A Few Things

~PIC HEAVY POST~

Hello!
No Try Something Tuesday this week, but for good reasons (explained later, I promise), I thought I should mention a few things instead:

• Firstly you won't be seeing any of Rara's lovely nails for a while because she broke her wrist on Saturday =( She's all plastered up and feeling a bit miserable, so please send her lots of get well messages!
• I'm going to be away this weekend as I am performing in this: http://boxoffice.brightonfringe.org/event.aspx?evId=4891#container at the Brighton Fringe festival, (which you should all come and see if you live nearby =p) so won't be around to post anything from Friday-Monday. Fear not! I have got a guest post lined up for you so there's something fun to look at whilst I'm away =)
• I have now put myself on an indefinite polish ban-until I've paid all my debts off! (To friends, I mean, not student loans!) The reasons for this will become very clear shortly. And as I'm not the richest person in the world this might be for a good couple of months! (The only exception I am allowing myself to this is a white Barry M pen if I come across one, because they're SO useful for nail art, but that's IT.) Also I figure if I tell you guys then I have to stick to it, don't I?
• In other news I have a job interview tomorrow! (Hence why I haven't done the TST I had originally planned, as I need work appropriate nails) It's only for a part time job but money is money and it's better than nothing at this stage! Please keep your fingers crossed for me lovelies =)

Now onto why I decided that I needed to ban myself:

I popped into H&M yesterday to pick up their Matte top coat (I need matte black nails for my show and didn't own a matte top coat) on a recommendation from Charlie from Pocket Money Polishes. Whilst I was there a couple of other polishes happened to make their way into my hands...

L-R: H&M Matte Top Coat, H&M Glitter-Blue,
H&M-Silver Frost

(I realise now I've uploaded this picture that you can't actually see what Silver Frost is-it's a silver glitter topper with small hexes and microglitter in a clear base.)
I'd wanted the Blue glitter since I saw it used on Fairly Charming's blog with underwater themed nail art on it-it's the perfect 'water' colour and really different to anything I've seen anywhere else! I'm not 100% sold on the bar glitter toppers that are popular at the mo, I can't help but think they look a bit hairy, but this is really lovely! All of these polishes were £1.99 so I reckon I got a bargain really!

Then I had to go and get my watch battery changed, and the little stall was right outside a new beauty store I'd not been in before. I went in solely with the intention of asking if they had any acetone (they didn't) but then my eye was caught by the polishes and I was lost.

Top Row L-R: Revlon-Blue Lagoon, La Femme Beauty Unnamed x2,
Revlon-Emerald City
Bottom Row L-R: Cairuo-Green Tea 22, Cairuo-Blueberry 16,
Cairuo-Blueberry 19

Those Cairuo's say they're 12mls on the front, but they're definitely not! They're about the same size as the smaller Rimmel bottles, which are 8ml. They're nice colours though, and were cheap so can't complain (even if I can't pronounce the name!). Geordie Nails has some swatches of two of these shades up at the mo. These were all £1 apart from the Revlons which were £2.50 I think.

Here's a close up shot of those pretty glitters, I'm so sad they don't have names though! (As far as I can tell they don't even have numbers!)

The one on the left has purple microglitters with turquoise and gold small hexes, and the one on the right has green and blue microglitters with hexes in red, pink, yellow and blue. 

Then when I arrived at home worn out with my day's shopping I discovered I had a package from Fragrance Direct with my new OPIs in-I couldn't resist when I saw them up there for only £3.99! They've got most of the Texas and Holland collections, with a few others.

L-R I Don't Give A Rotterdam, I Juggle...Men, I Have A Herring
Problem, Thanks a Windmillion

I've wanted Windmillion for ages now, it's a lovely shade of green. I couldn't choose between Rotterdam and Herring Problem so got both, and Juggle Men is a pretty iridescent shimmer topper which I think will look awesome over darker colours! 

Finally, after all that, I knew I had to do a post with them all in. But THEN when I woke up this morning I'd received some Awesome nail mail from Above the Curve with my beautiful new indies in, so I thought I'd add those too. For those who don't know ATC you should check them out, they make some really beautiful glitters and holos, and $1 from every bottle of polish is donated to a charity that helped the founder when she was younger.

L-R: Mother Earth, Field of Tulips

Can you believe that this is my FIRST EVER holo polish? I'd wanted one for ages and never really could afford one, or find sites that shipped them to the UK so I treated myself when ATC had a sale on a few weeks ago. It's a beautiful browny/coppery coloured holo with the full rainbow effect and I love it! It's what I am going to wear to my interview tomorrow because it's neutral enough to be work appropriate but still incredible!
As for Field of Tulips? I don't understand why I can't find any swatches of this floating around the blogsphere, it's so pretty! In the photo the glitters have settled where it was lying during transport but on the nail it has all those colours in a pale minty green base and it's lovely! I took a couple of swatch shots to show you them better too.

Field of Tulips, 3 coats

Mother Earth, 2 coats

So yes. I definitely am no longer allowed to buy polishes, especially as I have another 3 on their way to me in the post, Royal Mail permitting! I dread to think how much I've spent on polishes this month-Fragrance Direct have had a lot of it, so they're going to wonder what's happened to their profits over the next few months! But it's something I definitely need to do because I really don't have the money to spend on them, and I can't really warrant it when I owe lots of people lots of money. 

So that's you all caught up! I'm gonna head off now, but will try and get another post up before I leave on Friday!

~Nail Art Novice~

ABC Challenge: P is for Purple Phishtail Plaits

So I may have taken a little liberty with the name there ;) Forgive me?

I was going to do penguins originally for this mani but thought they would be too similar to my owls in the end. Also I've been working at my friend's Dad's factory this week and am frankly too exhausted to do anything fancy-so I've done a simple fishtail. I love these manis, they're so effective! Also I apologise for not doing a Try Something Tuesday post this week-the simple fact is that I fell asleep for most of Tuesday night when I got in and therefore didn't do any nail art!

Polishes used were Rimmel-Marshmallow Heaven (pinky-lilacy colour), Rimmel-Purple Addict (shimmery purple loveliness) and Marks and Spencer-Blue (dusky purpley blue). Incidentally it bugs me when people call what are clearly purple polishes 'blue'.
After I'd finished the mani I felt like it was missing something, so I added a layer of Absolut Lacquer-Maybe I'm Crazy to my non-fishtail nails and I think it's really added something magical. It's basically a rainbow glitterbomb in a pot-every colour of glitter imaginable and it's so pretty. It's also the first indie polish I ever bought, so it has a special place in my heart!

It's a really simple mani but I reckon it's really quite pretty too! I just noticed the chip on my middle finger though, boo =(

~Nail Art Novice~

Check out what the other particpants have done this week:

ABC Challenge: O is for Owls

Following Tuesday's total disasticure I am pleased to say that this mani is probably my favourite piece of nail art that I've ever done-I'm totally in love with it and don't want to take it off ever! Sorry if it sounds like I'm bragging but I'm just really proud of myself that I've done something that looks so good, I was so surprised how well it turned out!

So this week is 'O' in the ABC Challenge and I knew what I wanted to do straight away-something I saw a while ago and knew I would recreate. Before I even started my own blog I found these amazing owl nails by The Little Canvas and loved them. I finally got around to doing them myself!

Polishes used: Essie-Mojito Madness, Barry M-Lychee (finally I own this beauty!), Collection 2000-Look At Me! and Rimmel-Tangy Tangerine. Details were added with my new Barry M Nail Art Pen (I LOVE being able to spend my hard earned Boots points on awesome things!) which worked like a dream. 

Without further ado then (I took lots of pictures because I love them so much!):

Sadly this guy suffered a surprise zip attack shortly after he was
finished, hence the dint

This one really makes
me giggle!

So there we have it! I think next time I do these (there will be a next time!!!) I'll put a neutral base on over my nails first, just because the green makes my natural nail colour look a bit weird and purple (see my thumb on the first pic). I really love them though! They're making me really happy =)

Hope you like them as much as I do!

~Nail Art Novice~

Check out the other 'O' posts by these lovelies:

Try Something Tuesday-Splatter Mani

Hello lovelies, I'm back! I had a lovely time in Sheffield (so much so I didn't want to come home!) but my nails have suffered badly for it. Hoping to get back into the swing of blogging this week though, just with stubby nubbins!
So with no further ado, here's today's Try Something Tuesday splatter mani! This was, without doubt, the messiest thing I've ever tried to do with nail polish, but it was also quite fun and the end result has turned out pretty cool! I started with a base of Revlon-Sunshine Sparkle-a gorgeous pale yellow with silver sparkles shimmering through it, that I've wanted to wear ever since I found it in the pound shop a month or so ago. Sadly, it took me 4 coats to get it anything approaching opaque, so I'll probably layer it over a white next time I use it!

Then I splattered over the top (by blowing polish through a drinking straw) with Essie-Mojito Madness (my new absolute favourite green polish!) and Sally Hansen Complete Manicure-Himalayan Blue which have combined to make a messy splattery spring themed mani:

I think I prefer my right hand to my left because the splatter is a bit more sparse as opposed to large blobs of colour. I almost removed my left middle finger to do it again but couldn't be bothered to faff with the yellow base again. I think my left little finger and right thumb are my favourites-they both have a good even distribution of both the colours.

Overall-I really like this. It's a really messy technique and takes ages to clean up, but the effect is so random and crazy that it's worth it. Plus there are limitless combinations of colours you could use, and some of them would look AMAZING. I'll definitely be doing this again in the future!

It's good to be back =)

~Nail Art Novice~

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

Magic and Planets

So I lasted all of two days before I took off my magnetic mani from last time and gave in to the beauty that is L'Oreal-Magic Croisette. As I mentioned, it's a beautiful royal blue polish with goldy/greeny/aquay shimmer in (hard to tell the actual colour as it's constantly changing in different lights!) and frankly it looks pretty amazing on my nails. I'm a bit sad though that after two coats on my (tiny) toe nails and two coats on my fingers I've already used up a FIFTH of the teeny bottle. I reckon after this it's going to be a special occasion polish because it's too nice to use up too soon!
I added an accent nail of Emily de Molly's gorgeous When Planets Collide which I bought ages ago and for some reason I had never used on my fingers! It's a lovely glitter polish with blue, teal and orange glitters of various sizes in a dark navy/black base and I probably could have layered it up without the Magic Croisette underneath as it's turned out quite dark looking, although still lovely. (For better pictures go to the listing on Emily de Molly's Etsy page.)

Anyway, enough talking, on to the pictures-two coats of MC and three coats of WPC on my accent:

This one taken in natural light

Just look how pretty those glitters are!

Ooft. I love this. It's so shimmery and shiny and sparkly and all the colours in it look fab. I know the pictures don't do either of these polishes justice, but trust me, they both look amazing. I'm definitely in love, can someone just marry me to Magic Croisette please? You're going to be seeing more of this this week because I'm going to keep it on as long as I can, so will have to work around it tomorrow for Try Something Tuesday, but I'm sure I can think of something!

Until then,

~Nail Art Novice~

P.S I know these photos look messy but I just can't seem to clean them up any better! If anyone's got any advice for me as to how to get a neater clean up please let me know. At the moment I'm just using remover and a cotton bud and as you can see, it doesn't do the best job! Thanks =)

Suddenly I'm Bright And Breezy

Sadly my lovely fishtail (plaited!) mani suffered badly at the hands of my first Scuba Diving lesson last night, so it's time for a change again. Spring is still stubbornly refusing to appear in Britain at the moment (BOO) so I thought I'd wear the brightest mani I could in defiance of our grey skies and rainclouds. I recently picked up some of the Barry M gellies after seeing them on so many blogs and falling for them a little-I got Plum, Satsuma and Greenberry and would have got Lychee too had they had it in the shop! Sadly, no success this time.
This simple polka dot accents mani uses Satsuma and Greenberry which frankly look AMAZING together. I always knew I'd love Greenberry after seeing it on so many blogs and thinking it looked awesome every time, but I am also really enjoying the incredible brightness of Satsuma. Bright orange was the colour of my course society at university and I just so happened to be wearing my hoodie at the time I was painting my nails-it's a perfect match for Satsuma. I love happy coincidences.
Sadly I seem to have picked up the pot of Greenberry that everyone else had used for testing as it had a lot of dried polish around the outside edge of the bottle and so didn't close properly and wasn't as nice to apply as I had thought it would be-hoping a few drops of Seche Restore will sort that problem out though. Satsuma applied very nicely although dried fairly quickly when I was doing the dots leaving me with strings as you can see on my right thumb. Ah well.

Anyway, on to the pictures, featuring the return of my left hand now that my ring finger nail is an acceptable length again, this is three coats of each polish:

There's not much to say about this, I just fancied something excessively bright! I also have a bit of a thing for opposites and patterns so I like the symmetry of the design and the opposing colours, it makes me happy. Simple but effective!

~Nail Art Novice~

Title of post taken from 'Getting to Know You' from The King and I

Check out what some other awesome British Bloggers have got going on this week:

Ridiculousness for Red Nose Day

Today is Red Nose Day in Britain where people across the country "do something funny for money"-trying to raise as much as we can as a nation to help vulnerable people both in the UK and third world countries. It's one of the things that makes me proud to be British-every year we have two massive fundraisers, one in March (Comic/Sports Relief) and one in November (Children in Need) and no matter how much of a recession we're in we always raise millions to help those who aren't as lucky as we are. I haven't done anything interesting this year but I will be donating some money, even if I can't afford much.

Every year they sell red noses to help raise money too, which are always a bit silly and fun-this year's are dinosaurs! This inspired me to do some Red Nose Day nail art complete with some ridiculous extra features which I've always wanted to try out-this gives me the perfect excuse!

Polishes used: Rimmel Wear Maxx-Serene (gorgeous shimmery shiny white), Rimmel Wear Maxx-Celebrity Bash (a beautiful dark blood red-I'm a sucker for these! Both these polishes cost me just £1 each from Poundworld-bargain!), Rimmel I Heart Lasting Finish-Double Decker Red, Colour Me-Colour Me White and details with my L.A Colors Art Deco striper.

This is 3 coats of Serene, it's very sheer but also very very pretty-almost pearly.

Next I added spots using Celebrity Bash and painted my accents with Double Decker Red. I'm still not great at getting my dots perfectly spread out and sized equally but I guess it comes with practice. I added white eyes to my accents and black pupils and smiles. Then I added my ridiculous features to my thumbs and voila! This is what I was left with:

GOOGLY EYES!! =D

My red noses with one of this year's Di-NOSE-saurs

I'm not expecting the googly eyes to stay on very long as they're not secured with anything other than a blob of topcoat underneath/round the edges but I love the fact that they look completely absurd and wonderful. I can't help but love this silly mani, it's just awesome. 

Are you guys doing anything for Red Nose Day?

~Nail Art Novice~

Try Something Tuesdays-Striping Tape

It's time for another Try Something Tuesday post, hasn't time flown since the last one?
This week I'm trying out another really easy technique-using striping tape to create patterns on my nails.
I started with a base of Sally Hansen Insta Dry Brisk Blue which is a frankly AMAZING bright bright blue colour on its own. I had originally planned to team it with Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Going Green (from this post) but once I saw it on my nails I realised that the two together would be a bit too clashing and wouldn't really work very well, so I stuck to the one colour in the end.

This is two coats.

It's such a fantastically bright colour-dazzingly blue, it's amazing! The brush was really wide too-I managed to cover most of my nails with one swipe up the middle which doesn't happen very often. Dried pretty quickly too, as its name would suggest. Then I added my striping tape one nail at a time and covered it with a layer of Topshop's Cloud, a creamy grey polish. The first nail I did lifted off all the blue as well, so I went back and topped them all with a coat of Seche Vite and allowed it to dry before trying again. This was much more successful, although I still ended up getting better with practice-hence why you're getting pictures of my right hand today, it's a little neater than my left. It also has slightly longer nails due to cheese slicer related incidents.

Above two pictures taken with flash

Natural Light

I did a different pattern on each of my nails just to try them all out and see which ones I liked.I think I prefer the abstract one on my ring finger and the vertical lines on my little finger the most. It's weird just how much the grey has dulled the amazingness of the blue underneath, it almost looks more turquoise than bright blue now. They're not perfect, but I do think they look quite cool in bright light, in duller lighting they just look kinda tealy/grey and you can't really see the patterns. I almost decided to change my top colour for my right hand, but thought this would probably look even more peculiar so I stuck with the grey and overall it's turned out OK. I wish I had a paler grey though, it might have looked a little better.
Still the technique is pretty easy and not too time consuming for an effect which looks quite striking-I'll definitely be doing this again with different colours.

~Nail Art Novice~

Unlike Men, Diamonds Linger

My polka dot Try Something Tuesday manicure didn't last very long, unfortunately-by yesterday I had several chips and a missing thumb nail, so by the end of the day I had picked them all off*, leaving me with naked nails again.

Wanting something simple to and not requiring too much effort, I picked out two of my unused polishes to combine.
Firstly, I chose Revlon's Top Speed Cloud which is a lovely pale pale lilac. It almost looks grey in the bottle, but with 3 coats on, it's definitely more purple. It was still visibly streaky with 2 coats, so I think 3 is needed. Went on nicely though, and dried pretty quickly.

Forgot to clean up again, rubbish

Then I topped it off with the frankly beautiful Luxe and Lush from China Glaze which is an amazing iridescent flaky glitter topper that flashes green, orange, gold, pink and blue as it moves through the light. It was one of those 'must have' polishes when I saw it and I had chosen it and paid for it before I really even realised.

It's so pretty

There is just no way I can photograph this properly. I even stuck my hand out of the window to try and get a picture in the sunlight (THE SUN. I've not seen it in so long, it's so nice.) but even that didn't show how pretty it is. It's like I'm wearing diamonds on my fingers, they catch the light every time I move and twinkle away. You'll have to take my word for it, it's lovely.
Disclaimer: if you don't like heights you might want to avoid my outdoors photo. I'm in an attic bedroom and literally just stuck my hand outside and took a picture so the ground is a long way away. Thought I should just warn you.

Inside, with flash

Outside in the suuuuuuuuuuun.

Simple, quick and really pretty. I'm happy!

Hope you're all having a good Valentine's folks!


~Nail Art Novice~


*Terrible habit, I know, but I can't stand having chipped nails, and it's something of a compulsion...


Title of post taken from Diamonds Are Forever

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

Unconnected Dots

I want to start this post with a little story, if you don't mind of course. A while ago I saw on a nail art/fashion blog I was browsing (which I'm sad to say has since been closed down) Lyndarella's Connect the Dots and I don't think I've ever wanted a polish as much as I wanted that one. I just loved the way it gave was was an otherwise plain coloured manicure a whole different dimension-it looks awesome and you can wear it with literally any colour/pattern and it still looks great. I set about scouring the internet for it, but (as I'm sure many of you will know) it's almost impossible to find, especially for UK based bloggers. So instead I went to Etsy and typed in 'black and white glitter polish' to see what I could come up with-there were hundreds.Of course I bought one, from an Australian Etsy shop called EmilydeMolly and then sat and waited impatiently for it to arrive, and finally, finally, it did.

As I said, this was all months ago, but it still remains one of my favourite glitter toppers because even the simplest of colours is transformed when you wear it.
On then, to the mani:

Every so often my best mate comes over and we watch silly films, drink hot chocolate, do face masks and paint our nails together, and it's delightfully silly and wonderful. Last night was such a night, and while she was busy doing some impressive looking but deceptively simple nail art on her fingers (post to come) I stuck with a simple manicure because I knew exactly what I wanted.
I used Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Going Green, topped off with a coat of the gorgeous A Black and White Love Affair by EmilydeMolly. 
Going Green is a really lushiously bright grass green, with a very slight shimmer. A Black and White Love Affair is a B+W glitter topper with bar glitters, hexagonal and square glitters and is a twin for the Lyndarella polish I lusted after-thumbs up!

The pictures really don't do this colour justice, it's SO green. Think of your lawn on a really bright sunny day- it's that kind of colour, with a very subtle shimmer to it. And of course it looks even more amazing with the black and white blobs on top. This is another mani that makes me really happy, I just like to enjoy my slightly zany looking fingers, and it feels like spring is just around the corner wearing this colour.

Marvellous.

~Nail Art Novice~