2014 - The Year of the Bucket List!

Hey all!

Just another quick post today - I hope you all had a wonderful new year and are well recovered if necessary by now!

I had a lovely quiet night in with my other half after he managed to bruise the end of his nose. It was like a giant black smudge right on the end, so he didn't want to go out in public bless him!

Anyway, I digress. I have been thinking for some time that I need to get out of this comfortable rut I've been in for awhile. Being careful, sticking to things I've done before and that I'm comfortable with. Things that are easy! I will never get better at doing my nails if I don't try new things, so I've written a small bucket list of things I'd like to do in 2014 for the blog.

1.  Use up more of my untrieds. This is more for me than for the blog - I have so many polishes I have never even tried,  so I want to regularly try and share some of them with you. I will be starting 'Untried Friday' where I share some of these.

2. Trying new nail art techniques. I have gotten into a bit of a rut lately with nail art, so I want to try and do something new at least once or twice a fortnight. I know there are only a set number of different techniques, so this is why I want to try and recreate some of the wonderful manis that I have seen other bloggers do. 

3. Get back into challenges, and finish them. I love challenges, but often fall by the wayside and struggle to finish them. So I have joined a couple of less full on challenges for the weeks ahead, so look out for some of those posts soon!

4. More tutorials / pictorials and possibly videos. The latter will be the last to arrive if ever, as I'm pretty shy and awful at talking in public! But I do want to build on my tutorial skills. Any tutorials you would like to see, please let me know!

5. Get more involved in what the British Nail Bloggers are doing. I often see link ups and find I have missed something, so I will be making sure I share more of what they / we are up to this year!

6. More interactivity - I would love to know what you want to see on the blog. What do you like / dislike, what you want to see more / less of. And please comment! I love reading all your comments even if I do sometimes forget to reply. I am often browsing on my phone and my phone hates comments and makes it really difficult to post them, so I'm sorry about that! 

7. A couple of giveaways. I will have another one soon as I am running late on my 1 year blogiversary, so keep your eyes peeled!

Have you written a bucket list for 2014? Anything you definitely want to achieve in the next 365 days?

Rachael xxx

Knowing Vera - Giveaway!

ONE LUCKY WINNER WILL WIN THEIR CHOICE OF 

$20 AMAZON / PAYPAL GIFTCARD

PLUS A PRINTED BOOK FROM RACHELLE AYALA

Ending on Sunday 8th December at 11.59pm EST

Open Worldwide !!

Vera Custodio has never fallen in love, though she has strong feelings for her friend and sometimes lover, Zach Spencer. Long-forgotten memories resurface when Vera discovers Zach’s mother was the woman her father supposedly murdered many years ago.

After losing his leg, former triathlete Zach Spencer reevaluates his life—and realizes he’s falling in love with Vera. After she ends their relationship, Zach is determined to prove his love and follows her to Australia in search of the killer.

Caught between a web of family secrets and a deranged adversary, Vera and Zach must depend on each other for survival. Love blossoms, but the truth explodes everything Vera knows about herself. Will she close her heart forever or risk it all for a shot at happily-ever-after?

Book 3 of The Chance For Love Series - Each book can be read standalone, but earlier plots will be revealed by reading later books.

Winners Choice of Book (plus $20 Amazon/Paypal Giftcard)

Michal's Widow

Michal is one of those fascinating women in history who had the guts to stand up to the establishment and the courage to take her punishment. I knew there was more to her story than the surface presentation in the Bible. If God was so adamant about men remaining with the wife of their youth (Proverbs 5:18-19) and not mistreating their covenant wife (Malachi 2:14), then why did it seem as if David got away with his burgeoning harem? 

Michal was shortchanged in most history books, novels and Bible commentaries, so I wrote my own version of her story to vindicate this heroic woman, too strong for her time.

#1 of The Chance For Love Series - Broken Build (Dave & Jen)

When a woman wrongs a man… can a man forgive and love?

Jen Jones wasn't a criminal. She just made a few bad choices and ruined a few lives, primarily that of her boss, CEO Dave Jewell. When her blackmailer is murdered, she becomes the next target.

Dave Jewell protects Jen because she holds the key to his company's code. What he doesn't expect is love, lies, and a link to his past. Jen must solve the mystery and thwart a ruthless killer while keeping her heart from being broken.

#2 of The Chance For Love Series - Hidden Under Her Heart (Maryanne & Lucas)

Maryanne Torres has sworn off sex. Intent on finding a marrying man, she joins a church youth group. A party at her pastor’s house turns into a drinking binge, and Maryanne is raped.

Lucas Knight’s only concern was winning the Ironman Triathlon until the morning he finds Maryanne unconscious in the church parking lot. He becomes the prime suspect, even though Maryanne cannot identify her attacker.

Maryanne wants justice but the identity of her rapist is hidden in the baby she plans to abort. A trap is set. Lucas races to clear his name and keep Maryanne’s secret from drowning her and her baby.

Enter Below & Good Luck !!

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The Witch's Salvation - Giveaway!

SIGNED BOOK GIVEAWAY!!

And here it is - the giveaway! Fancy a good read? Get entered!

Rachael xxx

 

5 LUCKY WINNERS !!

This fantastic giveaway has been brought to you by 
author of The Witch's Salvation Francesca Pelaccia

5 Winners

Open Worldwide

Ending on Sunday 10th November at 11.59pm EST

A witch who demands humanity.

The immortal families who denied her of it.

Two mortals commanded to right the wrong.

That is the fate of the urban princess Anasztasia and the renegade prince Matthias, born shockingly mortal to two immortal families. If they go back in time and restore the witch’s humanity, she will grant them immortality. She will also break a 550 year-old curse that imprisons Matthias’s family in their ancestral homeland and exiles Anasztasia’s family from it.

But to make their lives their own, the heirs must return to the most dangerous day in their families’ past, Easter Sunday, 1457. This is the day Vlad III, aka Dracula, massacred all nobles and their families involved in the death of his father and older brother. 

How can Anasztasia and Matthias reverse the past when their families will not speak of their wrongs? How can they refuse when the witch owns their lives?

The Witch’s Salvation is a time-travel fantasy weaved around myth, historical fact, and a whole lot of creative license.

Buy the book from.....

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

Barnes and Noble

Enter Below and Good Luck!

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Giveaway Time!

Hi all!

Great news - I'm taking part in a Multi-blogger giveaway to offer all my readers some fantastic prizes!

They include plenty of international prizes such as gift certificates for a choice of 3 e-tailers and also two lovely ladies have submitted some of their own polishes as prizes. Exciting!

To get involved, start following all our lovely sponsors using the rafflecopter widget below!

There are 5 entries per follow and a whopping 10 entries for each share of our giveaway, so get entering!

If you follow me already on Bloglovin, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook then there are 5 entries for each of the platforms you follow me on! Get entered! If you aren't - quick links are on the left or are in the Rafflecopter widget.

Good luck!

Rachael xxx

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Winners of the British Bloggers Giveaway!

The massive British Nail Bloggers Giveaway finished last Friday.

It ran for three weeks and attracted 65,815 entries. What an amazing competition to be a part of!

As it has now come to an end, those of us who sponsored it are pleased to be able to announce the winners of the $100 gift certificate and the three $50 gift certificates – all of which can be used at any online nail polish e-tailer of the winner’s choice.

So, without further ado, congratulations go to the following winners:

- 1st prize – a $100 gift certificate – Lena Payne

- 2nd prize – a $50 gift certificate – Nina Wilson

- 2nd prize – a $50 gift certificate – Courtney Beck

- 2nd prize – a $50 gift certificate – Kris Wilson

Congratulations to the winners. To claim your prize, please email crumpet@the-crumpet.com, before the end of Wednesday 3rd July. Happy spending!

Thanks everyone for entering – if you followed me, I hope you enjoy reading my blog.

Rachael xxx

 

Invogue Polish Tea Leaf - Swatches and GIVEAWAY!

**Polishes in this review were kindly provided for me by Oh Beauty**

Good morning all!

Today I have a very special post for you - swatches of Tea Leaf, a beautiful shade by Invogue. You may recognise the name Invogue, as they are the makers of the Nails Inc Feathers dupes that I shared with you here and here.

  

This is the first chance I have had to try some of their 'Core' polish line. I was not disappointed! Tea Leaf is a beautiful mint creme polish. All the Invogue formulations are free from Toluene, Formaldehyde, Camphor and DBP, which for me is definitely a winner! 

The formulation is fantastic - cremes can be a real pain for being streaky, being hard to level etc but this isnt, it levelled really nicely and the formula was just right - I think this could be a one coater for those a bit more careful than me! (Here I have used 2 coats with Seche base and top coat to finish out of habit). The brushes are also really nice with these polishes - no stray hairs and nice and firm which helps with application.

You can find Tea Leaf and a whole range of Invogue polishes (including the Feather effects, Concrete, Neons, Metals, Matt Suedes and Glitters) here at Oh Beauty. They retail at £4.49 each for a 10ml bottle, which works out cheaper than other retailers such as Superdrug when you factor in their free delivery (to UK).

What do you think of Invogue polishes? Do you own any? Are there any on your wishlist? I'm loving the neon range - they're definitely on my to buy list!

What do you think of this shade? Would you wear it? I'm loving it!

---------------

Now - to the giveaway! This is open to UK readers only - sorry! Oh Beauty were kind enough to send me a second bottle of Tea Leaf to give away to my lovely readers! 

Rules:

Giveaway is open until 30th June - get your entries in! Open to over 18s only. I have added in some mandatory entries as I think we need to show Oh Beauty some love for giving us a free polish! More entries are available for sharing - you can do this each day to get another 5 entries per platform! Good luck! 

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British Nail Bloggers Collaboration Giveaway!

Today is a very exciting day – the launch of the British Nail Bloggers Giveaway!

A group of us have clubbed together to lay on a Giveaway worth $250.

So what’s on offer?

* 1st prize $100 gift certificate

* 3 x 2nd prize of $50 gift certificate

The gift certificates can be used at any online nail e-tailer to fill your Helmer / shoebox with the polishes of your dreams.

The Giveaway is open internationally and runs til 8pm on Friday 28th June.  You must be over 18 to enter.

All you need to do is click on the Rafflecopter widget below – make sure you follow everyone for the best chance of winning!

Good luck !!!

Rachael xxx

 

 

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Giveaway update!

Both winners from my giveaway have been notified and have responded - congratulations to Irina and Wendy :)

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Thanks everyone for joining in!

Lots of love,

Rachael xxx

100 Followers - Giveaway update!

yaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Thank you so much to everyone who follows me. To celebrate hitting 100 followers, and also 100 posts (a few ago) I have added another prize to my giveaway. First person drawn will get the choice of which prize they want - 2nd drawn will get the other prize as runner up :)

I have also added two more options to my giveaway - I want to share the love around a little bit - there are another 10 entries for anyone who follows my two bestest 'nail friends' - who always leave me a comment every once in awhile - Becca at Kitty's Painted Claws and Rachael at Nails and Colour. Thank you both for following me since I had only around 5 followers! :) Theres also another 5 for following me via Bloglovin too!


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My very first mini giveaway!

I was going to wait until I hit 25/30 followers, but I am so grateful to all of you already following that I wanted to set up the giveaway early!

The giveaway will run until my birthday (31st March), which means plenty of extra chances to enter through shares, tweets etc. If there are enough entries, I may have a second prize to add :)

The giveaway will be open internationally. This is one of my biggest bug bears when entering contests as so many are US only.. sad panda! I know this is because of shipping costs and shipping problems to a lot of countries, but if I can ship it to your country, I will :)

Check out the widget below.. if you have any problems let me know - its the first time I have used Rafflecopter! *noob*

So the prize is... a brand new bottle of KBShimmer's Oh Splat! (One of my personal favourites!)Any questions, feel free to send me an email at rachosnl at gmail dot com :)

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Valentines Giveaway at The Nail Junkie!

You knew it was coming! I'm a massive fan of The Nail Junkie polishes, so you'll always see a post from me when they come round :)

The giveaway can be found on Aleta's website.

There are 3 polishes to be won - all three are new Valentine's Day themed polishes - Cupcake, Bouquet and Love Letter.

(Source: The Nail Junkie)

Now my favourite.. thats a hard one! Definitely stuck between the two - Cupcake, because of its unusual round glitters and , or Bouquet - this has a matte, textured finish which looks similar to the OPI Liquid Sands. Excited to try it!

(Source: The Nail Junkie)

As you can see above, Cupcake has beautiful pale pink, magenta and red rounded glitters, with microfine silvery glitter that is reminiscent of fairy dust. Bouquet has a matted finish, with its small blue glitters providing a lovely textured finish. Love Letter has a sprinkling of pink, red and white squares to represent the paper the Love Letter is written on, with the bar and small black glitters representing the ink the Love Letter is written in - so creative and unusual! :)

Aleta's Etsy shop will be opening this weekend - so keep an eye out as she has said there will only be limited stock!

Save me a Cupcake please!

Another giveaway at The Nail Junkie!

Well, I didn't win the last one.. so here's hoping I'm feeling lucky this month! ;)

Aleta at The Nail Junkie is having another giveaway - this time for her beautiful Xmas line. A lot of places have had their Xmas lines out for ages, and I have to admit I am sick to death of seeing the same clear bases (not a clear base fan!) with masses of multi-coloured glitter in them.. there are only so many combinations before they all look the same!

So if you're like me, read on. If not, each to their own, but you still need to read on. I like that Aleta's lines are quite small - there are only a few combinations each time, but I think thats great because you know they're going to be really nice! I am particularly in love with 2 of the 4 colours, but if I get a bit of Xmas spends in my stocking this year I'll definitely be splashing on the full set (and the others I have in my favourites list!)

So anyway, here are the four polishes:





(Image Source: The Nail Junkie)

From left to right - Poinsettia, Snowflake, Gold Bell and Holly.

Can't remember if I have mentioned before, but I love that the labels have no writing on them. Also, the names are simple and honest - you get what it says on the tin (bottle).

So, my absolute favourite is Poinsettia - here's why.

This is Poinsettia with topcoat (and the others with topcoat):




(Image Source: The Nail Junkie)

Look at that shine! And look at the sparkle, you can really see the green popping out from the gorgeous almost cherry red colour, it really does make you think of Poinsettia's - the green and red are the exact shades.

But..... here's the same without topcoat:


(Image Source: The Nail Junkie)

It looks just like a strawberry! You can still see the green, but its not quite as poppy - outty as with topcoat. Now I think about it, it also reminds me of red poppies! Absolutely in love with this colour!


(Image Source: The Nail Junkie)

Look how beautiful it is!

Now.. I can't decide which I like more. If you have any polishes by Aleta, or have seen any of her polishes, you will know she has the Café trio (which I have blogged about before, and I also have Tea and Cocoa on route YAY!) and they are a beautiful blend of shimmery brown shades. So my thinking is.. how would Gold Bells look along with the 3.. I would only need one more shade for a perfect Ombre set <3

Here's Gold Bells:


(Image Source: The Nail Junkie)

Here's the Cafe colours:



(Image Source: The Nail Junkie)

I can see it, can you??

Lastly, my other choice colour is Holly - its not like anything else I've seen for Xmas this year. The main brands have their usual reds, blues and greens, and most indies have their glitter bombs and lots and lots of bar glitter (BLEH).




 (Image Source: The Nail Junkie)

So I don't know if this is me, but it looks almost grey in colour. If you look closely though, you can see the green where it catches the light. I think its absolutely stunning. This would be a favourite for me for work - classy, but with some Xmas in it. I love Xmas, it makes me happy just thinking about it - this would be my reminder in January / February and beyond that there'll be another one coming haha! I also have numerous jumpers and Xmas outfits that I am already co-ordinating this colour with!

And last but definitely not least (and still on my list) is Snowflake - this is quite similar to some other Xmas polishes I have seen, but it has a less sheer coverage, and has a beautiful almost creamy look to it. Really stunning, a definite favourite with many people I would guess! I am still sporting my Xmas pudding nail art.. I think it would look stunning in place of my regular white - for some extra added sparkle!


(Image Source: The Nail Junkie)

Hope you love them all as much as I do - if so, you can find these polishes and many others (check out Flamingo, Watermelon and Apple - my personal faves!) in her shop on Etsy.

Enjoy! :) x

Giveaway at Glitter Obsession

There is a BEAUTIFUL swatch post over at Glitter Obsession.

Not only are there many many many beautiful swatch photos, but there is also a giveaway!

Make sure you check it out, and check out all those beautiful holo swatches!



and here is my favourite of the lot - just incase you were thinking about NOT having a look!



(Image Source: Glitter Obsession.com)

This is Color Club Angel Kiss - I'm not usually a fan of holos but I seriously love this! Such a cheery shade to put a smile on your face on all these cold dark days where you wake up and its dark, and finish work and its dark! Put a bit of shine into your life! :)

Giveaway at The Nail Junkie

During my daily strolls through my favourite blogs, I saw that Aleta at The Nail Junkie is having a giveaway.

Aleta has some of the most gorgeous polishes (none of which I own.. just yet..) but is due to release her new Cafe Collection for sale in the next few days.



(Image Source - The Nail Junkie )

As you can see there are three beautiful shades - from left to right, I believe its Coffee, Tea and Cocoa. I like all three, but I love Tea the most - it reminds me of having afternoon tea - fresh baked sweet scones, raspberry jam, clotted cream.. and a big cup of tea. Makes me feel warm inside just thinking about it!All three are beautiful shimmer polishes - Coffee has a beautiful blue/green tint to it that you can see in the above photo. I think all three are gorgeous autumn shades and will look lovely across the Xmas period! :)




 (Image Source - The Nail Junkie)

As you can see, they come in the cutest, most uniquely labelled bottles. Really excited to get my hands on one soon!

They will be available in Aleta's Etsy store and you will also be able to get them here also from Friday 16th November <3

The giveaway you can find here:Giveaway