Happy Birthday Polish Party!

At the end of September the Polish Party group turned 1 and so the theme for the month's nail art challenge was party/celebrations related. I actually did these at the right time but have been a very lazy blogger and haven't actually got them up until today!
I chose to go with the true British party decorations-bunting! I used Barry M-Elderberry as my base and then drew the bunting using my black Barry M nail art pen. The pennants were done using Cirque-Baptista my POTW for that week), Avon-Midnight Green and Rimmel-Red Carpet.

Not the neatest nail art I've ever done but you get the idea I'm sure! They were sparkly and fun anyway.

Make sure you check out all the other birthday nails in the inlinkz too, there's some fab ones!

~Nail Art Novice~

Sparkle And Shine

Hello lovelies! Hope you're all doing well and enjoying the year so far. I had a brilliant time at my New Year's gathering, but it really took it's toll on my poor nails, they're the shortest they've been for a very long time at the moment! I've got no free edge left on most of my nails, it's making me really rather sad =(
So much so that I was feeling really uninspired for what I should do on them once I took off my fabulous rainbows so I made my boyfriend choose something for me! (#LazyBloggerSyndrome lol). He decided he wanted something sparkly and so this is what I ended up with: Revlon-Silver Screen, Avon-Fabulous and Barry M-Majesty from their autumn textures. I decided to keep it simple and do a mixed size dotticure with the Barry M on top of the other colours.

Apologies for the tipwear in these, it wasn't apparent in real life!

This was so sparkly and pretty! I wish I was better at doing these kind of dotticures, I think it looks a bit of a mess personally, but I know they can look amazing because I always admire the ones Emma from Emma's Little Corner does (like this one!), but I just can't get them too look that good! Siiigh.

Anyway, that's my first mani of 2014 done, woo! Onwards!

~Nail Art Novice~

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 11-Christmas Trees

Squeezing this post in before the end of Saturday so I can still claim to have posted on time, haha. I've been visiting my boyfriend today so haven't been able to post yet.
The penultimate Xmas challenge mani! Boo! I've had such fun doing these every day and sharing the challenge with some awesome ladies. For 'Christmas trees' I've known what I wanted to do ever since way back when in Metallic week of the Mish Mash challenge. I festived them up a bit but that's where the idea came from.
Polishes used: GOSH-Holographic Hero (not that you can really see the holo any more, many layers of topcoat killed it. It did look pretty awesome to begin with though!), Barry M-Cosmic Glow (magnetic), Maybelline-Winner Takes It All, London Girl Polish-#79, Rimmel-Red Carpet and Barry M-Teal. I added some gems that I won in a giveaway prize because hey, it's Christmas, and I fancied trying something different. Amazed how well they've stayed on actually!

These are fun! I did find the gems a bit weird at first because I wasn't used to having 3D things on my nails but I forgot about them fairly quickly. These make me feel VERY festive!

Rara
Polishes used: Base of Layla-Mermaid Spell, thumb xmas tree; nail art pen with Tara's Talons-12 Days over the top, index finger; Avon-Noir Emerald with nail art pen decorations, middle finger: Essie-Mojito Madness with Tara's Talons-Bauble over the top, ring finger; Avon-Garden Green mixed with Sinful Colors-Pistache with Andrea Fulerton silver nail pen for tinsel and little finger; as before. All trees have Avon-Express Mocha stumps and yellow nail pen stars.
I am very surprised how many greens I actually have as I don't really like green!! I like how all of my trees are different and my favourite two have to be the ones on my thumb and index fingers! 

Really sad that we only have one more mani left to do :'(

~Rara~

I'm also quite sad we've only got one left-it's been a really fun month trying to organise these around my life haha! Don't forget to check out the other ladies trees in the inlinkz. I'll be back on Monday with the FINAL mani, booo!

~Nail Art Novice~

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 9-Snowmen

I was looking at my manis for this challenge and realised none of them were particularly in your face bright amazing colours, so I decided to rectify that for this prompt! The base for this mani is the ever beautiful Tara's Talons-Ol' Blue Eyes (over a similar base colour to make it more opaque) and it's just gorgeous. My little fingers have decals I got on Ebay here and then the rest of the snowmen were freehanded all with a dotting tool. Other polishes: Rimmel-Serene, W7-Black, Barry M-Mango and Rimmel-Red Carpet.

When I was doing these I wasn't sure I was going to like them but actually I'm pretty pleased with the way they've turned out in the end! I love the contrast of colours over that blue, think it looks fab!

Rara
Polishes used Avon-Starry Sky, on my thumb is Tara's Talons-I Love Winter and on my ring finger is Tara's Talons-Ice Ice Baby then Paperchase nail art pens. The only problem I encountered was with the I Love Winter...it took me AGES to get any of the snowflakes and stars out it was mostly the polish that came out.
I didn't want to do a conventional snowman as I'd already done one in an earlier post. So I decided to do the main aspects of a snowman...the carrot, scarf and hat. I apologise now about the smudges on my nails...I took the photos after a trip to the pub and also I piggled the skin on my little finger...oops!! So I am including the photo I took before I did my clean up. Only 3 left :'(

Only 3 left :'(
~Rara~

Don't forget to check out the other lovely snowmen in the inlinkz. Also, does anyone else now have 'Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?' from Frozen in their head? LOVE that film!

Until next time,

~Nail Art Novice~

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 8-Holly

Hey lovelies, I'm back with day 8 of my Xmas challenge-can't quite believe how quickly these have sped by. There's only 4 left! I'm also reunited with my beloved fast dry topcoat, so there are a lot less dings in these nails than the last-phew!
So today's prompt is 'Holly' and I decided that I'd just do accent nails because I really wanted to use some of my festive glitters! The base for these is Revlon-Silver Screen and the glitter is Iconic Effect-Red, Green + Gold which is fabulously festive and basically does what it says on the tin. I sort of dabbled on two coats-could have used one as it looked quite pretty but this is Christmas time so I wanted ALL THE GLITTER =D
 The holly leaves are Rimmel-Camouflage and Revlon-Emerald and the berries are Rimmel-Red Obsession topped with Barry M-Red Glitter.

It's weird, in real life the stripes down the middle of the leaves look much darker than the leaves themselves but there you go-must be the different finishes playing with my camera. Look at that glitter-isn't it fab?

Rara
Polishes used: Avon-Noir Emerald, Nails Inc-Uptown Glamour, Tara's Talons-Bauble, Barry M-Diamond Glitter, holly berries are Barry M-Red Glitter and leaves are Avon-Garden Green or green nail art pen. I was a little under inspired for these nails-I'm not the greatest at drawing holly leaves and lacked the imagination to make them exciting. However I am pleased with the final results!

~Rara~

I really like them! She's talking nonsense about not being able to draw the leaves I reckon. Also I loooove that glitter on her index finger-we have a joint Tara's Talon's advent calendar and she got that in it-bit jealous!

So there's our holly berries. As ever, don't forget to check out the other awesome ladies in their holly-day manicures (haha!) in the inlinkz.

Here's a reminder of the remaining prompts too, only four more to go!

~Nail Art Novice~

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 7-Christmas Animals

OK so I did a very silly thing this week. I'm currently up in Sheffield visiting friends/rehearsing and performing in a show and I brought all my polishes with me to do this mani. Or so I thought. I'd actually (somehow!) managed to forget both my base coat and top coat, which is basically a massive fail for a nail blogger! I had to go out and buy some more and could only find Sally Hansen Double Duty. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty decent for what it is, but man I missed my Seche Vite! I don't know how I ever managed to function before I owned fast dry top coat, because these took hours to feel like they were properly dry, and even in the short time between finishing them and taking the pictures they got a little battered/dinged up. SIGH. Lesson learned there, methinks.

Anyway, enough of my idiotic-ness. I used lots of polishes for this one so I'll zip through them quickly: Rimmel-Red Obsession, Barry M-Red Glitter, W7-Black, Barry M-Matt White,Mango, Mushroom and Lemon Icecream. I also used some reindeer water decals which I picked up on ebay here.

I do think they look better in white but I wanted to try both colours out

So there's my Christmas animals-cute little robins and penguins!

Rara
So for some reason the majority of my Xmas animals are birds! I've done an owl, penguin, robin, reindeer and another robin. Not sure why it was so hard to think of Christmas animals but it was and I was sorely tempted to redo my Christmas pigs!! However I am pleased with how these came out, especially after I added the Santa hats...no Xmas mani is complete without a Santa hat!! Polishes used - base colour NYC-Sidewalkers, Avon-Express Mocha, Tara's Talons-Three Wise Men, Barry M-Matt White, Barry M-Red Glitter and an orange nail art pen. 
Friday 13th...hope it was a lucky nail art one for you all!!

~Rara~

Don't forget to check the inlinkz out for more awesome festive manis =)

~Nail Art Novice~

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 6-Decorations

-PIC HEAVY POST-

Do you ever have those moments where you do some really awesome nail art that you're really proud of one one hand and just know you're not going to be able to recreate it well on the other? Yeah, this was one of those! I took inspiration for these from Chalkboard Nails' Functional Christmas Lights and for this decided to stray away from the Christmas colours I've been sticking to at the mo! I did a base of Revlon-Minted and then topped it with my Iconic Effect-Extreme Holo Topcoat...because I couldn't resist using it again haha! I did the "string" with my black Barry M nail art pen and drew "bulbs" with the white to provide a good base for my slightly jelly like glow in the dark polishes. I used BK Polishes in 05, 06 and 10 to colour them in. On my thumb I did a sort of Christmas tree with the lights which I really like. Then it came to my right hand. My Barry M pens started playing up and the bulbs all came out different sizes and shapes. I did attempt the tree to match but it just wasn't playing so I gave up in the end, haha! Ah well, can't have it all ey?
I feel I should warn you that my camera was a little dazzled by the holoyness of these, poor thing, so these are a little blurry around the edges.

While one hand is definitely better than the other, I do really like these! And look, they really glow:

GITD nail varnish makes me so happy, which is good because I had crappy news today so I needed a pick me up!
Anyway, let's see Rara's decorations too!

Rara
I had absolutely no idea how to do decorations...so I kind of cheated. I decided to use a new polish from a TarasTalons goodie bag called Paper Chains. I layered it over the top of Avon-Forget-Me-Not Blue. Paper Chain is a beautiful many coloured glitter and makes me happy! To try to match it I painted my other nails with Layla-Mermaid Spell (Holographic effect) and attempted paper chains with my nail pens from Paperchase. Not sure you could tell what they are unless I had already told you though!

Bring on Christmas Animals!!!!

~Rara~

I actually really like those paperchains, they're so colourful, and that glitter is loooovely! There you go, lots of holoy goodness and pretty decorations. Here's a reminder of the rest of the prompts, can't believe we're half way through already!

Don't forget to check out the inlinkz for some more fabulous 'decorations' manis!

~Nail Art Novice~

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 5-Bells

Hello lovelies!
I'm back with another Xmas mani today-I can't believe how quickly these are going past. Today's is Bells and I've freehanded some slightly wibbly ones! I started with a base of Rimmel-Purple Addict and on all but my accent fingers topped it with a coat of Iconic Effect-Extreme Holo Topcoat which is basically my new favourite thing ever. A way to make any polish not only holoy but extremely so? I had to have it! I get the feeling I'm going to be using it a lot, haha. For my bells I used Maybelline-Winner Takes It All and added a little detail with Rimmel-Red Carpet/Camouflage.

Please ignore my stubby nubbin of a middle finger =(

I love the bells but I'm more impressed with that holo topcoat-look at those gorgeous rainbows! You can get it on the Iconic Effect Etsy site and it comes in three intensities depending on how much holo you want! Because I am a true "holo ho" (to quote a lovely lady in one of my nail groups on FB) I had to have the extreme one, but I'm sorely tempted to pick up the others with some of my Xmas money too!

OK, so there's my bells, now let's have a look at Rara's:

Rara
Today I used Avon-Garden Green which is quite a nice shimmery green. The bells were done using Nails Inc-Uptown Glamour which I got out of a magazine for £1.40! And the bow detailing I used Barry M-Bright Red. The lettering was done by my trusty Andrea Fulerton...think I might love that woman! I wasn't too sure how to draw bells so they could quite possibly have looked nothing like they needed to. But in the end I think you can tell what they are! Jingle all the way to the next challenge...decorations, where I'm completely stumped......

~Rara~

I love Rara's little bells, I think they're fabulous! I think it's interesting how we both have our own favourite nail art pens-she loves the Andrea Fulerton ones but I'm much more of a Barry M fan! Each to their own ey?

Don't forget to check out the rest of the manis in the inlinkz!

~Nail Art Novice~

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 3-Food

I was intrigued to see this prompt get as many votes as it did when we were picking themes for the challenge-it wouldn't have been one I would have chosen myself but that's the beauty of getting people to vote I guess!
I had a plan in my mind for these, but unfortunately my MoYou festive plate hasn't shown up yet (Boo!) so I had to think of something else and the only things I could really think of were candy canes or Christmas pud! As I don't eat Xmas puds I decided to go for candy canes! Polishes used were Rimmel-Serene/Red Carpet and Tara's Talons-Dasher from my advent calendar which I just adore! Sadly (for you guys) this polish isn't available in her shop because all the calendar polishes are one offs (with the same names) so my 'Dasher' won't be the same as anyone else's, which makes me love it even more!

Anyway, pictures!

I have to say I'm not the biggest fan of this mani, I like the stripes but all the candy canes on my accents are different sizes and a bit wibbly and I just don't love them. However, to redeem myself, let me show you a picture of 'Dasher' before I stuck nail art on top of it-it's gooooorgeous!

Rara
Pigs in blankets!!!! My favourite Christmas food of all time. I could eat my body weight in these every year! I used Avon-Gray Flash for the base, Essie-Cascade Cool for the pigs and the blankets were done with pens from Paperchase. I outlined the pigs with Andrea Fulerton black. And because I didn't think they looked very Christmassy I added little santa hats with Barry M-Bright Red.

Oh my gosh I love these so much...not sure I want to take them off to do my next mani!!

~Rara~

Awwh! I love them too, so cute! I also love the fact (because I'm a big sciencey nerd) that the blanket on her little finger looks like a Christmas amoeba! That might just be me though haha. Don't forget to check out the other awesome 'food' manis in the inlinkz below and happy Thursday!

~Nail Art Novice~

A Rather Royal Rain

Hey lovelies, hope you all had marvellous weekends!

Today I've got a random fishtail design I did because I have too much time on my hands at the moment, haha. I chose three colours that always make me think of 'royalty'-Red (Rimmel-Red Carpet), Purple (Rimmel-Purple Addict) and Bronze (Avon-Fabulous). On my other fingers I have yet another gorgeous British indie polish - Pocket Money Polishes-November Rain. I've wanted this sparkly beauty for ages and to my delight Charlie surprised me with a bottle when she returned some stamping plates to me earlier this week. Within half an hour of my opening the parcel it was on my nails, haha! November Rain is a gorgeous collection of bluey/grey, copper and gold microglitters and it really is just as lovely on my nails as I thought it would be!

What can I say? I love a fishtail mani (even if they are a pain to do!) and I love this glitter and I've been enjoying feeling like royalty, even if only with my fingernails, haha!

Thanks for stopping by

~Nail Art Novice~

When Autumn Leaves Start To Fall

I know we're heading along into winter but as we're not there yet I thought I'd take this opportunity to use a polish I've had forever and not had the chance to. I bought this last year in a Black Friday sale but it didn't arrive til Decemberish so it was no longer seasonally appropriate. I've had to wait for Autumn to roll around again before I can rock it on my nails-and it's gorgeous! Falling Leaves by Absolut Lacquer is a glitter topper with orange and yellow glitter pieces along with browny/red bar glitter and microglitters-I think it's lovely! I've used it here over a gradient of Barry M-Gold Foil, Rimmel-Gold Save The Queen and Avon-Fabulous-a perfect autumnal trio!

I love Autumn-it's my favourite season and I really like this mani too! I think I need to go and find a big pile of crisp Autumn leaves and photograph it with them (before jumping in, of course!).

Happy weekend!

~Nail Art Novice~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 9-Blue

Hello again!
Time for another Mish Mash challenge and I was rather looking forward to this one as I have a LOT of blue polishes-almost 30! I was originally going to try and use them all in today's mani but decided that would take forever so I randomly chose 10 instead. (By randomly I mean I stuck my hand in the box and pulled them out without looking, haha).
Polishes used: Barry M-Matt White, Guava, Denim, Rimmel-Midnight Blue, Aqua Cool, Royal Blue (Metal Rush), Maybelline-Dark Denim, China Glaze-For Audrey, Avon-On Point Blue, Sally Hansen-Himalayan Blue and Revlon-Royal.

 I decided to do a mosaic/colour blocked mani to show them off to their best potential so started with a white base and some striping tape, then added each colour semi-randomly to my nails.

(Kindly ignore my higgeldy-piggeldy nail lengths and shapes!)
I really like this, it's very me and really quite simple to do-the longest part was getting all the tape on, man that took forever! Some of the colours have bleached slightly in these photos, they look even better in real life with the contrasts between the colours. One day when I have time to spare I'm going to do one of these using ALL my blues, I reckon it'd look amazing!

Don't forget to check out the other fantastic 'blue' entries in the inlinkz below, and I hope you're having a marvellous Thursday!

~Nail Art Novice~

Quack Quack!

Hello Lovelies! Rara here again. I've got some fun rubber duck nails for you all today.

Polishes used were Avon-Grey Flash (a beautiful grey colour with shinies in, and it only needs one coat!), Avon-Inspire, Barry M-Atlantic Road (one of their textured polishes), Barry M-Mango (from their Gelly line) and Barry M-Sequinned White plus my Andrea Fulerton Dot and Flick in black.

I fancied something cute today so I decided on rubber ducks-a firm favourite theme between myself and Novice.

I used a dotting tool to create the ducks and then a small brush for their tiny wings. And who can say no to a few sparkles? So I added the bubbles above the ducks with a sequin in each one. 
I love these already and they've only been on my nails for about 10 minutes-I can tell I'll be staring at them all day at work tomorrow!

Until next time, 

~Rara~


Don't forget to enter Novice's Giveaway here! 

Rara's Super Quick Summer Nails

Hello lovelies! Rara here again! I'm posting today because Novice is away visiting her friend and doesn't have any internet so you get me instead! I've got a couple of summery designs I did that were pretty quick and easy.

First up-Gradients and stars.
I wanted to try some gradients on my own this time [Novice-last time I did some for her-here]. Me and Novice went to the park in the sunshine and I took my polishes. I used Avon-Forget-Me-Not Blue, Plum Seduction and Make My Day with a Rimmel glittery top coat. 
It was quite difficult to start with as I couldn't get the colours to blend properly, and I'm not sure I managed to get it right on all of my nails. I decided I wanted the colours to alternate so I went from blue to red then red to blue. After that I added some nail stickers that are also from Avon. I was quite pleased with the results and got a few compliments from them too, which is always good!

Next up-a summery dotticure.

Polishes used were both Essie-Mojito Madness and Off The Shoulder. This was just a quick and simple mani-I needed to paint my nails but was just going to bed. I painted each layer in between reading chapters of my book. Super quick, very easy and quite effective!

That's all from me for today but I'm sure I'll see you again soon!

~Rara~

Monsters University Nail Art

The other day my boyfriend and I went to see the (AWESOME) new Monsters University film and I had promised him these nails for it. He also asked for his very own Mike and Sully nails too, and of course, I obliged!
Polishes used: Barry M-Key Lime (Mike), Guava (Sully) and Cobalt Blue (University colours). Also starring Matt White  for the eyes, and a smidgeon of black mixed with Guava to make Sully's nose. Sully's purple blotches are Maybelline-Mellow Mauve and his eye colour is Avon-On Point Blue. Details were, of course, done with the Barry M nail art pens.

 And now for the first time on my blog, but probably not the last, I introduce my boyfriend's thumbs-he even painted the base colours himself!

He was so happy with these, it was kind of adorable. Actually, so was I, they've been making me really happy over the last couple of days. Sadly though, time to bid them farewell as they're all chipped now but they've been awesome while they lasted, and the film was FAB.

~Nail Art Novice~