Guest Post-Pocket Money Polishes

Hello Nail Art Notice Readers!

Big thank you to Jenni for having me back and I hope she’s having a great time on her travels! My mani today was inspired by tropical summer sunshine (sorry for the slightly dry fingers, I had a bit of a frustrating painting session before this mani which involved a lot of removing and starting again).

 I used Leighton Denny-Pure White which as whites goes is not too bad for application although needs three coats for completely even coverage. While these coats were drying I applied Dollish Polish-Auld Lang Syne which was gifted to me by a lovely polishy friend who wasn’t keen on the gold colour… I LOVE IT! This is the perfect soft holo-y gold, reminds me of hot sand glistening. Really lovely formula, I used two coats for full opacity. I think this was a special edition polish for one of the Llarowe indie boxes but these things do pop up on nail sale from time to time. You could probably get a similar finish using Ciate Sand Dune and a holo topcoat. On my second accent nail (you lucky devils getting two!) I used two coats of OPI-Kiss Me I’m Brazilian from the spring/summer Brazil collection – I find this needs two normal coats and a good three stroke technique for the best even application but is a lovely pigmented bright pink.

 I went back to my white nails and added a coat of Iconic Effect-Subtle Holo Topcoat to add a bit of fizz and slightly soften the all white finish. It is a really lovely soft linear holo which is perfect for me although I am sure it would look equally amazing with a stronger holo although slightly more silvered when not in direct light.

 I added an abstract flower design to my pink nail – inspired by the tropical flower designs on girly surf wear. I am not 100% happy with how the flower came out, I wish I had used acrylic paint rather than nail polish as it is a lot easier to work with. I finished everything up with a coat of HK Girl Topcoat which for me has been a massive game changer in my love hate relationship with topcoats – I am feeling ALL the love with it right now. I bought mine from Rainbow Connection which stocks a few different sizes from a regular 15ml all the way up to salon size bottles (WANT!).

 Hope you’re all having a lovely day wherever you are and will come and check out what I am up to over on Pocket Money Polishes soon! What do you think of mix and match manis? What are your go to sunshine mani colours? I definitely love a good holo and a soft gold in the summer, just making a refreshing change from neon brights sometimes. Let me know your thoughts with a comment below!

Guest Post Week! Bitten And Polished

Hi Everyone,

It's Ruth from bittenandpolished :) I have been invited to guest blog to keep you all entertained whilst Nailartnovice takes a well deserved break to move house. First of all, congrats! It's a big deal to move and takes a lot of energy, but there is no better feeling than that of having moved and sitting on the couch feeling at home for the first time.

Anyway, I thought what I could tell you all about and there could really only be one thing for me at the moment: OPI's Gwen Stefani collaboration. You have to know, I have been a Gwen fan since her early early No Doubt days, pink hair and bindhi's and all that, and have never stopped adoring her style, voice, and energy. When I heard that OPI have been working on a nail polish line with her, I actually said "OMG, no way!" out loud and made my other half wonder if I had lost the last of my marbles.

Here's one of the official pics OPI released with Gwen:

Since I am going through a, hopefully not very long, phase of unemployment, I couldn't splurge on the entire collection like I would have wanted to, but I could not resist buying the mini set on TNBL.com. This set includes the shades "Hey Baby", "I Sing in Color", "Love.Angel.Music.Baby" and "4 in the Morning".

To do Gwen justice, I wanted to do more than "just" swatches, I wanted to pimp my nails in a more rock'n'roll sort of fashion. So I decided to go all out - Chevrons, Stamping and, of course, Studs!

Here's step one, to show you what the colours dry like (only because 4 in the Morning and Love.Angel.Music.Baby dry in a fabulous matte finish).

And finally, what I did with studs (neons from ebay, silver including star from http://www.she-sells-seashells.co.uk/), stamping (using Konad plate M73 and 4 in the morning to stamp) and chevrons (ebay).

So, that's what I did with my mini set. What will you do with yours??

I really hope you liked my guest post, if you did, come follow bittenandpolished.blogspot.com to read about my adventure into nail art and polish making and - as the name says - my journey from having bitten my nails for 30 years and stopping with a a little help from... well, nail polish :)

Thanks for reading. Lots of love.

x<3
Ruth

Guest Post Week! Pocket Money Polishes!

And it’s all purple! Hello all, Charlie here today from Pocket Money Polishes– anyone familiar with my blogs knows that I am only just learning to like purple so to see an all purple combo from me is a very new phenomenon. Deep breaths. It’s ok. I LOVE BOTH OF THESE POLISHES.

OPI Vesper comes from the Bond Girls collection which was one of the earlier incarnations of the texture polish trend from OPI. I used two coats for full sugary effect and this polish does take a long time to fully develop its finish (about 45 minutes) but this doesn’t mean it is prone to damage for the same amount of time – it’s pretty solid after about ten minutes.

As you can see from the photos this really ends up barely thicker on the nail than normal polish and for full effect you shouldn't top coat. I found that this had absolutely no impact on the wear time of the polish vs regular nail polish. In my pictures it may look black but it is blackcurrent purple and reminds me of fruit pastles – all sugary and deep. I did find that compared to other OPI polishes the brush seemed to be thickly loaded but it wasn’t hard to work with – just whack it on and wait for the magic. Removal of the Liquid Sand is similar to a glitter and does require some patience but it is a very hard wearing polish and just so gosh darn pretty. I found the finish on this polish to be less rough than What Wizardry Is This?

For my accents (which also applied to my thumbs) I have Zoya Daul which I have only worn once HERE and is insanely pretty. I love it so much on this second time round – the shimmer/sparkle/magic in it is just breath taking and the entire polish changes look depending on the light.

 I used two medium coats and topcoat in the pictures and I did actually find the dry time a little slow although I was painting quite late at night so perhaps that’s why. Application on this polish is super smooth and easy – I needed a little tidy up around the edges as it was slightly thinner than the OPI I was pasting on but there were no issues with flooding.

 The way both of these polishes sparkle in the light is just beautiful. So much so that this is the first mani that I have worn until it has chipped and worn away in a very long time. I honestly couldn’t stop waving my hand around in varying lights. Have you ever had a mani like that?

 I’ve just been spending the evening admiring the swatching for the upcoming OPI Brazil collection and they’re looking prettier and prettier, I can’t believe that the bright liquid sands will only be available in mini form though, check out the yellow swatch HERE. You might need sunglasses! My favourite places to buy OPI include The Nail and Beauty Link and Nail Polish Direct at the moment and I am watching with baited breath to see when these pretties arrive. I passed on the Gwen collection so need to scratch my new OPI itch some how. If you’re looking for bargain OPI then keep an eye on Fragrance Direct!

On the Zoya front I have ended up buying more since my haul including Tamsen and Elke – I am just waiting for the postman to deliver them to me and I will be reviewing them on the blog. Thanks for letting me share a post with you today, I hope you’ve enjoyed it and will come and see what I am up to soon!

Guest Post Week! Vicky Loves Nails

Hello Nail Art Novice readers! My name is Vicky and I run a blog called Vicky Loves Nails. I was super excited when I saw that Jenni was looking for guest posters whilst she is moving, thanks so much for having me Jenni!

It took me a while to decide what to do for this post, but I finally decided on a vampy gradient with some gold leaf for good measure. I know how much Jenni hates clean up (I feel her pain on that one) so my original plan was to do photos before and after clean up which I know is similar to a post Jenni has done before.. but I got carried away and did my clean up without thinking and didn't take any photos. I couldn't face doing all that clean up twice so I just decided to show you the finished product instead.

For my gradient I used OPI - Miss You-niverse and OPI - In The Cable Car Pool Lane and added two coats of OPI - Man With The Golden Gun over the top.

These were very easy to do but I think they look quite effective, I love the dark, vampy colours even though it isn't my usual style.

Thank you once again Jenni for having me on your blog, it has been an honour and I hope your move goes swimmingly.

Mish Mash Challenge Week 26-Favourite Nail Art Technique

This is another one of the themes that I suggested originally, and when I did I had one thing on my mind-fishtails! I do love the way fishtails look when they're done but I don't love the amount of time and patience you have to have with them. Since the challenge has been ongoing, I've discovered a new favourite technique and that's gradients-I love getting the colours to blend nicely together and they're a fab way to have neutral nails but in more than one colour! I decided as a nod to my excited just-started-nail-blogging self I'd combine the two for this mani.

Polishes used: Barry M-Plum, Sinful Colors-Amethyst, Barry M-Prickly Pear, Revlon-Cloud, OPI-I Juggle...Men

They're not the best gradients in the world cos my polishes wouldn't play nice, but they were still quite pretty. I do still love fishtails but they are a pain in the butt to do! They look awesome when done though so can't complain.
There you go, pretty purple pretties.

Don't forget to check out all the other lovely nails in the inlinkz!

~Nail Art Novice~

My giveaway is running for another week! Make sure you're entered =)

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 12-Freestyle Christmas

Well we've finally reached almost the end of December and the end of this little challenge! I'm quite sad to see it go, I've had a fantastic time doing these and shared the experience with some really lovely ladies. Originally my plan was to choose some of their manis to do on my nails today but there have been so many lovely ones that I couldn't just choose 10, and I also would not be able to do them credit at all. So instead I want to dedicate this mani to lovely ladies who have taken part alongside me-there's been over 150 fabulous designs created for the various prompts and I, for one, have really enjoyed myself. I want to say thankyou to everyone who took part with me, whether it was just once or every mani-I never thought when I had this idea in November it would have become something this great! You've all been really awesome company, and I've loved seeing so many different designs. I can't wait to see what you've all come up with for today!

My 'freestyle' mani is made up of various things I've done along the way, and I used about 30 polishes in total for it! I won't list them, most of them have been used in the other Xmas posts anyway, but if there's one you want to know for definite just ask =) Also I used this tutorial from The Little Canvas to do the reindeer.

Here we are then, my final Christmas mani of 2013:

And just because it's Christmas, and I haven't yet, here's some pics using decorations too:

I can't believe it's over! Look out for my round up coming soon, but other than that I would just like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas (if you celebrate it), and I will be back after the festivities have quietened down a little!

~Nail Art Novice~

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 2-Snow/Winter

Hey lovelies, it's day 2 of my Xmas challenge and I've got a lovely wintry mani for you. I was feeling a little indecisive when I was planning this one, so I did a skittle in the end. Sadly, my new snowflake decals haven't arrived yet so I wasn't able to include them-Boo!

On my thumbs/little fingers I have the gorgeous Barry M-Lady from their autumn textured line-it's the most perfect 'snow' polish I think, pearly and shiny and shimmery white-the way the light plays across it is quite lovely! The darker of my fingers is a couple of coats of Absolut Lacquer-Snow Daze over Rimmel-Royal Blue (a bit of an homage to my first ever blog post!), and the lighter is Pocket Money Polishes-Ice Ice Baby over Revlon-Blue Lagoon. On my middle fingers I have OPI-I Don't Give A Rotterdam! and a freehanded snowflake done in my Barry M nail art pen (thanks to this easy tutorial from Nailside).

These are minimal effort nails really-I've not really done anything taxing at all but I still really like them, they definitely feel wintry to me! I'm sure it won't be long before we have the weather to match either and then it's time for snowball fights and snowmen and then steaming hot cups of hot chocolate to warm up again-lush!

Rara's
So today is 'Snow' and I obviously had to draw a snowman...one of my favourite things about winter is making a snowman when it snows (no matter how small it ends up!) The polishes I used were Sinful Colors-Cinderella (which is a gorgeous baby blue with shimmery pinks in it), Barry M-Matt White, Andrea Fulerton dot and flick black/silver and green/orange nail art pens from Paperchase. On my thumb I did a house/cottagey thing with snow on the roof, then what was meant to be trees but they didn't turn out the best, a snowflake, a snowman and some snowflakes. I love my snowman. Can't wait to see the other manis for this theme!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! Don't forget to check out the other wintry manis in the inlinkz, and here's a reminder of the rest of the prompts:

~Nail Art Novice & Rara~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 12-Flowers

I decided to stray a little out of my comfort zone this week and have another go at some freehand roses, which I've only done a couple of times before. I stuck to traditional rose colours and did them in red on nude.
Polishes used: Rimmel-Red Obsession, Barry M-Lychee, Collection 2000-Damson Jam and OPI-Don't Mess With OPI with a smidgeon of black mixed in to make the darker parts of the leaves.

They're not perfect but they're really not too bad I think! The camera is a bit harsh on them, they look much better IRL I think. This design feels a bit Cath Kidstony to me-I love it!

Don't forget to check out all the other Flowers manis in the inlinkz below =)

~Nail Art Novice~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 5-Music

Hello lovelies! I am back from my many adventures and finally posting a Mish Mash challenge mani on the right day for once-hurrah! I had to think about this one, as I like a lot of very strange music and wasn't exaactly sure how I would ever manage to represent any of this on my nails but then I had a much better idea!

One of the reasons I keep my nails short is because I play the bass guitar and find that long nails get caught on the strings and make it really difficult to play. I really love my bass-she's not the most expensive or well made of instruments but she's mine and I think she's really gorgeous (and yes, for reference, she does have a name as well). So I decided to do black and green gradients in tribute to her-plus accents designed to look like the neck of the guitar. Polishes used were: Barry M-Spring Green, W7-Black, OPI-Suzi Loves Cowboys plus the silver Barry M nail art pen. I matted the accents with Rimmel Lycra Pro-Matte Finish.

It's not quite the right shade of green but I love this colour combination and how bright it is, plus the accents which match my bass perfectly.
So there we go! I'm off to jam out for a bit now, laters!

~Nail Art Novice~

If you want to read about my Edinburgh adventures then check out my other blog: http://www.ordinaryextraordinarylife.com/

Don't forget to check out the other awesome participants in the inlinkz:

The Final ABC Challenge Mani-Z is for ZigZags

So this is it, this is the end of the ABC Challenge-boo! I've had a lot of fun doing them and have met some really lovely ladies through this challenge, who've done a lot of really fabulous manis along the way. I decided to go out with something ridiculously bright and colourful so did a zigzag mani using the new Barry M summer Gellies collection.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate how fab these colours are together?

Thumb to little finger that's Blue Grape, Guava, Key Lime, Mango and Passion Fruit, 2 coats of each. And that shine? Not a hint of topcoat in sight, they're just that glossy and lovely on their own! I think this is the first time I've ever wanted an entire collection-all of these colours are amazing on their own but together they're just totally delicious! After a layer of Seche Vite on top of them and a short wait to make sure they were completely dry, I stuck on some zig zag french mani guides (from the same set I used in the V mani which you can find on ebay here) and layered another colour on top before removing the sticker. To add a hint of subtle (read: impossible to capture on camera) shimmer I added a coat of OPI-I Juggle...Men which shifts from bright fuchsia to electric blue and looks fab when it catches the light.

I love these, they're so bright and fun! A fab way to end our challenge, don't you think?
But fear not, because there is a new nail art challenge starting at the end of July  and you can join in, if you so wish! I'm not 100% sure on the organisation right now (as I am scheduling this post) but drop me an email (nailartnovice@gmail.com) for now if you're interested and I will let you know more details as and when.

As always, don't forget to check out all the other fabulous 'Z' manis in the Inlinkz below.

~Nail Art Novice~

ABC Challenge: X is for X Marks The Spot

I had a really great idea for these nails but it just didn't translate well, probably due to my poor art skills! I wanted this to be like an old treasure map with X marking the spot and a trail to follow but I'm not sure how well it's turned out.

Polishes used: Barry M-Lychee  as a base colour with London Girl-# 95 sponged on top. For the details I used a dotting tool and OPI-Suzi Loves Cowboys. From little finger to thumb it's supposed to be a compass point, a ship, a dotted line trail and an island with X marking the spot for treasure. My right hand just has waves and an island because by this point I was rather tired and couldn't be bothered repeating all the details with my non-dominant hand.

I'm just not feeling this really. It feels weird having such neutral colours on my nails and I don't think the nail art is the best I've ever done. Be sure to check out the other ladies in the inlinkz collection for some much better x-amples (haha) of 'X'!
~Nail Art Novice~

Doc Martens Nail Art!

-Pic Heavy Post-

Hello lovelies!
Today I have a confession: I have another love outside of nail polish/nail art and that's my Doc Martens. I've got 5 pairs (at the moment) and keep adding more every year. My mum always rolls her eyes whenever I get a new pair and says "You can only wear one at a time!" so I thought I'd try and prove her wrong with some nail art. I had a quick search and couldn't find any previous examples out there so I came up with this design all by myself! I've been waiting to do it for months and months, because I needed the perfect blue and finally I have it (thankyou Barry M!).

Firstly, let me introduce you to my lovelies:

 I got the bright green ones in 2007 and have basically been obsessed with them ever since! I really love wearing them with miniskirts and opaque tights-it's sort of become my signature look really and it always makes me feel amazing.

Anyway, on to the mani! I wanted to recreate the colours of my Docs as closely as I could so I used many many polishes! Red-Revlon-Fire, Teal-Sally Hansen-Fairy Teal, Blue-Barry M-Blue Grape, Patterned White-Barry M-Matt White, sponged with Topshop-Cloud and  Rimmel-Tangy Tangerine and for the bright green Barry M 2013 Superdrug Limited Edition (such a catchy title)-Neon Green. I used two coats of them all, and put two coats of Matt White underneath the neon green too. For the iconic brown soles I used OPI-Suzi Loves Cowboys (over some curved French tip  guide stickers) and for the instantly recognisable orange stitching I used a Stargazer polish-number 103 (UV-glow Orange). The black lacing details were done with the black Barry M nail art pen. Phew! I also used my H&M Matte top coat on my index/ring fingers to simulate the leather effect, as opposed to the patent shiny shiny ones. I'm not sure how well you can tell in these pics though! (I have to admit I had a lot of fun taking them!)

What do you reckon? Are they too cool for school or what? I could do a tutorial for these if people wanted, although I reckon they're pretty easy to figure out! If you do your own version, let me know =)

They make me super happy! =D

~Nail Art Novice~

In a total piece of blogging serendipity, I didn't even realise that one of the nail art groups I'm part of has the theme of 'Shoes' for this week! So here's some more footwear inspired manis:

Roses Really Smell Like...

Hello lovelies!
You may recall my partner-in-blogging Rara broke her arm about a month ago? Well she came round to visit me this week while my parents were away and I did her nails for her. She's no longer in a plaster cast  but she still has a lot of trouble moving her left arm/hand so it was kinda interesting and meant I had to move myself around her rather than the other way around, but we made it work. This is also why there's such a discrepancy in nail lengths between her two hands-she's not been using her left hand for anything so the nails have grown really well!

Rara wanted me to do a gradient on her, and I asked her if I could try out some roses because I'd never done them before (and my nails were freshly painted!) and she agreed. She chose all the colours, I just did the painting and it got MESSY, but we both had lots of fun =)

Polishes used:
Gradient: Red- Rimmel-Red Obsession, Mid-Pink- Rimmel-Rose Libertine, Pale Pink- Nails Inc-Elizabeth Street, Glitter- OPI-I Juggle...Men
Roses: Red and Pink as before, Middles- A-England-Iseult, Leaves- OPI-Thanks a Windmillion

As you may appreciate, it's quite difficult to take pictures of someone who can't move their hand, but we tried our best for you:

I know my roses aren't perfect but they look pretty good from a distance and it was only my first attempt at them! I'm pretty happy with the gradient too, although it did get smudged a little by the glitter, but not too badly, it's not really noticeable in person.

I'm happy, Rara's happy, we hope you're happy too!

~Nail Art Novice & Rara~