Models Own Artistix Duos Review

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Models Own recently released a range of funky polish duos. Each duo is a pretty combination of one colour polish and one glitter from their extensive line of polishes. I love wearing glitter toppers on my nails and I don't know about you guys, but to this day I've never made it to the bottom of a bottle of glitter! Has anyone?! These sounded like an ideal solution - a little colour and a little glitter for almost the same price as one regular bottle of polish. (These RRP at £6 each and the regular bottles are £5). Win win!

The duos come in double ended bottles with the brushes sticking outwards from the middle. Now I know what you're thinking... at first I had doubts about how easy these brushes would be to manoeuvre too but they're surprisingly easy to use and I didn't have any problem with application. Now on to the fun part... swatches!

Stop and Smell the Roses

Happy Monday! I know some of you will be thinking that Monday is not a day to be happy, but it's recently become my favourite day of the week because it means a new episode of Game of Thrones! I can't believe there are only 2 episodes left in the season after today's. I must confess I haven't read the books, so far I've only made it half way through the first, so I have plenty of material to tide me over until the fourth series.

I used NYC Lavender Cupcake as my base colour with Sonnetarium Lenten Rose glitter on my ring finger. I did the pinstripes on my index finger using striping tape and BK Matt White. For the roses I used NYC Bubblegum Pink, Barry M Blood Orange and BK Matt White with NYC Mint Macaroon for the leaves. There's a full tutorial for the roses here. Finally I topped it all off with two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly.

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Sally Hansen Street Style Tutorial: Studs n' Chains

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This month, Sally Hansen's I ♥ Nail Art theme is Street Style and the call for inspiration is 'heavy metal, pop art and graffiti glam'. I stopped reading at heavy metal... it's got to be the studs for me!

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I'm not really sure where the idea of matte x glossy came from but it's been at the back of my mind, niggling away, all week. I've been playing with different combinations and I really wanted to try it with stamping although nothing seemed to work. I'm going to keep at it as I'm determined to perfect glossy undercoat with matte stamping but for now, I've settled for something simple (again)!

I used two coats of No7 Just Black as my base colour with one coat of W7 Cosmic Black on my ring finger, then used one coat of Rimmel's Mattifying top coat. Then I took a nail art brush and applied NYC In a New York Minute just to the tips of my nails.

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I Like My Candy Mattified

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I like it when my nails look tasty! Thanks to that super bright pink, my nails are looking sugary sweet today and the matte top coat is just a perfect addition. I got this effect using striping tape and although it would figure that it took a long time because it took a hell of a lot of tape, it was actually a lot quicker than some of my more intricate tape manis. I think because once I'd done one nail, all I had to do was repeat it on all the others and I had a good rhythm going by the end!

I used two coats of Barry M Lychee as my base colour and topped it with a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly. Once it was all dry, I placed on some striping tape where I wanted Lychee to show through (tutorial here). Next, I painted over it with Models Own Bubblegum and Barry M Mango one nail at a time and immediately removed the tape.

I topped it with another coat of Dries Instantly and finally once it was all dry, I added one coat of Rimmel's Matte top coat.

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