Glitter Me Monday: Barielle-Falling Star

Hello lovelies!

Back today with my second Glitter Me Monday and this one is my boyfriend's choice-both of polish and design. This week's GMM is Barielle-Falling Star which I have had for ages and I don't know why I've never got around to using yet-it's gorgeous! It's a cornflower blue base with bronze glitters in and it's so sparkly and pretty! I've layered it over a London Girl polish, which is one of my frankly awful smelly-never-drying ones, but it does match the glitter exactly so I decided to grin and bear it this time. My boyfriend decided that 2 stripes per nail were the perfect number and I have to say I agree with him-he's got an eye for nail art haha!

What do you reckon? I really like it, especially with the bronze flashes underneath. He's got very good taste, my fella!

Don't forget I have a GIVEAWAY going on at the moment, and it's ending really soon! Make sure you get your Rafflecopter entries in here and you can also enter on instagram here by reposting the pic with the tag #nangiveaway -I've not had many entries this way so make sure you tag it!

Good luck and Happy Monday!

~Nail Art Novice~

Fingerfood's Theme Buffet-Fishtails (+ My OH Does My Nails!)

I was complaining to my boyfriend the other day that while I really like fishtail manis, they just take so long to do and are basically a bit of a pain and I really couldn't be arsed to do one for this challenge. His eyes lit up and he told me he had an idea and this was the result! I painted the base coat and he did all the details with dotting tools and I have to say I love them!

Polishes used: Sinful Colors-Ciao Bella (which is a simply gorgeous blue jelly filled with sparkles!) and Revlon-Silver Screen, with my black Barry M nail art pen for details.

He also insisted I include this pic too (along with adorably re-enacting the last face-how could I refuse?!)

So there you go, my slightly less traditional take on fish tails, and a host of other marine life too. My boyfriend just asked me to point out that he realises that octopi etc are not strictly speaking fish, but hey, who's counting? I love them, they make me smile every time I see them, plus that base colour is gorgeous! And how awesome are the little octopus/squid/crab? I'll make a nail artist out of him yet =p

See you next time!

~Nail Art Novice~

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)

Sparkle And Shine

Hello lovelies! Hope you're all doing well and enjoying the year so far. I had a brilliant time at my New Year's gathering, but it really took it's toll on my poor nails, they're the shortest they've been for a very long time at the moment! I've got no free edge left on most of my nails, it's making me really rather sad =(
So much so that I was feeling really uninspired for what I should do on them once I took off my fabulous rainbows so I made my boyfriend choose something for me! (#LazyBloggerSyndrome lol). He decided he wanted something sparkly and so this is what I ended up with: Revlon-Silver Screen, Avon-Fabulous and Barry M-Majesty from their autumn textures. I decided to keep it simple and do a mixed size dotticure with the Barry M on top of the other colours.

Apologies for the tipwear in these, it wasn't apparent in real life!

This was so sparkly and pretty! I wish I was better at doing these kind of dotticures, I think it looks a bit of a mess personally, but I know they can look amazing because I always admire the ones Emma from Emma's Little Corner does (like this one!), but I just can't get them too look that good! Siiigh.

Anyway, that's my first mani of 2014 done, woo! Onwards!

~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~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 2-Taping

I have to apologise for my lack of posting over the last week, I was hanging out with my other half and didn't remember to blog-hopefully you can forgive me!

Time (already!) for the second mani of the Mish Mash challenge and this week it's taping. I was bandying some ideas around with the Mr. and we came up with the idea of doing bright colours and black together. He wanted to choose the colours so I let him pick five that looked good together-Barry M-Passion Fruit, Mango, Spring Green, Blue Grape and Rimmel-Sunshine, plus Barry M-Black over the top. I decided to mix it up a little and did one hand with the colours underneath and one with them on top.

(Apologies for the crappy clean up on these, it was really late!)

They did end up a little messy and on any other day I would have probably taken a couple of them off and redone them, but I was tired and just couldn't be bothered, oops! My bf also wanted to get in on the taping action (because he's basically awesome) so I did gradients on his nails and taped over the top...and they actually turned out so much more awesome than my nails! I was a bit jealous because they looked fab!

I'm definitely stealing his idea at some point in the future, haha.

Anyway, I'm going to try and get back to blogging properly again now, starting with checking out all the other awesome tape manis in the inlinkz below.

~Nail Art Novice~


Don't forget to enter my giveaway here!

OMD! Challenge Day 13-Stars

This is actually two challenges combined into one-the OMD! Challenge for the day and the #HePicksMyPolish challenge that was discussed in the Hobby Polish Bloggers Facebook group. Basically the idea is to get your other half to choose your polishes for you-and he's allowed free reign from your whole collection. I mentioned this in passing to my boyfriend and he was SUPER excited about it-it was really quite adorable. This is actually his second colour choice but the first one went on my toes and I know some people aren't keen on feet pictures so I didn't blog about them. They wouldn't necessarily be colours I would put together but I love them both on their own and think he could have done a lot worse!

Polishes used (picked by himself) were Avon-Midnight Green (one of the new ones Rara bought me for my birthday), Rimmel-Purple Addict and then to add a hint of starry sparkle I added Revlon-Stunning. On my accents I've done the star-sticker technique which worked surprisingly well, even with the dark colours. Two coats of all polishes.

I really do love this technique-it's so simple but it makes some really fun nail art. Loving those sparkles too!!

~Nail Art Novice~