31ish Week Nail Art Challenge 18-Half Moons

Hello lovelies!
Being a bad blogger again recently and also had interference from work shifts so haven't got anything on my blog for a while even though I've had these done since Friday...forgive me?!

These aren't your typical half moons but there are half moons on my thumbs so they totally count, right? I've wanted to redo my owl nails for a while just because they're cute and this was the perfect opportunity!

I used lots of polishes for this one! I started with a couple of coats of Sinful Colors-Social Ladder to give my natural nails a bit of a shimmer. I used Smitten Polishes-Bifrost on my thumb and did the moon in Dark Metal Lacquer-Lonely Day which is a grey holo which I really need to use on its own because it's really pretty! For my owls I used Barry M-Chilli and Damson, Sinful Colors-Exotic Green and Collection-Twilight. I did the eyes with Collection-Look At Me!, the beaks with Barry M-Mango, and the tummy patches with Barry M-Lychee.

They didn't end up being the neatest things ever but I like em-they're fun and bright!

I don't really have much else to say for once!
Hope you all had a good weekend =)

~Nail Art Novice~

Glitter Me Mondays: Dark Metal Lacquer-U-Fig

Hello lovelies, happy (?) Monday to you!

For this week's GMM I just really fancied doing something silly again as I haven't done any daft nail art in a while. The glitter I'm using as my base is Dark Metal Lacquer-U-Fig which is from a new (to me!) British indie and I won it and a couple of  others in her end of summer giveaway. It's an almost khaki green full of tiny black microglitters that reminds me of kiwi fruits. I used three coats because the first looked a bit patchy but it filled in really nicely with a second (and the third was just to get a couple of bits I'd missed). Once it was on my nails I realised it was just crying out to be turned into silly monsters! For the eyes I used Sally Hansen-Man-go Team!, Collection-Look At Me! and Maybelline-Ceramic Blue plus Rimmel-Rose Libertine for the tongues. The black and white details were (of course) done using my Barry M nail art pens, and I added a layer of Rimmel's matte topcoat to finish.

Hehe! What do you think? I love fun nail art like this sometimes. I really like the glitter too, I think it's one that wouldn't be for everyone but it's definitely for me!

Here's a shot before I matted it so you can see the glitter in all its glory (this is with a coat of Seche Vite, it's actually a bit matte itself without topcoat)-it's really different to anything I've seen before but I like it!

See you soon!

~Nail Art Novice~

U.G.L.Y, You Ain't Got Not Alibi

Ah Daphne and Celeste =P

One of the naily FB groups I am in has a weekly theme and this week's is 'Ugly Polishes'. I scoured my collection but could only find some slightly questionable browns with terrible formula that I really couldn't bring myself to use and this one. Now I don't think this one is too bad at all, but I know it won't be everyone's cup of tea-but then again I like all greens! This is 2 coats of Collection-Hidden, a camo-green colour which I quite like!

I didn't just leave it like this though, I don't like wearing plain colours on their own any more so I added a bit of Springy glitter (SJPolishes-Sprung) to jazz it up a little!

It doesn't look like much in the photos but in real life there was lots of gold glitter scattered through the green and the effect was rather pleasing on the eye!

What do you reckon, ugly or not? I think that ugly polish is in the eye of the beholder, so no polish is really ugly (with the exception of the Barry M sequins which seem to be unanimously awful!).

Happy Friday!

~Nail Art Novice~

31WNAC 5-Blue

Hello lovelies! Hope you're all having an awesome Friday bank hol and have been enjoying the sun-I am a little pink around the cheeks from it, oops!
It's Blue week in the 31 Week Nail Art Challenge and this colour/glitter combo is something I've been wanting to do for a while. I've used Rimmel-Out Of The Blue and paired it with the very lovely Pocket Money Polishes-Alien Like You which is one of the very last ones I got before Charlie closed her doors in January (sob!). To go with the Alien theme I've done some accents in Maybelline-Ceramic Blue, Collection-Look At Me!, Revlon-Silver Screen and Rimmel-Double Decker Red.

The flash on my camera seems to sort of 'flatten' the glitter a little, so I took one in more natural light (complete with my kitchen worktop in the background!) to show it off to its full, lovely, potential:

These nails are so much fun, I've had a couple of comments on them and I just LOVE flashing that glitter around in the sun too =D

Here's a reminder of the 31WNAC prompts, come back next week for 'Purple'.

Enjoy the rest of your Easter Weekend!

~Nail Art Novice~

Guest Post Week! Monkey Nail Art

Hi all! I'm Rachel from Monkey Nail Art and I'm chuffed to bits to be doing a guest post for Nail Art Novice. Sometimes it's nice to get out and about, you know? Jenni is a fabulous artist and looking through her designs I knew I'd have to do something extra special. Two things struck me about Jenni's blog - rainbow colours and striping tape. So I got out my brightest polishes and came up with this:

This is a reverse gradient of sorts - that is, I started with a plain base colour, applied my striping tape and then sponged the gradient over the top. I love how the gold really pops out!

My base gold colour is from Claire's Accessories (unnamed.) Following that I used:
Nails Inc Big Apple Red
Rimmel Tangerine Queen
Collection 2000 Sherbet Lemons
Barry M Emerald Green
Essie Sweet Talker
Essie Butler Please

It's all finished off with Seche Vite for that extra gorgeous glossy finish.

Thanks so much to Nail Art Novice for having me on your blog and inspiring me to create such bright, bold nails!

OMD! Challenge Day 16-Half Moons

Yesterday I was having a bit of a crappy day so I decided to shut myself away with a film that always makes me happy (WALL-E-I just adore that little robot with the enormous heart!) and do my nails because I always find that helps me stress bust. I chose to do half moons instead of ruffians because I wanted something that would take me a while to do and that I had to concentrate on. I was going to do all owls again, but decided to do a mix of 'night time' creatures instead. I've got a badger, a cat, a fox and an owl, with a cheeky half moon (see what I did there) on my little fingers.
Polishes used: Barry M-Black, Matt White, Lychee, Mango, Mushroom, Rimmel-Midnight Blue, Rose Libertine, Collection-Look At Me! and London Girl-# 70 plus the Barry M nail art pens in Black,White and Silver.
I really need to get myself some of those ring binder re-enforcer sticker things, as I had to freehand on all these half moons and they're all a bit wibbly as a result!

I'm not too sure about the cat's whiskers but it didn't look right without them. Otherwise I really love these nails-they're super fun and more importantly made me feel MUCH better once they were finished-Phew! I'm rather getting into this new mani every couple of days business, oops! Haha.

~Nail Art Novice~

Ask A British Blogger III + Nail Art!

This fortnight's British Blogger question is 'What is the oldest polish in your collection?' and to answer it instead of just taking a couple of pictures of what is frankly a rather boring bottle, I thought I'd do some nail art with it.
Introducing Avon's Fabulous which is about 10 years old I would guess. I can't find any information on it on the internet but I did get a lot of Avon stuff when I was 13/14 so I guess it's from then. It's actually the only Avon one I've got left as it survived the years much better than any of the others which turned into watery messes or hardened to the point where they were un-usable. It's quite a pretty colour though, so I am glad that I've still got it in my stash!

Check out how dated the bottle looks!

I couldn't decide what I wanted to do so I opted for a skittle using various techniques, and using Collection-Electric Dreams which looks awesome against the bronze. This is two coats of Fabulous and it was very nearly a one coater, which I was surprised at! It didn't have a horribly strong smell, but definitely more than newer polishes which I guess means it's not 3-free.

It's also a pain to try and hold comfortably too

The two colours together reminded me of Egyptian artifacts so on my thumb I did an Eygptian-inspired design (the Eye of Horus-Egyptian symbol of protection and good health) with my Barry M nail art pen in black.

I really like my thumbs and also my double dotted little fingers-I think they look quite nice without being too overwhelming. I love the colours together too.
So that's my oldest polish! What's yours?

~Nail Art Novice~

Check out everyone else's posts here:

Try Something Tuesdays: Colour Blocking

Hi lovelies!

I'm back from Brighton after a fantastic weekend away and have finally had chance to paint my nails again. After 4 days of plain black nails I wanted something colourful and so opted to try out colour blocking, inspired by this design by motelrocks.co.uk which was just something I randomly found whilst searching for ideas. I didn't want to stick to only 5 colours though, so I chose 10 and applied them randomly across all my nails for a ridiculously colourful effect =)

Here's my polishes:

L-R they are: No 7-Siren, Rimmel-Sunrise, Collection-Look At Me! (Apparently they're no longer Collection 2000, I'd not even noticed!), Essie-Mojito Madness, Barry M-Greenberry, Collection-Electric Dreams, Barry M-Navy, Barry M-Plum, Revlon-Hazy and Barry M-Gold Foil. I also used my black Barry M nail art pen for the lines.

Because I knew I wouldn't be able to get them very neat otherwise, I drew the lines on first, filled in the boxes with colour and then went over the lines again which took ages but I didn't have anything to do so it was fine. There's a couple of holes on my right hand but otherwise it worked quite well! Here's the result:

I think my favourite of all is my left index finger, I just really like the combination of colours. I love the look, it's so bright and cheerful, especially after a weekend of dreary plain black nails (I missed my nail art!). Colourful nails are so much more fun =)

In other news, I'm thinking of cutting down these Try Something Tuesday posts, I want to try more nail art and they limit what I can do really, especially if sometimes I just can't be bothered to do something complicated and want to go with something more simple/that I know I can do. I won't stop them completely because there's still things I haven't tried (gradients, marbling, etc etc) but I won't be doing them every week from now on, so I've got a bit more freedom to post!

Hope you all had wonderful weekends enjoying the beautiful weather!

~Nail Art Novice~

If you want to know more about what I got up to in Brighton, I've got a post on my other blog about it.

Night Time Is The Right Time

A week or so ago Rara told me about a contest on Avon's Connect site for night time nails (here, hopefully) and I really wanted to enter but couldn't really think of much that I would be able to pull off well (I was going to do my owls again but wanted something different as it was so soon!).
That all changed when I received some surprise nail mail from my friend! He'd borrowed my Barry M nail pen at the weekend to decorate his girlfriend's nails with and ended up using it much more than I had so he offered to buy me a new one. When the package turned up yesterday, not only was there a black pen but also a silver one and Barry M's Gold Foil Effects-I've been thoroughly spoilt! Having the silver pen made all the difference to this mani!

Polishes used: Rimmel-Midnight Blue (the darker of the two blues), Barry M-Denim, London Girl-Unknown (The sticker's come off the bottom! It's a very sheer pearly white), Collection 2000-Look At Me!, Barry M-Black, plus the Barry M nail art pens in black and silver, and a little bit of glow in the dark glitter polish called Astral Lights that I've had for YEARS. I actually only ended up using the London Girl polish on my thumb because I had forgotten how awful the formula was-it takes forever to dry and needs lots of layers to build up to a decent colour. All the rest of the details were done with my silver Barry M pen instead!

This really shows how good those pens were-this was done
with my left hand and still looks OK!

Just to prove they glow

I rather like them, but I couldn't have done them without a lot of help from Mr. Barry Mero and his wonderful nail art pens (and of course my lovely friend who bought them for me!)

EDIT: Asked Rara what she thought of my owls, and she said she thought they were cats! Made me laugh, oh dear =p

Tata

~Nail Art Novice~

Don't forget to check out the British Nail Blogger ladies this week:

ABC Challenge: O is for Owls

Following Tuesday's total disasticure I am pleased to say that this mani is probably my favourite piece of nail art that I've ever done-I'm totally in love with it and don't want to take it off ever! Sorry if it sounds like I'm bragging but I'm just really proud of myself that I've done something that looks so good, I was so surprised how well it turned out!

So this week is 'O' in the ABC Challenge and I knew what I wanted to do straight away-something I saw a while ago and knew I would recreate. Before I even started my own blog I found these amazing owl nails by The Little Canvas and loved them. I finally got around to doing them myself!

Polishes used: Essie-Mojito Madness, Barry M-Lychee (finally I own this beauty!), Collection 2000-Look At Me! and Rimmel-Tangy Tangerine. Details were added with my new Barry M Nail Art Pen (I LOVE being able to spend my hard earned Boots points on awesome things!) which worked like a dream. 

Without further ado then (I took lots of pictures because I love them so much!):

Sadly this guy suffered a surprise zip attack shortly after he was
finished, hence the dint

This one really makes
me giggle!

So there we have it! I think next time I do these (there will be a next time!!!) I'll put a neutral base on over my nails first, just because the green makes my natural nail colour look a bit weird and purple (see my thumb on the first pic). I really love them though! They're making me really happy =)

Hope you like them as much as I do!

~Nail Art Novice~

Check out the other 'O' posts by these lovelies: