Pink, Black and Gold

It's a day for blog-writing it would seem! I'm on a roll today, so please bear with me while I upload all of the posts I've been working on over the past couple of weeks.

I've always loved pink - anyone who knows me will understand that if a product is available in pink, then that's the one I will buy. My nail polish collection is largely dominated by pinky tones - glitters, gels, cremes, neons, sheers - I have them all in pink. But alongside loving pink, I also like to be a bit edgy. I'm not a super-girly type of girl; I don't spend hours doing my hair (it's lucky if I even brush it...), I very rarely wear make-up, and I can't remember the last time I wore a pair of heels. So I like my manicures to represent my personality as well as how much I love the colour pink. Therefore I bring to you *this mani*, which I put together (quickly, as you can see from the clean-up job...) a couple of weeks ago.

I wanted to incorporate a shiny black polish with gold stud accents to contrast with the neon pink polish that I chose to use. This is completely my own design, which isn't something that I'm used to doing! I find a lot of my inspiration on Instagram, and love recreating other ladies work to practice my skills. My next step is to create more individual and original designs, but this was a first for me.

L-R: Ciate Ladylike Luxe / Models Own Dinky Pinky / Models Own gold glitter / Barry M Black /
Studs from Boots

For this mani I used my favourite neon pink by Models Own 'Dinky Pinky', Ciate 'Ladylike Luxe' for the gold, topped with Models Own gold glitter, and Barry M 'Black'. I find that Barry M 'Black' tends to be somewhat dull without a super shiny topcoat, so I chose to use Glisten&Glow's HK Girl Fast Drying Topcoat, as it always leaves such a jelly-licious plumped up coating! The studs were bought from Boots. 

Ugh, my clean-up around the middle finger is terrible!!

LOVE these colours together!

I just want to give a quick overview of a couple of the polishes in this mani:

Models Own Dinky Pinky is a fabulous neaon, it's not so 'in-your-face' that it's unwearable, but it certainly does pop! I find the consistency to be perfect and it glides to an opaque coverage in two thin coats. Although it doesn't exactly compliment my skin-tone, that's fine by me because pink!

Ciate Ladylike Luxe is a polish from their 2014 'Mini Manor' advent calendar. When I first tried it out I really wasn't that impressed, however I have found it great when used as a base for glitter and for adding detail over black (as seen in the picture below). The golds in this mani are somewhat muted and dull, but it tones down the brightness of the pink which is definitely needed.

Please ignore the off-centre pinky stud placement!

I absolutely loved wearing this mani. Every girl needs a bit of bling in their life, right?!

Thanks for reading!
Helen x