Eye of Newt and Toe of Frog...

I seem to have accidentally got into the spirit of all these halloween manis that I've seen floating around the web with my latest creation. I wanted to use green polishes because I hadn't done a green mani for some time and picked out a couple I thought went well together-Sally Hansen-Grass Slipper and Barry M-Watermelon. I had originally wanted to stamp one on top of the other but utterly failed at stamping-I don't know if it's my technique, my stampers or my new Cheeky plates but I just can't seem to get the polish to lift off the plate and onto the stamper at all which is incredibly frustrating. Having given up on that idea I wanted something simple and grabbed my dotting tools and did a double dot mani. Looking at them-I think they look a bit like eyes, hence the title!

Oh and let me apologise for the ridiculous length of my left ring finger-I don't know what I do but I somehow always manage to break/tear this nail and it's always right down to the quick. I'm going to have to file the rest of my nails down too so it looks less silly, sigh.

Anyway, pictures!

Nothing amazing but still I think it looks pretty cool!

Hope you all had awesome weekends

~Nail Art Novice~



Title taken from Shakespeare's Macbeth

Mish Mash Challenge Week 5-Music

Hello lovelies! I am back from my many adventures and finally posting a Mish Mash challenge mani on the right day for once-hurrah! I had to think about this one, as I like a lot of very strange music and wasn't exaactly sure how I would ever manage to represent any of this on my nails but then I had a much better idea!

One of the reasons I keep my nails short is because I play the bass guitar and find that long nails get caught on the strings and make it really difficult to play. I really love my bass-she's not the most expensive or well made of instruments but she's mine and I think she's really gorgeous (and yes, for reference, she does have a name as well). So I decided to do black and green gradients in tribute to her-plus accents designed to look like the neck of the guitar. Polishes used were: Barry M-Spring Green, W7-Black, OPI-Suzi Loves Cowboys plus the silver Barry M nail art pen. I matted the accents with Rimmel Lycra Pro-Matte Finish.

It's not quite the right shade of green but I love this colour combination and how bright it is, plus the accents which match my bass perfectly.
So there we go! I'm off to jam out for a bit now, laters!

~Nail Art Novice~

If you want to read about my Edinburgh adventures then check out my other blog: http://www.ordinaryextraordinarylife.com/

Don't forget to check out the other awesome participants in the inlinkz:

OMD! Challenge Day 22-Animal Themed

Hello lovelies!
Today's theme is 'Animals' and as I did some half moon animals fairly recently, I decided to do something different for today. Would you believe this is my first leopard print mani? I know that they're well loved throughout the nail art world but I have a confession-I'm not really a leopard print kinda gal! I think I only own one thing that's leopard printy because it's not a pattern I'm drawn to usually. To make it a little more 'me' I did it in greens as opposed to actual leopard colours. Polishes used were: Revlon-Minted (3 coats as the base colour), Rimmel-Jaded Glamour (inner spots) and Camouflage (outer spots). I think this is one of those manis where practice makes perfect because I don't think I've got it quite right yet, although I do like my left thumb. I had to do my right hand twice because the first time just ended up as a blobby mess, oh dear!

I wouldn't say that I'm a complete leopard print convert but I do really like these. They're growing on me, so I'll probably do them again and hope they turn out better!

What's your opinion on leopard print?

~Nail Art Novice~

Monsters University Nail Art

The other day my boyfriend and I went to see the (AWESOME) new Monsters University film and I had promised him these nails for it. He also asked for his very own Mike and Sully nails too, and of course, I obliged!
Polishes used: Barry M-Key Lime (Mike), Guava (Sully) and Cobalt Blue (University colours). Also starring Matt White  for the eyes, and a smidgeon of black mixed with Guava to make Sully's nose. Sully's purple blotches are Maybelline-Mellow Mauve and his eye colour is Avon-On Point Blue. Details were, of course, done with the Barry M nail art pens.

 And now for the first time on my blog, but probably not the last, I introduce my boyfriend's thumbs-he even painted the base colours himself!

He was so happy with these, it was kind of adorable. Actually, so was I, they've been making me really happy over the last couple of days. Sadly though, time to bid them farewell as they're all chipped now but they've been awesome while they lasted, and the film was FAB.

~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~

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~

Me, Myself and I-The Ultimate Skittle

Hello!
I found out the other day that one of my favourite nail art blogs-Nailed It NZ- is having a nail art contest (and giveaway!) to celebrate her first year of blogging and I decided I really want to enter (despite the fact that I have little chance of winning looking at some of the amazing entries so far!)
The theme is 'Me Myself and I' and Jessie also says 'Make sure your manicure tells me something about you - I'm interested!.. Whatever you like - I like reading, so feel free to tell me a story about how your nails relate to you!' which I think is a really fun addition to it!

I sat down and had a think about what I wanted to do-you can submit up to three entries so it was a tricky decision! I decided this is what I wanted to do first though.

First-the back story! I am known in the blogosphere as Nail Art Novice because that's really what I am! This time last year, the only remotely interesting thing I did to my manicures was to add Crackle top coat. I started this blog in January and have since then learned a lot more cool tricks-whether that's by following other people's tutorials, getting advice and tips from some of the awesome ladies I've met through the nail blog networks on Facebook or just by playing around by myself to see what I can come up with. I still consider myself to be a Novice though, there's so many things I've never attempted yet, and I think I'll always be one because I'm hoping to keep improving my skills.

For this mani then, to represent me, to represent my blog and to represent my new found passion for nail art I decided to do the Ultimate Skittle incorporating all the different techniques that I've tried since starting my blog. I was originally going to do it in a rainbow of colours, because I really love rainbows, but thought that might start to look a bit too random and mismatched. Instead, I've decided to go with some of my favourite colours-blues and greens, with some silver and gold in there to add some contrast and detail. Quite co-incidentally I've also used polishes from the 3 brands I own the most of-Rimmel, Barry M and Revlon, although that was purely by chance!

Polishes used: Barry M-Navy, Barry M-Teal, Rimmel-Camouflage, Rimmel-Jaded Glamour, Barry M-Gold Foil and Revlon-Silver Screen. The glitter top coat is China Glaze-Fairy Dust and there's also a small amount of MaxFactor-Fantasy Fire and Barry M's silver nail art pen on my left thumb.

Techniques used:
Left hand, little finger to thumb: Dotticure, Striping Tape, Stamping, Gradient, Freehand scarab nail art (inspired by this tutorial by Holy Grail Nails)
Right hand, little finger to thumb: Splatter mani, Fishtail, Fan brush, Saran Wrap, Freehand rose nail art

This was the mess of my work station half way through!

and this was the state my fingers were in!

But it all turned out good in the end!

I really love these colours together in all the various combinations and would definitely wear all of these as full manis. I'm a bit unimpressed with my fan brush this time around, but I think that's more because all of the colours have blended together to make 'generic green' than anything else. The nail I spent by FAR the longest on was actually the stamp-what you can see is my 5th or 6th attempt and my 4th stamp choice and if this one hadn't have worked I was going to do something else! It made me so mad! Luckily it came out well on my last attempt, phew!

OK, I hadn't realised how long this post had got (sorry) so I'll leave you now!

~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:

L'Oreal Color Riche Collection-608 Luxembourg Garden

Here's my second post of swatches from my (random assortment of the) L'Oreal Color Riche collection and today's is number 608-Luxembourg Garden. This is another difficult one to describe-it's sort of dark greeny grey with lots of green shimmer running through it, so it sort of comes out as a metallicy green. I realise that doesn't make sense, but it's a bit of a chameleon, it seems to change colour depending on what you put it next to!

For instance, on my green swatch wheel, it looks distinctly out of place and very dark, hardly green at all:

Luxembourg Garden is number 1
(If you want to know any others, just ask!)

(Incidentally it makes me really happy that I've not found any colours the same as each other during my swatching, means that all my polishes were totally justifiable!)

But on my fingers it definitely looks quite green:

Natural light shot

This is again 3 coats without topcoat. This one definitely needed the three, unlike Rue Montmartre, which could have escaped with two-this is a lot more sheer. It's not as shiny either, it's definitely more on the metallic side of the spectrum. Application was easy and dry time was pretty fast! I really like these long flat brushes, it makes the polish really easy to control-again this required no clean up (except on the accent nails, but that's because I was being naughty and polishing horizontally across the nails!).
I even remembered to take a picture of the brush this time:

As you can see it's super long and very wide, it splays out quite a lot when you apply pressure and covers your nails easily in two strokes (one for little finger) but without getting polish all over your cuticles which get a massive thumbs up from me, coz I hate cleaning up!

I got my Color Riches from Fragrance Direct for £1.20 each but they're also available in Boots and Superdrug (although they don't seem to have all the colours anywhere!) for about £4.99! You only get 5mls in each bottle, so you have to really want one for that price!

Thanks for reading!

~Nail Art Novice~

Check out the lovely British Nail Bloggers magnificent work this week:

ABC Challenge: O is for Owls

Following Tuesday's total disasticure I am pleased to say that this mani is probably my favourite piece of nail art that I've ever done-I'm totally in love with it and don't want to take it off ever! Sorry if it sounds like I'm bragging but I'm just really proud of myself that I've done something that looks so good, I was so surprised how well it turned out!

So this week is 'O' in the ABC Challenge and I knew what I wanted to do straight away-something I saw a while ago and knew I would recreate. Before I even started my own blog I found these amazing owl nails by The Little Canvas and loved them. I finally got around to doing them myself!

Polishes used: Essie-Mojito Madness, Barry M-Lychee (finally I own this beauty!), Collection 2000-Look At Me! and Rimmel-Tangy Tangerine. Details were added with my new Barry M Nail Art Pen (I LOVE being able to spend my hard earned Boots points on awesome things!) which worked like a dream. 

Without further ado then (I took lots of pictures because I love them so much!):

Sadly this guy suffered a surprise zip attack shortly after he was
finished, hence the dint

This one really makes
me giggle!

So there we have it! I think next time I do these (there will be a next time!!!) I'll put a neutral base on over my nails first, just because the green makes my natural nail colour look a bit weird and purple (see my thumb on the first pic). I really love them though! They're making me really happy =)

Hope you like them as much as I do!

~Nail Art Novice~

Check out the other 'O' posts by these lovelies:

Bonus Post!

Just a quick one for you-I managed to squeeze in this quick fishtail mani (I still love them) in the small amount of time I had at home yesterday. This was attempt two, the first one wouldn't work because two of the colours were too sheer, so they will have to come out another day. Also, Sheffield has been hard on my nails, I've lost both thumbs plus my left index and middle fingers so I have teeny nubbins again at the moment!

Polishes: Rimmel Lycra Pro-Aqua Cool (Not a clue why this lovely shade of periwinkle is called 'Aqua' but there you go), Revlon Top Speed-Hazy and Barry M-Greenberry

Oh and I cleaned up. I cleaned up FOR HOURS. I spent longer cleaning up than I did doing the actual mani, and in the end I got cross and left it like this. I hate cleaning up, it's the worst. Just so that's out there.

OK, that's all for now, I've got another mani from Rara coming up soon and I'll (hopefully) be back at the weekend.

~Nail Art Novice~

Some Flowers, Pretty Daisies, Might Relieve The Gloom

So the snow is just about melting away now, and I actually saw blue sky today, for the first time in ages. I'm daring to hope that Spring is actually waking up *fingers crossed* so I have painted my nails accordingly.

I recently treated myself to a couple of Spring colours from the Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure (SHCSM) collection which I knew would be perfect for this type of mani. These are polishes which, in theory, you can wear without basecoat and topcoat but knowing how long I like to keep my manis on for I didn't want to risk stains and chips so I used them as normal. (In case you're interested that's Sally Hansen Insta-Grip and Seche Vite.)

I started with my base colours of SHCSM-Grass Slipper and SHCSM-Fairy Teal reversing my accents as usual. They're both almost one coaters in terms of opacity, although I ended up doing three of each to even out visible brush strokes as they didn't apply especially well. I really love the colours though, they're pretty stunning and definitely right for spring time. I have a bit of a crush on Fairy Teal too, tealy-greeny-blues being my favourite colours!

Apologise for the blur, it didn't look blurry on my camera!
This is Grass Slipper with an accent of Fairy Teal

And this, of course, is the opposite.
The blue staining you can see isn't polish-it's printer ink and
 WILL NOT come off!

Then I took my dotting tools and my white Colour Me polish to add daisies to each nail, basically just placing them randomly. I find it kind of interesting that even though I was using the same tool size on each hand my flowers are much smaller on my right hand (done with non-dominant) than my left-and I think I actually prefer the smaller ones-except where they went a bit wonky! The flower middles are Revlon-Sunshine Sparkle and Rimmel-Tangy Tangerine which was a bit of a last minute addition because I hadn't anticipated how yellow the Grass Slipper would turn my white (and it was still out from my last mani.) I kind of like the effect though, it doesn't look out of place with the rest of the mani:

Overall I reckon this is a mani fit for Springtime, just need the weather to catch up and it'll be fab.

Just to let you know I'll be away next week, so apart from my 31 Blog Challenge post going up tomorrow, this is the last you'll hear from me for a week or so. Instead of me, next week you'll get posts from Rara instead, she's got some awesome Easter designs to share with you all. I'll still have internet access and be checking in though, so keep commenting and saying hello =)

~Nail Art Novice~

Title of post taken from Wait-The Sweeney Todd Soundtrack

Suddenly I'm Bright And Breezy

Sadly my lovely fishtail (plaited!) mani suffered badly at the hands of my first Scuba Diving lesson last night, so it's time for a change again. Spring is still stubbornly refusing to appear in Britain at the moment (BOO) so I thought I'd wear the brightest mani I could in defiance of our grey skies and rainclouds. I recently picked up some of the Barry M gellies after seeing them on so many blogs and falling for them a little-I got Plum, Satsuma and Greenberry and would have got Lychee too had they had it in the shop! Sadly, no success this time.
This simple polka dot accents mani uses Satsuma and Greenberry which frankly look AMAZING together. I always knew I'd love Greenberry after seeing it on so many blogs and thinking it looked awesome every time, but I am also really enjoying the incredible brightness of Satsuma. Bright orange was the colour of my course society at university and I just so happened to be wearing my hoodie at the time I was painting my nails-it's a perfect match for Satsuma. I love happy coincidences.
Sadly I seem to have picked up the pot of Greenberry that everyone else had used for testing as it had a lot of dried polish around the outside edge of the bottle and so didn't close properly and wasn't as nice to apply as I had thought it would be-hoping a few drops of Seche Restore will sort that problem out though. Satsuma applied very nicely although dried fairly quickly when I was doing the dots leaving me with strings as you can see on my right thumb. Ah well.

Anyway, on to the pictures, featuring the return of my left hand now that my ring finger nail is an acceptable length again, this is three coats of each polish:

There's not much to say about this, I just fancied something excessively bright! I also have a bit of a thing for opposites and patterns so I like the symmetry of the design and the opposing colours, it makes me happy. Simple but effective!

~Nail Art Novice~

Title of post taken from 'Getting to Know You' from The King and I

Check out what some other awesome British Bloggers have got going on this week:

Mint Ice Cream and Sprinkles

A fairly uninspired title for a fairly uninspired mani, I'm afraid. I'm still stuck with this cold, and have been for a week now, thoroughly fed up of coughing and sore throats and nose blowing and feeling awful and NOT BEING ABLE TO HEAR. Honestly, if someone isn't directly facing me when they speak to me then I can't hear what they're saying, it's like I'm constantly wearing earplugs-everything is muffled and sounds very distant. Plus I can hear my pulse in my ears loudly and above all other noises, meaning that if I move quickly anywhere I'm temporarily deaf for a few seconds whilst it settles down again.
Basically, it SUCKS. I've not been feeling especially creative because of this, so this was just another simple and quick mani. My original intention was to cover the green in purple sparkles, but I had sorely underestimated how dark the base was, hence I ended up with diagonal accents. To make matters worse, I've lost my base coat and had to use an old one that's almost made of glue. Grumble Grumble.

Polishes used: Barry M-Mint Green (at least I think so. It doesn't have a label on but looks about right compared to their website) and Revlon-Facets of Fuchsia on my accents.
Don't get me wrong, I adore this green, but it's a pain in the arse to apply-this is between 2 and 4 coats on each nail because it's really sheer and takes a while to build up opacity. In daylight, I've got a big patch on my middle finger that you can see through to the nail beneath even still.
Facets is frankly beautiful-I got it through a blog sale at the beginning of the year so it was a bargain for me. I think it's now been re-released as Scandalous but it's still a sheer black base filled with lots of purple glitter. This is 2 coats on each tip.

It is a nice combination but I'm not blown away by it-I'm not taking any joy glancing at my fingers when I type like with some manis. Here's hoping I'll be better soon, then I can get back on track and do something a little more interesting!

~Nail Art Novice~

Unconnected Dots

I want to start this post with a little story, if you don't mind of course. A while ago I saw on a nail art/fashion blog I was browsing (which I'm sad to say has since been closed down) Lyndarella's Connect the Dots and I don't think I've ever wanted a polish as much as I wanted that one. I just loved the way it gave was was an otherwise plain coloured manicure a whole different dimension-it looks awesome and you can wear it with literally any colour/pattern and it still looks great. I set about scouring the internet for it, but (as I'm sure many of you will know) it's almost impossible to find, especially for UK based bloggers. So instead I went to Etsy and typed in 'black and white glitter polish' to see what I could come up with-there were hundreds.Of course I bought one, from an Australian Etsy shop called EmilydeMolly and then sat and waited impatiently for it to arrive, and finally, finally, it did.

As I said, this was all months ago, but it still remains one of my favourite glitter toppers because even the simplest of colours is transformed when you wear it.
On then, to the mani:

Every so often my best mate comes over and we watch silly films, drink hot chocolate, do face masks and paint our nails together, and it's delightfully silly and wonderful. Last night was such a night, and while she was busy doing some impressive looking but deceptively simple nail art on her fingers (post to come) I stuck with a simple manicure because I knew exactly what I wanted.
I used Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Going Green, topped off with a coat of the gorgeous A Black and White Love Affair by EmilydeMolly. 
Going Green is a really lushiously bright grass green, with a very slight shimmer. A Black and White Love Affair is a B+W glitter topper with bar glitters, hexagonal and square glitters and is a twin for the Lyndarella polish I lusted after-thumbs up!

The pictures really don't do this colour justice, it's SO green. Think of your lawn on a really bright sunny day- it's that kind of colour, with a very subtle shimmer to it. And of course it looks even more amazing with the black and white blobs on top. This is another mani that makes me really happy, I just like to enjoy my slightly zany looking fingers, and it feels like spring is just around the corner wearing this colour.

Marvellous.

~Nail Art Novice~