March Tri Polish Tuesday The Second

Here we are again with another Tri-Polish mani. This month's colours are Blue, Green and Purple and for this mani I have used Barry M-Greenberry, Rimmel-Marshmallow Heaven and Aqua Cool which are a really fun trio, I reckon. I also added a coat of my Iconic Effect-Extreme Holo Topcoat to my base colours before I added the nail art on top and they all look pretty awesome as holos XD
I decided to do dot-flowers and my boyfriend asked if he could do my off-hand because he likes playing around with dotting tools-who am I to pass up an opportunity like that? Haha!

These really didn't wear very well, I only had them on for about a day before they started chipping, which is why they look a little worse for wear in the photos I'm afraid. Still pretty though! First photo is my hand and the second is the one my boyfriend did-although I did the base coats. Not bad for a newbie, are they?

I love these, they're happy nails-bright and sparkly and fun, it's just a shame about the chips already-boo!

Don't forget to check out the other tri polish manis in the inlinkz!

~Nail Art Novice~

Tara's Talons Swatches-Swim With Dolphins and Chocolate Orange

~PIC HEAVY POST~

~Items in this post were sent to me for my honest review~

Regular readers of this blog may have heard of Tara's Talons before-it's the longest running UK Indie Polish brand and often featured on my blog because I love her polishes. A few weeks ago, Tara said she was looking for some swatchers for March so I filled in her blogger application form even though I didn't think I had a chance. To my surprise and delight, she emailed me to ask me to help out this month and I almost fell out of my chair! I started squeeing out loud so hard my boyfriend asked me what was wrong, haha!

So today I've got two gorgeous Tara's Talons polishes for you, yaaay! 

With flash

First up is the very lovely 'Swim With Dolphins' which is a pale blue with a silver shimmer running through it. This is three coats, I could have used two really, but I thought I could still see a hint of nail line through it so I stuck another on just to make sure. The polish went on really nicely-there was a small amount of lifting if you went over the same patch more than once but nothing that caused a problem, and it all evened out beautifully by the second coat. It did dry with some brush strokes in but I think that's more because of the shimmery/pearly finish than a problem with the polish. A lick of topcoat and you can't even notice them. 

With flash

Normal indoor lighting

I really like this one! It's such a nice colour-I can't help but think of it as the natural brother of 'Dasher' from my advent calendar-he's green with a gold shimmer running through and SWD is a blue with silver, I think they'd make a lovely pair! 

The other polish I was sent was called Chocolate Orange and there is so much going on in it! At first glance I just thought it was yellow glitters in a browny base but no! There's actually matte yellow, shiny silver and translucent orange hexes, bright orange stars, bronze mini hexes and goldy-bronze mini squares AND brown microglitter-it's crammed full of glitters! I wanted to show this one off to its full potential, so I've swatched it over several colours -and it's so pretty!

With flash

With flash

This is one coat over Swim With Dolphins. It does dry with a slightly gritty texture (because of all those glitters!) but again this is fixed with a layer of topcoat. I didn't have to fish for any of the glitters, even the stars, and there was a great payoff of glitter per brush load. I did use the dabble technique to move some of the hexes around a bit, because they tended to want to clump, but other than that this was one easy coat. I decided to try it over a complimentary colour and also some completely contrasting colours to see how it would look!

With flash

 One coat over Maybelline-Winner Takes It All. My ring finger is 4 coats of Chocolate Orange on its own, to show that if you wanted to you could definitely wear this polish without any undies, as the coverage is fairly dense. Personally, I prefer it as a topper though, I love seeing all the different glitters spread out! This combo is so Autumnal, it's lovely.

One coat over Rimmel-Marshmallow Heaven and Barry M-Greenberry (ring finger as before). These were totally random colour choices-I was just trying to find some colours that would contrast really well. I actually love the mix-I can't help but feel that it's a really Spring-y combo over Greenberry-so this really is a glitter for all seasons!

Overall, I can't recommend Tara's Talons polishes enough-there's so many different ones out there that there's definitely something for everyone. Most of her polishes are limited editions or one off though, so if you see something you like, be sure to snap it up quickly! Plus Tara is lovely, and always goes out of her way to help out her customers. You can find Tara's Talons polishes on her Etsy shop here or through her website here. She's also just expanded to form 'The Tara Emporium' and is now selling all sorts of beauty goodies/jewellery/home items too, as well as lots of other exciting things so make sure to go to her website and check all of that awesomeness out! 

That's all from me today, big thank you to Tara!

~Nail Art Novice~

March Tri Polish Tuesday The First

Hey lovelies! Happy Pancake Day! (Nom!)

Today I'm joining in with the Tri Polish challenge, although it's undergone a little revolution since last year. Basically the rules are now that there is a set of given colours for each month (details of which can be found here) and you do four manis with polishes matching those colour prompts BUT you no longer have to use the same polishes throughout. You still have free use of black/white/silver/gold and glitter toppers. This month's colours are green, blue and purple-all my faves and the polishes I have the most of, so I had to join in.

For today's mani, these are the (rather gorgeous) polishes I've used-all from the Shine On Collection by Nails Inc
L-R: Lyall Street, Elm Park Road, Raphael Street

Aren't they lovely? They're so much more sparkly in real life too! I also used Revlon-Silver Screen to break up the colours a bit. I've done a 'mermaid scale' mani on my accents and then stamped waves from the MoYou London-Sailor 3 plate on the rest.

Yeah I don't know what happened to my index finger either...

I love love love these! They're so shiny and sparky! I really really like the Shine On collection, I think they're all pretty beautiful and together like this they look fab too! The mermaid scales took ages but I like the random look of them.

Don't forget to check out the other gorgeous tri-polish manis in the inlinkz and enjoy all your scrummy pancakes!!

~Nail Art Novice~

Polish Party-Chevrons

Hello lovelies!
One of the new groups I am taking part in challenges with is called Polish Party and they choose a theme each month and post nail art on that theme in the last week. This month's theme is chevrons.

I started with a base of Barry M-Matt White, and then added the chevron guide stickers (from this set, although I cut them in half). I painted the very gorgeous Chubby Owl Polish-Midnight Owls on one half of the sticker and Barry M-Majesty on the other, then removed the sticker.

I really like the way this has turned out, I love the colours together, especially Midnight Owls which is just all kinds of beautiful! I don't do chevron nail art very often but I think I should cos it's really effective!

Check out what the other Polish Party lovelies have done for their chevron posts too, and I'll  be back soon =)

~Nail Art Novice~

Mish Mash Challenge Round-Up

PIC HEAVY POST

I recently realised that I'd let the end of the Mish Mash challenge pass me by, it got lost somewhere in my move and recent events. I'm kinda sad to see this one go cos it was this lovely group of ladies that kinda helped me find my footing in the nail art world, and I will miss being connected with them every week. Here's a round up of all the mish mash manis I did:

Week 1-Purple

Week 2-Taping

Week 3-Metallic

Week 4-New Nail Art Technique (1)

Week 4-New Nail Art Technique (2)

Week 5-Music

Week 6-Hot

Week 8-Cold

Week 9-Blue

Week 10-Triangles

Week 11-Book

Week 12-Flowers

Week 13-Rainbow

Week 14-Pink

Week 15-Holographic

Week 16-Faux Stone (ah ha ha, I still think this is hilarious =p)

Week 17-Grey

Week 18-Card/Board Game

Week 20-Nail Stamping

Week 24-Inspired By A Decade

Week 25-Two Colours You Never Normally Pair Up

Week 26-Favourite Nail Art Technique(s)

Week 27-Green

So that's the Mish Mash challenge over and out! It was so much fun, thanks to all the ladies that were involved!

But fear not, there's lots of other challenges I plan on taking part in now this one is over. There's the Tri-Polish Tuesdays challenge (find out more here), Fingerfood's Nail Art Buffet (here) and the Twin Blog Posts (here) plus plenty more I'm sure! I'm also going to try to start what I've been planning for a while and do the 31 Day Challenge but doing one mani a week or something. Basically, there will still be lots going on here, so stick around =)

~Nail Art Novice~