12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 4-Festive Colours

Hey lovelies-can you guess what I did for my Festive Colours mani from this pic?

Haha! Aside from about 20 strands, that tape is all from one mani which I think is a bit impressive! I had originally planned to do a sort of gradient of the three "Festive" colours (red/green/gold) but decided to try them out like this on a swatch stick and liked it so much I did a full mani of it! It's another one of my double layered taping manis which take forever to do but I think give some really awesome results!

Polishes used: Maybelline-Winner Takes It All, Rimmel-Red Carpet and Camouflage plus copious layers of Seche Vite!

As I said, I really like these-they're definitely very festive but also a bit different and quite eyecatching too! I do feel that I should probably step away from the striping tape now though-3 of my 4 Xmas manis so far have used it-oops! I just love the awesome things you can do with it-and so does Rara by the look of things:

Rara
I used Barry M-Red Glitter, Silver Multi Glitter and Gold Glitter and Andrea Fullerton dot and flick black and silver. I wasn't sure what to do for this mani and I'm not completely happy with this one. I tried to do a striping tape mani and I just don't know what went wrong with it. However it is really glittery yay!! Hopefully I'm going to be more impressed with the up coming manis!

~Rara~

Ahh my eyes! It's so sparkly! Gotta love a glitter fest =D

Here's a reminder of the rest of the prompts, and if you want to join in then the FB group with the details is here.

Have a look at the other fabulous festive manis too!

~Nail Art Novice~

A Grand Century!

In the last week I've noticed that my GFC follower count has hit 100+ and I couldn't be more grateful to everyone who's clicked that little button over the past 11 months! It's really exciting to think that I'm potentially reaching this many people and I never expected anything like this when I started this blogging venture in January! So THANKYOU to my lovely followers, thank you so much!! You're all wonderful!

I know that traditionally milestones like this are marked with a giveaway, but as it's occurred so close to my blog birthday (January 14th!) I'm going to combine the two together and have one larger one then, rather than two smaller ones close together. I won't say too much right now but *touch wood* I have some awesome prizes lined up-let's just say I've got fingers in a few pies!
For now though, I just wanted to know that if you're reading this-you're appreciated! I'm so lucky to have such awesome followers!

Here's a kitten who wants to shake your hand as much as I do!

[Source-whaas987 on Flickr
All rights reserved]

I'll be back soon with more Xmas Nail Art, woo!

~Nail Art Novice~

12 Days Of Xmas Nail Art 3-Food

I was intrigued to see this prompt get as many votes as it did when we were picking themes for the challenge-it wouldn't have been one I would have chosen myself but that's the beauty of getting people to vote I guess!
I had a plan in my mind for these, but unfortunately my MoYou festive plate hasn't shown up yet (Boo!) so I had to think of something else and the only things I could really think of were candy canes or Christmas pud! As I don't eat Xmas puds I decided to go for candy canes! Polishes used were Rimmel-Serene/Red Carpet and Tara's Talons-Dasher from my advent calendar which I just adore! Sadly (for you guys) this polish isn't available in her shop because all the calendar polishes are one offs (with the same names) so my 'Dasher' won't be the same as anyone else's, which makes me love it even more!

Anyway, pictures!

I have to say I'm not the biggest fan of this mani, I like the stripes but all the candy canes on my accents are different sizes and a bit wibbly and I just don't love them. However, to redeem myself, let me show you a picture of 'Dasher' before I stuck nail art on top of it-it's gooooorgeous!

Rara
Pigs in blankets!!!! My favourite Christmas food of all time. I could eat my body weight in these every year! I used Avon-Gray Flash for the base, Essie-Cascade Cool for the pigs and the blankets were done with pens from Paperchase. I outlined the pigs with Andrea Fulerton black. And because I didn't think they looked very Christmassy I added little santa hats with Barry M-Bright Red.

Oh my gosh I love these so much...not sure I want to take them off to do my next mani!!

~Rara~

Awwh! I love them too, so cute! I also love the fact (because I'm a big sciencey nerd) that the blanket on her little finger looks like a Christmas amoeba! That might just be me though haha. Don't forget to check out the other awesome 'food' manis in the inlinkz below and happy Thursday!

~Nail Art Novice~

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~

12 Days Of Christmas Nail Art 1-Presents

It's here, it's here, it's finally here! Today is the first of December which means it's also the first day of my Christmas Nail Art Challenge-hurrah! I've been really quite excited about this for a while now and now it's here-I'm really looking forward to seeing what people come up with!

For my first mani I've done some simple taping with some sumptuous metallic colours-Maybelline-Winner Takes It All for my base and then (from thumb to little finger on my right hand)-Barry M-Teal, Rimmel-Camouflage, Rimmel-Purple Addict, Rimmel-Red Carpet and Barry M-Navy. I added labels to my accents with my Barry M nail art pen.

I've also got Rara's submissions because she's doing the challenge too-yay! For these she used Barry M-Silver Multiglitter/Red Glitter and some Andrea Fulerton nail art pens in black/silver. Please note she did these whilst out of the house and so the pics were taken pre-clean up!

That's all from us for this first challenge, but make sure you check out all the other beautiful manis in the inlinkz! Here are the rest of the challenge prompts-keep an eye out for them in the coming weeks!

~Rara and Nail Art Novice~