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~

Guest Post-Manis and Makeovers

Dear readers, I'm so happy to be guest blogging here! Me and Nail Art Novice did a mani swap for the occasion, because she also guest blogged on my page! I decided to recreate her super cute tri polish challenge flower mani:

I used Essence "Absolutely Blue", Bourjois "Green Fizz" and Rimmel "Ultra Violet". My trusty dotting tool did the rest. I finished it off with some holo top coat :)

This was very fun, I love floral dotticures like this, so when I came upon it when choosing one of Nail Art Novice's manis to recreate, I immediately knew this was the one!

Here's a collage of both of our swapped manis! You can check Jenni's out on my blog ;)

Polish Party-Spring/31WNAC-Yellow

Hello lovelies! I'm feeling a bit like a zombie today, my head just won't wake up. And I had planned to be so productive and everything =(

Anyway, today I have a double challenge mani, woo! I've got the March Polish Party prompt of Spring along with my own 31Week Nail Art Challenge one of yellow so I went for some lovely springy daffodils.

Polishes used: Sinful Colors-Mint Apple, Barry M-Lemon Icecream, Matt White, Revlon-Electric, Sally Hansen-Man-go Team! and Rimmel-Tangy Tangerine. My boyfriend did my off hand for these again, he's really getting into playing with dotting tools and stuff, it's quite fun!

I don't really know what else to say about these (zombie brain, haha!) but they did cheer me up a lot because they are so bright and cheerful.

Hope you're having a good Sunday!

~Nail Art Novice~

March Tri Polish Tuesday The Second

Here we are again with another Tri-Polish mani. This month's colours are Blue, Green and Purple and for this mani I have used Barry M-Greenberry, Rimmel-Marshmallow Heaven and Aqua Cool which are a really fun trio, I reckon. I also added a coat of my Iconic Effect-Extreme Holo Topcoat to my base colours before I added the nail art on top and they all look pretty awesome as holos XD
I decided to do dot-flowers and my boyfriend asked if he could do my off-hand because he likes playing around with dotting tools-who am I to pass up an opportunity like that? Haha!

These really didn't wear very well, I only had them on for about a day before they started chipping, which is why they look a little worse for wear in the photos I'm afraid. Still pretty though! First photo is my hand and the second is the one my boyfriend did-although I did the base coats. Not bad for a newbie, are they?

I love these, they're happy nails-bright and sparkly and fun, it's just a shame about the chips already-boo!

Don't forget to check out the other tri polish manis in the inlinkz!

~Nail Art Novice~

Four Petal Flowers

Hello loves! I am back from my weekend away camping and we had a really amazing time-the weather held off for us and it was a really good weekend. I didn't end up doing any camping-related nail art and for once I actually went with naked nails by choice-shocking! When I got back yesterday though, I wanted to do something a bit pretty to make up for the time I'd missed so I chose these little four-petal flowers. I think my nail art skills are getting a little rusty through under-use though-these are all a little wobbly and imperfect. Ah well!

Polishes used: Barry M-Lychee for the base/centres, and the flowers were done in Rimmel-Block Your Green, Revlon-Fire, Barry M-Cobalt Blue & Satsuma and Sinful Colors-Amethyst which is my new favourite purple cream.

The green seems to have bled through the Lychee a little and turned it a little yellow which is annoying but I can deal with it. As I was taking the pictures, I had a sudden urge to see what this would look like Matted so I added a top coat of Rimmel's Matte Finish and I think I actually prefer them this way!

As I said, they're a little wibbly but I still like them-I'm really enjoying the more subtler look rather than inyourfacecolourseverywhere like I normally do, haha.

That's all from me for now, I'm hoping to get back to blogging regularly again now summer is over and I shouldn't be jetting off all over the place as often so I'll see you soon!

~Nail Art Novice~

OMD! Challenge Day 14-Flowers

Much as I was loving my stars I felt they were a bit too dark and didn't fit with the awesome weather we're having at the moment, so I decided to swap them for something a bit more summery. I took inspiration from my fabulous Rocket Dog shoes and wanted to recreate them on my nails.

Colours used were Revlon-Fire (two coats), Barry M-Matt White and Revlon-Electric (can you tell this is my favourite yellow atm??)

I don't think they look half bad really! I'm wearing the shoes today and just keep comparing my nails to them-they're both so fun and bright and make me happy. 

Hope you're enjoying your Sundays in the sun!

~Nail Art Novice~

ABC Challenge: T is for Tulips

Hello lovely readers! Sorry I've been absent recently, as I said on Thursday I had some work over the weekend which was really good, but as I was leaving the house at 6:30am and not getting back til after 8pm I really couldn't be bothered to do much in the evenings but curl up and sleep! I'm back now though and have lots of plans for some fun nail art things, yay.

I knew exactly which polish I wanted to use for this challenge, even though it's not strictly a 'T' name-Above the Curve's beautiful Field of Tulips that I bought for myself in their sale about a month ago. It's a pale green polish full of hundreds of different coloured glitter pieces and it's super pretty! I also added some tulip nail art to my accent nails.

Other polishes used: OPI-Thanks A Windmillion as a background colour/base for my glitter, No7-Siren, Collection 2000-Damson Jam, Rimmel-Sunshine and OPI-Don't Mess With OPI for the leaves.

Here's what I came up with:

As you can see, the little tulips on my right hand aren't quite as good as the ones on my left but I'm  gstill overall pretty happy with the way this turned out. I love that glitter and it's really nice to have colourful nails again after a weekend of plainish grey ones.

Hope you're all enjoying this glorious bank holiday/Memorial Day weather!

~Nail Art Novice~

P.S Please would you take a moment to go and vote for me and Rara (Jenni and Sarah) in this competition? We really would like to win but we're lagging behind somewhat. Get your mum to vote get your dad to vote, get your sisters, brothers, nan, dog, everyone you know to vote, pleeeease. All I can offer in return is my undying gratitude and love (and some Irish-themed nail art, of course!), but I would be so grateful! It'd be so awesome if we won.

Don't forget to go and check out all the other amazing 'T' creations:

Some Flowers, Pretty Daisies, Might Relieve The Gloom

So the snow is just about melting away now, and I actually saw blue sky today, for the first time in ages. I'm daring to hope that Spring is actually waking up *fingers crossed* so I have painted my nails accordingly.

I recently treated myself to a couple of Spring colours from the Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure (SHCSM) collection which I knew would be perfect for this type of mani. These are polishes which, in theory, you can wear without basecoat and topcoat but knowing how long I like to keep my manis on for I didn't want to risk stains and chips so I used them as normal. (In case you're interested that's Sally Hansen Insta-Grip and Seche Vite.)

I started with my base colours of SHCSM-Grass Slipper and SHCSM-Fairy Teal reversing my accents as usual. They're both almost one coaters in terms of opacity, although I ended up doing three of each to even out visible brush strokes as they didn't apply especially well. I really love the colours though, they're pretty stunning and definitely right for spring time. I have a bit of a crush on Fairy Teal too, tealy-greeny-blues being my favourite colours!

Apologise for the blur, it didn't look blurry on my camera!
This is Grass Slipper with an accent of Fairy Teal

And this, of course, is the opposite.
The blue staining you can see isn't polish-it's printer ink and
 WILL NOT come off!

Then I took my dotting tools and my white Colour Me polish to add daisies to each nail, basically just placing them randomly. I find it kind of interesting that even though I was using the same tool size on each hand my flowers are much smaller on my right hand (done with non-dominant) than my left-and I think I actually prefer the smaller ones-except where they went a bit wonky! The flower middles are Revlon-Sunshine Sparkle and Rimmel-Tangy Tangerine which was a bit of a last minute addition because I hadn't anticipated how yellow the Grass Slipper would turn my white (and it was still out from my last mani.) I kind of like the effect though, it doesn't look out of place with the rest of the mani:

Overall I reckon this is a mani fit for Springtime, just need the weather to catch up and it'll be fab.

Just to let you know I'll be away next week, so apart from my 31 Blog Challenge post going up tomorrow, this is the last you'll hear from me for a week or so. Instead of me, next week you'll get posts from Rara instead, she's got some awesome Easter designs to share with you all. I'll still have internet access and be checking in though, so keep commenting and saying hello =)

~Nail Art Novice~

Title of post taken from Wait-The Sweeney Todd Soundtrack

Friendly Flowers

As I mentioned in my last post, that mani was created on a night where my friend did something rather more impressive that she's allowed me to share with you.
She's always loved ladybirds and when I happened to come across this beautiful ladybird/ladybug mani over at The Little Canvas I sent it to her because I knew she'd want to try it out. Alongside that she decide she wanted to some dotting tool flowers because she didn't want red polish on all of her nails. We practised together on a bit of old plastic packaging and were both surprised how easy the technique was to pick up and how effective it looked!
In total she used 8 polishes on her fingers, not including the base coat and top coat!

They were from L-R:

Number 17 Fast Finish in Nightshade, Rimmel I Heart Lasting Finish in  Block Your Green, Colour Me in Colour Me White, London Girl in un-named shade 148, Barry M in Cobalt Blue, Rimmel I Heart Lasting Finish in Double Decker Red, L.A Colors Art Deco in Black and a top coat of Rimmel I Heart Lasting Finish in Disco Ball. Phew! It was definitely worth it though because the results looked awesome! She kept The Little Canvas mani open for reference and then just freehanded her designs using the brushes in the polishes or dotting tools, and this was the result:

To say she's never really done anything like this before (neither have I for that matter) I was really impressed with how well this turned out and will definitely be trying both of these techniques soon. The design is so fun and bright, I know she's really pleased with it and so am I!

~Nail Art Novice + Friend~