Paisley Patterns

Hello lovelies! Rara here again!

I wanted to try something fairly difficult on my nails this week so I decided upon some paisley prints. I only used two polishes-which for me is absolutely nothing-I normally have at least 4 on the go at once!  I used Sinful Colors-Easy Going (which is a really nice pale pink) and then my Andrea Fulerton Dot and Flick-in case no-one has noticed this is my favourite nail art accessory, it is SO easy to use when drawing on nails and the formula is really nice. They've just stopped selling it in Superdrug =( so I've had to go to Amazon to stock up with another four!
All I did for this mani was to freehand the design on. I was quite impressed with the overall effect.

As you can tell my left hand is much better than my right (bottom picture) but I'm blaming my broken wrist as I still don't have the same amount of 'squeeze' in my hand as I did before I fractured it and it often shake more now when doing dainty/detailed things.
I hope you all like it-lots of people have asked me if they're transfers so I suppose that's good as they obviously look quite neat!

Next weekend I will be doing a nail varnish party for 7 girls and I am really excited about it-hopefully I will do a blog about that too =)

Until then, 

~Rara~

Quack Quack!

Hello Lovelies! Rara here again. I've got some fun rubber duck nails for you all today.

Polishes used were Avon-Grey Flash (a beautiful grey colour with shinies in, and it only needs one coat!), Avon-Inspire, Barry M-Atlantic Road (one of their textured polishes), Barry M-Mango (from their Gelly line) and Barry M-Sequinned White plus my Andrea Fulerton Dot and Flick in black.

I fancied something cute today so I decided on rubber ducks-a firm favourite theme between myself and Novice.

I used a dotting tool to create the ducks and then a small brush for their tiny wings. And who can say no to a few sparkles? So I added the bubbles above the ducks with a sequin in each one. 
I love these already and they've only been on my nails for about 10 minutes-I can tell I'll be staring at them all day at work tomorrow!

Until next time, 

~Rara~


Don't forget to enter Novice's Giveaway here! 

Rara's Goin' On A Summer Holiday...

Right now Rara is off sunning herself (hopefully) in Cornwall on her summer hols (lucky thing!) and she came over the other day and did some beach themed holiday nails for her trip. She took inspiration from these nails by The Crafty Ninja and these which she found on Google+ but are un-watermarked. (If anyone knows who did them originally, please let me know so I can credit them).
She used a myriad of polishes and I can't find the list where I wrote them all down so I'm just going to tell you the ones I remember for now. If anyone has a burning desire to know the colours specifically, just ask and I will try and be helpful! I know the sky is Revlon-Blue Lagoon and the 'beach' colour is Barry M-Lychee. The white of the beach ball was Barry M-Matt White and all the black and white details were done with nail art pens-both Barry M and Andrea Fulerton. She started by painting all her nails blue then sponging on the Lychee when that was dry. Then she just freehanded on the rest of the details using a dotting tool and a paintbrush.
Enough chatter, on to the pictures!

From thumb to little finger she's got a beach ball, some palm trees and hammock (possibly not in Cornwall!), a beach hut, a sandcastle and a starfish. Aren't they fab? I think my favourite is the sandcastle.

I hope she's having a lovely time away and I'm definitely not jealous at all! Haha. Are you going anywhere nice this summer?

~Rara & Nail Art Novice~

More Easter Nail Art!

Rara's back today with another awesome Easter/Spring inspired nail art. Yes I know it's been and gone, but is that any reason to stop wearing awesome things on your nails?

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Hi again! I'm back with my second Easter nail art and for this one I decided I'd use several different ideas-Easter eggs, a chick, a rabbit and a butterfly.
I used this rather impressive array of polishes:
Avon-Inspire, Avon-Orchid Splash, Avon-Red Reveal, Barry M-Matt White, Barry M Gelly-Watermelon, Barry M-Pink Flamingo, Barry M Textured-Atlantic Road, Andrea Fulerton Dot and Flick-Black and a green nail art pen I got from Ebay a while ago.
These were my results:

I'm not as enamoured with the chick and the rabbit as I was last time but I still think they turned out OK! The butterfly was hard to do but turned out pretty well in the end. I have, however, realised I need a baby/sky blue that isn't textured...oh no, that means I need to go nail polish shopping, how awful for me! [Novice- I said she was a bad influence on me, didn't I!]

Also my (not-so) little sister wanted her nails doing too so I whipped up another spring-themed mani for her on her tiny nubbins!

I used Avon-Orchid Splash, Barry M-Matt White, Andrea Fulerton Dot and Flick-Black and the same green nail art pen to do some rabbits:

I will admit that it was really hard to do such tiny faces so some of them do look a bit cross or worried, and I never realised how difficult it was to paint someone else's nails! I think they turned out pretty well though.

This concludes my Easter eggstravaganza (Sorry...), I hope you all had a good one and that the Easter bunny visited your house and left you lots of scrummy treats!

Until next time, 

~Rara~

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Oh dear, that was a terrible pun! That aside, I really like these nails, especially that they're so detailed because they're tiny! I'm impressed at least. And I love the worried rabbits!

Big thanks to Rara for these posts, and I'll be back at the weekend with some blog post challenges, and hopefully a new mani if I get time. Otherwise I'll see you on Tuesday!

~Nail Art Novice~

Bluffy Funnies

As I mentioned the other day, this week I'm separated from my polishes so will be unable to post, so Rara is filling in for me with her excellent Easter inspired manis! As it's Tuesday and I would normally 'Try Something', here's a post featuring something new to this blog:

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Hello again!
Hope that you all had a good Easter and enjoyed the extended weekend (if you're in the UK, at least!)
This was my first easter mani.
I used the following polishes: Avon-Inspire, Avon-Sea Breeze, Avon-Orchid Splash, Barry M-Matt White and Andrea Fulerton Dot and Flick in Black.
I also used some yellow and white flocking powder from Ebay-I got a really good deal-16 colours for under £4! (Think it was this listing)
I wanted a cutesy design for this mani so I thought I would go with fluffy chicks and rabbits-literally!

I love the rabbit on my thumb!
I painted the rabbit head and ears/chick head and added the fluff on top using tweezers and then flattened it all down using a nail art brush. I then used the Dot and Flick to paint on the details. The fluff felt a bit strange at first but I soon got used to it-in fact I couldn't stop stroking it!! The only downside was that where I work I have to handle a lot of money and the fluff soon got dirty and started to look a bit grey =(
But all in all I would definitely recommend flocking powder to anyone who doesn't mind strange textures (unlike Novice, the big weirdo)

I'll see you next time, 

~Rara~

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Yeah, I can take being called a weirdo, I guess, in return for this adorable fluffy nail art!

West End Nails

Hello all! Rara here again.

As you may have noticed many of the titles for some of our blog posts will be song lyrics-we are always singing (often bursting into song at inappropriate times) and we love going to the theatre together. This thought occurred to me at work the other day and inspired me into doing West End musical themed nails.

I used Barry M-Matt White, Avon-Inspire, Avon-Mint Green and Andrea Fulerton Dot and Flick in Black as my polishes.

I took my inspiration from Cats, Wicked, We Will Rock You, The Lion King and The Phantom Of The Opera.

These are my results...

Thumb: Cats

Index: The 'i' of Wicked

Middle: Freddie Mercury  from We Will Rock You

Ring: Lion King
Sorry, didn't realise this was blurry on the camera!

Pinky: Phantom of the Opera mask

 

I was quite impressed with these, especially tiny Freddie and the prancing cat in the left eye, which in my opinion look remarkably similar to the actual posters. 

I did these using just a thin brush. The only thing I would do differently would be the Wicked nail as I realise it looks nothing like the Wicked 'i' as I am definitely not clever or skilled enough to draw such a tiny witch!

It was quite difficult doing these on my right hand as they were so intricate!

All that is left to say is Hakuna Matata, Another [nail blog] Bites the Dust, All I Ask Of You...is that you keep on reading them, and remember that Everyone Deserves the Chance to Fly!

Another [blog] Ends, Another [one] is Dawning...

~Rara~

P.S It took ages to think of all those song lyrics, hope you appreciate them!

One Day I'll Fly Away

While I am busy being ill and complaining and unimaginative, Rara has been beavering away and come up with another awesome mani so here's a post from her to brighten the place up a little:

Hello all! This is the first post I've ever written so I hope it's OK!
I love peacock feathers so when I saw this peacock feather tutorial from the NailNerd I knew I had to try it out!
I used Barry M-Matt White for the base because I wanted to use something pale so that the feather designs would really stand out. The green is Barry M-Watermelon but I wanted it to be sparkly so I added a Rimmel glitter topcoat to it. It is slightly sparkly under the right light but not quite as I imagined it would turn out. The yellow 'eye' is Avon-Inspire and the blue is Avon-Forget Me Not which is already really sparkly and pretty. 
First I painted the green feathers as you can see here:

 then I added the eye and layered on the blue, and added the blue feather details. I didn't think it looked completely finished so I added black flicks and a black centre to the eye. (Andrea Fulerton Dot and Flick in Black) before finishing with a Barry M topcoat.

My feathers are slightly thicker than I wanted them to be as I don't think I used the correct brush/have a thin enough one but overall I love it!!!!!
I will definitely be doing this again!


WOW. I'm blown away by how AWESOME these look. They're amazing! I'm super impressed by Rara's talent, she's only been doing this as long as me (possibly even less time) but she's definitely got the upper edge on painting skill. These are fantastic!!

~Rara & Nail Art Novice~

Title of Post taken from 'One Day I'll Fly Away'-Moulin Rouge/Randy Crawford