Mish Mash Challenge Week 13-Rainbows

I always knew I would love this week because I'm a massive rainbow fan-they're so bright and colourful and never fail to make me smile-whether in the sky or on my nails! This design was inspired by a couple of things-firstly by my boyfriend's idea in 'tape week', because his gradients looked really awesome, and secondly by an awesome glitter that I bought in a blog sale a couple of weeks ago. To combine them together I used the glitter over black and then did rainbow accents.

Polishes used: W7-Black, Barry M-Passion Fruit, Mango, Spring Green, Blue Grape, Revlon-Electric, Sinful Colors-Amethyst, Seventeen-Monochrome Graffiti Effects and Krafty Gurl-It's A Fiesta.
Here's what I ended up with:

Can you believe that this is only one coat of that Krafty Gurl glitter? SO MUCH PRETTY. I love love LOVE this mani, it's awesome and amazing and I don't want to take it off ever ever ever. It's making me happy =D

Don't forget to check out all the other rainbow coloured brilliance in the inlinkz below!

~Nail Art Novice~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 8-Cold

Sooooo...I missed a week of the Mish Mash challenge and feel really bad about it. I keep going up to visit my boyface in Sheffield and then ending up staying longer than I anticipated and missing lots of posts-oops! So today's mani is the new Mish Mash challenge prompt which is cold (co-incidentally ended up very close to 'Hot' in the list!). I wanted something relatively simple so I picked out some 'cold' colours (Pale blue, white and silver) and went at it.
Polishes used: Revlon-Blue Lagoon, Rimmel-Serene and H&M-Silver Frost. I added some wintery tree decals from YRNails to contribute to the effect too.

I actually really like this, it's definitely 'cold' in colour but it's pretty and delicate too. Now I've got the hang of them I really like using these decals, they're such a simple way of sprucing up an other wise boring mani, I think.

I'm off camping this weekend with my fella (Lovely weather for it, ey!) so I might be a bit absent again, but will try and get some appropriately themed nails done before we leave!

See you soon, have a good weekend all!

~Nail Art Novice~

Don't forget to check out the other ladies fab efforts this week:

A Gorgeous Goddess

As I've been doing lots of travelling and haven't wanted to take all my nail art tools with me I've been using a lot of glittery indies to keep my nails interesting without having to take too many polishes. Most of them haven't ended up being photographed but this one I had to share with you because it's stunning, although it comes with a sad (for me) story. While I think that the rise in indie makers (particularly in the UK) is fabulous because it means they are much more available for us polish lovers it also means that some of the older sellers are unable to compete with the influx any more. One of my absolute favourite indie polish makers, who has been so right from the beginning of my nail art obsession, is closing her doors for good and this makes me SO sad. To use up her supplies she's offering one of a kind 'mystery' polishes on her Etsy shop until they're all gone and I had to bag myself one before she disappeared into the ether. And boy am I a lucky girl-it's beautiful.

This is Absolut Lacquer-Goddess Jenni (she even named it after me-how awesome is that?) and she's a clear glitter topper filled with golden dots and iridescent hexes, squares and shimmers. She's utterly gorgeous and a little camera shy, but I've done my best. I layered her over Revlon-Plum Night to try and bring out some of that hidden sparkle. This is 1-2 coats-for the most part I got a pretty decent amount of coverage with just 1 but sometimes I went back and added a second for extra glitz and glam. (Apologies for the slight tip wear in these)

You can see how many different colours she shimmers and shines, and I couldn't stop moving my fingers about to admire the colour changes and the sparkle-I'm a bit in love. I'm also torn, I want to wear her all the time because she's so pretty but at the same time I know this is the only bottle that is ever going to exist and I want to keep her forever and ever! 

If you want to get your own Absolut Lacquer one of a kind polish then you have to be quick, they're going fast! Visit her Etsy shop here. I, for one, will miss her when she's gone! Thanks for all the awesome polishes Tisha, best of luck in your new adventures!

~Nail Art Novice~

OMD! Challenge Day 13-Stars

This is actually two challenges combined into one-the OMD! Challenge for the day and the #HePicksMyPolish challenge that was discussed in the Hobby Polish Bloggers Facebook group. Basically the idea is to get your other half to choose your polishes for you-and he's allowed free reign from your whole collection. I mentioned this in passing to my boyfriend and he was SUPER excited about it-it was really quite adorable. This is actually his second colour choice but the first one went on my toes and I know some people aren't keen on feet pictures so I didn't blog about them. They wouldn't necessarily be colours I would put together but I love them both on their own and think he could have done a lot worse!

Polishes used (picked by himself) were Avon-Midnight Green (one of the new ones Rara bought me for my birthday), Rimmel-Purple Addict and then to add a hint of starry sparkle I added Revlon-Stunning. On my accents I've done the star-sticker technique which worked surprisingly well, even with the dark colours. Two coats of all polishes.

I really do love this technique-it's so simple but it makes some really fun nail art. Loving those sparkles too!!

~Nail Art Novice~

ABC Challenge: Y is for Yellows and YRNails

I can't quite believe that it's nearly the end of the ABC Challenge already! I know I joined at the half way mark but it still seems to have flown by so quickly! Luckily we're already planning our next challenge as a group, woohoo!

So this week is Y and like a lot of people I reached for the yellows-although I don't actually have any polishes that start with 'Y' to use! This is a couple of lovely Revlons-Electric (the darker-3 coats on its own) and Sunshine Sparkle (the paler-2 coats over a coat of Barry M-Matt White). I also added in a lovely water decal by YRNails to get another Y in there, and because it's been a while since I used them. I've only done so twice before-once fairly successfully and once disastrously! I was hoping that this time it would go well, and thankfully it did!

I chose these delicate little bird cage decals to go with my lovely shimmery yellow and I really love them! I also added some La Femme Beauty glitter to my other nails-sadly it doesn't have a name or even a number but it's a mix of small purple and even smaller black glitters with gold and turquoise hexes and it's really pretty-I think it looks fab over Electric (my new favourite yellow polish-it's so bright and has a touch of shimmer to it too!)
For such a relatively simple mani, I'm really enjoying this look. I also really can't believe we've only got one week left in this challenge-boo! If you want to join in our next one then I will let you know the nitty gritty next week in my Z post. The ladies involved are all really wonderful and I'm so looking forward to taking on another challenge with them all. As ever, don't forget to check out all their fabulous 'Y' manis in the Inlinkz below.

~Nail Art Novice~

Born Pretty Holo Polish + British Indie Accents

A few weeks ago when the Born Pretty store brought out their holo range, they put 200 polishes up for grabs if you shared the information about them on certain social media platforms and I was lucky enough to 'win' one from this mini giveaway. I had a tough time choosing which colour I wanted because there were so many really pretty ones, but in the end I plumped for #8-a tealy blue shade. It only took a couple of weeks for the polish to arrive and it was really well packaged when it did come. It's slightly darker in the bottle than it was on the listing but it's still a really gorgeous blue-more cobalt than teal.

I have a habit of wearing similar base colours underneath my holos because they take so many coats to build to opacity, but I did test this one on my thumb to see its true colour:

Born Pretty Holo Polish #8, No topcoat

As you can see, the colour built up really well and I definitely could have got away with only 3 coats. The linear holo is really awesome and you can spot the full rainbow running through it. I didn't manage to get any shots in the sun because of our crummy weather at the moment, but it's still visible inside too. For my other fingers I used 2 coats of the holo polish over 1 coat of Maybelline-Dark Denim which has made the colour slightly darker than on its own, but not by much.

I did find the square shape of the lid a little difficult to hold whilst I was polishing but there was nothing that would cause major problems. The brush is quite long and flat so gives good coverage.
The polish on its own is beautiful, but I wanted to add a little something extra to make it even more special, and I had the perfect polish just sitting on my desk begging to be used. Pocket Money Polishes are a new, British, indie brand made by the lovely Charlie (who you may remember from her guest post in May) and she has designed two collections called her 'Glitter Babies'. (The new one is launching on July the 1st-check out all the details here). This polish is from her first collection and is called Starry, Starry Night and it's GORGEOUS. It's full of blue matte glitter, gold holo glitter and tiny white stars and is almost impossible to capture on camera, especially over the holo background, but I did my best:

This was the ONLY picture I could pick
up those gold sparklies in!

My camera just couldn't cope with everything I was throwing at it in these photos, so you can't see how pretty this combination is in real life I'm afraid, you'll just have to trust me that it is stunning. I keep getting dazzled by all the holoy sparkly goodness =)

You can buy the Born Pretty Holos here, currently they have a 50% off sale so are $6.44 for 6ml, with free shipping.
You can buy Pocket Money Polishes' Glitter Babies here, but they're seriously limited edition-Starry, Starry Night is already gone I'm afraid! They're £4 for 5ml + £1.50 postage. Look out for the new gorgeous collection arriving on the 1st of July!

~Nail Art Novice~

P P P P Pick Up A...

Hi all,
Just a quick post before I leave for Sheffield (my second home!) for a couple of days. Obviously this was supposed to be part of the ABC challenge but I've had an awesome idea for X which will take me AGES to do if I manage it, so I'm dedicating Sunday to that. In the interim I've thrown this one together really quickly with some bright colours and penguin accent nails-penguins are my favourite animal, they're just TOO CUTE.

All polishes are Barry M (surprise surprise!)-Black, Matt White, Mango, Passion Fruit, Guava and Key Lime plus their fabulous nail art pens in Black and White. I also added a little bit of sparkle with China Glaze-Fairy Dust.

Haha, I love these little guys, they're so adorable!

Hope you like them too. I'll be back late tomorrow (Saturday) night, tata!

~Nail Art Novice~

Things What I Did Won

A couple of weeks ago I won a giveaway over at It's All About The Polish and so I thought I'd share my goodies with you now they've arrived safely. I'm now the very proud owner of some pretty Australian Indies including my very first piCture pOlish (does ANYONE know why it's capitalised like that, I've wondered forever?) and my very first  Pretty Serious *swoon*

From L-R that's Pretty Serious-Party By The Pool, MaxFactor-Fantasy Fire, piCture pOlish-Mirage, Loki's Lacquer-Buddy, Gloss 'n Sparkle-Slowly Growing Deaf and Loony Lacquer-Love A Lot.

I've done a quick swatch of them on swatch sticks, and will try and get proper swatches of them up soon but in the meantime I'll try and find some links so you can see them in all their glory =)

Party By The Pool

3 coats

I have to confess this is my favourite of them all-but then again it would be, right? It's a teal jelly with blue and green glitter in it and I love it love it love it! Here's a swatch from Lucy's Stash.

Mirage

2 coats on its own/
2 coats over black

This is a terrible quality swatch for which I can only apologise. Mirage is a gorgeous greyish duochrome that shifts from green to blue with a hint of purple in it too. On its own I imagine it'd take a lot of coats to become opaque, but over darker colours it's gorgeous! Here's some swatches by the person who it was made for-Sarah Hassan's Blog

Buddy

3 coats

Buddy was a bit of a surprise for me-it's so pretty! It's a lilac shimmer with holo glitter in it that shifts to green in certain light which was released as part of Loki's Lacquer Easter range this year. Here's some swatches from Osiris and Loki.

Slowly Growing Deaf

2 coats

This one is really pretty-red and silver glitters in a baby blue base, I really like it. I think I may have to do some nail art using this baby soon. Nailed Obsession has got some good swatches.

Love A Lot

2 coats

I am surprised how much I like this polish-I originally thought I wasn't going to because I'm not much of a pink person at all! When I got it onto my swatch stick though, I was pleasantly surprised, it looks really fun! It's a mix of red and pink glitters in a white creme base-there are also hearts in the mix but I haven't managed to fish one out yet. Apparently this is really limited edition so I'm even more excited to own it. Marie's Manicure Madhouse has some swatches.

Hope you've enjoyed this post, keep an eye out for these polishes in future ones! =)

~Nail Art Novice~

Try Something Tuesday: Tribal Nail Art With Barry M

Hello lovelies =)

Today I popped into Superdrug on the off chance that they might have the new Barry M Gellys ahead of their launch tomorrow and I got lucky! They had all of them except Passionfruit (the red one) so I snapped them up! They were also on 3 for 2 so I also got Pricky Pear from the original Gelly collection and one of the new Superdrug Limited Edition (SLE) Neons as well. When I got home I decided to throw on some new nail art and my eye was caught by the funky tribal pattern on the SLE bottle so I decided to use it as my inspiration for today's mani.

Polishes used: Barry M-Superdrug Limited Edition 2013 (Green), Barry M-Matt White (I decided it was finally time to upgrade to a decent white polish!) and Barry M-Black plus the black and white Barry M Nail Art Pens. The SLE polish is a super bright neon-the colour of highlighters! I layered 3-4 coats (some were thicker than others) over a white base, painting my accents white. I used striping tape to block off/fill in the various sections for the tribal accents and then went to work with my nail art pens and this is what I ended up with:

My cuticles are a little bit yellowy but I think that's due to dodgy cleaning up more than anything else. I'm quite proud of those tribal designs, it goes to show how awesome the Barry M pens are! I love the super bright green but I felt like it needed just a little something more so I added a couple of coats of Seventeen's Graffiti Effects in Monochrome to add a bit of pizzazz.

Here's the final mani:

Apologies for the slightly fluffy fingers,
I think they're strands from my jumper!

I just love that glitter! I can only apologise in advance 'cos I have a feeling you're going to be seeing that one a lot, as well as a lot of nail art with my Gellys.

What do you reckon to the Limited Edition Neons? (There's also a pink). Will you be investing?

Until next time!

~Nail Art Novice~

ABC Challenge: T is for Tulips

Hello lovely readers! Sorry I've been absent recently, as I said on Thursday I had some work over the weekend which was really good, but as I was leaving the house at 6:30am and not getting back til after 8pm I really couldn't be bothered to do much in the evenings but curl up and sleep! I'm back now though and have lots of plans for some fun nail art things, yay.

I knew exactly which polish I wanted to use for this challenge, even though it's not strictly a 'T' name-Above the Curve's beautiful Field of Tulips that I bought for myself in their sale about a month ago. It's a pale green polish full of hundreds of different coloured glitter pieces and it's super pretty! I also added some tulip nail art to my accent nails.

Other polishes used: OPI-Thanks A Windmillion as a background colour/base for my glitter, No7-Siren, Collection 2000-Damson Jam, Rimmel-Sunshine and OPI-Don't Mess With OPI for the leaves.

Here's what I came up with:

As you can see, the little tulips on my right hand aren't quite as good as the ones on my left but I'm  gstill overall pretty happy with the way this turned out. I love that glitter and it's really nice to have colourful nails again after a weekend of plainish grey ones.

Hope you're all enjoying this glorious bank holiday/Memorial Day weather!

~Nail Art Novice~

P.S Please would you take a moment to go and vote for me and Rara (Jenni and Sarah) in this competition? We really would like to win but we're lagging behind somewhat. Get your mum to vote get your dad to vote, get your sisters, brothers, nan, dog, everyone you know to vote, pleeeease. All I can offer in return is my undying gratitude and love (and some Irish-themed nail art, of course!), but I would be so grateful! It'd be so awesome if we won.

Don't forget to go and check out all the other amazing 'T' creations:

ABC Challenge: S is for Stamping & Sea Creatures

Hello lovelies!
I've got some underwater nail art for you today for 'S' week, yay! This is only my second time stamping but I think I've already improved from the first time, with thanks to this video tutorial by soguesswhat11 on Youtube.

I started this mani with about 4 coats of H&M's Blue Glitter Nail Polish which has holographic bar glitter laced through it and is pretty unique as far as I can tell. I think it really looks like water. In real life the nail lines are much less visible than in the pics, but I think next time I'll wear it with a similar colour underneath to eliminate the need for all those layers!

I completely forgot to even try and clean up this week,
my apologies!

Then I took my stamping kit out of its drawer and hunted for some appropriate 'sea creature' images. In the end I chose the turtle and the seahorse to keep things simple. (I don't know what brand of plate these are, they were in a random set I got on Ebay!)

I stamped with Barry M-Gold Foil because I know lots of people use this for stamping and it seems to work pretty well for them, and thankfully it did for me too!

Overall I'm pretty happy-apart from some slightly off centre placements I've managed to get a good stamp image on pretty much all of my nails. I love the colour combination and the way the light hits those holo glitter strands is really cool! Sadly it doesn't seem to have much sticking power and I've got some tip wear and a couple of chips already-which to me is another reason to use a base colour under the glitter. It's very pretty and twinkly though =)

~Nail Art Novice~

Don't forget to check out all the other wonderful 'S' manicures:

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~

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:

ABC Challenge: P is for Purple Phishtail Plaits

So I may have taken a little liberty with the name there ;) Forgive me?

I was going to do penguins originally for this mani but thought they would be too similar to my owls in the end. Also I've been working at my friend's Dad's factory this week and am frankly too exhausted to do anything fancy-so I've done a simple fishtail. I love these manis, they're so effective! Also I apologise for not doing a Try Something Tuesday post this week-the simple fact is that I fell asleep for most of Tuesday night when I got in and therefore didn't do any nail art!

Polishes used were Rimmel-Marshmallow Heaven (pinky-lilacy colour), Rimmel-Purple Addict (shimmery purple loveliness) and Marks and Spencer-Blue (dusky purpley blue). Incidentally it bugs me when people call what are clearly purple polishes 'blue'.
After I'd finished the mani I felt like it was missing something, so I added a layer of Absolut Lacquer-Maybe I'm Crazy to my non-fishtail nails and I think it's really added something magical. It's basically a rainbow glitterbomb in a pot-every colour of glitter imaginable and it's so pretty. It's also the first indie polish I ever bought, so it has a special place in my heart!

It's a really simple mani but I reckon it's really quite pretty too! I just noticed the chip on my middle finger though, boo =(

~Nail Art Novice~

Check out what the other particpants have done this week: