Saturday 28 September 2013

A Rather Blue-tiful Gradient

I'm sorry, you know I can't resist a terrible pun!

I was really sad to have to take off my blue Mish Mash nails as I was really enjoying them-but they were starting to look a little tatty and I wanted something that would match the dress I am wearing to my friends' engagement party this evening. I love me a good gradient, and I had 3 perfect blues that matched my dress perfectly and I figured they'd make a really pretty gradient-and I wasn't wrong!

Polishes used: Barry M-Teal, Rimmel-Azure and Barry M-Navy. I have actually also got a coat of OPI-I Juggle...Men  on there too to add extra sparkle, but you can't see it any of the pictures and can barely see it in real life except as a purple shimmer every now and again.
This is so blue-tiful that it dazzled my camera a little-these are the best photos I could get! I will also try to add one of me in my dress at some point if there's a nice one!




What can I say other than I LOVE this-it's so me and it's also so shiny and gorgeous! And now I must go, for my party abeckons!

~Nail Art Novice~


Thursday 26 September 2013

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 WhiteGuavaDenimRimmel-Midnight BlueAqua CoolRoyal Blue (Metal Rush)Maybelline-Dark DenimChina Glaze-For AudreyAvon-On Point BlueSally 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~

Tuesday 24 September 2013

Four Petal Flowers

Hello loves! I am back from my weekend away camping and we had a really amazing time-the weather held off for us and it was a really good weekend. I didn't end up doing any camping-related nail art and for once I actually went with naked nails by choice-shocking! When I got back yesterday though, I wanted to do something a bit pretty to make up for the time I'd missed so I chose these little four-petal flowers. I think my nail art skills are getting a little rusty through under-use though-these are all a little wobbly and imperfect. Ah well!

Polishes used: Barry M-Lychee for the base/centres, and the flowers were done in Rimmel-Block Your Green, Revlon-Fire, Barry M-Cobalt Blue & Satsuma and Sinful Colors-Amethyst which is my new favourite purple cream.



The green seems to have bled through the Lychee a little and turned it a little yellow which is annoying but I can deal with it. As I was taking the pictures, I had a sudden urge to see what this would look like Matted so I added a top coat of Rimmel's Matte Finish and I think I actually prefer them this way!


As I said, they're a little wibbly but I still like them-I'm really enjoying the more subtler look rather than inyourfacecolourseverywhere like I normally do, haha.

That's all from me for now, I'm hoping to get back to blogging regularly again now summer is over and I shouldn't be jetting off all over the place as often so I'll see you soon!

~Nail Art Novice~

Thursday 19 September 2013

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:



Saturday 14 September 2013

Funky Fishtails

Hello lovelies!

As you may have guessed by my erratic posting schedule of late, I've been away a lot-visiting friends around the country and staying with my boyfriend up in Sheffield. This means I've not been looking after my nails very well-and I've had a lot of breaks as a result so I'm back to stubby nubbins again. It also means I've not really been doing much nail art because I didn't want to take a load of stuff with me, so when I got an opportunity today to just sit down for a while and paint I took it! I decided to do fishtails because I still really like them and I hadn't done them in a bit...so long in fact I'd forgotten how long they take to do! I mean they're worth it and it was nice to just chill out for an hour or so but I'm so used to doing quick and easy "on the road" nails that it felt like forever! Haha.
Polishes are all Barry M Gellies-which seem to be my go-tos at the moment because I love the bright colours! I used Key Lime, Guava, Plum and Prickly Pear.



I'm really loving these exceptionally bright nails, they make me feel pretty happy which is good because the day I did them was a bit rubbish and I needed a bit of a pick me up.

Anyway, hope you are all having happy weekends!

~Nail Art Novice~

Thursday 12 September 2013

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~

Tuesday 10 September 2013

Mish Mash Challenge Week 6-Hot

Sneaking this one in just before the deadline-phew! I've been staying with my boyfriend (without an internet connection!) for the past week or so, so I haven't been polishing/posting much-apologies! I spent the week being introduced to an excellent TV show which actually inspired me for this challenge!

That TV show was Avatar-The Last Airbender which I can whole heartedly recommend if you ever get the chance to watch it. There are four nations within the series and I chose to represent two on my nails-the Fire Nation and the Water Tribe. I've got the insignia of each on my ring fingers and the element symbol on my thumbs-links are here to see what they look like if you're interested: Fire Nation insignia, Fire symbol, Water Tribe insignia, Water symbol.

Polishes used were the rather appropriately named Revlon-Fire and OPI-I Have A Herring Problem. I topped all but the accents with a coat of MaxFactor-Fantasy Fire and I really love the way that it looks completely different colours over each base. The details were done with the Barry M nail art pens. Now these aren't the best nail art I've ever done, as I was doing them at about 11pm at night so don't hold that against me, K?




So there you go! I will try and post more often again now but I already know next week's mish mash will be late too-oops!

Don't forget to check the inlinkz for other awesome 'Hot' manis from my lovely co-participants!

~Nail Art Novice~




Monday 2 September 2013

Liebstered IN THE FACE

So I got nominated for a couple of Liebsters again. And I'm going to cheat and not do them properly again-because I always feel awkward about asking people to do something like this (because I am, deep down, a stereotypical Brit!) and I'd feel bad not doing them myself. Also I really enjoy this sort of thing every once in a while-it gives you a chance to find out a little about the person behind the nails and I've always loved reading them, so here's hoping you guys will too!
It's weird how these things always seem to come along like buses though isn't it-two nominations within five days of each other! This time it was the lovely Erika from The Polished Fangirl and Dil from I 'Art Nails (loving that name, by the way!) so I'm going to answer all their questions here.

Erika's Questions:
1. If you were told you could only keep 10 polishes for the rest of your life, what would they be?
Gulp, that's a hard one! I'd probably have to choose some of my Barry M gellies because they give great coverage in one-two coats and they're really bright shiny colours that you can use for stamping and lots of other nail art effects quite well. Plus a silver holo because holos.

2. What is your favourite style of nail art?
On me I love silly things like my Monsters Uni nail art or my Doc Martens ones. Actual art on my nails! I love gradients though, and tape manis too-I've seen some fabulous ones on other people.

3. What hobbies do you have besides nail art?
I'm learning to play bass guitar, I'm also learning to swing dance and I LOVE to go on stage whenever I can. Also theatre, I want to see ALL the theatre.

4. What was your favourite vacation ever?
Ooh, that's a tricky one! I'd have to say either Rome last year (because it was amazing) or Slovenia the year before that because I laughed constantly for 4 days. Awesome people and awesome memories from both =)

5. Are you in a relationship? If so, what is he/she like?
I am in a relationship, albeit one that's only 3 months old! He's Australian, tall and skinny with blueish hair and he (like me) loves science and theatre. He makes me laugh a lot and he's just as soppy as I am which is kinda awesome really. (Don't tell him I said that though, haha)

6. What's your ideal comfort food?
I don't know really, while I may be a big girl I don't think I comfort eat-I tend to go off my food when bad things happen. Probably chocolate though, if I had to name one.

7. Do you have any equally (or even more) obsessed polish loving friends or are you alone in your dedication?
My best mate Rara (who regularly posts on this blog) is just as bad as I am and she's a terrible influence on me! She's definitely better than I am though, sigh!

8. What was the first polish you ever bought?
Honestly, I can't remember. Probably by free choice a Stargazer in bright green or bright orange I would guess.

9. Are you into make-up as well as polish? What are your favourite make-up products?
I'm really not into make-up at all, most days I don't even wear any! My most used product is my mascara-a Collection 2000 one. I've got quite long eyelashes so I just buy the cheapest one around for a bit of colour.

10. What's your favourite colour family?
Long time readers of this blog will know the answer to this-blues and greens!

11. If someone paid you a million dollars not to paint your nails for a week would you do it?
Are you mad? Of course I would! I may be an addict but I can cope for a week for that much dough! Hell I'd do it for a lot less to be honest, it's not a hardship to me!


Dil's Questions
1. If you had three wishes what would they be?
Probably exactly the same as I said last time-a job and a home in Sheffield and the ability to drive without having to learn! I'm willing to work for the rest, haha.

2. What beauty item(s) do you carry around in your bag?
A pot of Vaseline (or a stick of Nivea in the summer months) and that's it.

3. What song would be the soundtrack to your life?
Erm...just one???  I don't think I could pick one that would have been the soundtrack to my entire life, because I connect with song lyrics on an emotional level so songs that mean something are constantly changing. I can't choose!

4. If you could be any character in any book or film, who would you be?
Ooh, so many possibilities! OK...soo...I'd probably pick Agnes Nitt in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books (please tell me someone out there reading this knows who I mean?!) because I played her on stage once and she was fabulous. She was a stompy goth witch with a fabulous voice who wasn't afraid to speak her mind and had incredible hair. She was AMAZING. This picture is all Agnes and I LOVE it:



5. What is your favourite perfume/fragrance?
I don't really have a "signature scent" really. I've recently got back into a Body Shop perfume called Indian Night Jasmine, which is really lovely and lasts all day.

6. What has been your biggest beauty/fashion faux pas?
Probably when I was starting to try out make-up when I was 13 or so, I slathered it all over my face in a way that must have looked completely awful!

7. Natural or Acrylic nails?
Personally I prefer natural ones every time. I couldn't be dealing with acrylics and some of the ones I've seen on people are so long they're like scary talons!

8. If you could have a lifetime supply of make-up, what brand would you choose?
If this is including nail varnish probably Barry M! I don't own any of their make-up though...so I'd go with Clinique for that because it works well with my skin and is really nice quality.

9. If you could have a date with any celebrity, who would it be?
It depends what mood I was in really! If I wanted someone pretty to ogle then it'd be Chris Hemsworth (who plays Thor-Phwoar!) but if I wanted a really good intellectual/funny conversation I'd pick someone like Neil Gaiman or Sarah Millican, because I imagine we'd have a good old time and laugh far too loudly in public, haha.

10. If you could invite 5 people to a dinner party (dead or alive), who would it be?
Ahh, I hate these questions, I always feel pressured to answer them in a witty and funny way or something. Although as this question doesn't specify they have to be famous then I am going to say my boyfriend and my best friends because I know it'd be an evening I would enjoy without question, and we'd have lots to talk about and much laughter. Totally evaded the real question there =p

11. Why did you start blogging?
Originally I started blogging because I wanted a little corner of the internet where I could express myself-state my opinions and write about my life. I started nail blogging because I wanted somewhere to share my nail art and where I could meet people who were also interested in it and have some (virtual) nail art friends. I'm really glad I have both of my blogs though, I've "met" some really fabulous people through blogging and really love it!

OK, that's all for now, thanks again to the two ladies who nominated me!

~Nail Art Novice~

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