A-Z Challenge: Fashion

Hello loves!

So I missed last week's A-Z challenge because I just couldn't get what I wanted to actually work and gave up in the end. But I'm joining back in today!
I didn't want to do a mani directly inspired by a dress or pattern because I did that for my Copycat mani, so I did something a little different instead.

The base for these is Freckles Polish-Ben Dover from her new Prank Call collection. It's a really deep shimmery navy which I think is really pretty! I topped it with Let It Glitter!-Golden Star which is another wintery polish that I really like. On my accents I have also got Essence-Sparkling Water Lily which is a really pretty shimmery white. I also used my old faithfuls-my Barry M nail art pens-for the details.

What do you think? Fun, no?

Happy-it's-nearly-Friday!

~Nail Art Novice~

Glitter Me Monday: Autumn Glitters

Hello lovelies!

I've been a very lazy blogger and not posted anything all week, oops! I did do my nails but just couldn't find the motivation to sort the pictures out and get them uploaded =(

BUT I am back and will hopefully be getting them all sorted and up here over the next week to make up for it so YAY.

For today's GMM I used lots of autumnal polishes/glitters-I LOVE autumn and so this mani made me very happy! I did some gradients using the Barry M autumnal gellies in Mustard, Paprika, Chilli and Cocoa. On my accents I used a coat of China Glaze-White Cap and then added some autumnal leaf nail vinyls which were from Make It Stick Designs. On my other fingers I used a variety of Autum glitters-Tara's Talons-Chocolate Orange, Nelly Polishes-Prototype and Absolut Lacquer-Falling Leaves.

What do you reckon? I kinda love these if I'm honest, they remind me of scrunching through leaves and large mugs of warming drinks. I love these sorts of colours together and they went together really well in the gradients.

What's your favourite season?

~Nail Art Novice~

Guest Post-Pocket Money Polishes

Hello Nail Art Notice Readers!

Big thank you to Jenni for having me back and I hope she’s having a great time on her travels! My mani today was inspired by tropical summer sunshine (sorry for the slightly dry fingers, I had a bit of a frustrating painting session before this mani which involved a lot of removing and starting again).

 I used Leighton Denny-Pure White which as whites goes is not too bad for application although needs three coats for completely even coverage. While these coats were drying I applied Dollish Polish-Auld Lang Syne which was gifted to me by a lovely polishy friend who wasn’t keen on the gold colour… I LOVE IT! This is the perfect soft holo-y gold, reminds me of hot sand glistening. Really lovely formula, I used two coats for full opacity. I think this was a special edition polish for one of the Llarowe indie boxes but these things do pop up on nail sale from time to time. You could probably get a similar finish using Ciate Sand Dune and a holo topcoat. On my second accent nail (you lucky devils getting two!) I used two coats of OPI-Kiss Me I’m Brazilian from the spring/summer Brazil collection – I find this needs two normal coats and a good three stroke technique for the best even application but is a lovely pigmented bright pink.

 I went back to my white nails and added a coat of Iconic Effect-Subtle Holo Topcoat to add a bit of fizz and slightly soften the all white finish. It is a really lovely soft linear holo which is perfect for me although I am sure it would look equally amazing with a stronger holo although slightly more silvered when not in direct light.

 I added an abstract flower design to my pink nail – inspired by the tropical flower designs on girly surf wear. I am not 100% happy with how the flower came out, I wish I had used acrylic paint rather than nail polish as it is a lot easier to work with. I finished everything up with a coat of HK Girl Topcoat which for me has been a massive game changer in my love hate relationship with topcoats – I am feeling ALL the love with it right now. I bought mine from Rainbow Connection which stocks a few different sizes from a regular 15ml all the way up to salon size bottles (WANT!).

 Hope you’re all having a lovely day wherever you are and will come and check out what I am up to over on Pocket Money Polishes soon! What do you think of mix and match manis? What are your go to sunshine mani colours? I definitely love a good holo and a soft gold in the summer, just making a refreshing change from neon brights sometimes. Let me know your thoughts with a comment below!

And Make It Evergreen

Hey loves! How's things? Feels weird being back on my blog again after ignoring it for a couple of weeks, but back I am, and with a gorgeous polish too! Before I get onto that though, I just want to apologise for the state of my cuticles/hands in general. I've been visiting my boyfriend (who is still in hospital!) every day and the combination of the crappy weather plus LOTS of antibac hand gel on the ward is ruining my skin-so please try to ignore the bleedy/cracked/dryness of them as much as you can!

Now onto nicer things-the polish! This is Black Cat Lacquer-Evergreen. I saw this in one of the nail-related FB groups I'm in and it was green, had scattered holo sparkles and smelt of cinnamon-all things I totally love, so I knew I had to have it! As a bonus, it's also a thermal (my first) which was kinda fun to play with too!

Warm state

Cold state

Best transition photo I could get cos my hands warm up too quickly!

Seriously, this is just stunning! It's so green and sparkly, and although the warm colour is a little sheer it's still absolutely lovely! And the smell is AMAZING-it really makes me hungry for cinnamon buns and biscuits and stuff. It has faded a little over the three days I've been wearing it but it's still there, nom nom nom.

What do you reckon to this one-love it as much as me?

~Nail Art Novice~

Slowly Growing Stars

Hey lovelies! This is a post I've got scheduled well ahead because I haven't been painting my nails much recently what with everything going on. This is actually what I was wearing when I moved in on the third! It's really kinda fun though.

Polishes used: Gloss n Sparkle-Slowly Growing Deaf (which I won in a giveaway ages ago!) and Sinful Colors-Amethyst. I recently bought myself some fun shaped cutters to use in nail art and that's what I wanted to do here. For most of my nails I cut stars out of Scotch tape and applied that to my nail and painted the purple over it, and for the accent I took the cut out stars and put them on where I wanted them-hence the reversey effect.

I think it's really fun and I love the contrast between the busy glitter and the plain cream on top, how about you?

Here's a pic of SGD on its gorgeous little ownsome too:

These were such fun to wear! I'm hoping to get back with some more nail art some time soon! And a Happy Love Day to you all too ;)

~Nail Art Novice~

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 12-Freestyle Christmas

Well we've finally reached almost the end of December and the end of this little challenge! I'm quite sad to see it go, I've had a fantastic time doing these and shared the experience with some really lovely ladies. Originally my plan was to choose some of their manis to do on my nails today but there have been so many lovely ones that I couldn't just choose 10, and I also would not be able to do them credit at all. So instead I want to dedicate this mani to lovely ladies who have taken part alongside me-there's been over 150 fabulous designs created for the various prompts and I, for one, have really enjoyed myself. I want to say thankyou to everyone who took part with me, whether it was just once or every mani-I never thought when I had this idea in November it would have become something this great! You've all been really awesome company, and I've loved seeing so many different designs. I can't wait to see what you've all come up with for today!

My 'freestyle' mani is made up of various things I've done along the way, and I used about 30 polishes in total for it! I won't list them, most of them have been used in the other Xmas posts anyway, but if there's one you want to know for definite just ask =) Also I used this tutorial from The Little Canvas to do the reindeer.

Here we are then, my final Christmas mani of 2013:

And just because it's Christmas, and I haven't yet, here's some pics using decorations too:

I can't believe it's over! Look out for my round up coming soon, but other than that I would just like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas (if you celebrate it), and I will be back after the festivities have quietened down a little!

~Nail Art Novice~

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 10-Santa

~Pic Heavy Post~

So we're down to the final three manis of this challenge and I still can't really believe that it's gone by so quickly-I mean in a WEEK Christmas will have been and gone, what's that about?! In the spirit of all things Christmassy, here's some Santa nails-hope you've all been good this year ;)
I saw some awesome ones by Pause For Polish yesterday and decided to recreate them as accents, along with some Santa hats. For my Santas I used Rimmel-Red Carpet/Serene plus W7-Black and Maybelline-Winner Takes It All. On my hats I added Barry M-Lady to add a touch of sparkle and to make the fluff look fluffier, oh and the background is Revlon-Silver Screen. My other fingers have a base of Tara's Talons-Carollers from my Advent Calendar which is a lovely forest green with gold glitters. On top of that is two coats of the appropriately named Absolut Lacquer-Mrs Claus' Night Out for that perfect mix of Festive colours!

First (pre clean up!) pic is to show Carollers in all its glory.

I also grabbed one without flash to show off Mrs Claus to her full potential-she's packed full of silver and red micro glitter and larger silver pieces:

I really like these! They're super festive and really rather cool I reckon. My Mum liked them so much that she asked me to do some on her too (and that's a big deal because she never ever wears nail polish!), which I think is pretty cool =D

Rara
Polishes used: Barry M-Retro Red, Essie-Cascade Cool, Nails Inc-Uptown Glamour, Barry M-Matt White and Andrea Fulerton black and silver.
I love my Santas!!!!!! I'm not sure if you can tell but they are tiny boots on my little finger! I like how happy and cutey my Santas' faces are!!!

It's "Christmas Day" today so I'm meeting Novice and we're going to swap gifts so it actually feels like Christmas now!!

~Rara~

Haha, yeah, we're going to take our Santa nails and eat some scrummy food whilst exchanging presents today, yay! I love Christmas!
Here, if you need them, are the challenge prompts one last time-only two left to go now.

And check out the other Santa manis too!

~Nail Art Novice~

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 2-Snow/Winter

Hey lovelies, it's day 2 of my Xmas challenge and I've got a lovely wintry mani for you. I was feeling a little indecisive when I was planning this one, so I did a skittle in the end. Sadly, my new snowflake decals haven't arrived yet so I wasn't able to include them-Boo!

On my thumbs/little fingers I have the gorgeous Barry M-Lady from their autumn textured line-it's the most perfect 'snow' polish I think, pearly and shiny and shimmery white-the way the light plays across it is quite lovely! The darker of my fingers is a couple of coats of Absolut Lacquer-Snow Daze over Rimmel-Royal Blue (a bit of an homage to my first ever blog post!), and the lighter is Pocket Money Polishes-Ice Ice Baby over Revlon-Blue Lagoon. On my middle fingers I have OPI-I Don't Give A Rotterdam! and a freehanded snowflake done in my Barry M nail art pen (thanks to this easy tutorial from Nailside).

These are minimal effort nails really-I've not really done anything taxing at all but I still really like them, they definitely feel wintry to me! I'm sure it won't be long before we have the weather to match either and then it's time for snowball fights and snowmen and then steaming hot cups of hot chocolate to warm up again-lush!

Rara's
So today is 'Snow' and I obviously had to draw a snowman...one of my favourite things about winter is making a snowman when it snows (no matter how small it ends up!) The polishes I used were Sinful Colors-Cinderella (which is a gorgeous baby blue with shimmery pinks in it), Barry M-Matt White, Andrea Fulerton dot and flick black/silver and green/orange nail art pens from Paperchase. On my thumb I did a house/cottagey thing with snow on the roof, then what was meant to be trees but they didn't turn out the best, a snowflake, a snowman and some snowflakes. I love my snowman. Can't wait to see the other manis for this theme!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! Don't forget to check out the other wintry manis in the inlinkz, and here's a reminder of the rest of the prompts:

~Nail Art Novice & Rara~

November Tri-Polish Challenge 3

Hello lovelies! I hope you all had good weekends. I had hoped to get my Doctor Who mani uploaded but I just never got round to it-but I loved the episode! It was wonderful =)
I'm back with the third installment of this month's Tri-Polish challenge-where you do 4 manis with three polishes. This months colours are grey, blue and purple and my polishes are L'Oreal Color Riche-Metropolitan, Rimmel-Aqua Cool and Barry M-Prickly Pear.
This time I've gone for a gradient, along with a topping of China Glaze-Fairy Dust for a little bit of sparkle.

I'm kinda disappointed that these didn't blend together better-you can kinda see it on my thumb/little finger in the bottom picture but for the most part I've still got three distinct lines. Oh well, can't have it all can you, they're still quite pretty!

And as a bonus, here's a picture of my Doctor Who nails, just because I can...please excuse my dodgy TARDIS, I was rushing at this point because it was nearly time for the episode and I didn't want to miss it!

Isn't that blue holo (thumb) gorgeous? It's Smitten Polish-Bifrost if you're interested.

I'll be back on Thursday with mani number 4 for the TPC, tata!

~Nail Art Novice~

When Autumn Leaves Start To Fall

I know we're heading along into winter but as we're not there yet I thought I'd take this opportunity to use a polish I've had forever and not had the chance to. I bought this last year in a Black Friday sale but it didn't arrive til Decemberish so it was no longer seasonally appropriate. I've had to wait for Autumn to roll around again before I can rock it on my nails-and it's gorgeous! Falling Leaves by Absolut Lacquer is a glitter topper with orange and yellow glitter pieces along with browny/red bar glitter and microglitters-I think it's lovely! I've used it here over a gradient of Barry M-Gold Foil, Rimmel-Gold Save The Queen and Avon-Fabulous-a perfect autumnal trio!

I love Autumn-it's my favourite season and I really like this mani too! I think I need to go and find a big pile of crisp Autumn leaves and photograph it with them (before jumping in, of course!).

Happy weekend!

~Nail Art Novice~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 14-Pink

Now you might think that this isn't a pink-themed mani at all, but that it's actually a blue one with pink highlights and...well...you'd be entirely correct. See, the thing is, is that I am not a pink person at all-aside from socks (which don't count) I can't think of any one item of clothing I own that has pink on it. I just don't like the colour and never have-from the time I started defyingly dressing myself aged about four I've avoided it wherever I can. It's a miracle that I actually own any pink polishes at all! Actually, thinking about it, I didn't pay for either of the two I used in this mani-one came as a free gift with some polishes I bought and I won one in a giveaway. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is I don't like pink, so I didn't want to do an all pink mani, because I'd HATE it and take it off straight away. This, I feel is a happy compromise, hopefully nobody minds my bending of the rules too much!

Polishes used: Looney Lacquer-Love A Lot, Rimmel-Rose Libertine and Barry M-Guava. I did something that I've never seen done before (although I am by no means claiming to have "invented" it!) -a double laser taping mani. I started with a layer of Love A Lot, which is a very limited edition polish-I own one of the only 5 bottles in existence! It's a white creamy base filled to bursting with pink and red glitters of all sizes and colours, and there's some little hearts in there too. I actually like this a lot more than I ever thought I would-it's a really pretty polish! It's not very 'me' but it's definitely something I would wear, perhaps around Valentine's Day or something.

This is two coats:

I added a topcoat of trusty Seche Vite and once it was all dried I stuck striping tape randomly over each nail and added a coat of Rose Libertine:

Another layer of Seche Vite, another layer of tape and a layer of Guava finished it off:

So that's what I ended up with, my not-pink pink mani! I like it a lot more than I would if it were all pink, and I think the bright blue works really well with the subtler colours underneath it. I'll definitely be trying this technique again too, it's a bit time consuming but the effect at the end is really cool!

Don't forget to check out what the other lovely challenge ladies have done for their pink week manis (I imagine there's will be much pinker than mine, haha!)

~Nail Art Novice~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 13-Rainbows

I always knew I would love this week because I'm a massive rainbow fan-they're so bright and colourful and never fail to make me smile-whether in the sky or on my nails! This design was inspired by a couple of things-firstly by my boyfriend's idea in 'tape week', because his gradients looked really awesome, and secondly by an awesome glitter that I bought in a blog sale a couple of weeks ago. To combine them together I used the glitter over black and then did rainbow accents.

Polishes used: W7-Black, Barry M-Passion Fruit, Mango, Spring Green, Blue Grape, Revlon-Electric, Sinful Colors-Amethyst, Seventeen-Monochrome Graffiti Effects and Krafty Gurl-It's A Fiesta.
Here's what I ended up with:

Can you believe that this is only one coat of that Krafty Gurl glitter? SO MUCH PRETTY. I love love LOVE this mani, it's awesome and amazing and I don't want to take it off ever ever ever. It's making me happy =D

Don't forget to check out all the other rainbow coloured brilliance in the inlinkz below!

~Nail Art Novice~

A Gorgeous Goddess

As I've been doing lots of travelling and haven't wanted to take all my nail art tools with me I've been using a lot of glittery indies to keep my nails interesting without having to take too many polishes. Most of them haven't ended up being photographed but this one I had to share with you because it's stunning, although it comes with a sad (for me) story. While I think that the rise in indie makers (particularly in the UK) is fabulous because it means they are much more available for us polish lovers it also means that some of the older sellers are unable to compete with the influx any more. One of my absolute favourite indie polish makers, who has been so right from the beginning of my nail art obsession, is closing her doors for good and this makes me SO sad. To use up her supplies she's offering one of a kind 'mystery' polishes on her Etsy shop until they're all gone and I had to bag myself one before she disappeared into the ether. And boy am I a lucky girl-it's beautiful.

This is Absolut Lacquer-Goddess Jenni (she even named it after me-how awesome is that?) and she's a clear glitter topper filled with golden dots and iridescent hexes, squares and shimmers. She's utterly gorgeous and a little camera shy, but I've done my best. I layered her over Revlon-Plum Night to try and bring out some of that hidden sparkle. This is 1-2 coats-for the most part I got a pretty decent amount of coverage with just 1 but sometimes I went back and added a second for extra glitz and glam. (Apologies for the slight tip wear in these)

You can see how many different colours she shimmers and shines, and I couldn't stop moving my fingers about to admire the colour changes and the sparkle-I'm a bit in love. I'm also torn, I want to wear her all the time because she's so pretty but at the same time I know this is the only bottle that is ever going to exist and I want to keep her forever and ever! 

If you want to get your own Absolut Lacquer one of a kind polish then you have to be quick, they're going fast! Visit her Etsy shop here. I, for one, will miss her when she's gone! Thanks for all the awesome polishes Tisha, best of luck in your new adventures!

~Nail Art Novice~

B-B-B-B-Birthday Nails!

~Pic Heavy Post~

Hello lovelies, I'm back to blogging again now after an awesome week of fun things! I apologise if I haven't replied to your comments from the past week or so, but I'm getting there eventually-thank you for them all!

As I mentioned it was my BIRTHDAY week last week and so I did some appropriate nail art. For my party evening I wanted to keep it relatively simple so I pulled out my new Dandy Nails-Bory Alice which I bought with a voucher I won in a giveaway. It's a super super pretty duochrome shimmer which changes from blue to purple with a hint of gold in there too. Of course it's nearly impossible to capture properly, but I tried! I also added a couple of birthday-themed accents with Barry M-Gold Foil and Revlon-Silver Screen.

You can kinda see how pretty it is, right? It looked really awesome when it caught the light but I couldn't really get it across well. 

Anyhow. For my actual birthday I went to see Hairspray the musical at my local theatre (Hurrah!) and wanted themed nails (of course!). I broke out some of my new YRNails decals on top of some Barry M-Mango and Matt White and Sally Hansen-Brisk Blue. My thumb nails I adorned with some theatre mask comedy/tragedy faces, done with Barry M nail pens over Rimmel-Red Carpet. 

These aren't the best as I did them in a bit of a rush so don't judge my sloppy techniques! I did chequerboards using my Barry M nail art pen to represent the shoes Tracy (the lead character wears) throughout the show. The bow is to represent the show's logo and the pointy glasses are worn by one of the characters and are very 60s so I thought they would be fitting.

I didn't get a picture of my 'tragedy' mask on my other thumb because it looked a little special, but I promise it was there! The show was really awesome and I had an amazing birthday!

Anyway, this post has gotten longer than I expected so I'll leave it there, but I'll be back to normal blogging soon!

Thanks for stopping by,

~Another-Year-Older Nail Art Novice~