Christmas Holly Berries

Hey everyone! Happy Christmas Eve Eve, I thought it was about time I posted some Christmas nails. These mistletoe with red berries were inspired by a plate from Matalan (see below). I actually did these in early November but I felt embarrassed to post Christmas nails so early... so I took it to the other extreme and now I'm posting two days before Christmas, oops! 

I used OPI - My Vampire Is Buff as the base, and then a mix of greens to create the leaves. I used OPI - Big Apple Red, and then acrylic paint for the white and black detailing. Finished with Barry M - Matte topcoat. 

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Alice

A Very Patterned Christmas

Hey everyone! Can you believe it's Christmas Eve already? I love the build up to Christmas so much, I'll be sad when I can no longer play Christmas songs and have lovely decorations up around the house. I'll also miss Christmas nails. As I said in my last post, I've had so much inspiration this year but not enough time to do anything with it. Hopefully I can carry that inspiration to next year. 

These nails were inspired by this Christmas pattern I found on Pinterest, I loved it so much and I knew it would work well on nails. I tried it initially on false nails with a cream background, and I must admit I think I prefer that to this more blue-toned off-white but I do still like them nevertheless. 

Rose Gold Snowflakes

It's been a busy ol' week this week, which concluded with me smashing my car into a bollard.. so not the best. But as with all bad weeks, I've turned to blogging to take my mind off it. I have to keep telling myself it's Christmas soon to distract myself, and what better to remind myself than with Christmas nails! I have so much inspiration this year but just not enough time to do everything I want to do. I'm hoping to be able to do a couple more designs this weekend before it's too late. I did however manage to squeeze in these nails a couple of weekends ago. 

I was recently sent a wonderful Christmas package from Sally Hansen, and I knew as soon as I saw these polishes inside that I had to do some nail art with them, they just looked like they would work so well together... and they do! 

Gelish Chilly Christmas Trees

I'm trying to be strict with myself on Christmas this year, especially in terms of food. I've lost weight recently and I don't to gain it back by pigging out on mince pies, but they're so delicious I'm struggling to resist. However, I decided that I didn't need to resist doing Christmas nails, what's the harm right? And apparently Twitter agreed, as I did a poll earlier and these were the popular choice! 

These aren't the first Christmas nails I've done this year I have to admit, I've been playing around with nail wheels to decide on some designs and these are a by-product of that.  As I was swatching the Gelish - Thrill Of The Chill Collection* (review coming soon), I couldn't help feeling Christmassy and I wanted to do some quick Christmas nails to show off the gorgeous shades of the collection, and to play around with one of the designs from my nail wheel. 

Gelish - Little Miss Nutcracker Collection, Review + Swatches

After a busy weekend of doing absolutely nothing except painting nails and eating (what could be better?), it feels right to end it with a blog post. It's a super exciting week for me as I'm off to see Harry Potter and The Cursed Child next weekend, plus we're off to the Warner bros studios, I can't wait! I bought the tickets for the play more than a year ago, so it's been a long time coming. 

Anyway, on to the nails! It's been so long since I last did a Gelish review, in fact it's been pretty much exactly a year, and boy have I missed reviewing their gorgeous gels. So when I got the new Little Miss Nutcracker* collection to review, I wanted to show you them as soon as I could. I'm well and truly in the festive spirit this year already, I know it's super early but I think because I had such a miserable time last Christmas it just feels all the more exciting this time around, and I already can't wait to decorate my house! 

The collection features 6 gorgeous shades, plus a lovely glitter topper to complete the collection. They're all such wonderful Christmassy shades, but I think my favourite must be Plum-thing Magical*, because it really is (some)thing magical! This was also my first time trying to new Gelish bottles. When I first saw they'd changed I was a little sad, as I really loved the old design, but having seen them in person I really like them, and it's so much easier to see which colour you're picking out! 

Candy Cane Holly

Hey everyone! I can't believe how soon Christmas is, the presents are under the tree and I just have half a day at work left before four and a half days of freedom, I can't wait! As I promised in my Candy Cane Mistletoe post I'm back today with another candy cane border. These seemed to go down pretty well first time around so I'm hoping you all like the holly and the pastel pink base just as much. I love this candy cane border and I think I'll spruce it up throughout the year to make it more fitting to the rest of the seasons. 

Matte Christmas Trees

Can you believe how close to Christmas it is? I've been swapping christmas presents with my friend this evening and I've spent all weekend wrapping, and making my own gift tags (those things are expensive to buy!), so I'm definitely in the Christmas spirit now. Just a few more days of work until 4 days of freedom. Soooo... time for some more Christmas nails. When swatching the Autumn/Winter Barry M Speedy Dry Polishes, I felt that Dead Heat*, this gorgeous red, would be perfect for some Christmas nails. I didn't really know where I was going with these nails, I started with just the white outline and I intended to leave them at that, so I took my pictures and went to remove them. But I just wanted to see what they looked like with a pop of colour, and I ended up loving them more. 

Christmas Polka Dots

Hey everyone! As I mentioned yesterday in my Secret Santa nails post, I actually created two designs inspired by Peachy Polish, but I was a bit more unsure of these nails and I didn't think they turned out as well as yesterday's design. However, I still wanted to post them because this is after all meant to be a documentation of designs I've done, good or bad. Valesha's original design is much much better than mine but if I wasn't comparing mine against any others I think I'd probably like them. 

Paint All The Nails: Secret Santa Edition

Hey everyone! This month's "Paint All The Nails" prompt was a little different. Instead of creating our own designs based on a prompt, we've all recreated each other's designs for a Secret Santa edition. My secret Santa this month was .... (drum roll) ..... Peachy Polish (also know as Valesha)! I hope she likes what I've created. I'm really excited this month to see what everyone's posting (more than usual) and I can't wait to find out who has me and what design they chose! We could choose any design, it didn't have to be seasonal, but as I'm mainly posting seasonal designs at the moment I wanted to stick to that and I also found these nails by Peachy Polish that I just couldn't resist recreating. In fact I actually found two designs but the second one didn't come out as great. I may post that in a few days but I didn't really want to showcase it in this post because these were definitely better! 

I used the new OPI Hello Kitty collection for the pink and red because I really wanted to showcase these beautiful polishes. I'll have a full review up after Christmas but the pink is 'Look At My Bow'* and the red is '5 Apples Tall'*. For the white I used Barry M - Cotton. The studs are from Avon. All finished off with a coat of Seche Vite 

If you want to find more of Valesha's work you can find her on the channels below:

Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Blog

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Alice

An InLinkz Link-up

Pearly Santa Hats

Hey everyone! I've got another cute Christmas design to show you, I have so many Christmas nails to post that I'm worried I'm not going to get them all up in time. I'll probably end up posting twice a day nearer Christmas if I'm not careful because I'm always so busy in the evenings. I feel like working full time has taken the magic out of Christmas a little bit because what I'm really looking forward to is 4 days off! Anyway, on to the nails. I was recently sent the Avant Le Lettre* collection by Soigne, a high end brand that were completely new to me. I'll have a full collection review up after Christmas but I wanted to post these santa hats I did using Cherir.* There's currently a 70% off sale on and Cherir is the only one from the collection not sold out so if you want to get your hands on it I would hurry! I wasn't expecting these to be so simple to create but they were super quick, and you can always do slightly bigger ones if you don't like fiddly designs.

Candy Cane Mistletoe for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! I've tried out something a little new today with this cute candy cane border. It was a complete accident (which you might be able to see if you check out the steps here) but I ended up really loving the result and I've done a second design with the border, which you'll see soon. In fact I'd probably do another if I didn't already have a tonne of christmas designs to post. It's super simple to do and it looks really effective. This is also the first time I've ever done mistletoe and I was really proud of how they turned out, I hope you do too! If you want to learn how to create these I've done tutorial for Divine Caroline - here. 

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Alice

Christmas Wreaths for Divine Caroline

Today it's time for my first christmas design of 2015, I've posted a couple of wintery looks up to now but these are my first full christmas nails this year. I've had a couple of comments asking when Christmas nails would start. I usually don't start posting them until much later in December, but I've done so many looks this year that I don't know if I'll have time to post them without starting now! I seem to have gone christmas mad a bit this year with my nails. Last year I really struggled with design ideas and this year I've already done at least seven and I'm sure there are more to come. These wreaths were created as a tutorial for Divine Caroline, so if you want to learn how to create them click here. They're much easier than they look I promise. I've never actually done wreaths as a design before but I really loved the end look, and I wore these for a week (despite the fact it was November and I got a lot of comments asking me why I was so eager!).

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Don't forget to check out the tutorial for these nails here.

Alice

Fair Isle Print for Avon + Tutorial

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a good christmas. Today's nails are keeping in the christmas spirit slightly as I dont quite want to let go of it, but they're also quite wintery so it's fine! I'd never done fair isle nails before so I decided to give them a try and I really like how they turned out. Steps are after the jump

Christmas Eve Christmas Trees

Merry Christmas everyone! It's technically Christmas here in the UK now as it's 2am, but I just wanted to quickly post some christmas tree nail art that I created for Tesco before I go to bed. It seems like these days I stay up later and later on christmas eve and then I'm knackered on christmas day. I still can't actually believe it's christmas tomorrow (/today), having worked all day it just feels like another working week! 

Tutorial Tuesday: Christmas Baubles for Barry M

Hey everyone! I really can't wait for christmas now. I'm working all day tomorrow (christmas eve) so it'll be nice to have some time off and see my family and boyfriend. I'm also so excited to see what everyone thinks of what I've bought them. I'm definitely one of those people that watches you eagle-eyed as you open presents, oops! Anyway, today's nails are some festive baubles that I created for Barry M and I also did a tutorial to go alongside them (which will come as no surprise considering all my recent posts!). Me and my sister were upset that my mum put up the christmas tree and all the decorations without us this year, so it seemed only right to put them on my nails instead.

Christmas Holly Negative Space Nail Art for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! I've finally finished uni for Christmas, and now I feel like I can properly get into the Christmas spirit (not that I haven't been already), especially now I've got all my Christmas shopping out of the way. Today I another tutorial for you, as a wonderful christmas gift to you all, haha! I know you all do like tutorials though so I don't really know why I keep acting like it's such a hardship that they're all I post at the moment. Today's tutorial is for these negative space holly nails. It was one of those designs where an idea just popped into my head, and it was either going to be a disaster or look great, and somehow it ended up looking pretty good. Hopefully you all like it too, and like recreating it! You can find all the steps on Divine Caroline here.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Don't forget to check out the steps here

Alice

Penguin Snowscape for Tesco + Tutorial

Hey everyone! I have another tutorial for you today, I'm sorry that they're all I ever seem to post at the moment but I have a lot of them to show you and it doesnt harm for you all to be able to recreate what I'm showing you (hopefully). Today's tutorial is for these cute penguins. I realised that I've never done any penguin nails before so I knew I had to do some this year and I decided to create some in collaboration with Beauty at Tesco. Steps are after the jump!

Tutorial Tuesday: Santa Got Stuck Up The Chimney

Hey everyone! I have another tutorial for you today, this time one that I created for Divine Caroline. I was searching for an original way to create some santa nails when I remembered the song 'When Santa got stuck up the chimney' (not sure if that's a universal song or just in England but either way!), and I decided to create some nail art based from that. To see how to create these nails yourself head over to the Divine Caroline website for the step by step instructions. 

Don't forget to check out the steps here.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Alice

Tutorial Tuesday: Christmas Eve Reindeer

Hey everyone! It's christmas eve! (now technically christmas day) I completely forgot to post this last christmas tutorial but I really want to go to sleep and wake up to christmas so it's only going to be a short post, and I haven't numbered the steps but hopefully you can work it out! Merry christmas everyone

China Glaze Happy Holiglaze Christmas Collection 2013 Swatches and Review - Part 2

Hey everyone! Today I'm back for the second part of my China Glaze Happy Holiglaze review, if you missed the first part you can see it here. I'm sorry it's been almost a week since I posted the first part of this review, but hopefully you've been enjoying all the christmassy nail art I've been posting this week! In this part of my review I'm going to be showing you the glitters from the collection, of which there are 3 fine glitter polishes and 3 glitter toppers. As most of us associate glitter and christmas this is definitely a very christmassy collection! Full review will be after the jump