April Favourites

April has gone by SO quickly-it's really flown past for me, only feels like a couple of days ago we were celebrating Easter and all of a sudden it's May! Wow!
Here's my April Faves!

-I didn't do many Try Something Tuesdays this month so I don't have many to choose from-my favourite was obviously my splatter mani, as my other attempt was a total disasticure!

-Rara's done a lot of Spring time/Easter themed nails for me this month but my favourite has to be her birthday bunnies, which were really awesome!

-I joined Kimber's ABC challenge and was really overwhelmed with the support my fellow challengers gave to me, right from my first post-nautical nails.

-I'm also really enjoying using my new Barry M nail pens as they let me do so much more than I could with brushes-like my night time nails:

-But overall my favourite mani of the month HAS to be my owls-they got so many positive and lovely comments both from fellow bloggers and in real life! I'm definitely going to do them again soon!

So there's my April favourites, and I hope you liked them too!

~Nail Art Novice~

A Few Things

~PIC HEAVY POST~

Hello!
No Try Something Tuesday this week, but for good reasons (explained later, I promise), I thought I should mention a few things instead:

• Firstly you won't be seeing any of Rara's lovely nails for a while because she broke her wrist on Saturday =( She's all plastered up and feeling a bit miserable, so please send her lots of get well messages!
• I'm going to be away this weekend as I am performing in this: http://boxoffice.brightonfringe.org/event.aspx?evId=4891#container at the Brighton Fringe festival, (which you should all come and see if you live nearby =p) so won't be around to post anything from Friday-Monday. Fear not! I have got a guest post lined up for you so there's something fun to look at whilst I'm away =)
• I have now put myself on an indefinite polish ban-until I've paid all my debts off! (To friends, I mean, not student loans!) The reasons for this will become very clear shortly. And as I'm not the richest person in the world this might be for a good couple of months! (The only exception I am allowing myself to this is a white Barry M pen if I come across one, because they're SO useful for nail art, but that's IT.) Also I figure if I tell you guys then I have to stick to it, don't I?
• In other news I have a job interview tomorrow! (Hence why I haven't done the TST I had originally planned, as I need work appropriate nails) It's only for a part time job but money is money and it's better than nothing at this stage! Please keep your fingers crossed for me lovelies =)

Now onto why I decided that I needed to ban myself:

I popped into H&M yesterday to pick up their Matte top coat (I need matte black nails for my show and didn't own a matte top coat) on a recommendation from Charlie from Pocket Money Polishes. Whilst I was there a couple of other polishes happened to make their way into my hands...

L-R: H&M Matte Top Coat, H&M Glitter-Blue,
H&M-Silver Frost

(I realise now I've uploaded this picture that you can't actually see what Silver Frost is-it's a silver glitter topper with small hexes and microglitter in a clear base.)
I'd wanted the Blue glitter since I saw it used on Fairly Charming's blog with underwater themed nail art on it-it's the perfect 'water' colour and really different to anything I've seen anywhere else! I'm not 100% sold on the bar glitter toppers that are popular at the mo, I can't help but think they look a bit hairy, but this is really lovely! All of these polishes were £1.99 so I reckon I got a bargain really!

Then I had to go and get my watch battery changed, and the little stall was right outside a new beauty store I'd not been in before. I went in solely with the intention of asking if they had any acetone (they didn't) but then my eye was caught by the polishes and I was lost.

Top Row L-R: Revlon-Blue Lagoon, La Femme Beauty Unnamed x2,
Revlon-Emerald City
Bottom Row L-R: Cairuo-Green Tea 22, Cairuo-Blueberry 16,
Cairuo-Blueberry 19

Those Cairuo's say they're 12mls on the front, but they're definitely not! They're about the same size as the smaller Rimmel bottles, which are 8ml. They're nice colours though, and were cheap so can't complain (even if I can't pronounce the name!). Geordie Nails has some swatches of two of these shades up at the mo. These were all £1 apart from the Revlons which were £2.50 I think.

Here's a close up shot of those pretty glitters, I'm so sad they don't have names though! (As far as I can tell they don't even have numbers!)

The one on the left has purple microglitters with turquoise and gold small hexes, and the one on the right has green and blue microglitters with hexes in red, pink, yellow and blue. 

Then when I arrived at home worn out with my day's shopping I discovered I had a package from Fragrance Direct with my new OPIs in-I couldn't resist when I saw them up there for only £3.99! They've got most of the Texas and Holland collections, with a few others.

L-R I Don't Give A Rotterdam, I Juggle...Men, I Have A Herring
Problem, Thanks a Windmillion

I've wanted Windmillion for ages now, it's a lovely shade of green. I couldn't choose between Rotterdam and Herring Problem so got both, and Juggle Men is a pretty iridescent shimmer topper which I think will look awesome over darker colours! 

Finally, after all that, I knew I had to do a post with them all in. But THEN when I woke up this morning I'd received some Awesome nail mail from Above the Curve with my beautiful new indies in, so I thought I'd add those too. For those who don't know ATC you should check them out, they make some really beautiful glitters and holos, and $1 from every bottle of polish is donated to a charity that helped the founder when she was younger.

L-R: Mother Earth, Field of Tulips

Can you believe that this is my FIRST EVER holo polish? I'd wanted one for ages and never really could afford one, or find sites that shipped them to the UK so I treated myself when ATC had a sale on a few weeks ago. It's a beautiful browny/coppery coloured holo with the full rainbow effect and I love it! It's what I am going to wear to my interview tomorrow because it's neutral enough to be work appropriate but still incredible!
As for Field of Tulips? I don't understand why I can't find any swatches of this floating around the blogsphere, it's so pretty! In the photo the glitters have settled where it was lying during transport but on the nail it has all those colours in a pale minty green base and it's lovely! I took a couple of swatch shots to show you them better too.

Field of Tulips, 3 coats

Mother Earth, 2 coats

So yes. I definitely am no longer allowed to buy polishes, especially as I have another 3 on their way to me in the post, Royal Mail permitting! I dread to think how much I've spent on polishes this month-Fragrance Direct have had a lot of it, so they're going to wonder what's happened to their profits over the next few months! But it's something I definitely need to do because I really don't have the money to spend on them, and I can't really warrant it when I owe lots of people lots of money. 

So that's you all caught up! I'm gonna head off now, but will try and get another post up before I leave on Friday!

~Nail Art Novice~

Ask A British Nail Blogger II

Time for another British Bloggers question! This week it's:

How Do You Store Your Polish?

Easy answer-in these!

Yes that is a Christmas tree in the background.
Yes my room is full of stuff that really needs sorting.

When I was at uni I used to keep all my polishes in my makeup bag, although that was getting more and more impractical as I bought more. When I came home for good, I decided I needed somewhere to keep them more permanently and as luck would have it I found these Ikea drawers again. I've had them for years and they didn't really have much in when I first rediscovered them but now the smaller one on the left holds all my "extra bits" and the one on the right holds my ever expanding collection of polishes!

This is how my polishes are arranged-the swatch wheels live in the appropriate drawers and I group the polishes together by colour. Top left is purple, grey and white, top middle is red and brown, top right is glitter toppers, indies and crackle effect types, middle left is blue and black, middle right is green and yellow and the bottom drawer is currently pinks, silvers, oranges and nudes, plus extra bits such as base coat and top coat. The groupings do keep changing based on how many of each colour I have though! (I don't know what I'll do when I end up with altogether too many of one colour!)
I also tag the top of the bottle with a sticker swatched in that polish, so I can see exactly what I want when I'm looking from above. 

The second, smaller set of drawers has all the non-polish bits I need-decals, stampers, swatch sticks (which I use to practice designs on), sponges, extra remover/cotton pads, Seche Restore, tape, stickers and brushes. I also have a stool next to my work area that has become a home for the polishes I'm using at the moment, my remover and topcoat/basecoats. It's not the best set up in the world (as I routinely knock it over!) but it'll do for now, until I move out!

So there you have it. If you want to know how more sensible people store their polishes then check out the links at the bottom.

~Nail Art Novice~

31BPC 8-Biggest Pet Peeves

I am a person who has a lot of pet peeves, I'm sorry to say. I just get annoyed really easily by little things and  end up ranting about it on Twitter sometimes! Picking just one for this post would be impossible:

1. People who play their music out loud on public transport.
Also if their music is so loud I can hear it over their headphones, that's just as bad for me. It's just so rude. The wonderful thing about music is that everyone has their own bands/songs that they like and dislike and it's a very personal thing. Which is why it really annoys me if I can hear your music blasting out over the top of my own/the conversation I'm trying to have-because you're assuming that everyone else around you wants to listen to the same things as you, or worse not caring if it bothers anyone. It drives me mad because it ends up being all I can hear and I have been known to move to an entirely different train carriage before to get away from someone being this inconsiderate.

2. Poor spelling and grammar.
In particular mis-use of apostrophes! I see it everywhere and it makes me twitch. Now I'm not necessarily talking about blog posts and FB posts here-I would never correct someone's grammar in this situation because I realise that a lot of people are sensitive about it, and you just come off as a bit of a nobhead (s'quse my French!) if you do. But in public or in a way that's supposed to promote a service you offer? It's ridiculous. It looks so unprofessional to have apostrophes to make words plural or the wrong use of 'your' in an advert or something. For instance there's a tattoo parlour near me that has 'TATTOO'S' in large black letters over the door. I'm really not sure why you would choose to go and get something inked on you FOREVER from a tattoo parlour that can't even punctuate its own sign correctly-I mean would you risk it??

3. People who assume I'm going to have children.
This is a very personal one, but one that really gets on my nerves. I'm don't want to have children, for a myriad of reasons, but it's something I've thought about a lot. This is why it drives me so mad when I tell people this and their response is "Oh but you'll change your mind when you get older" or "It's different when it's your own though". I would much prefer them to respect my decision rather than telling me that I'm too young to make it yet, or just being shocked that I know I'm not going to have any. The worst ones are people who respond with "you'll get all broody when the hormones kick in in 5 years time though" as if just because I am a woman with ovaries I am destined to want to have children one day. It's my choice and my body and my life, and if one day I do change my mind that will also be up to me and not anyone else. I can't see it happening though!

I'm going to stop there because there are so many more that I have but it'd take me forever to type them all out!

Until next time,

~Nail Art Novice~

Find the other 31BPC posts here:
One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven

Night Time Is The Right Time

A week or so ago Rara told me about a contest on Avon's Connect site for night time nails (here, hopefully) and I really wanted to enter but couldn't really think of much that I would be able to pull off well (I was going to do my owls again but wanted something different as it was so soon!).
That all changed when I received some surprise nail mail from my friend! He'd borrowed my Barry M nail pen at the weekend to decorate his girlfriend's nails with and ended up using it much more than I had so he offered to buy me a new one. When the package turned up yesterday, not only was there a black pen but also a silver one and Barry M's Gold Foil Effects-I've been thoroughly spoilt! Having the silver pen made all the difference to this mani!

Polishes used: Rimmel-Midnight Blue (the darker of the two blues), Barry M-Denim, London Girl-Unknown (The sticker's come off the bottom! It's a very sheer pearly white), Collection 2000-Look At Me!, Barry M-Black, plus the Barry M nail art pens in black and silver, and a little bit of glow in the dark glitter polish called Astral Lights that I've had for YEARS. I actually only ended up using the London Girl polish on my thumb because I had forgotten how awful the formula was-it takes forever to dry and needs lots of layers to build up to a decent colour. All the rest of the details were done with my silver Barry M pen instead!

This really shows how good those pens were-this was done
with my left hand and still looks OK!

Just to prove they glow

I rather like them, but I couldn't have done them without a lot of help from Mr. Barry Mero and his wonderful nail art pens (and of course my lovely friend who bought them for me!)

EDIT: Asked Rara what she thought of my owls, and she said she thought they were cats! Made me laugh, oh dear =p

Tata

~Nail Art Novice~

Don't forget to check out the British Nail Blogger ladies this week: