Pocket Money Polishes This is the Life

My previous slightly unloved mani has been rescued by a beautiful glitter. This is the Life is from Charlie at Pocket Money Polishes September Sparkle Collection, named after the haunting song by Amy Macdonald, which I love.
In the bottle it appears to be a beautiful mix of purple glitters, but on the nail it is so much more and actually the subtle backdrop of my LD nude as a base is perfect to allow this stunning combination of glitters to show their true beauty.
There are deep purple hexes, smaller purple hexes and purple micro glitters, but there are also magenta pink microglitters and then I can also see blue, green and gold as I move my hands in the light.
Glitter distribution was great as ever with Charlie's glitters, I did one coat and then added just a little extra.
I love the combination of all the pretty glitters against the neutral back ground. Obviously this glitter would look great over pink, purple, black, dark blue but its nice to go for a contrast sometimes and I think these colours added that pinky tone that was missing from the LD.
No sun for the pictures, I was too late to catch it and my hands look a bit grey, but hopefully you can see just how gorgeous This is the Life is.

Pocket Money Polishes This is the Life

 

 

 

 

Leighton Denny On the Rocks

I've used my second oldest untried polish today, but unlike the one I used last week, this was not love at first sight. Leighton Denny On the Rocks is a mini varnish (4ml) that I got in a swap a long time back. I tucked it away thinking, oh that's a nude so when I try it, it will be fine.
It applied well enough but I think there are two issues that stop me from loving this as much as I should, it is just very slightly too yellow for me and it has a very subtle shimmer and I'm not keen on shimmer.
As the day wore on I did warm to it but it won't be up there on my favourites list.
On the Rocks is a medium taupe shade with a subtle shimmer which actually looks a bit reddish in the bottle. The actual base colour is slightly more yellow than for example Supermodel, and I think I may have been happier with it if I had a bit of a tan, my hands felt very pale wearing this although later in the day when it was a bit warmer, I liked it more.

Leighton Denny On the Rocks

 

 

 

Black Autumnal Mitts

More gloves, black this time as I have often over the past year thought I could do with a pair of black gloves.
I thought for a while about doing a cabled pair but then I went for a pattern that I have done before in grey. They worked well before and I think the pretty leaf pattern works well in black.

I got the pattern from Ravelry, written by Jo Bangles and called "Autumnal Mitts" as the pretty lace style look like leaves.
I used a double knitting wool that I have had for ages and I think it may have been an own brand from John Lewis. They knitted up nicely, but I have small hands so I switched from a 4mm needle to 3.75mm. I don't actually have 4mm double ended needles, so I often end up making this switch.

The gloves are knitted in the round, so no sewing up - always good!!!

Black Autumnal Mitts

 

Hairy Legs London Tainted Love

Freshly delivered by the postman this morning, straight out of its jiffy bag and onto my nails, this is an absolute stunner of a polish from another new UK Indie, Hairy Legs London. The polish is a limited edition, called Tainted Love, with special symbols for the T but I can't do that on my laptop so I've pasted the name in from the Hairy Legs Etsy page

 †ain†ed love 

Tainted Love is a mix of blue/purple bar glitter and circular glitters, tiny black glitters and bar glitters, bright pink circular glitters of different sizes, red hearts and tiny red microglitters. I have used one coat over Leighton Denny No Comment, which I think makes a good base for this. I did go fishing for a couple of red hearts but otherwise the glitter distribution was great.
Because I have used it over such a dark base you can only just see the black glitters, but I also did a quick swatch on some white paper. I was quite surprised to see what look like yellow glitters but under a light when you change the angle they are the blue/purple glitters - amazing! On the nail they look iridescent, so beautiful!
Quite a few pictures here as each time I move my nails they catch the light differently, I hope I have capture some of its beauty!

Hairy Legs London Tainted Love

 

  

Leighton Denny No Comment

This was my oldest untried polish! Not quite untried, I had swatched it but not actually used it.
A challenge has been issued in All Things Nails to use your oldest untried, so here we are. I got this polish in September 2011, in a swap. I did swatch it as soon as it arrived, loved it and put it away safely as it seemed quite special.
Leighton Denny No Comment was originally released as part of his Criminal Collection. It is a deep dark red black with a stunning shimmer in the sunlight.
I am not quite sure why it sat untouched for so long, possibly because I thought it was so special I'd save it, and then that silly idea that the best polishes and most important mani's always go wrong - mad I know but anyway, its tried now and I really should have used it sooner.
It is a beautiful polish, almost chocolatey like a Minstrel!! The shimmer is very fine, I don't usually like shimmer, but this is gorgeous and despite leaving it for so long, very easy to paint! I listed this on my spreadsheet as purple but I am changing it to red, not sure purple is the right group for it.
You can see the shimmer on the bottle shot, taken in the sunshine but for some reason the other pics were rubbish so I have had to take them again and the sun has gone down.

Leighton Denny No Comment 

 

 

   

 

No Comment, taken with flash to capture the shimmer

Why I blog...

I can't paint my nails at the moment as one of my kittens clawed a couple of fingers while I was rescuing him from climbing somewhere he shouldn't have been. No lasting damage to kitten or nails but I am not brave enough to go near the wounds with nail varnish remover so I thought I'd finish this post I'd started a while ago.

I thought I'd write a little bit about why I started my blog...

A few of my friends had seen my knitting pics and my nails and suggested a blog.

I thought it would be a nice way of recording what I had done, like a diary with comments about what worked and what didn't, both for knitting and nails for me to refer to as much as for anyone else.

As I got really into nail painting about 2 years ago, I got very frustrated about some varnishes that you just can't find swatches for. I am in a few swap groups and the first thing I do when I see something I think I like is google the name (well who doesn't). Often a whole raft of images will appear and you have a much clearer idea of whether you will actually like the polish when it arrives, but sometimes there is nothing or a whole bunch of totally unrelated images appear, not helpful!! So I naively thought I could plug a small part of that gap!
Imagine my disappointment when I realised that google doesn't quite work like that. I had to spend quite some time figuring out why other peoples pictures came up and mine didn't. I even resorted to asking my husband for some help (he's a bit of an IT geek, so whilst he doesn't really get the whole nail varnish thing, he did help a bit).
So I read about making your blog sticky, and putting in hyperlinks and tagging the pictures, and then eventually one day, I googled something and there was my picture!!! Excited?? You bet!!!
Nails Inc Great Portland Street was the first one that actually that finally made it onto the google images page and I just tried it now, I come up as the 1st and 2nd pic, in fact 6 of the first 14 pics are me me me!!!
Well, that's me excited! Anyway, its a bit of fun!

And finally, when I started this blog I had a bit of time on my hands so why not. It was the Christmas holidays, we were all ill with some rotten bug so we were confined to the house, kids on the TV, playstation etc, husband reading some geeky science podcast, what's a girl to do? So on 30th December  2012 Knitty Nails was born, with my Christmas nails.
Then in February I started a part time job and it's now not so easy to find the time to paint and blog regularly, and the arrival of 2 lovely kittens in June meant that I don't knit quite as much as I used to, but I do my best and I think I've managed to blog about once a week.

So there we go, that's why :) I don't have hundreds of followers or get thousands of hits a day but I think I have achieved a bit of what I set out to do, I enjoy it and I love getting comments :)

TarasTalons Creepy

Another UK Indie for you today and October has been designated UK Indie month, by the UK Indie makers on facebook, so an even better excuse to blog this.
If I needed an excuse! This arrived today and instantly I had to wear it. I ordered 4 mini polishes from TarasTalons, having trawled through the many beauties she has listed here. They are all unique, so you won't find one exactly like this but you'll be sure to find something pretty!
This is from her Halloween collection and it's called Creepy. It is beautiful! A mix of red, teal and silver matte squares, small teal glitters and tiny red microglitter in a sheer blue base.
I was already wearing Leighton Denny Embellish Me, so I haven't swatched it on a bare nail but there's such a lot of glitter I think you could easily build this one up to full coverage. I have just used one coat here and I think its gorgeous. It's so sparkly, the red microglitter really catch the light, so I get teal or red as I move my hand and I think they look great against the dark purple of Embellish Me.
This is quite a textured polish and having only used one coat of top coat I can feel the glitter but I don't mind that, a second coat would make it completely smooth.
I love glittery nails and I love dark nails so this is perfection for me!

TarasTalons Creepy