Blue OPI Roses

Happy Tuesday all, only two days in and I already feel like this week is dragginnng. I've booked to go away for a few days next week and see my sister and I'm counting down the days. 

Today I've got another design for you using the OPI - Nutcracker collection*. There are so may possible colour combinations with this collection, but I absolutely love all OPI green's (or at least all the ones I own anyway) and I find they're perfect for leaves, so I knew I had to do a floral design with the collection.

Gelish Forever Fabulous Collection - Review + Swatches Part 1

Christmas really is the busiest time of the year isn't it? I feel like I've barely stopped recently, and I've got to go away with work this week so I've got even less time than usual.

 I've been so busy I haven't had the time to write up this review, even though I tried the products a few weeks ago, so I'm sorry for the delay in getting this out to you! 

The Gelish - Forever Fabulous collection* is a bumper collection of TWELVE new shades for winter.  There are some really great colours in this collection, and I've split it into two halves so you can see them all in more detail. This is Part 1, and Part 2 will be along shortly. 

Gelish - Make A Splash: Review + Swatches

Hey everyone! I had such a mare trying to get this post up. I managed to get my review done soon after I received them, and as I went to plug my memory card in, the whole thing wiped! I've no idea why. After a lot of panicking from me, and help from my boyfriend, I actually managed to receive the photos, hours before I was due to go on holiday. So I thought therefore I'd write the post on holiday, but then Blogger wouldn't work on my phone! 

We're finally here... so here is the gorgeous and fun Gelish Make A Splash Collection. I love how bright these gels are, the perfect summer shades! There's also a Cellophane Coat included with the collection, which is described as an 'iridescent overlay' and just adds a bit of shimmer, scroll down to have a look. 

Barry M - Candy Culture Collection Review + Swatches

It feels like forever since I last did a full review. I find that more and more I prefer using polishes in nail art and reviewing them that way, but now and again I can't resist an old-fashioned swatch post. And the latest Barry M Candy Culture Collection* was just too cute to be able to resist reviewing. It's been so cold and miserable lately that it's nice to have some lovely spring polishes to brighten things up a bit.  These gorgeous pastel shades are from the first ever Barry M scented range. I found that they all smelt strong enough that you knew they were scented, but not strong enough that it was overpowering. Barry M claim that these shades only require two coats and dry with a soft matte finish, read on to find out what I thought...

Meebox Nov '17 - Through The Looking Glass, Review + Nail Art

So it finally happened, the cold/flu that everyone has had recently has caught up with me, and I'm regretting all the time that I was well and didn't appreciate it (you know the feeling I mean). Before I slip into a deep sleep (... I wish) I want to show you the latest Meebox*. This month's theme was Through The Looking Glass*. I was asked to review it because 'it has my name written all over it' but it really does, and I find it hard to turn down anything Alice in Wonderland related! This month box is worth a whopping £54.22, so you're definitely getting value for money. It includes:

Zoya - Saint* (£13)

iZ Beauty London - Front Row* (£6)

iZ Beauty London - Wonderland Inspired Decals* (£2)

Sally Hansen - Sleigh All Day + Miracle Gel Topcoat* (£14.99)

MoYou London - Alice 04 Stamping Plate* (£5.99)

Clear Jelly Crystal Clear Stamper* (£7.24)

I wanted to try and use everything from the box but in the end I used everything except the Sally Hansen polishes, which wasn't too bad going. 

Shimmery Starfish

Hey everyone! To celebrate the first day of Autumn I thought it would be appropriate to share some summery nails... right? In reality I completely forgot I hadn't posted these yet, there not as complicated as I'd prefer them to be so I've put off posting them for ages and now it's getting a bit late in the year. Not that I've ever let the seasons put me off posting pastels in winter, who sets the rules anyway?

Essie Block Colours

Hey everyone! I'm back this week with some nails that are a bit simpler than those I posted last week. I often really struggle to simplify designs, I always want to add more and more but when I'm in a rush I sometimes have to fight against myself and let the designs remain simple. I was playing around with the Essie Resort 2017 Collection*, and I thought the colours would work well in a block manicure. It's been so long since I used tape for a manicure, but I love block manis like this, I used to do loads of them 'back in the day' so it's nice to bring it back. 

Lost City - Meebox May '17 Nail Art + Review

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I did a review of Meebox thanks to my unscheduled break, so I actually have two different boxes to show you at the moment, the first of which is the 'Lost City' Meebox* from last month. When this landed on my doorstep I was a bit stumped on what to create with the contents of the box, which were:

Annika - Blue Lagoon
Cuccio - Pier Pressure
Ruby Wing - Hello Sailor
NCLA - Take It Off Soy Remover Sheets
House of Wonderland Decals (exclusive to Meebox)

Worth more than £40 in value (despite the box only costing £20 a month, or £18 if you pay for 3 months), they're definitely worth trying out if you haven't already. All these brands were completely new to me, and pushed me to create something I wouldn't usually do.

Anyway, I was struggling to come up with a design so I decided to completely wing it. I've never used water decals before so I started with those on top of the Cuccio polish, and I accented with Ruby Wing - Hello Sailor over Pier Pressure. Then I decided to play around with striping tape, and by the end of it I really loved the result, and I hope you do too!

Barry M Frosted Cupcakes Collection - Review and Swatches

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I did a review of a full collection but I loved the Barry M Frosted Cupcakes Collection* so much that I felt they deserved their own review. I'm a bit slow on getting it uploaded, but I still wanted to show you these gorgeous polishes. There are 4 in the collection, one of which you will have already seen on my blog with these nails, but I think they'd all make gorgeous bases for nail art. They're lovely subtle colours but the specks really work with the colours to create a lovely collection. I also love the names of the polishes, they feel very English and cutesy and they fit the collection too. It's nice to find some names that actually slightly make sense because I do feel that brands get carried away sometimes when naming polishes!

Earl Grey* is a lovely muted grey, this was 2 easy coats without topcoat and as you can see they're smooth and shiny without topcoat, not textured at all. 

Strawberries and Cream* is a gorgeous baby pink. This is the shade I used for my frosted daisy nails, and I absolutely love this colour. This was 2 easy coats without topcoat and it dried fast and shiny. 

Marshmallow* is a slightly off-white colour. This was 3 easy coats without topcoat, again it dried fast and shiny, and wasn't textured at all. 

Blue Velvet* is a beautiful baby blue. This was 3 thin coats. I have used this in some nail art but I'm not 100% sure I like the design so whether or not it will see the light of day still remains to be seen. Shown without topcoat but it dried fast and shiny. 

What do you think? Have you tried any of the collection? Let me know in the comments!

Alice

*Some of 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

Essie Periwinkle Stars

Honey I'm hooooommeeeee. I'm finally back! And I'm hoping this time I'm back for good. I decided to take a couple of weeks off to focus on moving house, Christmas, new year and just generally getting my life back in order. November and December were tough and eventful, but I feel like I've come out the other side now and I want to throw everything back into my blog. I've missed it a lot, this is my outlet, and I wish life hadn't got in the way recently, but I had so much to deal with that it was easier to let this aspect of my life slide a little bit. Now I'm feeling more normal and happy I'm ready to find my passion again. 

I've barely even painted my nails over the past 2 months, it's not just that I've barely been posting but I really haven't actually done any designs. I genuinely don't think I've stopped for 2 months though, I've kept myself busy every single day to cheer myself up and I've not had much time for anything else. However, I made some time to sit down the other day and just paint my nails. Nothing too extravagant, but something that says 'hey I'm back and I'm sorry for abandoning you all', and something that says 'this is still what I love doing', so I hope I've done that with this incredibly simplistic design. I actually even made the time to paint both hands (don't fall off your chair in shock) for the first time in months and months.  

Madam Glam Gel Polish Review + Swatches

Hey everyone! Hope you're all having a lovely week so far. I've still got a lot going on at the moment which is why it's been quiet from my end, but I've still got a few posts edited and waiting for me to write them up. I was recently sent a selection of Madam Glam gel polishes to try out. It's a brand I've heard a lot of but I hadn't got around to trying yet. So when they reached out and asked if I'd like to pick a selection of colours I jumped at the chance. I chose colours that I don't really own in gel shades as I wanted to add something different to my collection. I had high hopes based on the things I'd read, and they were proven to be correct. I really loved all of these shades, and I'm sure you'll be seeing them again.

Unlike other gels I have tried, I did not receive a lamp with my polishes from Madam Glam. This isn't a problem as I own a couple of curing lamps, but just as I agreed to review these Melody Susie contacting me asking me to review their new Pro48W lamp*, and I knew that the two reviews could go hand in hand.  I will do a more thorough review of the Melody Susie lamp at some point but I just wanted to say that I was really impressed. For the price ($109.99) you get a really high quality lamp. As it has three settings it meant that I could set it to the correct curing time for Madam Glam, which is 30s per coat. This is actually quite quick for gels, the majority take 45s or longer. The lamp also has a sensor so that it knows when you have inserted your hand, and how long to keep the light on for, which made the whole swatching process much easier.

Sharpie Watercolour Flowers

Hey everyone! I want to apologise for not being the best blogger at the moment, I have a lot of products building up and I'm definitely feeling the pressure but life has to come first. I've needed to prioritise my life off the internet for the past few weeks, and I still need to, but my blog has always been my escape and I want it to remain that way, so here I am escaping for a little while. I've been finding it hard to find the time to do my nails, let alone blog about them, but I managed to spend the entirety of Saturday doing nails and it feels nice to be able to have some new content to show you. 

Today's nails are kind of a fail, but as I've said before I want to document all my designs, fails or not. I've never tried watercolour nails before, mainly because I didn't think I had the necessary products (what is 'rubbing alcohol' when it's at home?). But then my lovely friend Very Emily informed me that all I need are some Sharpies and some nail cleanser, and I decided to buy a nice huge pack of Sharpies to give it a go (I'll always be a stationary hoarder at heart, so any excuse really). These were so simple to create, I was kind of just playing around and they turned into a design. It was so satisfying to see them turn into little bubbles rather than blobs of colour. And I really loved the design ... until my topcoat smeared it everywhere. I don't know if it's because I used a gel topcoat, or if I should have used nail polish for the centre of the flowers rather than black sharpie? If you've done watercolour nails before let me know where I went wrong. 

Flickanail Inspired Water Flowers

Hey everyone! I hope you've all had a lovely weekend, I can't believe once again that Monday has crept upon us. Two days is never enough, but luckily next weekend is a bank holiday so we get 3 whole days, and then 2 weeks later I'm going on holiday for a week I can't wait. I've done lots of gel designs this weekend, both on myself and on other people, but the nail art I'm showing you today is purely trusty old nail polish. 

For a long time I've been in awe of a number of Japanese nail artists. My twinsie nails with Very Emily were a homage to this, as we both have great respect for Japanese nail art, but I wanted to try my hand at something further. I was inspired by this design by Flickanail, but once again my need for everything to be neat meant that the design didn't turn out as I hoped, despite my best efforts to just go with the flow. When looking at the design alone I really love it, but in comparison it looks nothing alike. I think that I didn't add enough flowers because I was wary of going overboard.

However, I'm not going to give up, there are tonnes of Japanese designs that I want to try my hand at, and I have a feeling that for a lot of them I might be better off working in gel. I'm also tempted to sign up for Neiru tutorials. Have any of you tried these? Are they worth paying for? I really want to improve my skill and learn something new too, so let me know if they are worth doing.

Blue Celestial Geometric

Hey everyone! How has another week gone already? August is absolutely flying by. I've had a really busy week, last night I went to see Wicked which was absolutely amazing. I've never seen it before but I went with a friend who has seen it 3 times now and I can see why she keeps going back. I'm going to try my hand at some Wicked nails this weekend so we'll see how those go.

Today's nail art is a result of me experimenting with these* brushes from Winstonia. I did these nails a couple of months ago when I first received the brushes and I completely forgot I did them. I've been practicing with them since and you will have seen them in many designs, but I was happy with how straight I managed to keep my lines here. I used the smallest brush for this design, and I was really impressed with it, although it took me a while to get used to as it contains harder bristles than I'm use to.

Gelish A Very Nauti-cal Girl Collection Review + Swatches

Hey everyone! Happy hump day, only 2 more days until the weekend. I'm really looking forward to this weekend because I'm off to see Finding Dory, I have waited far too long for this film and I'm glad it's finally been released in the UK. I'm not sure why the gap between US and UK release dates was so huge. I also went to see the BFG last weekend (I seem to be spending a lot of time at the cinema recently!) and I would recommend it 100%, such a lovely version of a childhood classic. Now I just need them to do a new version of The Witches, the book (and the film) were always my favourite growing up and I loved to see a modern version. What's your favourite Roald Dahl book?

Anyway, today I have a review of the gorgeous Gelish - A Very Nauti-cal Girl Collection*. I was really excited when I saw sneak peaks of this collection because these kind of shades are right up my street. I've already used a couple of them for nail art, either on me or on others, and they're firm favourites in my collection. Gelish consistently impress me with their shades and colours, and I have friends coming back to me again and again to have their nails done with Gelish products. It's great to be able to use my friends as guinea pigs as I often can't wear polish for more than a few days (although my toes also get to be testers too!). There's been loads of amazing releases this year, and many more coming up, which I hope to be able to share with you too! You can see all my previous Gelish posts here.

Celestial Cosmetics Galaxy Nail Art

Hey everyone! Hope you've all had a lovely weekend. I had a huge spring clean of our house yesterday and it's so nice for everything to be tidy and clean. It's so strange to me (and my mum I'm sure) that I actually enjoy cleaning and keeping my house tidy, as I was always one of those teenagers with a very messy room. But I've definitely become house-proud since we got our own place.  Anyway, before I started on my cleaning I wanted to get some nail art done with the new Celestial Cosmetics Pun-tastic collection (swatches coming soon), and I figured they'd work well for galaxy nail art. I massively underestimated how stunning holographic polishes are for galaxy nails, I can't stop staring at them! They're slightly wrecked after all my cleaning, but I'm still enjoying seeing the shift in different lighting.

OPI - Alice Through The Looking Glass Collection Review + Swatches

Hey everyone! I'm so annoyed with myself because when I was getting ready to leave for work the other day I managed to cut my middle finger with my house keys. The cut is about an inch long and goes from my cuticle up my finger, which of course means it's going to be vet painful to use acetone for a while. It also means I'll likely have to photoshop it out as it's rather unsightly. I was halfway swatching a collection, but luckily it wasn't this one so I can at least post this for you today. 

OPI's Alice Through The Looking Glass collection* contains some really gorgeous shades. I must admit I really love how this collection looks together, I think the polishes work really well alongside each other. I also think they fit quite well with the film, although I'd have loved to see something a bit more unusual and bright in there to fit in with the Hatter's crazy style. I really liked the film itself, I actually think I preferred it to the first film, so if you haven't seen it yet I'd recommend it. From the collection my favourite is probably The I's Have It* (baby blue) although it should probably be my namesake: Fearlessly Alice*. My least favourite is A Mirror Escape*, but more on that after the jump. 

June Splash Meebox Review + Nail Art

Hey everyone! Today I've got another Meebox* to review for you. You can see my previous two reviews of the February and April boxes here. June's box is themed 'Splash' and is a mermaid-inspired box. It's a unique one, because it's entirely made up of indies. The 3 polishes, whilst usually a mix of different brands (both indie and regular), are this time all from A-England, the shades are: Whispering Waves, Gloriana, and The Blessed Damozel. The box also contains:

Mess No More liquid nail tape from Mini Mani Moo Nails

Fishscale nail stencils from Nail Mail

Starfish and Conch Shell studs from She Sells Sea Shells (which is apparently also a tongue twister when I try and spell it because I wrote that wrong 3 times!). 

There's also a couple of unique discount codes in the box too. For £20 a month you couldn't ask for more really, you're definitely getting value for money as the A-England polishes alone are worth £11 each, so that's £33 before you've even considered the rest. Mess No More is worth £10, the stencils £4 and the studs £3 so you're getting far beyond what you've paid for. Subscription boxes are nothing new, but to have a brand that consistently delivers value for money is rare, and in my experience of Meebox so far, and what I've seen on their Instagram for month's I've not reviewed, they consistently deliver. Of course I had to create some nail art with them. I didn't use the stencils (admittedly I completely forgot until it was too late) but I've used them in another design that you'll see soon.

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. 

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.