Rawr!

Hello lovelies! Rara here again, because Novice is off visiting another friend in Devon at the moment-nice for some ey?

Today I wanted to do something fun and settled on the idea of monsters! I wanted each one to have different expressions and personalities. Polishes used were: Revlon-Fire, Barry M-Blue Grape, Spring Green, Mango, Rimmel-Sunshine as well as the black and white Barry M nail art pens. 

I love the orange one with her eyelashes, the red one reminds me of a spider and the green one of a dragon. I'm well impressed with these! So happy!!!!

Novice will be back in time for the Mish Mash challenge next week,

Until next time!

~Rara~

Mish Mash Week 4-New Nail Art Technique-Take Two!

OK, so I really didn't like what I'd ended up with in my first attempt at this week's challenge, and definitely didn't want to keep it on my hands for long. As I started removing it (shortly after I'd finished the post, if I'm honest), I started looking through some of the other wonderful manis done for this week and I came across this wonderful post by A Polished Prance showing the 'drag marbling' technique which looks really fabulous. I decided to try it out on my thumb to see if I could do it and it looked really cool! I then decided this was going to be my second 'try something new' mani, in the hope it would come out a little better. Thankfully, it did!

Polishes used are the same as before with the addition of Barry M-Matt White and China Glaze-Fairy Dust because I fancied adding a little sparkle. I just followed the same video tutorial that Chantelle linked to in her post and it was really quite simple and easy =)

I did struggle a little using my non-dominant hand, simply because holding the needle was a little fiddly but I still really like the end result MUCH more than I did with the acid wash-it's really bright and fun and funky. This one definitely won't be getting taken off straight away! Thanks to A Polished Prance for the idea!

Again, don't forget to check out the inlinkz,  it just goes to show you never know what you might find as inspiration =)

Until next time!

~Nail Art Novice~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 4-New Nail Art Technique

I had originally planned to try out the dreaded water marble for this week, but that would have meant being awake enough to get dressed and go and buy supplies for it and I just couldn't be bothered in the end =p

Instead, I attempted the acid wash technique which is something I'd been wanting to try for a while. Polishes used were all Barry M-Passion Fruit, Mango, Key Lime, Guava, Blue Grape, Prickly Pear and Plum. I followed this pictorial by The Crumpet (because for some reason Youtube doesn't want to work on this computer today) although I can't really claim it as a successful endeavour!

I think the nails with orange in look pretty cool but all the others are a bit dark and gloomy and haven't really worked as well. I think I needed to make my original 'slices' a bit wider so you got the full effect of the different layers of colours, also maybe use only two layers under my top colour rather than three. I dunno, I just don't really love them and won't be keeping them on for long. But hey, at least I've tried them now! I will do them again someday, hopefully with a little more success. Hopefully the other awesome challengers will have had more luck, check out the inlinkz to see!

~Nail Art Novice~

Also congratulations to Raquel who won my giveaway!

A Flying Visit!

Hello lovelies!

This is just the quickest of quick posts to say that I am not going to be posting over the next few days because I have (semi-spontaneously) decided to go up to Edinburgh to see some of my friends performing in the Fringe Festival-and I'm super excited because it's amazing! (I was in it last year!) It's going to be a very mad, theatre-packed, sleep deprived couple of days but hey, life is for the living right?

As a result of my shenanigans I am EXTENDING my giveaway of one set of Sethir's Shinies beautiful false nail sets until Wednesday when I return, exhausted and broke. For more details go to the original post here and to enter just fill in your details on the Rafflecopter below.

I will see you in a few days, hope they're as fun for you as they will be for me.

~Nail Art Novice~

For more examples of Sethir's work go here or here

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Mish Mash Challenge Week 3-Metallic

I thought I'd keep it simple for this week's mish mash challenge and did a design loosely inspired by Kimber's awesome tape mani from last week. I started with a base of Revlon-Silver Screen (two coats) on all my nails and then applied some Seche Vite to help it dry. Once this was done I added some scotch tape to my nails leaving a triangle free in the middle-which I filled in with Barry M-Cosmic Glow which is a gorgeous magnetic green polish. It's full of multi coloured glittered flecks and I think it's really pretty. I used the diagonal line magnet with them too.

I really like these, simple and relatively easy to do. They look a bit like Christmas trees I think, so I might pull this one out again at Xmas time.

Don't forget to check out some of the other awesome Metallic manis in the inlinkz below!

~Nail Art Novice~

There's only 4 days left to enter my giveaway so make sure you've got your entries in here!