Guest Review: Viva La Nails

The lovely Charlie from Lady of the Lane (Which i must admit is a fabulous blog, who i have been following for a long time now!) is guest reviewing some nail bits and pieces from Viva La Nails. Without further ado, take it away Charlie! 

I was busy tweeting one evening and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for Nail Art supplies as I fancied a play with some diamante’s and sequins...I only had one reply and that was Sinead asking if I fancied doing a guest review of some nail art supplies from Viva La Nails that she had needing to be reviewed. Of course I did!

A day or two later this amazing collection of bits and pieces arrived through my door.

I absolutely couldn’t wait to get going and started looking through all the little packets and trying to decide what to do. First thing I noticed was that there are no instructions. This made it impossible to tell what kind of stickers there were, were they water decals, or normal stickers, did they need a top coat over the top or not? So the obvious answer was to look them up on the Viva La Nails site.  Fail number two. There are no names on the packets either. If you’ve never looked at the site then you won’t know there are thousands of products on there, trying to find the exact item you are clutching in your hand on the site is nigh on impossible. In fact I’d go so far as to say I’m pretty certain half the products weren’t on the site at all. So I had to guess how to use things, which as a total nail art novice was no easy feat.

Over the next couple of weeks I created loads of looks and there’s a selection of pics below of things I tried. Some more successful than others. The diamantes are incredibly fiddly to use but were my most successful manicures. The stickers, all of them, were total fails. They don’t stick. None of them. They peel up at the edges, even with a top coat. I can’t in all honesty recommend any of the stickers, without a top coat they last half an hour if you are lucky, and with a top coat the edges still start peeling off so you end up with sharp edges.  This was really disappointing to me as it was the stickers I was most looking forward to trying. I think the water decals might be more successful but to the best of my knowledge there weren’t any in the selection I received, as I say, if there were I couldn’t tell, none of them were labelled!

My imagination totally failed me when it came to using glitter and bits of shell, but I will probably try just putting the glitter into clear polish at some point.

Anyway hit and misses, and perhaps some of it is down to my appalling lack of technique.  The crystals are lovely, the sequins are too and I think they’ll stick really well, not tried them yet but I should think a top coat will stick them down very well. The stickers however, I can honestly say I would avoid. With a lack of instructions, or even names so you can look them up on the site, then they don’t seem to cater for the novice at all.

I will however, use Viva La Nails to purchase more crystals and sequins (dazzlings I think they are called on the site).

Anyway, here’s some pics of the products in action.

This was my fave.

This was also a success.

And this worked out 

And here are some sticker disasters. All my attempts with the stickers had to be removed within half an hour of application.

There are an unbelievable amount of products on the Viva La Nails site and I’m sure there’s something for everyone there. The stickers didn’t work for me, but the gems were a success so I’m sure you’ll find something you like :)

Thank you again to the wonderful Charlie, for testing and reviewing these products for me! If you are interested in reviewing any products for me, please get in touch! As i always have lots of things to get through! 

*All products are available from the Viva La Nails Website with free shipping on all orders over £25* 

xxx