I wear - the longer my nails the more likely that dark colours will make them look like talons! Dark colours also scuff a lot more quickly on a long nail so what I wear is always mixed up.

While I rarely bother with manicures, I love pedicures but fit them in all too rarely. At the start of December I managed to treat myself to a pedicure at Joop on Sturt Road at Brighton. Although it's primarily a hairdressing salon (owned by one of the women in my baby group, of all things) it does offer a small range of beauty services. The pedicures are insanely cheap and it's lovely to kick back for an hour and have someone else attempt to scrub off all the dead skin on my feet!

Anyway, I chose CND's Midnight Swim. I'm not 100% sure which range but it might have been Vinylux (definitely not shellac). It has looked fab and lasted really really well - to the extent that the polish looks good but my toe nails have noticeably grown!

To pep up the pedicure I used an extra top coat of Nails Inc's Edinburgh Gate. Very sparkly and Christmassy!

On my finger nails, as they're super long at the moment, I went a bit more subtle. Base coat was Nails Inc's Chelsea Bridge, followed by one coat of Nails Inc's South Molton Street and then a coat of Nails Inc's Glamour Glitter. This last I got as a magazine freebie and it doesn't seem to be one of the regular colours. In a single colour, the closest looks to be Chelsea Embankment, but Bishops Road in the Winter Wonders pack also seems quite similar.

The great thing about this was that it lasted well (even without top coat) and after a couple of days when it did start to look battered, a quick lick of the glitter coat freshened it up flawlessly!