Mish Mash Challenge Week 10-Triangles

How is it OCTOBER already?? I honestly have no idea where this year is going.
Today I've got another Mish Mash challenge for you, and for the first time in weeks not only is this one going up on time but I'm actually scheduling it in advance! Not quite sure where my efficiency came from this week but I'm not complaining.
This week's theme is triangles and I've done a tape mani in a style I've wanted to try for a while because I think they look awesome. What I didn't anticipate was quite how long it would take to apply 9 pieces of tape to each nail, paint over them and remove them, but oh well, the results are worth it!

I started with a gradient (yes, another one, I love them!) of Revlon-Fire, Barry M-Satsuma and Mango and Revlon-Electric because I wanted to get away from the blues that I have been using a lot of recently for one reason or another. Can't get much further away from blue than bright red/orange, right? After I'd done the gradients (and totally forgotten to take a picture of them, much as I intended to) and they'd dried sufficiently, I applied the tape. Normally with tape manis I tape up the nails on one hand and then paint over them and remove, but as there were so many strips per nail with this one I had to do one at a time, which took AGES. I painted over the top with Barry M-Black Multi Glitter.

Here's what I ended up with:

I have to say I love it-it took me so long to do that I was actually fed up of it, but it was worth it in the end. Some of my triangles are slightly wibbly but I still love them. I like the firey colours vs the black overlay too-and not a hint of blue in sight!

Check out the other ladies' fabulous triangle manis in the inlinkz below, and I'll see you soon!

~Nail Art Novice~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 9-Blue

Hello again!
Time for another Mish Mash challenge and I was rather looking forward to this one as I have a LOT of blue polishes-almost 30! I was originally going to try and use them all in today's mani but decided that would take forever so I randomly chose 10 instead. (By randomly I mean I stuck my hand in the box and pulled them out without looking, haha).
Polishes used: Barry M-Matt White, Guava, Denim, Rimmel-Midnight Blue, Aqua Cool, Royal Blue (Metal Rush), Maybelline-Dark Denim, China Glaze-For Audrey, Avon-On Point Blue, Sally Hansen-Himalayan Blue and Revlon-Royal.

 I decided to do a mosaic/colour blocked mani to show them off to their best potential so started with a white base and some striping tape, then added each colour semi-randomly to my nails.

(Kindly ignore my higgeldy-piggeldy nail lengths and shapes!)
I really like this, it's very me and really quite simple to do-the longest part was getting all the tape on, man that took forever! Some of the colours have bleached slightly in these photos, they look even better in real life with the contrasts between the colours. One day when I have time to spare I'm going to do one of these using ALL my blues, I reckon it'd look amazing!

Don't forget to check out the other fantastic 'blue' entries in the inlinkz below, and I hope you're having a marvellous Thursday!

~Nail Art Novice~

Mish Mash Challenge Week 2-Taping

I have to apologise for my lack of posting over the last week, I was hanging out with my other half and didn't remember to blog-hopefully you can forgive me!

Time (already!) for the second mani of the Mish Mash challenge and this week it's taping. I was bandying some ideas around with the Mr. and we came up with the idea of doing bright colours and black together. He wanted to choose the colours so I let him pick five that looked good together-Barry M-Passion Fruit, Mango, Spring Green, Blue Grape and Rimmel-Sunshine, plus Barry M-Black over the top. I decided to mix it up a little and did one hand with the colours underneath and one with them on top.

(Apologies for the crappy clean up on these, it was really late!)

They did end up a little messy and on any other day I would have probably taken a couple of them off and redone them, but I was tired and just couldn't be bothered, oops! My bf also wanted to get in on the taping action (because he's basically awesome) so I did gradients on his nails and taped over the top...and they actually turned out so much more awesome than my nails! I was a bit jealous because they looked fab!

I'm definitely stealing his idea at some point in the future, haha.

Anyway, I'm going to try and get back to blogging properly again now, starting with checking out all the other awesome tape manis in the inlinkz below.

~Nail Art Novice~


Don't forget to enter my giveaway here!

BK GLOW IN THE DARK Polishes

~This post is pre-scheduled because I am currently away~

I am a bit excited about these, there's just something awesome about having something glowing at the end of your fingertips when you turn the light off, haha. That's the main reason I bought them-I'd seen a couple on other people's blogs and wanted to join in the fun myself! I found them on ebay here but they are also available on the Born Pretty Store with free shipping (although the glow in the dark ones are currently unlisted-sorry!).
I got myself 3 colours because I wanted to see if you could really see the difference in the glow colours- #5 (Bright green), #6 (Bright Blue) and #10 (Fuchsia sort of colour). I applied these over a couple of coats of Barry M-Matt White because they are fairly sheer and have a jelly consistency. I'd never understood why people say jellies are 'squishy' when they dry but now I've used these I understand-they're not glossy and shiny like most polishes but aren't matte either. Squishy is perfect!

Anyway, pictures! The first is taken under natural light, the second with flash and the third in the dark to show you the glow, all with a topcoat of Seche Vite.

They do actually glow a little brighter but I was finding it really hard to capture. You can sort of see the differences in the colours though-the pink definitely is glowing a different colour to the other two. They were bright enough to cast light onto my pillow in bed at least!

Honestly? I love these. The formula isn't the greatest and they did take about 3 coats to become properly opaque even over the white polish but I can forgive them because it's just so much fun having glow in the dark nails and they weren't especially expensive! I couldn't stop playing with these in the dark-TOO FUN =D

~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~

OMD! Challenge Day 11-Stripes

Hello lovelies,
I'm back with another one of the OMD! Challenges today!

Today it's stripes so I busted out the striping tape for a simple horizontal-striped mani. I used one of my new birthday polishes from Rara-Avon's On Point Blue which is a gorgeous cornflower blue-this is three coats.

on top of that I added my tape and then Barry M-Gold Foil and Revlon-Silver Screen, alternating the colours on my fingers.

Simple, but effective I reckon! Love these colours together =)

~Nail Art Novice~

The Final ABC Challenge Mani-Z is for ZigZags

So this is it, this is the end of the ABC Challenge-boo! I've had a lot of fun doing them and have met some really lovely ladies through this challenge, who've done a lot of really fabulous manis along the way. I decided to go out with something ridiculously bright and colourful so did a zigzag mani using the new Barry M summer Gellies collection.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate how fab these colours are together?

Thumb to little finger that's Blue Grape, Guava, Key Lime, Mango and Passion Fruit, 2 coats of each. And that shine? Not a hint of topcoat in sight, they're just that glossy and lovely on their own! I think this is the first time I've ever wanted an entire collection-all of these colours are amazing on their own but together they're just totally delicious! After a layer of Seche Vite on top of them and a short wait to make sure they were completely dry, I stuck on some zig zag french mani guides (from the same set I used in the V mani which you can find on ebay here) and layered another colour on top before removing the sticker. To add a hint of subtle (read: impossible to capture on camera) shimmer I added a coat of OPI-I Juggle...Men which shifts from bright fuchsia to electric blue and looks fab when it catches the light.

I love these, they're so bright and fun! A fab way to end our challenge, don't you think?
But fear not, because there is a new nail art challenge starting at the end of July  and you can join in, if you so wish! I'm not 100% sure on the organisation right now (as I am scheduling this post) but drop me an email (nailartnovice@gmail.com) for now if you're interested and I will let you know more details as and when.

As always, don't forget to check out all the other fabulous 'Z' manis in the Inlinkz below.

~Nail Art Novice~

OMD! Challenge Day 4-Black and White

Today I've got another Oh Mon Dieu challenge mani for you. For more details/to take part go here.

Today is Day 4-Black and White. I don't think I've ever worn a full black and white mani before, so I found this one kinda fun. I used only two polishes-Barry M-Matt White and Black which also has to be some kind of record-I always use loads, haha!
I painted my left hand white and my right hand black and then did the same pattern on each but with reverse colors-striping tape accents and fan brush patterns.

I really enjoyed the opposite effect because they looked really cool next to each other. This will definitely be something I will do again, with different colours because it didn't take me long to do but I really like the end result!

~Nail Art Novice~

OMD! Challenge Day 3-Purple

~Wooo, this is my 100th post on this blog!~

Hello lovelies!
As I mentioned the other day, this month I will be participating in the Oh Mon Dieu! Challenge/Giveaway that's running throughout July. I already knew I wasn't going to be doing a mani for every day so here is my first one for you.
I used two absolutely gorgeous purple polishes-Loki's Lacquer-Buddy and Rimmel-Purple Addict. This was my first time using Buddy since I won it in a giveaway last month and WOW it's beautiful. It's a pale lilac shimmery creme with minute holo microglitter throughout it. It's also got this amazing pink-green duochrome shift that I could not persuade my camera to pick up at all! This is three coats, and I loved it so much I almost didn't do any nail art on top at all!

In the end I decided to go for accents and did a laser tape mani with Purple Addict on top.

I'm glad I did because Purple Addict is another lovely purple and I'm really enjoying this combination-although I wouldn't say I was an addict myself!  It's all about the greens and blues for me!

I won't be around too much this week as I have an Australian coming to visit and lots of fun stuff planned for us to do together. I've got a couple of posts scheduled so you won't miss me, I just won't be replying to comments as much. It's also my BIRTHDAY on Monday so I'm hoping to get some birthday manis up but we shall see. I'm like a little kid at this time of year-super excited =D

See you soon

~Nail Art Novice~

ABC Challenge: V is for Valiant and cheVrons

I only have one 'V' polish but I knew I wanted to use it today because it's a colour I really rather like. Valiant by L'Oreal is a lovely tarnished silver/gun metaly sort of colour that I used as a base for some chevron nail art-because chevrons are essentially just 'Vs' anyway, right?

I had to be pretty valiant with this mani-it's not a difficult one at all, and I was using some French mani guide stickers I got on Ebay to make the chevron shapes so should have been a doddle but I had so many problems with it. I nearly gave up on it several times but persevered in the end and it's turned out OK. It's annoying that it doesn't show how much effort went into it though-it took me an hour and a half in the end! AAH.

Anyway. Other polishes used were Collection-Look At Me!, Barry M-Mango, Barry M-Key Lime, Barry M-Guava and Barry M-Prickly Pear (Haha, guess what collection I bought the other day?!). I love the effects you can get mixing different types of polishes-in this case a shimmery metallic and some cremes.

By the time this was done I really didn't care about the wrinkles you can see in some of them-I wasn't starting again! It's not perfect but it'll do, and sometimes that's the best you can hope for! I dunno...the colours are awesome but I'm not really feeling it after all the trouble it caused me!

Hoping for better luck next week! In the meantime, check out all other ladies' entries on the Inlinkz below =)

~Nail Art Novice~

Featured on Imperfectly Painted

Today I have a mani featured on Imperfectly Painted in her 'Share With You Sunday' post

Here's a sneak peek:

but you'll have to go to Imperfectly Painted to see how it was done and find out what polishes I used [LINK]. Why not submit one of yours while you're there too?

~Nail Art Novice~

Ask A British Blogger III + Nail Art!

This fortnight's British Blogger question is 'What is the oldest polish in your collection?' and to answer it instead of just taking a couple of pictures of what is frankly a rather boring bottle, I thought I'd do some nail art with it.
Introducing Avon's Fabulous which is about 10 years old I would guess. I can't find any information on it on the internet but I did get a lot of Avon stuff when I was 13/14 so I guess it's from then. It's actually the only Avon one I've got left as it survived the years much better than any of the others which turned into watery messes or hardened to the point where they were un-usable. It's quite a pretty colour though, so I am glad that I've still got it in my stash!

Check out how dated the bottle looks!

I couldn't decide what I wanted to do so I opted for a skittle using various techniques, and using Collection-Electric Dreams which looks awesome against the bronze. This is two coats of Fabulous and it was very nearly a one coater, which I was surprised at! It didn't have a horribly strong smell, but definitely more than newer polishes which I guess means it's not 3-free.

It's also a pain to try and hold comfortably too

The two colours together reminded me of Egyptian artifacts so on my thumb I did an Eygptian-inspired design (the Eye of Horus-Egyptian symbol of protection and good health) with my Barry M nail art pen in black.

I really like my thumbs and also my double dotted little fingers-I think they look quite nice without being too overwhelming. I love the colours together too.
So that's my oldest polish! What's yours?

~Nail Art Novice~

Check out everyone else's posts here:

Guest Blog from Pocket Money Polishes

Right now I am in Brighton, doing my final rehearsal bits before my first performance of Titus later, woo!
So last Saturday I was chatting on FB with Charlie from Pocket Money Polishes and really cheekily asked her if she would be willing to do a guest post for me whilst I was away-completely expecting her to say no. To my surprise she readily accepted so I'm sending out a MASSIVE thanks to her. With no further ado, I'll let her get on with it!

~

Hello Nail Art Novice Lovelies!
My name is Charlotte and I have a blog called Pocket Money Polishes. I'm delighted to say that I've been asked to do a guest post for you this weekend-apologise for the intrusion. I'm having a crazy busy week between deadlines, blogging and other projects so I have put together a simple look today using some of my favourite trends and techniques.

First I created a block ombre across my nails (going from light on my thumb to dark on my pinky), I excluded my ring finger as that is my finger of preference for an accent-this I painted white. I used a total of 5 varnishes for this look: Fast Track from China Glaze is a beautiful neutral gold that glistens and has a great textured appearance but is smooth to the touch, it does take a little building up and this photo shows 3 thin coats. Barry M's Mushroom is a grey leaning brown and one of my favourite polishes for the days when I need to have serious nails.Cackle is from George (Asda) and is a fairly standard brown with a good formula for easy consistent coverage. Finally, the darkest brown on my little finger is Roasted Chestnut by W7, which is one of my most beloved polishes with its deep chocolate brown colour and coppery shimmer. To these colour block fingers I added a slightly curved column of white dots to one side of my nail, as always my white is from the Natural Collection at Boots. Dots are a nail art staple and such a quick way to spice up a simple mani.

I painted my accent finger first to ensure that it had plenty of drying time as I was using thin striping tape, and if you don't give your base enough time to dry it will just be ripped up when you remove the tape. I used three pieces of tape, two horizontally across the nail and one vertically down the middle. The next step was to randomly add a square of each colour to my nail, and then while this polish was wet remove the tape. I then added some top coat to smooth the edges and voila-all finished! I am describing this manicure as 'coffee squares' in my head as it has all my favourites-latte, cappuccino and vanilla colours.

Thanks for having me today, please feel free to pop over to my blog and see what I am up to-I am usually up to something!! Wishing Novice luck with her polish buying ban and hope she's having a good weekend away.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
 <3 Pocket Money Polishes

~

Yay! Look at those pretty nails =) I love this look, I'm definitely going to try it out myself soon! BIG THANKS to Charlotte for doing this so last minute for me, I'm so impressed that she managed to fit it in her busybusy life! Please do go check out her blog, I'm sure she'll be glad to have you!

I'm back on Monday so normal posting should resume on Tuesday!
I'll see you then

~Nail Art Novice~

ABC Challenge: N is for Nautical

Ahoy Sailor is the alternative title for this post ;)

In case you didn't spot my mini announcement at the end of my last post, I've joined a nail art challenge group and am participating in an ABC challenge hosted by the lovely Kimberly at Kimber's Lacquer Korner. The idea is to post a mani that features a polish/brand/technique/nail art design etc in each letter of the alphabet and this week is N (because I joined half way through! But I intend to start at 'A' after completing 'Z' if all goes well.)
I didn't really have any good polishes for 'N' so I thought I'd go with a nail art design in Nautical style.

Polishes used were: Colour Me-Colour Me White, Maybelline-Dark Denim, No 7-Siren and Colour Me-Pure Gold. I used striping tape over a white base to create the stripy sailor-eqsue look and then freehanded the details using a dotting tool.

I really like this mani, it's cheerful and fun without being overwhelming and was really easy to do-bonus! I'm loving how vibrant that red looks over a white base too.

(Ladies who are visiting me for the first time from the link up [Hello!], please let me apologise for my less than perfect pictures. I hate cleaning up and I'm also really bad at it-no matter how long I seem to spend scrubbing away at my cuticles I never seem to get crisp neat edges like so many other people and I've yet to fathom how to do this apart from learning to paint neater. I've tried really hard before to clean up and just ended up removing the sides of my manicure instead, so now I tend to leave it looking a bit rough and ready-hope this isn't too offensive on the eye!)

Right, I'm off to swash some buckles and swab some decks (check me, I have the lingo and everything...), but do check out the other awesome ladies taking part in this challenge in the link-up below.

~Nail Art Novice~

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~

Star Spangled

I think I'm in love again, this mani is really really awesome. I knew as soon as I saw this post from The Daily Nail that I wanted to do it because I think the effect is really rather stunning, plus it's so simple to do. I was looking at my polishes the other day trying to decide what to use, and randomly picked out a blue and a gold and decided they'd look really cool as stars in the sky-then I knew I had to do this idea.

Polishes used were: London Girl Shade 31, a shiny goldy yellow colour, London Girl Shade 79 which is a clear polish crammed with tiny gold glitters and Maybelline Forever Strong Pro Dark Denim, a lovely midnight blue sort of colour.
I started with three coats of 31, followed by one of 79, and a top coat of Seche Vite.

It's really surprisingly sparkly for a cheap polish

Then I added the stickers and painted over with a thick coat of Dark Denim and peeled them off with tweezers (very fiddly if I stuck the whole sticker to my nail!) and ended up with this:

which I have to say I think is really rather pretty! I like the fact that they're not all the same based on where i put the sticker each time, although my ring finger is definitely my favourite.
I love them! And the best part is you could do this with any combination of colours and it would still look really amazing, but it's so simple. Win-win!


~Nail Art Novice~

Try Something Tuesdays-Striping Tape

It's time for another Try Something Tuesday post, hasn't time flown since the last one?
This week I'm trying out another really easy technique-using striping tape to create patterns on my nails.
I started with a base of Sally Hansen Insta Dry Brisk Blue which is a frankly AMAZING bright bright blue colour on its own. I had originally planned to team it with Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Going Green (from this post) but once I saw it on my nails I realised that the two together would be a bit too clashing and wouldn't really work very well, so I stuck to the one colour in the end.

This is two coats.

It's such a fantastically bright colour-dazzingly blue, it's amazing! The brush was really wide too-I managed to cover most of my nails with one swipe up the middle which doesn't happen very often. Dried pretty quickly too, as its name would suggest. Then I added my striping tape one nail at a time and covered it with a layer of Topshop's Cloud, a creamy grey polish. The first nail I did lifted off all the blue as well, so I went back and topped them all with a coat of Seche Vite and allowed it to dry before trying again. This was much more successful, although I still ended up getting better with practice-hence why you're getting pictures of my right hand today, it's a little neater than my left. It also has slightly longer nails due to cheese slicer related incidents.

Above two pictures taken with flash

Natural Light

I did a different pattern on each of my nails just to try them all out and see which ones I liked.I think I prefer the abstract one on my ring finger and the vertical lines on my little finger the most. It's weird just how much the grey has dulled the amazingness of the blue underneath, it almost looks more turquoise than bright blue now. They're not perfect, but I do think they look quite cool in bright light, in duller lighting they just look kinda tealy/grey and you can't really see the patterns. I almost decided to change my top colour for my right hand, but thought this would probably look even more peculiar so I stuck with the grey and overall it's turned out OK. I wish I had a paler grey though, it might have looked a little better.
Still the technique is pretty easy and not too time consuming for an effect which looks quite striking-I'll definitely be doing this again with different colours.

~Nail Art Novice~