Polish Of The Week: Rimmel-Serene

Hello lovelies!
Here's the start of a new feature on my blog that I'm hoping to do every week if I get chance. I, like many other nail polish addicts, have an ever growing collection of polishes and some of them don't get much chance to see the light of day all that often. For Polish of the Week (POTW) I'm going to choose a polish with a random number generator and my swatch book numbers and then use it in some nail art. This was an idea that I first came across on the lovely Vicky Loves Nails' blog where she calls it Pick A Polish and I thought it was a really clever idea to make sure you use some of those long forgotten beauties in your stash. I hope she doesn't mind me borrowing her idea here!

So my first POTW was Rimmel-Serene, a lovely white shimmery polish. It is unfortunately rather sheer so for this (pre-clean up!) photo I used two coats over a layer of white undies.

For my nail art I did a quick striping tape mani, using Sinful Colors-Let's Talk over the top. For some reason my camera just couldn't see this colour properly and has made it much more blue than it actually was

This one (normal lighting) is more colour accurate but still doesn't really show how bright this shimmery purple is-I'd suggest googling some swatches if you want to see it in all it's brightness!

I also had a friend visiting at the time and she wanted me to do her nails too so of course I obliged! She had a lovely maxi dress with chevrons on it and asked if I could match her nails to it. I used Serene and Smitten Polish-Bifrost plus some chevron vinyls and really like how they turned out!

I think I actually like hers more than mine, plus that holo polish looked amazing in the sunshine at the beach we visited.

So that's my first POTW done, hope you enjoyed it!

~Nail Art Novice~

Geckos And ZigZags And Holos, Oh My!

Hello lovely readers! How's your weekend going? I've been home alone since Friday and I'm kinda bored and lonely now, boo!

I used a couple of lovely holo polishes for this mani- GOSH-Holographic Hero and Too Fancy Lacquer-Cooper Trooper. I also used nail vinyls from Nail Stickrs (zigzags) and Vinyl Boutique (geckos that Rara got me for my birthday!).

Hehe I love those adorable little geckos as well as those colours together (I'm not a Slytherin, promise!), plus the holoy ness of course! I'm a little sad the sun's gone away at the moment because it means my holos only light up like this when I'm doing the washing up! Ah well, this is Britain, haha!

Enjoy the rest of your Sundays folks!

~Nail Art Novice~

31WNAC 12-Stripes

Hello loves!
This is my last 31(ish)WNAC before I jet off to Australia on THURSDAY, eek! So I will pick up the challenge with 'Animal Print' when I get back. But back to this week's 'Stripes'! I used another one of my Mentality microglitters-this one is Intense which is black, white and yellow. As a base coat/on my accents I used my all time favourite yellow-Revlon-Electric. The stripes were with W7-Black and some more of my Nail Stickrs nail vinyls-this time the thicker stripes. I drew the bees with my Barry M nail art pen and added their iridescent wings with Picture Polish-Mirage, which I really need to use properly at some point, it's gorgeous!

What do you reckon? I think they're kinda cute! Plus you know I love doing nail art with these micro glitter polishes...although not cleaning them up! It's a real pain!

As I said, I am heading to Australia on Thursday, but hoping to get another mani up before then if I possibly can! I've also got lots of lovely guest posts and manis from Rara to come whilst I'm away, and I will try to post when I can too! If not, have a brilliant summer!

~Nail Art Novice~

Nail Stickrs Review II

Hello! How're you all doing? I'm getting really excited cos I go away to Australia in a WEEK! SO much still to do though, eek!
I've got some more nail art using the Nail Stickrs vinyls (see my first review here) today, also incorporating some texture and my boyfriend's absolute favourite technique-the jelly sandwich. I used the zigzag vinyls, both in a 'tape mani' style and as a stickers to create a skittle mani using Revlon-Silver Screen, Kiko-643 (a gorgeous shimmery green Sugar Mat I picked up in a blog sale a few weeks ago), and Barry M-SLE'13B  for the sandwich (cos my boyfriend really wanted me to use the stickers under layers!).

On my index/ring fingers I started with a coat of Silver Screen and then applied the vinyls on top. They come in a set all together so I just placed them on as one unit and then used tweezers to remove every other strand, which was tricky but doable, even on my off hand! I then applied the Kiko over the top and pulled them off while it was still wet to make the pattern. On my thumbs I did the opposite-started with two coats of the Kiko and then placed the silver zig zags over the top once it was dry-I wanted to see how well they stayed on for. I topcoated over the top of them to secure them, and so far they haven't budged at all, even through multiple hand washings/showers/washing up.

The butterflies are normally silver, but I actually quite like the shade of gold they've turned under the green, and the fact they're still really sparkly, even with topcoat. The vinyls themselves are really easy to use-although a pair of tweezers is always useful to have on hand to help with placement-and I really love all the fun things you can do with them. If you're a newbie to the nail art world you should definitely think about getting yourself some cos they're really easy to use and give you some awesome looking designs  (when we all know they're so much easier to use than they look, but shhh ;) )

You can find Nail Stickrs here: 

  Website | Facebook | Twitter

Thanks for reading! I've got one more design with/review of these coming up this weekend so keep an eye out for that.

~Nail Art Novice~

Nails Stickrs Review

~Some items in this post were sent to me for my honest review~

Hello lovelies!
A few weeks ago someone posted in one of the nail groups I am in asking if anyone would like to review some of their nail vinyls and of course I said yes! I received a nice little package last week with lots of goodies in-loads of different designs and lots of fab colours too.

There are two ways you can use these Nail Stickrs-either simply as stickers by painting a base colour on, sticking the vinyl on top and using top coat to secure it. The other way is to use them is as a tape mani-painting your base colour, applying the vinyl, painting another colour on top and then removing the vinyl. I chose to do the second option today with some of the hearts. Nail Stickr vinyls come 'unweeded' meaning you get both the shape and the outline of it-so you can use both!

The base I used for this was the fabulous Mentality-Moody, an awesome mix of black white and bright blue microglitters-I love using fun backgrounds like this for my nail art. I layered 3 coats over one coat of Sally Hansen-Brisk Blue to make sure it would be opaque, then stuck some fast dry topcoat on top (my trusty Seche Vite!). Once I was sure it was dry, I applied the vinyl to my nails and painted on some Barry M-Coconut on top and then peeled the sticker off. I used just one sticker for all 6 of my nails because they're a really good size (3cm x 2cm)

As you can see the hearts came out really clearly, even the tiny ones, and I think it's a really fun look! I was going to add the heart stickers to my other nails but thought it might be a bit too much so decided against it.

I would definitely recommend these vinyls, they're good quality, come in loads of different designs and are a really easy way of sprucing up a plain mani-I'll definitely be taking some away with me on my summer holidays!

You can find Nail Stickrs here:

Website | Facebook | Twitter

and you can get the nail vinyls from their site starting at $4.99 for 100, which is a pretty awesome amount!

I'm going to be doing a couple more designs with these this week, so keep an eye out for them!

~Nail Art Novice~