Weekend Mani #17

I have power!! Laptop cable has arrived, thank you Amazon and now hopefully normal service can resume!

My nails this weekend were all about Christmas as we had our work night out yesterday, although it was a lunch that lasted into the night! 

Ah, my smudgy penguin! my first attempt ever at a penguin and I literally had 13 minutes to do my nails so I think he turned out pretty good

The red is a Mavala number called 'Rouge Rubis' and it is rather lovely! I received this last year in my latest in beauty, you beauty advent calender (which I got for half price in January). It's packaged really cutely as a Christmas decoration so a nice wee surprise for a nail fanatic at Christmas time.  Topshop are doing similar individually packaged polishes too.  

I smudged his tummy several times although I am happy that his eyes were ok, they would have been harder to redo. I will post a tutorial this week on how I did the penguin, there are loads of tutorials on youtube or you can just google some images for inspriation.

I have used Mavala polishes before and I really like them.  They have a special formulation that apparently allows your natural nails to breathe and therefore reduce damage caused by polish (pretty sure you would have to use a Mavala Base Coat to achieve this result though?!).  Several other great things about Mavala polishes is that they are in 5ml pots therefore less likely to dry out, they are less than £5, come in a fabulous range of colours, are nasty chemical free (in your face formaldehyde!!) and they are opaque in two coats.

I tried to capture the shimmer in this polish but it is much more shimmery in real life.  It has a ruby red 'jelly' type base with these red glassfleck type particles throughout, these pictures are without topcoat by the way. It kinda reminds me of Essie's 'Leading lady' seen here, Essie's 'Ruby Slippers' here, China Glaze's 'Ruby Pumps' here or Zoya's 'Carrie Ann' seen here. Off the top of my head, I would say the closest OPI I could think of that would be even slightly like this would be 'Love is a Racket, here, but I think that is more pink with blue through it. I always thought it was weird that OPI didn't release some version of red polish with their 'Oz: The Great and Powerful' collection but it was a soft shades collection so I'll let them off!! 

It has chipped a wee bit and there is some tip wear but I was pretty tough on my nails last night, I dropped my bag alot and so was picking many a thing up off the ground, tsk tsk!!

Latest in Beauty are currently offering this Mavala polish as a 'luxury sample' and so for £2 this could be yours, its free to sign up to their website and they often have great collections. 

The Youbeauty advent calender is available here, and if you use the code YBD10 you can get £10 off.  I really liked my one last year as the samples are good sizes to try out. 

Have you tried Mavala polishes before?

Are you going to attempt some Christmas nail art?

Hugs,

Jodi

xxx