Sparkly Zig Zags

As I said in my last post, I am starting a new job tomorrow (aah!) and I don't yet know what the rules will be regarding nails so for the first couple of weeks I'm going to go with toned down nails which will be weird! Because of this I decided that I would do one last ridiculously colourful/sparkly mani before I go for something much more work appropriate later this evening.

I started with a base of Dark Metal Lacquer-Flashy Sparklies which is an amazing gold holo glitter polish that just looks fabulous. I used some zigzag vinyls from VyNails and then added bright colours on top using Barry M-Satsuma, Blue Grape, Kiwi, Passionfruit, Key Lime, Sinful Colors-Amethyst, Dream On and Sally Hansen-Brisk Blue, Sonic Bloom, Man-go Team! 

Bright and cheerful! I figured I'm probably not going to be able to wear most of these colours at work so I'd give them a final showing before they go into semi retirement for the time being. Also that base polish is just gorgeous, I love the way that it sparkles!

Wish me luck for tomorrow lovelies!

~Nail Art Novice~

A-Z Challenge-Bold

Hello lovelies!

Back with the A2Z challenge again this week and the prompt is bold. I love how these non-specific prompts are really open to interpretation so that everyone comes up with something different. Two things sprang to my mind for the word 'Bold'-black and white manis and really bright colours. As I did some pretty bright colours for last week's prompt I decided to go down the black and white route, but add a hint of bright colour to make it fun.

I started with a base of Barry M-Matt White and then triple-stamped on top of it using MoYou London-Back to the 80s 03 changing up the angle that I put the stamp on and generally playing around with them. For my stamping colours I used Sally Hansen-Brisk Blue and Lightening and Barry M-Satsuma.
This is how they looked at this stage (pre clean up) and I think it's a kinda cool effect!

I'm definitely going to have to do this again someday cos I like how it looks a bit mad and random.

Over the top of that I did some vertical stripes with striping tape and W7-Black.

What do you reckon? I think they're pretty bold and I love the flashes of colour underneath the stripes, plus they were really fun to do-not having to think about where you're placing your stamps is liberating!

That's all from me as I have to head out five minutes ago, but make sure you check out all the other Bold manis in the inlinkz and on the A2Z hubpage here.

~Nail Art Novice~

A-Z Challenge-Angles

Hello lovelies!

I've started a new challenge this week-joining lots of other awesome bloggers and instagrammers in an A-Z challenge with a difference. Unlike the one I did before (so long ago now!) this one has prompts for each letter instead of just being any nail art beginning with it. This weeks is Angles and I have done a look inspired by this tutorial on the Nailside blog.

I used Sally Hansen-Lightening (I hope they mean making lighter in colour and not the stuff that comes with thunder) which I picked up in the pound shop the other day because I can't resist a yellow cream. I made my squares with striping tape and Barry M-Damson and Kiwi. Finally I added sheer pinky purple triangles with BK-#10 which is a jelly GITD polish.

I love how bright these are! They're not exactly subtle but quite fun I think.

Make sure you check out the inlinkz for all the other 'Angles' manis or vist the challenge's hub page for all of them across all of the weeks. I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with for the prompts, and I like the social aspect of doing a challenge with other people again-it keeps me on track much better!

~Nail Art Novice~

Brighten Up A Lonely Day

Hello lovelies!

Today's mani was born out of me just pulling out random colours from my untried pile that I thought looked quite good together. I started with a base of the very gorgeous Dark Metal Lacquer-Lonely Day which is a grey polish with a subtle linear holo running through it that I think looks really pretty. To add a little colour I pulled out two bright matte polishes-Barry M-Cancun and Sinful Colors-Dream On. I did a skittle mani with various different vinyls and tapes to make different shapes on the nail.

I actually really like the contrast between the matte and the holo and I think the colours are fab too! HOw about you?

Happy weekend!

~Nail Art Novice ~

Glitter Me Monday: Maybelline Color Show Street Art

Hey lovelies! I've got some more awesome treats from America on my nails today, in the way of the Maybelline Color Show Street Art glitters. We did get these over here in the UK but the colours were really wishy washy and nowhere near as bright as these, and I just kind of fell in love with that red!

L-R: Blue Beats, Wild at Heart, Nighttime Noise

As before, these were presents from my lovely friend at A Mani Maniac-these were what I had originally asked her to get because they're just so cool! I'm wearing them over similar bases-Barry M-Guava, Cobalt Blue and Passion Fruit plus Coconut on my accents, where I have layered all three on top of each other which I think looks really fun!

What do you think? I love them, they're so awesome! I really like the different sizes and shapes of glitters with the splash of colour, and still really love that red, it's definitely my favourite. How about you?

~Nail Art Novice~

31 Week Nail Art Challenge 14-Flowers

Hello lovelies! Hope you are all enjoying your weeks so far!

This is another one of my 31 Week Nail Art Challenges (that are taking much longer than 31 weeks) and today it's flowers. I've been wanted to do this design for a while, inspired by a particularly wonderful pair of shoes of mine that I love:

They're so bright and colourful and I knew I'd have to stick them on my nails someday!

Polishes I used: Barry M-Coconut, Mango, Cobalt Blue, Spring Green, Revlon-Electric and Rimmel-Red Obsession (all of which I realised I took with me to Oz, coincidentally!)

They aren't the neatest flowers in the world because I did them in a bit of a rush but I still think they look  kinda cool! Especially side by side with their inspiration:

Hehe! So fun =D Whaddya reckon?

Short and sweet post for me today, that's all folks!

~Nail Art Novice~

Glitter Me Monday: Tara's Talons-Fun House

Hello my lovelies! Finally getting my nails back on my blog again after more than a month! I had a fantastic time in Australia but my nails have really suffered for it and are now back to being nubbins again-boo!
In a bid to use up some of my many many glitter toppers, I am introducing a new feature to my blog-Glitter Me Mondays-where each week I will use a different glitter topper or glitter polish. I reckon it could take me a fair while to get through them all!

For the first Monday I have gone with a really cheerful polish to brighten up my little nubs-Tara's Talons-Fun House. It's an explosion of different colours and shapes of glitters and it's just a little bit mad and I love it! I've gone for two coats over Barry M-Kiwi  (definitely becoming a summer favourite of mine!) so together they're a really bright splash of colour.

I don't even mind my poor, short nails with this combo, so bright and fun =)

Don't forget that I have a Tara's Talons giveaway going on at the moment and that you can do some nail art as an entry option. I currently haven't had any entries this way so there's a good chance of winning if you do ;)

~Nail Art Novice~

Rara's TETRIS Nails

Hello lovelies!

As you probably know Jenni is away in Australia and having a marvellous time I would imagine!! So I have done a few manis for her so she didn't have to do a whole month worth of manis before she went! By the way....I MISS YOUR FACE JENNI!! Come back sooooon!

Anyway for this mani, I took my inspiration from someone who I follow on Instagram...Dahlia Nails. I haven't been following long but I have seen about 10 of their manis that I already want to attempt! My first try was the copy their Tetris nails. They did theirs without the black outline but I thought it would be easier for me to draw the shapes with the black first and then fill them in.

I drew the shapes with my Andrea Fulerton black pen and then used the following colours for the shapes; Barry M-Guava, Tara's Talons-Super Soaker, Nails Inc-Big Red Apple, Nails Inc-Belsize Park, Nails Inc-Notting Hill Gate and Nails Inc-Westbourne Grove. Before I started I assigned each colour to a shape so it all matched over each of my fingers!

I really liked this mani, the only thing I didn't like was that not all the shapes were uniformly sized (OCD ALERT) some of my long straight shapes were twice the size of each other and it didn't look right in my eyes! However I did like how bright it was and I couldn't stop looking at it!

I am not sure I managed to recreate Dahlia Nails' perfect Tetris nails but I did give it a good try!

~Rara~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 18-Card/Board Game

Well in my last post I said I wanted some bright colours again and I think I've definitely succeeded with this mani, hehe. It's not my best nail art ever, but then again I was doing it at 5AM because my sleeping pattern is FUBAR'd, so I think that's to be expected. Also my red decided it didn't like being topcoated even though it'd been left ages to dry. Sigh.

I've chosen to represent the classic kid's game snakes and ladders-I've got a brightly coloured grid and then accents of a snake, a ladder, a playing piece and a dice. Main polishes are Rimmel-Red Obsession, Sally Hansen-Brisk Blue, Barry M-SLE 2013 and Barry M-Lemon Ice Cream over a base of Barry M-Matt White.

As I said, they're a  bit wibbly but I blame lack of sleep for this! They're bright and fun so I don't mind too much!


This will almost certainly be my last Mish Mash mani for a while because I'll be busy busy with the 12 Days of Christmas challenge that I've set myself-I'm really quite excited to see what everyone comes up with. If you want to join in, go to the FB group here. Here's a reminder of the prompts:

So I'll be back in a couple of days with the first one-woo!

~Nail Art Novice~

Halloween Nail Art

Better late than never, ey!

I had intended to get these up yesterday but I ended up getting stranded in Sheffield at my boyfriend's house sans laptop so I've got them a day late. I used waaay to many polishes to list them all but my accents were Barry M-Satsuma with the Black Croc Effect on top and Rimmel-Trend Spotting topped off with the fab Pocket Money Polishes-I Put A Spell On You, which I just had to use because it's perfect for Halloween. I also couldn't have done these nails without my trusty Barry M nail art pen-they're seriously brilliant! For some of them I took ideas from this tutorial by cutepolish, and the rest I just made up as I went along.

And yes, that is a terrible pun name on my gravestone, I was quite proud of that, haha!

Hope you all had a fun Halloween and got more treats than tricks!

~Nail Art Novice~

Rock of Ages Nail Art

Last week me and my fella went to London to catch a couple of West End shows and I couldn't resist doing my nails to match one of the shows! These are inspired by Rock of Ages-a fabulously 80s-tastic rock musical. I did some gradients inspired by the show programme, some guitars and some nail art inspired by some of the costumes with the zip decals from the Born Pretty store that I've wanted for aaaages. My boyfriend even got in on the action too!

Gradient: Maybelline-Dark Denim, Sinful Colors-Amethyst, Barry M-Satsuma/Mango, China Glaze-Fairy Dust, GITD music note decals from Born Pretty.
Guitars: OPI-Suzi Loves Cowboys, Barry M Nail art pen in silver
Jackets: W7-Black, Colour Me-Colour Me White, Rimmel-Red Obsession, Barry M- Gold Foil, Zip decals from Born Pretty.

The shows were both fabulous-we laughed a lot, sang along until we were hoarse and had a generally fab day!

~Nail Art Novice~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 10-Triangles

How is it OCTOBER already?? I honestly have no idea where this year is going.
Today I've got another Mish Mash challenge for you, and for the first time in weeks not only is this one going up on time but I'm actually scheduling it in advance! Not quite sure where my efficiency came from this week but I'm not complaining.
This week's theme is triangles and I've done a tape mani in a style I've wanted to try for a while because I think they look awesome. What I didn't anticipate was quite how long it would take to apply 9 pieces of tape to each nail, paint over them and remove them, but oh well, the results are worth it!

I started with a gradient (yes, another one, I love them!) of Revlon-Fire, Barry M-Satsuma and Mango and Revlon-Electric because I wanted to get away from the blues that I have been using a lot of recently for one reason or another. Can't get much further away from blue than bright red/orange, right? After I'd done the gradients (and totally forgotten to take a picture of them, much as I intended to) and they'd dried sufficiently, I applied the tape. Normally with tape manis I tape up the nails on one hand and then paint over them and remove, but as there were so many strips per nail with this one I had to do one at a time, which took AGES. I painted over the top with Barry M-Black Multi Glitter.

Here's what I ended up with:

I have to say I love it-it took me so long to do that I was actually fed up of it, but it was worth it in the end. Some of my triangles are slightly wibbly but I still love them. I like the firey colours vs the black overlay too-and not a hint of blue in sight!

Check out the other ladies' fabulous triangle manis in the inlinkz below, and I'll see you soon!

~Nail Art Novice~

Funky Fishtails

Hello lovelies!

As you may have guessed by my erratic posting schedule of late, I've been away a lot-visiting friends around the country and staying with my boyfriend up in Sheffield. This means I've not been looking after my nails very well-and I've had a lot of breaks as a result so I'm back to stubby nubbins again. It also means I've not really been doing much nail art because I didn't want to take a load of stuff with me, so when I got an opportunity today to just sit down for a while and paint I took it! I decided to do fishtails because I still really like them and I hadn't done them in a bit...so long in fact I'd forgotten how long they take to do! I mean they're worth it and it was nice to just chill out for an hour or so but I'm so used to doing quick and easy "on the road" nails that it felt like forever! Haha.
Polishes are all Barry M Gellies-which seem to be my go-tos at the moment because I love the bright colours! I used Key Lime, Guava, Plum and Prickly Pear.

I'm really loving these exceptionally bright nails, they make me feel pretty happy which is good because the day I did them was a bit rubbish and I needed a bit of a pick me up.

Anyway, hope you are all having happy weekends!

~Nail Art Novice~

Rawr!

Hello lovelies! Rara here again, because Novice is off visiting another friend in Devon at the moment-nice for some ey?

Today I wanted to do something fun and settled on the idea of monsters! I wanted each one to have different expressions and personalities. Polishes used were: Revlon-Fire, Barry M-Blue Grape, Spring Green, Mango, Rimmel-Sunshine as well as the black and white Barry M nail art pens. 

I love the orange one with her eyelashes, the red one reminds me of a spider and the green one of a dragon. I'm well impressed with these! So happy!!!!

Novice will be back in time for the Mish Mash challenge next week,

Until next time!

~Rara~

Mish Mash Week 4-New Nail Art Technique-Take Two!

OK, so I really didn't like what I'd ended up with in my first attempt at this week's challenge, and definitely didn't want to keep it on my hands for long. As I started removing it (shortly after I'd finished the post, if I'm honest), I started looking through some of the other wonderful manis done for this week and I came across this wonderful post by A Polished Prance showing the 'drag marbling' technique which looks really fabulous. I decided to try it out on my thumb to see if I could do it and it looked really cool! I then decided this was going to be my second 'try something new' mani, in the hope it would come out a little better. Thankfully, it did!

Polishes used are the same as before with the addition of Barry M-Matt White and China Glaze-Fairy Dust because I fancied adding a little sparkle. I just followed the same video tutorial that Chantelle linked to in her post and it was really quite simple and easy =)

I did struggle a little using my non-dominant hand, simply because holding the needle was a little fiddly but I still really like the end result MUCH more than I did with the acid wash-it's really bright and fun and funky. This one definitely won't be getting taken off straight away! Thanks to A Polished Prance for the idea!

Again, don't forget to check out the inlinkz,  it just goes to show you never know what you might find as inspiration =)

Until next time!

~Nail Art Novice~

Suddenly I'm Bright And Breezy

Sadly my lovely fishtail (plaited!) mani suffered badly at the hands of my first Scuba Diving lesson last night, so it's time for a change again. Spring is still stubbornly refusing to appear in Britain at the moment (BOO) so I thought I'd wear the brightest mani I could in defiance of our grey skies and rainclouds. I recently picked up some of the Barry M gellies after seeing them on so many blogs and falling for them a little-I got Plum, Satsuma and Greenberry and would have got Lychee too had they had it in the shop! Sadly, no success this time.
This simple polka dot accents mani uses Satsuma and Greenberry which frankly look AMAZING together. I always knew I'd love Greenberry after seeing it on so many blogs and thinking it looked awesome every time, but I am also really enjoying the incredible brightness of Satsuma. Bright orange was the colour of my course society at university and I just so happened to be wearing my hoodie at the time I was painting my nails-it's a perfect match for Satsuma. I love happy coincidences.
Sadly I seem to have picked up the pot of Greenberry that everyone else had used for testing as it had a lot of dried polish around the outside edge of the bottle and so didn't close properly and wasn't as nice to apply as I had thought it would be-hoping a few drops of Seche Restore will sort that problem out though. Satsuma applied very nicely although dried fairly quickly when I was doing the dots leaving me with strings as you can see on my right thumb. Ah well.

Anyway, on to the pictures, featuring the return of my left hand now that my ring finger nail is an acceptable length again, this is three coats of each polish:

There's not much to say about this, I just fancied something excessively bright! I also have a bit of a thing for opposites and patterns so I like the symmetry of the design and the opposing colours, it makes me happy. Simple but effective!

~Nail Art Novice~

Title of post taken from 'Getting to Know You' from The King and I

Check out what some other awesome British Bloggers have got going on this week: