12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 11-Christmas Trees

Squeezing this post in before the end of Saturday so I can still claim to have posted on time, haha. I've been visiting my boyfriend today so haven't been able to post yet.
The penultimate Xmas challenge mani! Boo! I've had such fun doing these every day and sharing the challenge with some awesome ladies. For 'Christmas trees' I've known what I wanted to do ever since way back when in Metallic week of the Mish Mash challenge. I festived them up a bit but that's where the idea came from.
Polishes used: GOSH-Holographic Hero (not that you can really see the holo any more, many layers of topcoat killed it. It did look pretty awesome to begin with though!), Barry M-Cosmic Glow (magnetic), Maybelline-Winner Takes It All, London Girl Polish-#79, Rimmel-Red Carpet and Barry M-Teal. I added some gems that I won in a giveaway prize because hey, it's Christmas, and I fancied trying something different. Amazed how well they've stayed on actually!

These are fun! I did find the gems a bit weird at first because I wasn't used to having 3D things on my nails but I forgot about them fairly quickly. These make me feel VERY festive!

Rara
Polishes used: Base of Layla-Mermaid Spell, thumb xmas tree; nail art pen with Tara's Talons-12 Days over the top, index finger; Avon-Noir Emerald with nail art pen decorations, middle finger: Essie-Mojito Madness with Tara's Talons-Bauble over the top, ring finger; Avon-Garden Green mixed with Sinful Colors-Pistache with Andrea Fulerton silver nail pen for tinsel and little finger; as before. All trees have Avon-Express Mocha stumps and yellow nail pen stars.
I am very surprised how many greens I actually have as I don't really like green!! I like how all of my trees are different and my favourite two have to be the ones on my thumb and index fingers! 

Really sad that we only have one more mani left to do :'(

~Rara~

I'm also quite sad we've only got one left-it's been a really fun month trying to organise these around my life haha! Don't forget to check out the other ladies trees in the inlinkz. I'll be back on Monday with the FINAL mani, booo!

~Nail Art Novice~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 3-Metallic

I thought I'd keep it simple for this week's mish mash challenge and did a design loosely inspired by Kimber's awesome tape mani from last week. I started with a base of Revlon-Silver Screen (two coats) on all my nails and then applied some Seche Vite to help it dry. Once this was done I added some scotch tape to my nails leaving a triangle free in the middle-which I filled in with Barry M-Cosmic Glow which is a gorgeous magnetic green polish. It's full of multi coloured glittered flecks and I think it's really pretty. I used the diagonal line magnet with them too.

I really like these, simple and relatively easy to do. They look a bit like Christmas trees I think, so I might pull this one out again at Xmas time.

Don't forget to check out some of the other awesome Metallic manis in the inlinkz below!

~Nail Art Novice~

There's only 4 days left to enter my giveaway so make sure you've got your entries in here!

Fishnets and Fog

This was an idea I came up with a while ago, around the time I bought my magnetic polishes, but never ended up doing it. I had originally planned to alternate the colours on each finger but decided on something different in the end, because I wanted to see if the magnetic polish worked layered over another colour-which it does, hurrah. I also had more success with it this time than last time and managed to get decent patterns on 8 out of 10 nails this time around.

This is two coats of Rimmel's Stormy Skies which is a beautiful blue-grey polish and two coats of Barry M's Neptune Sea (using the fishnet magnet) as diagonal tips. I was going to tape it off but decided in the end that I couldn't be bothered so these were freehanded-think I wasn't really paying attention on my middle finger, oops!

Here's a shot before I added the Neptune Sea too. I really like this grey, plus it applied like a dream. Probably could have got away with one coat but used two to fill in bits I'd missed first time around:

As a bonus, I also wanted to show you this gorgeous L'Oreal polish I picked up in Boots the other day as it was on sale for £2.50 because I really like it!
Magic Croisette is a royal blue polish with a aqua/greeny/goldy shimmer to it and it's lovely! It's only a mini but not bad for that price, I reckon. It's currently on my toes because I wanted to use it straight away, and I did try to get a picture but they all look a bit weird due to my dodgy toenails-they're all tiny! So I'll upload one if you really want to see it, otherwise you'll have to wait til I use it or look at some swatches here.
Here's a bottle shot which doesn't really do it any justice at all:

Hope you're all having wonderful weekends!

Edit 24/3: I think I fall for Neptune Sea a little more every time I wear it-the blue shimmers in it practically glow in the sunlight and it does look really really lovely!

~Nail Art Novice~

Then There's Audrey, Lovely Audrey

Recently, I've acquired rather a lot of polishes and am determined to use them all eventually. Here's two of them-the beautiful 'For Audrey' from China Glaze and the very pretty 'Neptune Sea', one of Barry M's magnetic polishes. I've got two from their magnetic range, and I'm pretty sure (looking at those pictures) that I have managed to get the wrong magnets with both of them but oh well. I like the ones I have better really, so I'm not complaining. I clearly haven't quite got the hang of these yet, in all my practises on some old plastic packaging the patterns came up really nicely but I haven't had as much luck on my nails sadly. Neptune Sea is mostly quite a dark gun metal silver but it has loads of tiny bright blue glittery flecks in it, which makes it really shimmery and pretty.
I've also wanted For Audrey ever since I first saw it-I didn't have any light/sky blues in my collection anyway  and this was gorgeous-slightly on the teal side of blue, more ocean coloured than sky. It was just as lovely when it arrived, thankfully, it's definitely competing for my favourite polish.

This was 3 coats of For Audrey and countless of Neptune Sea (with the fishnet magnet) because I kept putting another layer on top to try and get the pattern more developed. Probably ended up with between 3 and 5 layers on each nail.

You can see that in this pic Neptune Sea looks more blue than silver-
there's that much glitter/magnety magic in it.

The flash has bleached For Audrey a little, she's a bit more greeny IRL

As I said, I still need to get the hang of the magnetic polish, my best result (and only full nail showing the pattern) is on my right middle finger:

Which of course I forgot to clean up before I took pictures of it...sorry!

You can't really tell in this photo, but the pattern goes all the way
across, promise!

I've got quite a good one on my right thumb too, but it's only on half the nail...not sure how I managed that. I've seen some awesome swatches by other bloggers though, so I know that it IS possible to get a good strong pattern on each nail. I shall persevere and practise more and hopefully next time I try them it'll be a little better!


What are your opinions on magnetic polishes? Did you have any more success than me and have any hints? Let me know =)

~Nail Art Novice~


Title of post taken from the wonderful Little Shop of Horrors-Meek Shall Inherit