Guest Post-Fixin to Faff

Hey y'all!

I'm so excited to be guest posting for Jenni, whose whimsical style I adore.  I'm Ali from Fixin To Faff, a Texas transplant to the UK.  Today I have a colorful summer look using two of my favorite colors this year: coral and purple.  I think these colors are so opposite one another that they actually play really well in the sandbox.

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

Ridiculousness for Red Nose Day

Today is Red Nose Day in Britain where people across the country "do something funny for money"-trying to raise as much as we can as a nation to help vulnerable people both in the UK and third world countries. It's one of the things that makes me proud to be British-every year we have two massive fundraisers, one in March (Comic/Sports Relief) and one in November (Children in Need) and no matter how much of a recession we're in we always raise millions to help those who aren't as lucky as we are. I haven't done anything interesting this year but I will be donating some money, even if I can't afford much.

Every year they sell red noses to help raise money too, which are always a bit silly and fun-this year's are dinosaurs! This inspired me to do some Red Nose Day nail art complete with some ridiculous extra features which I've always wanted to try out-this gives me the perfect excuse!

Polishes used: Rimmel Wear Maxx-Serene (gorgeous shimmery shiny white), Rimmel Wear Maxx-Celebrity Bash (a beautiful dark blood red-I'm a sucker for these! Both these polishes cost me just £1 each from Poundworld-bargain!), Rimmel I Heart Lasting Finish-Double Decker Red, Colour Me-Colour Me White and details with my L.A Colors Art Deco striper.

This is 3 coats of Serene, it's very sheer but also very very pretty-almost pearly.

Next I added spots using Celebrity Bash and painted my accents with Double Decker Red. I'm still not great at getting my dots perfectly spread out and sized equally but I guess it comes with practice. I added white eyes to my accents and black pupils and smiles. Then I added my ridiculous features to my thumbs and voila! This is what I was left with:

GOOGLY EYES!! =D

My red noses with one of this year's Di-NOSE-saurs

I'm not expecting the googly eyes to stay on very long as they're not secured with anything other than a blob of topcoat underneath/round the edges but I love the fact that they look completely absurd and wonderful. I can't help but love this silly mani, it's just awesome. 

Are you guys doing anything for Red Nose Day?

~Nail Art Novice~