Rimmel Space Dust-Moon Walking

AKA that time I wore a polish on its own with no fancy bits =P

So yeah...this is the lovely Moon Walking by Rimmel. It's from their Space Dust line-textured glittery polishes and it's just so pretty! I had originally planned to do something over the top but once I got it on I didn't want to-it's too lovely. And to think when I started blogging I was adamant that I would never wear textured polishes-ha!

This went on really easily and was almost a one coater, but I used two to make sure I got full coverage. I know a lot of people dislike the flat Rimmel brushes but they work really well for me-they cover my nail well and mean I need to do less clean up (always a bonus!).

It's so sparkly and in addition to the texture has some tiny microglitters in, although my camera seems to not want to find them in the photos. I love the way the light plays across this, it's super pretty! It's not too textured either-it definitely feels rough but it isn't spiky or uneven like some textured polishes I've used previously.

Isn't it lovely! It's very rare that I put a polish on and don't feel like it needs something on top to make it more fun, but this was definitely one! I just really like it...and it's not even green! I think I need a lie down ;)

What do you reckon to textured polishes?

~Nail Art Novice~

31 Week Nail Art Challenge 6-Purple

I called this a 31 Week nail art challenge but I have to confess that I'm not really sticking to posting one every week very well, this should really have gone up by Sunday but oh well!

For my purple challenge I used a new polish and a new technique-the cloud mani. I've always thought these looked quite fun and I don't know why I've never tried it before! The base colour is the beautiful Cirque-Baptisia which is another polish I won in Emma's giveaway at the start of the month. It's a really deep purple packed with bluey shimmers, and it smells of lavender too, mmm! On top of that I added the "cloud" shapes in Loki's Lacquer-Buddy and Revlon-Purple Addict, both favourite purples of mine.

I'm totally in love with this, the colours together are just stunning! I have to say though, I'd not really thought about doing this one with my off hand-and it's really hard! Keeping the lines at the right height while at the same time trying to keep the lovely blobby shapes at the top was really difficult, and you can see some of the ones on my right hand are less than perfect. I still like it though!

Here's what I've got coming up next week, or at least at some point in the indeterminate future haha!

~Nail Art Novice~

March TPT The Fourth

Hello lovelies! Happy Tuesday-hope the weather near you is nicer than here, it's very grey today!
Today brings the final instalment of the March Tri-Polish Tuesdays challenge, the colours for which have been green, blue and purple (so I have been very much in my element!). Today's mani is bright and a bit mad to look at-I love it!

Polishes used: Sally Hansen-Grass Slipper, Sally Hansen-Brisk Blue and Sinful Colors-Amethyst 

I decided to do a double tape mani with them, because I really love the way the colours play together and thought they'd look awesome all peeking out from under each other-turns out I was right!

What can I say? I love a double tape mani. They do take ages to do but they way they come out is so unique and fun that I will always forgive them! I have enjoyed doing these Tri-Polish manis, but I am yet to decide if I am taking part in next month's as the dreaded PINK is one of the colours haha. We shall see!

As ever, don't forget to check out what the other talented ladies have done in the inlinkz below!

~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

Guest Post Week! Pocket Money Polishes!

And it’s all purple! Hello all, Charlie here today from Pocket Money Polishes– anyone familiar with my blogs knows that I am only just learning to like purple so to see an all purple combo from me is a very new phenomenon. Deep breaths. It’s ok. I LOVE BOTH OF THESE POLISHES.

OPI Vesper comes from the Bond Girls collection which was one of the earlier incarnations of the texture polish trend from OPI. I used two coats for full sugary effect and this polish does take a long time to fully develop its finish (about 45 minutes) but this doesn’t mean it is prone to damage for the same amount of time – it’s pretty solid after about ten minutes.

As you can see from the photos this really ends up barely thicker on the nail than normal polish and for full effect you shouldn't top coat. I found that this had absolutely no impact on the wear time of the polish vs regular nail polish. In my pictures it may look black but it is blackcurrent purple and reminds me of fruit pastles – all sugary and deep. I did find that compared to other OPI polishes the brush seemed to be thickly loaded but it wasn’t hard to work with – just whack it on and wait for the magic. Removal of the Liquid Sand is similar to a glitter and does require some patience but it is a very hard wearing polish and just so gosh darn pretty. I found the finish on this polish to be less rough than What Wizardry Is This?

For my accents (which also applied to my thumbs) I have Zoya Daul which I have only worn once HERE and is insanely pretty. I love it so much on this second time round – the shimmer/sparkle/magic in it is just breath taking and the entire polish changes look depending on the light.

 I used two medium coats and topcoat in the pictures and I did actually find the dry time a little slow although I was painting quite late at night so perhaps that’s why. Application on this polish is super smooth and easy – I needed a little tidy up around the edges as it was slightly thinner than the OPI I was pasting on but there were no issues with flooding.

 The way both of these polishes sparkle in the light is just beautiful. So much so that this is the first mani that I have worn until it has chipped and worn away in a very long time. I honestly couldn’t stop waving my hand around in varying lights. Have you ever had a mani like that?

 I’ve just been spending the evening admiring the swatching for the upcoming OPI Brazil collection and they’re looking prettier and prettier, I can’t believe that the bright liquid sands will only be available in mini form though, check out the yellow swatch HERE. You might need sunglasses! My favourite places to buy OPI include The Nail and Beauty Link and Nail Polish Direct at the moment and I am watching with baited breath to see when these pretties arrive. I passed on the Gwen collection so need to scratch my new OPI itch some how. If you’re looking for bargain OPI then keep an eye on Fragrance Direct!

On the Zoya front I have ended up buying more since my haul including Tamsen and Elke – I am just waiting for the postman to deliver them to me and I will be reviewing them on the blog. Thanks for letting me share a post with you today, I hope you’ve enjoyed it and will come and see what I am up to soon!

Mish Mash Challenge Week 26-Favourite Nail Art Technique

This is another one of the themes that I suggested originally, and when I did I had one thing on my mind-fishtails! I do love the way fishtails look when they're done but I don't love the amount of time and patience you have to have with them. Since the challenge has been ongoing, I've discovered a new favourite technique and that's gradients-I love getting the colours to blend nicely together and they're a fab way to have neutral nails but in more than one colour! I decided as a nod to my excited just-started-nail-blogging self I'd combine the two for this mani.

Polishes used: Barry M-Plum, Sinful Colors-Amethyst, Barry M-Prickly Pear, Revlon-Cloud, OPI-I Juggle...Men

They're not the best gradients in the world cos my polishes wouldn't play nice, but they were still quite pretty. I do still love fishtails but they are a pain in the butt to do! They look awesome when done though so can't complain.
There you go, pretty purple pretties.

Don't forget to check out all the other lovely nails in the inlinkz!

~Nail Art Novice~

My giveaway is running for another week! Make sure you're entered =)

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 5-Bells

Hello lovelies!
I'm back with another Xmas mani today-I can't believe how quickly these are going past. Today's is Bells and I've freehanded some slightly wibbly ones! I started with a base of Rimmel-Purple Addict and on all but my accent fingers topped it with a coat of Iconic Effect-Extreme Holo Topcoat which is basically my new favourite thing ever. A way to make any polish not only holoy but extremely so? I had to have it! I get the feeling I'm going to be using it a lot, haha. For my bells I used Maybelline-Winner Takes It All and added a little detail with Rimmel-Red Carpet/Camouflage.

Please ignore my stubby nubbin of a middle finger =(

I love the bells but I'm more impressed with that holo topcoat-look at those gorgeous rainbows! You can get it on the Iconic Effect Etsy site and it comes in three intensities depending on how much holo you want! Because I am a true "holo ho" (to quote a lovely lady in one of my nail groups on FB) I had to have the extreme one, but I'm sorely tempted to pick up the others with some of my Xmas money too!

OK, so there's my bells, now let's have a look at Rara's:

Rara
Today I used Avon-Garden Green which is quite a nice shimmery green. The bells were done using Nails Inc-Uptown Glamour which I got out of a magazine for £1.40! And the bow detailing I used Barry M-Bright Red. The lettering was done by my trusty Andrea Fulerton...think I might love that woman! I wasn't too sure how to draw bells so they could quite possibly have looked nothing like they needed to. But in the end I think you can tell what they are! Jingle all the way to the next challenge...decorations, where I'm completely stumped......

~Rara~

I love Rara's little bells, I think they're fabulous! I think it's interesting how we both have our own favourite nail art pens-she loves the Andrea Fulerton ones but I'm much more of a Barry M fan! Each to their own ey?

Don't forget to check out the rest of the manis in the inlinkz!

~Nail Art Novice~

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~

Funky Fishtails

Hello lovelies!

As you may have guessed by my erratic posting schedule of late, I've been away a lot-visiting friends around the country and staying with my boyfriend up in Sheffield. This means I've not been looking after my nails very well-and I've had a lot of breaks as a result so I'm back to stubby nubbins again. It also means I've not really been doing much nail art because I didn't want to take a load of stuff with me, so when I got an opportunity today to just sit down for a while and paint I took it! I decided to do fishtails because I still really like them and I hadn't done them in a bit...so long in fact I'd forgotten how long they take to do! I mean they're worth it and it was nice to just chill out for an hour or so but I'm so used to doing quick and easy "on the road" nails that it felt like forever! Haha.
Polishes are all Barry M Gellies-which seem to be my go-tos at the moment because I love the bright colours! I used Key Lime, Guava, Plum and Prickly Pear.

I'm really loving these exceptionally bright nails, they make me feel pretty happy which is good because the day I did them was a bit rubbish and I needed a bit of a pick me up.

Anyway, hope you are all having happy weekends!

~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~

OMD! Challenge Day 13-Stars

This is actually two challenges combined into one-the OMD! Challenge for the day and the #HePicksMyPolish challenge that was discussed in the Hobby Polish Bloggers Facebook group. Basically the idea is to get your other half to choose your polishes for you-and he's allowed free reign from your whole collection. I mentioned this in passing to my boyfriend and he was SUPER excited about it-it was really quite adorable. This is actually his second colour choice but the first one went on my toes and I know some people aren't keen on feet pictures so I didn't blog about them. They wouldn't necessarily be colours I would put together but I love them both on their own and think he could have done a lot worse!

Polishes used (picked by himself) were Avon-Midnight Green (one of the new ones Rara bought me for my birthday), Rimmel-Purple Addict and then to add a hint of starry sparkle I added Revlon-Stunning. On my accents I've done the star-sticker technique which worked surprisingly well, even with the dark colours. Two coats of all polishes.

I really do love this technique-it's so simple but it makes some really fun nail art. Loving those sparkles too!!

~Nail Art Novice~

OMD! Challenge Day 3-Purple

~Wooo, this is my 100th post on this blog!~

Hello lovelies!
As I mentioned the other day, this month I will be participating in the Oh Mon Dieu! Challenge/Giveaway that's running throughout July. I already knew I wasn't going to be doing a mani for every day so here is my first one for you.
I used two absolutely gorgeous purple polishes-Loki's Lacquer-Buddy and Rimmel-Purple Addict. This was my first time using Buddy since I won it in a giveaway last month and WOW it's beautiful. It's a pale lilac shimmery creme with minute holo microglitter throughout it. It's also got this amazing pink-green duochrome shift that I could not persuade my camera to pick up at all! This is three coats, and I loved it so much I almost didn't do any nail art on top at all!

In the end I decided to go for accents and did a laser tape mani with Purple Addict on top.

I'm glad I did because Purple Addict is another lovely purple and I'm really enjoying this combination-although I wouldn't say I was an addict myself!  It's all about the greens and blues for me!

I won't be around too much this week as I have an Australian coming to visit and lots of fun stuff planned for us to do together. I've got a couple of posts scheduled so you won't miss me, I just won't be replying to comments as much. It's also my BIRTHDAY on Monday so I'm hoping to get some birthday manis up but we shall see. I'm like a little kid at this time of year-super excited =D

See you soon

~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:

L'Oreal Color Riche Collection-607 Rue Montmartre

I thought I'd bring you some swatches of some of the Color Riche collection by L'Oreal that I went and bought after I fell in love with Magic Croisette. I purchased them from fragrancedirect.co.uk which is an excellent site for getting awesome polishes for cheapy cheap from-the only trouble is that the colour swatches they use are really inaccurate for the colours the polishes actually are. When I was searching online for better swatches of these polishes, they were really hard to come by so I thought I'd make some of my own. I'm categorically not going to start swatching a lot of polishes on this blog, because there are enough sites out there that do that, with better pictures than I could ever take, but as these polishes seem to be rarer than a lot of others I hope you won't mind too much.

I got four colours-607-Rue Montmartre, 608-Luxembourg Garden, 604-Metropolitan and 502-Purple Disturbia but I'm going to dedicate a post to each so that I don't overwhelm you with pictures all in one go.

Today's offering is number 607-Rue Montmartre, which is a dusky purple/grey. This is 3 coats with no top coat, with accent nails featuring all 4 colours:

Natural light, and probably the closest to its actual colour

It's a bit of a weird one this-it's too grey to be purple and too purple to be grey. In my head it's a kind of 'lavendery grey' so I put it in with the rest of my purples. You only get 5mls in these teeny bottles but for the Fragrance Direct price of £1.20 a bottle I don't mind! I definitely wouldn't pay the full price of £4.99 for such a small amount of polish though. 

Application was pretty good-they have a wide flat brush which splays out a little when you use it-I managed to cover my little finger nail with one stroke and the rest only needed two. I didn't do any clean up on these nails and I managed not to get too much on my skin, which is a bonus and shows that even Novices can use the brushes well! It was fairly opaque in two coats but I put a third on just in case. As you can see, it's really shiny and lovely when it dries and doesn't leave obvious brush strokes behind. 

Overall I do really like this polish, although I think I'm going to struggle to wear it with other colours as it's such an odd one to match. She'll have to be a stand alone girl!

What do you think of my first swatching post? Did I do OK or did I forget something important?

~Nail Art Novice~

It's British Blogger link up time-check out these ladies and their beautiful nails:

Mint Ice Cream and Sprinkles

A fairly uninspired title for a fairly uninspired mani, I'm afraid. I'm still stuck with this cold, and have been for a week now, thoroughly fed up of coughing and sore throats and nose blowing and feeling awful and NOT BEING ABLE TO HEAR. Honestly, if someone isn't directly facing me when they speak to me then I can't hear what they're saying, it's like I'm constantly wearing earplugs-everything is muffled and sounds very distant. Plus I can hear my pulse in my ears loudly and above all other noises, meaning that if I move quickly anywhere I'm temporarily deaf for a few seconds whilst it settles down again.
Basically, it SUCKS. I've not been feeling especially creative because of this, so this was just another simple and quick mani. My original intention was to cover the green in purple sparkles, but I had sorely underestimated how dark the base was, hence I ended up with diagonal accents. To make matters worse, I've lost my base coat and had to use an old one that's almost made of glue. Grumble Grumble.

Polishes used: Barry M-Mint Green (at least I think so. It doesn't have a label on but looks about right compared to their website) and Revlon-Facets of Fuchsia on my accents.
Don't get me wrong, I adore this green, but it's a pain in the arse to apply-this is between 2 and 4 coats on each nail because it's really sheer and takes a while to build up opacity. In daylight, I've got a big patch on my middle finger that you can see through to the nail beneath even still.
Facets is frankly beautiful-I got it through a blog sale at the beginning of the year so it was a bargain for me. I think it's now been re-released as Scandalous but it's still a sheer black base filled with lots of purple glitter. This is 2 coats on each tip.

It is a nice combination but I'm not blown away by it-I'm not taking any joy glancing at my fingers when I type like with some manis. Here's hoping I'll be better soon, then I can get back on track and do something a little more interesting!

~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