Wednesday 29 June 2016

Tweexy Nail Polish Holders

Hey everyone! I'm glad to be able to sit down and concentrate, I've been doing a charity fast today for work and I've never been so hungry, and I've really struggled to concentrate today. I have so much more respect for those who do Ramadan now, I couldn't do it for a whole month, a day was hard enough! But I did it, I wasn't expecting to but I did and I'm pretty proud of myself, because all I do is eat usually. 

Today's post is about Tweexy* nail polish holders, designed to keep your polish bottle in place and make it easy to access whilst you paint your nails. Tweexy* is the original nail polish holder, and whilst there have been many copycats since, their design was perfected over two years to fit all bottles and fingers, and is guaranteed for 10 years. So whilst they may seem a little bit pricier than their copycats, it's because they're of a much higher quality. Full post after the jump




Tweexy* is designed to fit every nail bottle shape. I tried it with multiple different shapes and sizes and they all fit and stayed in place. You can also move your fingers without fear of the bottle falling out as the rubber grips the bottle.



I decided the best way to show you my thoughts would be do a pros and cons of Tweexy holders:

Pros:
- Stays steady whilst you paint your nails
- Doesn't pop out/stays very stable in the holder
- Ideal for people who paint their nails with their hand steady
- Adjusters on the side so you can simply lift away without smudging your nails
- Easy access to the nail polish

Cons:
- I felt like I was breathing in the polish a lot more because it was closer to my face (I get very close to my nails when I'm painting them)
- I usually hold my hand in ridiculous ways when I paint my nails so I found it hard to paint them neatly. However, this is just a matter of personal preference so for many people this wouldn't be a problem

Overall the only cons were really down to my own personal weird ways of painting my nails, rather than any issues with the product itself, so I was pretty impressed.


I decided to test it with Orly - Road Trippin* because I liked how the bright yellow contrasted with the turquoise, but also because Orly bottles are quite large and I wanted to test whether it held it, which it did.

I also created a boomerang video of me wearing my Tweexy which I'll be posting on my Instagram.

You can find Tweexy on Amazon for £14.95 + Free Postage

What do you think? Do you want to try out, or have you already tried out, Tweexy? Let me know in the comments!
Alice

*The products in this post were provided to me for review but all opinions are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way

Monday 27 June 2016

Bright Pink Gelish Daisies

Hey everyone! I hope your Monday has been a good one, or better than it was for the England football team at least! It's been a weird old weekend for England, and I'm glad there will be something else for everyone to moan about for a few days! Anyway, today's nails were a bit of experiment. I wanted to try a different style of flowers, and I used a thicker brush to get the effect I wanted, using a similar technique to one stroke. I used acrylic paint so it would be easier to use for the design, and hoped for the best. I ended up really liking how they turned out, and they were super quick to do. 

Saturday 25 June 2016

Guest Post for Very Emily

Hey everyone! Today I've got a guest post over at Very Emily for you all, you can see the full post here, which also includes a tutorial for this design. All info is on Emily's blog.


Thanks again to Emily for having me! 

Alice

Tuesday 21 June 2016

Scratch Star Awards 2016

Hey everyone! This post is slightly overdue as the Scratch Star Awards were actually more than two weeks ago, but I wanted to show you the nails I created for the event and a few photos from the evening. I didn't win the award (I was up for best nail blogger), but my wonderful friend Sammy of The Nailasaurus did and she certainly deserved it. Her blog was one of my original inspirations, so it's still a little weird to be friends with her! I also went to the event with Lucy of Lucy's Stash, and Lex of Talonted Lex. Once we got to the event we also met up with Natasha Lee and Ava of Nail Lacquer UK. It was a really lovely night, very different to the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards I've attended previously, but that's mainly because it was filled with nail professionals rather than other bloggers. 


Sunday 19 June 2016

A England Russian Soul Collection Review + Swatches

Hey everyone! I hope you've all had a lovely weekend. This weekend was my younger sister's birthday and father's day so it's been quite a busy one for me, but it's been nice to spend some time with my family. Today I've got a review of the gorgeous new A-England Russian Soul collection*. The collection consists of 5 majestic holographic glitters ranging from silver to navy, which are described as being inspired by 'Russian music and dance', and all of which are absolutely stunning. I'm still quite new to A-England but the polishes absolutely blow me away every time. Full review after the jump 

Thursday 16 June 2016

Throwback Thursday - Neon Stripes

Hey everyone! It's almost the end of the week, just one more final hurdle and we'll have reached the weekend. I've got lots of birthdays this weekend (sister, mum and grandma), and it's fathers day too, so not only am I busy, I'm also poor! It'll be nice to have a meal with the family though, and eat cake. Diets have to go out of the window when there are so many birthdays to celebrate. Anyway, it's been a while since I did a Throwback Thursday post, despite the fact I've actually had these images for well over 2 months. Thursdays just seem to pass me by, and suddenly it's Friday and I have missed the day to post once again, but this week I finally remembered! 

This was the original post for these nails, which I did for the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge back in 2012. They ended up being quite popular, which I wasn't expecting, and a few years later I recreated them in pink here. But I wanted to go back to my original design and give it a new lease of life. The first time around I remember waiting hours and hours for tape to dry and getting frustrated at how messy it was. This time around Seche Vite was my friend, and so was liquid palisade, which made it a lot easier and a lot quicker to do.

Monday 13 June 2016

Negative Blue Marble

Hey everyone! I hope you've had a good start to the week so far. Monday's aren't always the best days but mine wasn't too bad. Today I've got a quick post with these blue marble nails. Is there a term for the new trend of half negative space nails? I feel like there should be if there isn't because "halved nails" sounds a bit rubbish so I just tend to stick with calling them negative space. Despite the lack of a name, I love this trend and there are so many different options (basically you could just cut any design in half) that I doubt I'll get bored anytime soon. Although I do try not to do it as much as I'd like because otherwise it might get a bit boring to read about! For this design I was struggling to think of a design as I was in 'swatching mode', and I saw a "halved" design on Instagram and knew that's what I wanted to do, so I just went where the design took me. I decided the combination of this and stamping marbling would work quite well, and I was really happy with the results. 


Saturday 11 June 2016

Essie Spring 2016 Collection Review + Swatches

Hey everyone! Hope you're having a lovely weekend so far. The European Championships are on, which means I'm being roped into watching a lot of football with my boyfriend. Or alternatively, it means I have a lot more time to do nails because I don't want to sit and watch TV! I never watch football, but there's something about international football that's slightly more exciting, and I do end up getting sucked in even when I hate to. 

Today I'm reviewing the Essie Spring 2016 collection*, I wanted to include this with my post about the Rankin event but I thought it would make the post too long. I've already shown the collection in this nail art, but I wanted to show the colours individually too. This is the first full Essie collection I've reviewed, and I hope it's not the last, but I was very impressed. I don't own many Essie shades, I don't have the need to buy many new polishes (as you can imagine) so apart from my trusty bottle of Essie - Beyond Cozy which I bought ages ago, I only have one or two others. This collection consists of some 'typical' spring shades, but also some darker shades that make the collections lightly unusual. 



Tuesday 7 June 2016

Tutorial Tuesday: Barry M Blue Roses

Hey everyone! I hope you had a lovely weekend, it's been really sunny here for the past few days which has been a nice break from the usual dreary weather, but it's gone back to rain again now. Over the weekend I attended to Scratch Star Awards, where I was shortlisted for Best Nail Blog. Unfortunuately I didn't win, but Sammy did and she definitely deserved it more than I did, her blog is iconic. I'll be doing a full post on the event (and my nails of course) in the next few days but I wanted to post a tutorial today, as it's been so long since I did 'tutorial tuesday'. 

Today's tutorial is for these cute and simple floral stripes. I've done designs similar to this in the past using different shades, but it's always nice to see how I've progressed and also experiment with different colours against 'old' designs. You also can't go wrong with an easy combination of flowers and stripes. I was asked my Barry M to create some tutorials using their spring releases back in March, and this was one of the looks I created using the Sunset Gel polishes*. Tutorial is after the jump.

Saturday 4 June 2016

Gelish Glitter Geometric

Hey everyone! I decided to take a few days break from blogging, after my awful weekend last week I really just wanted some down time and to spend a bit of quality time with my boyfriend. There's always something to do when you're a blogger, and it can start to weigh you down sometimes. I'd never give it up but sometimes I need to step away for a few days, even if I feel guilty about it. But now I've had a few days break I'm feeling refreshed and ready to write a new post. Tomorrow I'm off to the Scratch Star Awards where I'm nominated for Best Nail Blogger. I'm nominated against Sammy and Lucie so I stand no chance but I'm excited to see them both and other blogging friends and have a good time. 

Today's nails are created using the products of one of the sponsors of the scratch awards: Nail Harmony UK, the UK base for Gelish. Although, these aren't the nails I'm wearing to the Scratch Awards, I'll post those when I post about the event.  I've made no secret of the fact I love Gelish, and they've released so many amazing polishes recently so I've had lots of additions to my collection. The base for this nail art is one of those recent additions: Primrose and Proper*, from the Botanical Awakenings collection and it is a lovely subtle shade which works so well for this design, which was again inspired by Sophie of Nancy Loves Nails. I know it's very similar to this design I did a few weeks ago but I really wanted to retry the design with a gel white rather than a nail polish white, and I decided to add a bit of extra glitter too.