Quack Quack!

Hello Lovelies! Rara here again. I've got some fun rubber duck nails for you all today.

Polishes used were Avon-Grey Flash (a beautiful grey colour with shinies in, and it only needs one coat!), Avon-Inspire, Barry M-Atlantic Road (one of their textured polishes), Barry M-Mango (from their Gelly line) and Barry M-Sequinned White plus my Andrea Fulerton Dot and Flick in black.

I fancied something cute today so I decided on rubber ducks-a firm favourite theme between myself and Novice.

I used a dotting tool to create the ducks and then a small brush for their tiny wings. And who can say no to a few sparkles? So I added the bubbles above the ducks with a sequin in each one. 
I love these already and they've only been on my nails for about 10 minutes-I can tell I'll be staring at them all day at work tomorrow!

Until next time, 

~Rara~


Don't forget to enter Novice's Giveaway here! 

Mish Mash Challenge Week 2-Taping

I have to apologise for my lack of posting over the last week, I was hanging out with my other half and didn't remember to blog-hopefully you can forgive me!

Time (already!) for the second mani of the Mish Mash challenge and this week it's taping. I was bandying some ideas around with the Mr. and we came up with the idea of doing bright colours and black together. He wanted to choose the colours so I let him pick five that looked good together-Barry M-Passion Fruit, Mango, Spring Green, Blue Grape and Rimmel-Sunshine, plus Barry M-Black over the top. I decided to mix it up a little and did one hand with the colours underneath and one with them on top.

(Apologies for the crappy clean up on these, it was really late!)

They did end up a little messy and on any other day I would have probably taken a couple of them off and redone them, but I was tired and just couldn't be bothered, oops! My bf also wanted to get in on the taping action (because he's basically awesome) so I did gradients on his nails and taped over the top...and they actually turned out so much more awesome than my nails! I was a bit jealous because they looked fab!

I'm definitely stealing his idea at some point in the future, haha.

Anyway, I'm going to try and get back to blogging properly again now, starting with checking out all the other awesome tape manis in the inlinkz below.

~Nail Art Novice~


Don't forget to enter my giveaway here!

Sethir's Shinies Review

~Pic Heavy Post~

A good friend of mine has started making and selling some gorgeous nail art on false nails on Etsy and I promised him that I would share them on my blog. He (yes, he's that elusive thing-a man who enjoys nail art!) started off doing nail art on his girlfriend's nails and has since produced some really gorgeous stuff.

Photograph courtesy of Sethir's Shinies

Photograph courtesy of Sethir's Shinies

Photograph courtesy of Sethir's Shinies

His nail art is really fab and he is more than prepared to make custom orders for people if you don't see what you fancy in his shop. There are more examples of the stuff he's done over at http://pixieledmakeup.wordpress.com/category/nails/

The nails I received were these peacock ones, only I asked if they could be done on a lighter base so you could see the colours better. A few days later they arrived and they're really gorgeous! They were beautifully packaged and wrapped up well too, so they arrived intact, and got here only a couple of days after they were posted-Fab!

My camera refuses to pick up the gold shimmer in each feather 'eye' but
it's definitely visible in real life!

You get 12 nails in each set and they're all slightly different sizes so that you can match them to your own nail beds. Because of this each set comes with two thumb nail accents to ensure that you can find one to fit you. I haven't actually worn mine yet because I'm saving them for a special occasion, but I've sized them to my nails and found that there's easily one to fit each of them. A friend of mine with (to quote her) "very busy hands" ordered some of these and hers lasted 4 days, so I imagine you could get them to last a week if you weren't doing too much hard work (perfect for holidays!) They come with a tube of nail glue which you will need some sort of solvent (like acetone) to remove, which might damage the nails. Alternatively if you wanted to wear them on more than one occasion without damaging them (though not for as long) then you could use sticky pads to attach them. Either way you'll be getting some really great nail art to treasure.

~Nail Art Novice~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 1-Purple

Hurrah, it's finally time for the Mish Mash challenge to begin! I've been looking forward to this for a while, and I reckon it's going to be pretty fun! For more details, go here.

This week's prompt is 'purple' and although I've only just done some minion nails for the OMD! Challenge, I couldn't resist rocking them again when my friend invited me to see Despicable Me 2 for the 2nd time (I just love those movies!)-only this time, of course, I did the purple 'evil' minions to fit with the theme.

Polishes used: Barry M-Prickly Pear, Matt White, Topshop-Cloud, Revlon-Electric, Maybelline-Dark Denim, L'Oreal-Valiant plus my Barry M Nail Art pens in black and white.

These were super fun to wear for a few days and I got a few compliments on them which is always good! And the film was brill too, of course!

Don't forget to check out all the other purple entries in the inlinkz below. So excited to be back, woo!

~Nail Art Novice~

An InLinkz Link-up

BK GLOW IN THE DARK Polishes

~This post is pre-scheduled because I am currently away~

I am a bit excited about these, there's just something awesome about having something glowing at the end of your fingertips when you turn the light off, haha. That's the main reason I bought them-I'd seen a couple on other people's blogs and wanted to join in the fun myself! I found them on ebay here but they are also available on the Born Pretty Store with free shipping (although the glow in the dark ones are currently unlisted-sorry!).
I got myself 3 colours because I wanted to see if you could really see the difference in the glow colours- #5 (Bright green), #6 (Bright Blue) and #10 (Fuchsia sort of colour). I applied these over a couple of coats of Barry M-Matt White because they are fairly sheer and have a jelly consistency. I'd never understood why people say jellies are 'squishy' when they dry but now I've used these I understand-they're not glossy and shiny like most polishes but aren't matte either. Squishy is perfect!

Anyway, pictures! The first is taken under natural light, the second with flash and the third in the dark to show you the glow, all with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

They do actually glow a little brighter but I was finding it really hard to capture. You can sort of see the differences in the colours though-the pink definitely is glowing a different colour to the other two. They were bright enough to cast light onto my pillow in bed at least!

Honestly? I love these. The formula isn't the greatest and they did take about 3 coats to become properly opaque even over the white polish but I can forgive them because it's just so much fun having glow in the dark nails and they weren't especially expensive! I couldn't stop playing with these in the dark-TOO FUN =D

~Nail Art Novice~