My OH Paints My Nails

PIC HEAVY POST

The British Nail Bloggers are having another fun group post this week that I thought I'd join in with: My Other Half Paints My Nails. As the name suggests this is asking nail art newbies (not necessarily just partners) to paint your nails for you. I asked my Australian if he'd be up for doing that and he was surprisingly excited! He decided to do a skittle mani across all my nails, incorporating many techniques. He even opted to do a fishtail nail which I thought was pretty impressive! So these are all his nail art, he chose the colours and did them all and I think they look really fab. I'll hand over to him now:

So Ah... Hi!
Having spent so much time with Jenni over the last 7 or 8 months it is unsurprising really that I was asked to do her nails at some point. I have done several "He picks my polish" things, and Jenni has done several designs on my thumb nails, so I guess this was the next logical step. So without further ado here they are:

Left Hand

Right Hand

So I know this isn't how Jenni usually does her posts but I am going to do a nail by nail breakdown with the polishes I used for each nail and the technique used, also possibly some other bits and pieces. (See more after the break)

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~

#HePicksMyPolish October Edition

Sometimes I can't be bothered to think of a new mani idea and so I get my boyfriend to choose for me, coz I'm lazy like that. When I asked him this time around he didn't even have to deliberate but picked out two of my newest polishes-Barry M's Crush, one of their gorgeous new mattes, and their black Croc Effects to go with it. I'd never tried the Croc Effects before, so had no idea if this would even work, but persevered anyway!

Firstly, Crush. It's bloomin beautiful! I love me a dark red and this one's a really nice colour-like red wine stains on white table cloths. This is two coats:

The finish is interesting too-it sort of looks like wax crayons to me but I like it! I think it's very autumnal and I really like that colour!

Next I added the Croc Effects-I had to play around with this for a bit to get it to work, I don't think matte bases are the best ones to use underneath it, certainly not for a first time! It certainly didn't create the nice reptilian patterns I've seen in other people's manis (like this one from Pretty Purple Polish, for example) but it definitely worked a little! Apologies for the clean up on these, I am currently separated from my acetone and brushes/cotton buds so this was the best I could do!

I do like the effect but I think it would work better over a normal polish as the mattes dry so quickly! I intend to play around with it some more in the near future and see if I can get a better effect, although I still think it looks pretty cool. This takes me back to my pre-blogging days when I used to use a lot of crackle effects on half my nails-it's kinda nice reminiscing about how little I knew then haha! 

I think my boyfriend's choice wasn't all that bad actually! If you want to see more brave ladies who let their fellas free on their stash then check out the inlinkz below. If you want to join in sometime, head on over to the #HePicksMyPolish facebook group where they do a monthly link up.

Happy Saturday!

~Nail Art Novice~

Rather Regal

Since I received my new polishes the other day I've been dying to try this gorgeous purple Revlon one out. I've also always loved purple and gold together-they always remind me of royal colours (hence the title), so I decided to team it with my gold Barry M crackle polish as accent nails.
The colour (Plum Night) is really lovely, a really deep purple like the colour you get staining your fingers when you've been picking blackberries.

You get my right hand today coz the nails on my left are rather broken at the mo,
apologies for the splodges around the edges

The picture above shows three coats, although I could have definitely got away with only two. The only thing I didn't like was the fact the brush was a little thin, which meant it took a lot of brush strokes to cover one nail, but otherwise I was very satisfied with the colour and application, and it dried fairly quickly too.

Here's the final product. I know that crackle polishes are controversial amongst nail bloggers but I love them because of how unique every manicure becomes when you use them. Also I think they add a little bit of fun detail to what would otherwise be a plain mani, and it wouldn't do for everyone to be the same now would it?

I love this colour and will definitely be using it again soon!

~Nail Art Novice~