Mish Mash Challenge Week 13-Rainbows

I always knew I would love this week because I'm a massive rainbow fan-they're so bright and colourful and never fail to make me smile-whether in the sky or on my nails! This design was inspired by a couple of things-firstly by my boyfriend's idea in 'tape week', because his gradients looked really awesome, and secondly by an awesome glitter that I bought in a blog sale a couple of weeks ago. To combine them together I used the glitter over black and then did rainbow accents.

Polishes used: W7-Black, Barry M-Passion Fruit, Mango, Spring Green, Blue Grape, Revlon-Electric, Sinful Colors-Amethyst, Seventeen-Monochrome Graffiti Effects and Krafty Gurl-It's A Fiesta.
Here's what I ended up with:

Can you believe that this is only one coat of that Krafty Gurl glitter? SO MUCH PRETTY. I love love LOVE this mani, it's awesome and amazing and I don't want to take it off ever ever ever. It's making me happy =D

Don't forget to check out all the other rainbow coloured brilliance in the inlinkz below!

~Nail Art Novice~

Try Something Tuesday: Tribal Nail Art With Barry M

Hello lovelies =)

Today I popped into Superdrug on the off chance that they might have the new Barry M Gellys ahead of their launch tomorrow and I got lucky! They had all of them except Passionfruit (the red one) so I snapped them up! They were also on 3 for 2 so I also got Pricky Pear from the original Gelly collection and one of the new Superdrug Limited Edition (SLE) Neons as well. When I got home I decided to throw on some new nail art and my eye was caught by the funky tribal pattern on the SLE bottle so I decided to use it as my inspiration for today's mani.

Polishes used: Barry M-Superdrug Limited Edition 2013 (Green), Barry M-Matt White (I decided it was finally time to upgrade to a decent white polish!) and Barry M-Black plus the black and white Barry M Nail Art Pens. The SLE polish is a super bright neon-the colour of highlighters! I layered 3-4 coats (some were thicker than others) over a white base, painting my accents white. I used striping tape to block off/fill in the various sections for the tribal accents and then went to work with my nail art pens and this is what I ended up with:

My cuticles are a little bit yellowy but I think that's due to dodgy cleaning up more than anything else. I'm quite proud of those tribal designs, it goes to show how awesome the Barry M pens are! I love the super bright green but I felt like it needed just a little something more so I added a couple of coats of Seventeen's Graffiti Effects in Monochrome to add a bit of pizzazz.

Here's the final mani:

Apologies for the slightly fluffy fingers,
I think they're strands from my jumper!

I just love that glitter! I can only apologise in advance 'cos I have a feeling you're going to be seeing that one a lot, as well as a lot of nail art with my Gellys.

What do you reckon to the Limited Edition Neons? (There's also a pink). Will you be investing?

Until next time!

~Nail Art Novice~

Randomised Mani-Double Dots

Ever since I saw the first Tri Polish post (run by The Crumpet's Nail Tarts) I've been a bit intrigued with the idea of doing a mani with no control over the colours used in it. I haven't yet decided if I'll join in with the challenge, but it's something I'm considering for when the ABC challenge ends (Sob!)
I have a habit of using the same colours over and over again for my manis because they're the ones my eye is naturally drawn to so I decided to set myself a similar challenge-I'm calling it the Randomised Mani. Basically, using a random number generator, I select the number of polishes for the challenge (between 2 and 10) and then the actual ones I'm going to use. I have my swatch wheels all catalogued in a book (because I'm a nerd!) and so just kept selecting random numbers which represented a polish. I'm not explaining this very well but basically I didn't pick them by choice but by chance! I also gave myself the option to veto one polish from the lot if it didn't fit very well.

So for my first Randomised Mani these were the polishes that got chosen:

 Colour Me-Pure Gold, 17-Nightshade, Rimmel-Sunrise and Kleancolor-Jewelry Red (It really pains me to have to spell jewellery wrong because it's the polish name!)
I decided that the orange didn't really fit with the opulence of the other colours so I got rid, leaving me with three polishes. I really liked the double dot effect on my little finger in my Fabulous mani the other day so I recreated that here.

I used two coats of Pure Gold and three of Jewelry Red as bases and was suddenly struck with the thought that they really look like the colours used for Tony Stark's Iron Man suit! (Yes, I'm a big nerd. But Iron Man 3!! *fangirls*) Had I not already decided what to do I might have attempted an Iron Man mani but alas (earwax) it was not to be, today.

I added dots in the opposite colour down the sides of my nails, then black ones on top. My camera really didn't like photographing this at all so I've done the best I can!

 What do you think? I reckon it's not too bad! I think the red dots look like poppies, which is quite cool. I'll be doing this random challenge every so often-at least once a month, perhaps more if I get stuck for inspiration.

Hope you enjoyed this mani!

Edit 19/5: I can't believe I never realised how pretty this gold was before-it's actually full of tiny green and orange shimmery bits and is such a lovely colour! Hard to believe it cost £1.99 and is a cheap brand I've never seen anywhere else!

~Nail Art Novice~

Try Something Tuesdays-Going Dotty!

I want to introduce a regular feature to my blog, even though it's only just about a month old. I'm so new to this game that a lot of techniques and styles that seem to be common place to a lot of nail bloggers are still completely alien to me, and I want to get better, I want to get good at this. So I decided to utilise the expertise of my fellow bloggers and start Try Something Tuesdays. Every Tuesday (I hope) I'm going to find a tutorial for a new technique I haven't attempted yet, or a mani I want to attempt to recreate, or even something I want to do from somewhere inside of my own head and try it out, and then post the results. Some might work spectacularly, some might fail in a smeary blobby mess, but I'll keep persevering. I'll keep trying and trying again until I master everything that I want to master and evolve from a Novice into a proficient nail blogger. This is the hope, anyway.

I'm going to start this on my very first week with a polka dot manicure to match my gorgeous black and white rockabilly dress I might be wearing on Valentine's Day (which can be found here on Ebay as I don't have a picture in it yet)

I know this is (in theory) a spectacularly easy thing to master, but I think getting the right number and size of dots is going to be the tricky thing for me-I'm not very good at getting them consistent yet and my practises have ended up looking a little crazy. I'm going for a simple straight line pattern, rather than placing them randomly and hope it turns out a bit better.
I originally was just going to do black and white and keep it monochrome, but my black nail varnish isn't the greatest quality for dotting and I fancied a little splash of colour on my accent nails, which now looks a bit bonkers but I kinda like it.

Polishes used were: Number 17 Fast Finish in Nightshade, Colour Me in Colour Me White, Rimmel I Heart Lasting Finish in  Block Your Green, Marks and Spencer Nail Colour in Blue (that, can I add, is definitely more purple), Number 7 in Siren (red), and Barry M in Cobalt Blue (which is getting a lot of use at the moment, but I shall try to give it a rest soon). I painted my accents (thumb and ring finger) white, and the rest of my fingers black, then pulled out my dotting tools.
Here's the results:

What's annoying is that I did actually bother cleaning up today.
Clearly I forgot my little finger *shakes fist*

Actually, I quite like them. They do look a little bit mad if I'm honest, and are probably a bit Lichtensteiny rather than true polka dots but they're an improvement on my practises in that they're all roughly the same size and a lot more evenly spaced out. Next time I try this I'll probably opt for the next size up dotting tool and make fewer bigger dots, rather than more smaller ones, as I think it'll look a bit neater overall. For my first Try Something Tuesday though, I'm happy, plus I think they'll look awesome with my dress if I actually get to wear it!

~Nail Art Novice~

Friendly Flowers

As I mentioned in my last post, that mani was created on a night where my friend did something rather more impressive that she's allowed me to share with you.
She's always loved ladybirds and when I happened to come across this beautiful ladybird/ladybug mani over at The Little Canvas I sent it to her because I knew she'd want to try it out. Alongside that she decide she wanted to some dotting tool flowers because she didn't want red polish on all of her nails. We practised together on a bit of old plastic packaging and were both surprised how easy the technique was to pick up and how effective it looked!
In total she used 8 polishes on her fingers, not including the base coat and top coat!

They were from L-R:

Number 17 Fast Finish in Nightshade, Rimmel I Heart Lasting Finish in  Block Your Green, Colour Me in Colour Me White, London Girl in un-named shade 148, Barry M in Cobalt Blue, Rimmel I Heart Lasting Finish in Double Decker Red, L.A Colors Art Deco in Black and a top coat of Rimmel I Heart Lasting Finish in Disco Ball. Phew! It was definitely worth it though because the results looked awesome! She kept The Little Canvas mani open for reference and then just freehanded her designs using the brushes in the polishes or dotting tools, and this was the result:

To say she's never really done anything like this before (neither have I for that matter) I was really impressed with how well this turned out and will definitely be trying both of these techniques soon. The design is so fun and bright, I know she's really pleased with it and so am I!

~Nail Art Novice + Friend~