Tara's Talons Treasure Trove!

Last month Tara's Talons turned 1 year old and to celebrate Tara ran a competition where you sent in photos of her polishes to help her celebrate. I was lucky enough to be picked as one of her winners and today I received my prize-a Tara's Talons Treasure Trove goodie box! It also contained some polishes that I'd ordered so it was a bit of a huge (and really exciting!) haul =D

This was what was waiting for me when I opened the box. This is a photo from my phone because I was far too excited to think about finding my camera at this point, haha! Four of those parcels are from my order but there's still loads from the Treasure Trove itself! I got two full size TT polishes, three minis, a black nail art pen/detailing brush and some cuticle oil PLUS some striping tape, some caviar beads and 3D nail art decorations, and the sweeties that Tara includes with every order cos she's awesome! Treasure Trove is definitely the right word for this box of magic =D

Here's what I got in a bit more detail:

My Treasure Trove polishes
L-R: Out Of This World, Kiki's Blue, Vy, Butterfly Dreams and Don't Be Jel
plus detail pen

The extras, plus the bow from the box it came in cos I thought
it was a nice touch!

As I said, also included in the box was my latest order from Tara containing some of her lovely spring polishes, and I grabbed a quick photo of these too!

My purchases
L-R: Party Bag, Clear Skies, 100% and The Mill Creek Killer

So basically this was a really awesome day! Although now I am faced with a complete dilemma about just which one I should wear first! They're all so lovely. Here's what they look like swatched (except Kiki's Blue and Vy cos I ran out of wheel!)

L-R: Clear Skies, The Mill Creek Killer, 100%, Party Bag
Don't Be Jel, Out Of This World, Butterfly Dreams

Which one would you choose?

You can get your hands on a Tara's Talons Treasure Trove over at The Tara Emporium-and there's lots of other monthly/yearly subscriptions too. I'm sure whichever one you choose would be amazing!

~Nail Art Novice~

U.G.L.Y, You Ain't Got Not Alibi

Ah Daphne and Celeste =P

One of the naily FB groups I am in has a weekly theme and this week's is 'Ugly Polishes'. I scoured my collection but could only find some slightly questionable browns with terrible formula that I really couldn't bring myself to use and this one. Now I don't think this one is too bad at all, but I know it won't be everyone's cup of tea-but then again I like all greens! This is 2 coats of Collection-Hidden, a camo-green colour which I quite like!

I didn't just leave it like this though, I don't like wearing plain colours on their own any more so I added a bit of Springy glitter (SJPolishes-Sprung) to jazz it up a little!

It doesn't look like much in the photos but in real life there was lots of gold glitter scattered through the green and the effect was rather pleasing on the eye!

What do you reckon, ugly or not? I think that ugly polish is in the eye of the beholder, so no polish is really ugly (with the exception of the Barry M sequins which seem to be unanimously awful!).

Happy Friday!

~Nail Art Novice~

31 Week Nail Art Challenge 6-Purple

I called this a 31 Week nail art challenge but I have to confess that I'm not really sticking to posting one every week very well, this should really have gone up by Sunday but oh well!

For my purple challenge I used a new polish and a new technique-the cloud mani. I've always thought these looked quite fun and I don't know why I've never tried it before! The base colour is the beautiful Cirque-Baptisia which is another polish I won in Emma's giveaway at the start of the month. It's a really deep purple packed with bluey shimmers, and it smells of lavender too, mmm! On top of that I added the "cloud" shapes in Loki's Lacquer-Buddy and Revlon-Purple Addict, both favourite purples of mine.

I'm totally in love with this, the colours together are just stunning! I have to say though, I'd not really thought about doing this one with my off hand-and it's really hard! Keeping the lines at the right height while at the same time trying to keep the lovely blobby shapes at the top was really difficult, and you can see some of the ones on my right hand are less than perfect. I still like it though!

Here's what I've got coming up next week, or at least at some point in the indeterminate future haha!

~Nail Art Novice~

Polish Party-Inspired by Kerruticles

Hello lovelies! It's the last week of the month again which means it's Polish Party time and this month the theme was 'Inspired by another Polish Party member'. I chose the lovely Claire from Kerruticles because I have been following her for almost as long as I have been blogging and she has some really fabulous nails. Claire is the Queen of clean, crisp lines in her striping tape manis and often comes up with some really elegant but deceptively simple manis. I had a quick scout through her blog for some inspiration and came up with these three manis: (33 Day Challenge taping, Holiday stripes, GOT Challenge Chevrons)

All photos from http://www.kerruticles.com and used with permission

I decided to incorporate elements from all of them into my nails for today, but wanted to stay away from the blues/purples because I've been doing a fair few blue manis lately! The colours I chose were: A England-Iseult, Barry M-Mango and Passion Fruit.

My lines are nowhere near as crisp and clean as Claire's (and my clean up is frankly atrocious!) but I like these nonetheless, they're really bright! Obviously as my nails are shorter I have fewer stripes than her as well, but I hope these are still a good homage to those fabulous manis!

Also, here's a picture of Iseult on its pretty little onesome-I am always surprised by how much I like this polish. I won it in a giveaway ages ago and thought I'd never wear it (what with it being a PINK and all =p) but that subtle silver shimmer running through it lifts it into something really lovely!

That's me for today then, don't forget to check out the other PP lovelies in the inlinkz!

~Nail Art Novice~

Stamp, Stamp, Baby!

Hello loves!

Apologies for being a little sporadic with my posting lately, I keep doing manis and never managing to get pics of them before they start chipping off =(
I've got some stamping today and this is going to be a thing I'm going to be doing fairly regularly (once a fortnight hopefully) because I've got a fair few stamping plates that just never get used and I am inheriting some more from a lovely polishy friend as her nails have outgrown them. I do love stamping (when it works), it's such an easy and quick way to get nails that are more interesting than a plain colour so I reckon I should really do more!

Today's base is a first for me-my very first Mentality polish that I won in the lovely Emma's giveaway recently. Cobbler is a really pale blue matte polish crammed with blue shimmery bits and is really pretty on its own:

but then I stamped over it with Revlon-Emerald City and MoYou London-Pro Collection 09.

And while that did look really cool, I am a shiny girl at heart, so I added a layer of Seche Vite to seal it all in and add some shine:

It really brings out the sparkle in both the polishes, and I think it's pretty!

Happy St George's Day!

~Nail Art Novice~