31WNAC 5-Blue

Hello lovelies! Hope you're all having an awesome Friday bank hol and have been enjoying the sun-I am a little pink around the cheeks from it, oops!
It's Blue week in the 31 Week Nail Art Challenge and this colour/glitter combo is something I've been wanting to do for a while. I've used Rimmel-Out Of The Blue and paired it with the very lovely Pocket Money Polishes-Alien Like You which is one of the very last ones I got before Charlie closed her doors in January (sob!). To go with the Alien theme I've done some accents in Maybelline-Ceramic Blue, Collection-Look At Me!, Revlon-Silver Screen and Rimmel-Double Decker Red.

The flash on my camera seems to sort of 'flatten' the glitter a little, so I took one in more natural light (complete with my kitchen worktop in the background!) to show it off to its full, lovely, potential:

These nails are so much fun, I've had a couple of comments on them and I just LOVE flashing that glitter around in the sun too =D

Here's a reminder of the 31WNAC prompts, come back next week for 'Purple'.

Enjoy the rest of your Easter Weekend!

~Nail Art Novice~

Feb Resolutions Check In

So you may remember that last time around when I did this, I had had a really good month and had kept up with my resolutions really well. This month has not been so successful...oops!

Resolution #1-Lemony Flutter
So I have...not used my LF all month. I really should have been but I just haven't. I think the fact that I've moved up to Sheffield and that my boyfriend has been in hospital so much has really just thrown me off. My cuticles look really bad on it though, so I am going to try and use it every night before bed in March if I can!

Resolution #2-Spend no more than £20 on polish things a month and/or buy no more than 4 polishes a month
Ah...this one I have done really terribly at this month. In total I have acquired SIXTEEN new polishes, which is 4 times more than I should have done! I did only pay for half of them though, as I have been very lucky this month and got a lot of freebies from various places. Lets have a look at my collection then:

...oops

Top Row: Pocket Money Polishes-She's Like The Wind and Alien Like You, Black Cat Lacquer-Evergreen (all bought by me), Rara Avis-Cast Iron Cannon (made and given to me by Rara!!)

2nd Row: Sally Hansen-Cherry Drop, Revlon-Haunted Heart, Rimmel-Out Of The Blue, Sinful Colors-Ciao Bella, Sally Hansen-Razzleberry (all bought by me)

3rd Row: Nails Inc Shine On Collection-Elm Park Road, Raphael Street, Cadogan Gate, Lyall Street (bought for me for Valentine's by my boyfriend)

Bottom Row: Chubby Owl Polishes-Roses Are Red, Midnight Owls, Violets Are Blue (I bought Midnight Owls and Jenna included the minis as a lovely surprise in my parcel!)

Here's a pic of the glitters swatched so you can enjoy them!

L-R: Alien Like You (over Out Of The Blue), She's Like The Wind (over Cast Iron Cannon), Midnight Owls, Roses Are Red, Violets are Blue

So my total spend this month was...£35.79-eep! I am officially on a no-buy for the forseeable future now, sigh. I'm going to have to avoid Poundland like the plague and it's going to take all my resolve! Hopefully this month's pretties will keep me occupied for a while!

Total spent: £35.79
Under/Over budget: Over, way, way over!
Number of new polishes acquired: Sixteen!
Fewer/More than four? SO MANY MORE.

I guess that's a double fail for me this month, oops! :-/ Will try harder next time!

See you next month,

~Nail Art Novice~

Purple Nails For B-EAT; Eating Disorders Awareness Week

This week is Eating Disorders Awareness Week and in one of my nail groups on Facebook lots of ladies are doing nail art to help raise awareness. B-EAT is a charity that helps support people with eating disorders and the charity ribbon they use is lilacy/purple, so the theme for these nails was purple.

I used three UK Indie polishes-Tara's Talons-Comet (gorgeous purple with reddy shimmer and holo glitter) and Mistletoe (dark purpley/grey packed full of holo sparkles) (both from my TT advent calendar) and Pocket Money Polishes-She's Like The Wind to add EVEN more sparkle. Simple but pretty, I reckon!

Not only pretty, but with a good reason behind it too!

To find out more about B-EAT, go here or about Eating Disorders Awareness Week, here.
To donate to B-EAT, go here.
If you are struggling with anything related to any eating disorder, here is the link to their helpline/message boards info.

I'll be back soon!

~Nail Art Novice~

An InLinkz Link-up

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~

A Rather Royal Rain

Hey lovelies, hope you all had marvellous weekends!

Today I've got a random fishtail design I did because I have too much time on my hands at the moment, haha. I chose three colours that always make me think of 'royalty'-Red (Rimmel-Red Carpet), Purple (Rimmel-Purple Addict) and Bronze (Avon-Fabulous). On my other fingers I have yet another gorgeous British indie polish - Pocket Money Polishes-November Rain. I've wanted this sparkly beauty for ages and to my delight Charlie surprised me with a bottle when she returned some stamping plates to me earlier this week. Within half an hour of my opening the parcel it was on my nails, haha! November Rain is a gorgeous collection of bluey/grey, copper and gold microglitters and it really is just as lovely on my nails as I thought it would be!

What can I say? I love a fishtail mani (even if they are a pain to do!) and I love this glitter and I've been enjoying feeling like royalty, even if only with my fingernails, haha!

Thanks for stopping by

~Nail Art Novice~

Halloween Nail Art

Better late than never, ey!

I had intended to get these up yesterday but I ended up getting stranded in Sheffield at my boyfriend's house sans laptop so I've got them a day late. I used waaay to many polishes to list them all but my accents were Barry M-Satsuma with the Black Croc Effect on top and Rimmel-Trend Spotting topped off with the fab Pocket Money Polishes-I Put A Spell On You, which I just had to use because it's perfect for Halloween. I also couldn't have done these nails without my trusty Barry M nail art pen-they're seriously brilliant! For some of them I took ideas from this tutorial by cutepolish, and the rest I just made up as I went along.

And yes, that is a terrible pun name on my gravestone, I was quite proud of that, haha!

Hope you all had a fun Halloween and got more treats than tricks!

~Nail Art Novice~

Born Pretty Holo Polish + British Indie Accents

A few weeks ago when the Born Pretty store brought out their holo range, they put 200 polishes up for grabs if you shared the information about them on certain social media platforms and I was lucky enough to 'win' one from this mini giveaway. I had a tough time choosing which colour I wanted because there were so many really pretty ones, but in the end I plumped for #8-a tealy blue shade. It only took a couple of weeks for the polish to arrive and it was really well packaged when it did come. It's slightly darker in the bottle than it was on the listing but it's still a really gorgeous blue-more cobalt than teal.

I have a habit of wearing similar base colours underneath my holos because they take so many coats to build to opacity, but I did test this one on my thumb to see its true colour:

Born Pretty Holo Polish #8, No topcoat

As you can see, the colour built up really well and I definitely could have got away with only 3 coats. The linear holo is really awesome and you can spot the full rainbow running through it. I didn't manage to get any shots in the sun because of our crummy weather at the moment, but it's still visible inside too. For my other fingers I used 2 coats of the holo polish over 1 coat of Maybelline-Dark Denim which has made the colour slightly darker than on its own, but not by much.

I did find the square shape of the lid a little difficult to hold whilst I was polishing but there was nothing that would cause major problems. The brush is quite long and flat so gives good coverage.
The polish on its own is beautiful, but I wanted to add a little something extra to make it even more special, and I had the perfect polish just sitting on my desk begging to be used. Pocket Money Polishes are a new, British, indie brand made by the lovely Charlie (who you may remember from her guest post in May) and she has designed two collections called her 'Glitter Babies'. (The new one is launching on July the 1st-check out all the details here). This polish is from her first collection and is called Starry, Starry Night and it's GORGEOUS. It's full of blue matte glitter, gold holo glitter and tiny white stars and is almost impossible to capture on camera, especially over the holo background, but I did my best:

This was the ONLY picture I could pick
up those gold sparklies in!

My camera just couldn't cope with everything I was throwing at it in these photos, so you can't see how pretty this combination is in real life I'm afraid, you'll just have to trust me that it is stunning. I keep getting dazzled by all the holoy sparkly goodness =)

You can buy the Born Pretty Holos here, currently they have a 50% off sale so are $6.44 for 6ml, with free shipping.
You can buy Pocket Money Polishes' Glitter Babies here, but they're seriously limited edition-Starry, Starry Night is already gone I'm afraid! They're £4 for 5ml + £1.50 postage. Look out for the new gorgeous collection arriving on the 1st of July!

~Nail Art Novice~