Guest Post by Lisa of Geordie Nails!

Hey lovelies! I've got a guest post for you this week, and I guess I should explain; this week I was supposed to be moving back to my beloved city of Sheffield, and so I had planned to take the entire week off blogging, hence the guest post. In actuality, the room I thought was mine got given to someone else (heart breakingly!) and so I'm not moving...yet! I'm still determined to get back there! The lovely Lisa sent me this post before I knew the room had fallen through, so I thought it would be rude not to use it since she's been so kind!

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Hello! I'm Lisa from the blog Geordie Nails, and Jenni of Nail Art Novice has very kindly let me write a guest post while she's busy moving house. I decided to go with a well-wishing new home manicure!

 For the design I used two stamping plates: Cheeky's Home Sweet Home and Bundle Monster BM315. To start with I painted a base colour of Model's Own's Blueberry Muffin, a very pale (and pleasantly scented) blue-purple. On my thumbs and ring fingers I painted Nails Inc.'s Maida Vale glitter as accent nails. And then onto the stamping! The Cheeky plate has a lovely full-nail "home sweet home" image; I used a cotton bud to remove the parts of the design I didn't need from the stamper before putting the houses and lettering onto my nails. I finished the design with a silver bird flying to its new home. 

Here it is:

The best of wishes to Nail Art Novice for your move and I hope you're very happy in your new home! 
Hugs,
Lisa, Geordie Nails xx

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How lovely is that? The colours/glitter look awesome together and the stamping is perfect! Thank you to Lisa for doing this, even if I'm not moving at the moment, the sentiment is still very much appreciated. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I get there soon folks!

~Nail Art Novice~

I Hate Cleaning Up!

I really do, I reckon it's one of the worst bits about being a nail blogger and sometimes it takes twice as long as the mani itself-so annoying! I was having a discussion about this in a FB group once and lots of ladies seemed to agree with me so I decided to set up a bit of a silly collaborative post showing off our messiest nails without cleaning up first. Nail blogging doesn't always need to be serious, after all, and I thought it would be a bit of fun! Here's my effort, and it's gloriously messy!

Polishes used: Color Club Holo Hues-Kismet, Angel Kiss and Over The Moon. These were my last treat to myself of 2013 before my buying restrictions came in this year, and they're simply BEAUTIFUL. So much sparkle! I used the three together as a gradient and then stamped over the top with Sally Hansen-Purple Bolt and MoYou London-Pro 9. I still need a lot of practice placing my stamps but I love the colours together, and the way the holo smacks you in the face is pretty amazing.

And just in case you wanted to see it all cleaned up too...here's the finished product (I have recently discovered what a wonder PVA glue is for helping clean up and I will admit it makes it so much quicker! Still my least favourite job though!) :

Yay for messy manis!

~Nail Art Novice~

Sparkle And Shine

Hello lovelies! Hope you're all doing well and enjoying the year so far. I had a brilliant time at my New Year's gathering, but it really took it's toll on my poor nails, they're the shortest they've been for a very long time at the moment! I've got no free edge left on most of my nails, it's making me really rather sad =(
So much so that I was feeling really uninspired for what I should do on them once I took off my fabulous rainbows so I made my boyfriend choose something for me! (#LazyBloggerSyndrome lol). He decided he wanted something sparkly and so this is what I ended up with: Revlon-Silver Screen, Avon-Fabulous and Barry M-Majesty from their autumn textures. I decided to keep it simple and do a mixed size dotticure with the Barry M on top of the other colours.

Apologies for the tipwear in these, it wasn't apparent in real life!

This was so sparkly and pretty! I wish I was better at doing these kind of dotticures, I think it looks a bit of a mess personally, but I know they can look amazing because I always admire the ones Emma from Emma's Little Corner does (like this one!), but I just can't get them too look that good! Siiigh.

Anyway, that's my first mani of 2014 done, woo! Onwards!

~Nail Art Novice~

My Fifteen Favourites From 2013

2013 was the year I started my blog and I like to think I have improved my nail art over the 12 months it's now been running. I've tried lots of new techniques and had a lot of fun, with only a few minor disasters along the way.

Here's a round up of my favourite of my manis from this past year:

1-Feb '13-Star Spangled

2-Mar '13-My First Fishtail

3-Apr '13-ABC Challenge Owls

4-Jun '13-ABC Challenge Doctor Who Nail Art

5-Jun '13-Doc Martens Nail Art

6-Jul '13-OMD! Flowers

7-Jul '13-Monsters Uni Nail Art

8-Jul '13-OMD! Red Dwarf Nails

9-Aug '13-Mish Mash Minions

10-Aug '13-Mish Mash Music

11-Oct '13-Mish Mash Rainbows

12-Nov '13-Mish Mash/TPC Grey

14-Dec '13-Festive Colours

15-Dec '13-Christmas Freestyle

I think I've had a pretty decent year one way or another! You can see the improvement across the months I think, and I hope to keep improving in the months to come! If I had to pick one favourite mani from them all, it would either have to be my Doc Martens nails or my fab rainbows-I love them both!

Hope you're looking forward to 2014 as much as I am!

~Nail Art Novice~

My Blogging Resolutions!

~Happy New Year! I hope 2014 brings you happiness and awesome things, and of course, lots and lots of shiny polishes!~

I don't, as a rule, make resolutions, because I feel like they're just a way to make you feel bad about yourself if you break them-and life is too short for feeling guilty for breaking a pledge to yourself! However, this year I am dispensing with tradition and making a couple of blogging/nail related resolutions, which I am determined to stick to as best I can-and I will keep you updated on my progress throughout the year.

1. Buy some Lemony Flutter and start actually looking after my cuticles/hands properly.

I am a bit terrible at looking after my skin in general, if I'm honest, but as a nail blogger I feel like I should try and make an effort with my hands if I can. Also all this acetone is playing havoc with my cuticles, and the skin around them is a bit rough and raggedy. I want to try and improve the state of them if I can in 2014!

2.Drastically limit my polish spending, at least until I am employed and earning again.

This is the biggy for me. I have a terrible habit of spending money that I don't have on polishes I don't really need and I am amassing a collection that's growing in size too rapidly for me to deal with it. So this is a two part thing-I'm going to:

i) Limit myself to a maximum of 4 new polishes a month and try to use the ones I have more.

ii) Limit myself to a maximum spend of £20/month on polish and all polish related things including shipping, stamping plates, brushes, tools, etc etc. (I'm not including remover/cotton pads in this because I go through so much of them and also the amount I use changes depending on what manis I have been wearing.)

To help me to try and achieve this second resolution, I will post at the end of every month showing what I have acquired and detailing what I have spent-in a bid to shame myself if I've been bad/be proud if I've been good! I know, if nothing else, Rara will help keep me on the straight and narrow for this-she's always telling me off for buying new polishes!

The final thing for me to say is a great big THANKYOU to all of you who have started following me over the past year. The people I have met through this blog are really what makes it for me-I've made "friends" (virtually, at least!) with so many awesome people and I look forward to growing those friendships in 2014. There's also lots of exciting things on the way, so keep an eye out!

~Nail Art Novice~