It's begining to look a lot like Christmas.... part 1

With the festive season, galloping closer and closer (seriously time seems to be flying by) my mind turned to present buying and I thought I put together some kind of gift guide.  I thought I'd be obvious and start with a bit of  nail theme and thanks to a tweet from Stephanie from Imperfectly Painted, I have the craziest nail related gift I've seen to show you.


For the polish lover:


The nail brand Julep, started a monthly box scheme in the US, similar to those offered from Birchbox, Glossy Box et al. Every month, you get a selection of their products and they call their subscribers mavens.  So on to the gift, and forgive me if it's out of most of your price ranges (it's totally out of mine!!) , Julep are offering the chance to become a lifetime maven with boxes every month for life, for the bargin price of $10,000.  The full deets are here. If you are interested go with the quickness as there are only 10 of these available. (If my loved ones are reading and have had a recent windfall I know nothing about, this is not what I want for Christmas! - Just so we are clear!) 



Nail polish lovers will be happy with anything that's a little bit different or unusual, that could be a new polish brand or an unusual finish particularly a holographic or flaky polish (that doesn't sound that nice really nobody wants a polish which flakes they want one with flakes in it á la nubar 2010 - see here and here ) 

Cult Nails Iconic - one of my favourite polishes

Here I was going to suggest Cult Nails Clairvoyant, this was originally released as a limited edition called Unicorn Puke (see here for the swatchaholic's amazing photos) but it's sold out, but they still have loads of amazing polishes left and a Black Friday - Cyber Monday offer on, which ends on Monday.  Polishes are retailing for $7.75 instead of $10 and the base coat and top coat are $6 instead of $8, shipping usually costs $8 to Ireland.  Also beware of import duties etc, so don't order too much that you get caught for them (anything less than €22 is ok in Ireland). 


My other suggestion is A-England, they are an English nail polish brand, who have some lovely polishes and some of them are holographic!  They retail at £9 each and have free worldwide shipping. 




For the polish novice:


First up, do your non-nail polish wearing friends a favour, you know the ones who say they never have time to paint their nails and comment that you must have loads of free time on your hands to be able to paint you nails, introduce them to fast drying topcoat and maybe base coat too!

Picture from Seche.com

My personal favourite is Seche Vite  and you can find it on beautyemporium.ie for €9.55 delivered here. (This is one of the new bunch of Irish beauty sites that have popped up lately, I've ordered from them and the service was excellent, my order arrived super quick.)  Other fast dry top coats people recommend are the Red Sally Hansen one, Essence, Poshe and Cult nails. 


Even better, you can put together a mani  kit (well you could buy one but one you put together will be better )  you could pick up a couple of polishes, maybe Essence, Catrice and Elf are all cheap but generally very good (see here, here and here for inspiration).  Add in a nail file, I know glass is best but I could never find one I was happy with, top and base coat as above and there you have it.  You could also add, your favourite hand cream, cuticle remover or oil, toe seperators (although I always use a rolled up tissue), orange sticks, I'm sure there's some things I forgot.   


If you feel that neither of the above ideas will sway them to enjoy your love of all things nail polish, what about a voucher for a mani/pedi.  There are caveats associated with this, never ever give a voucher for somewhere you wouldn't be happy to receive a voucher for yourself and this might just be my friends but I know that some of my friends would consider a pedi as some kind of torture, since they hate people touching their feet and one doesn't even like strangers touching their hand.  


If you think none of the above will win over your friend you better catch the next non- nail related part of the gift guide.  


Is there anything I left out? Let me know!