Barry M Gradient Dots

Hey everyone! Just a quick post from me today cos I'm so so stressed about coursework and I really need to get back to it. Just one more month and it will all be over for this year thankfully! Today's nails are more from my university nail art society, which you can read more about here. I'll post a picture at the end of the group's nails, I love how we all chose completely different colours and they all work so well together, although the picture is a bit blurry!

The base of these is Barry M - Huckleberry, then I used a sponge with Barry M - Prickly Pear, and once that was dry I used Barry M - White for the dots, done using a dotting tool. Then I topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite

Everyone's nails!

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

Alice

Gradients and palm trees

Hey everyone! No explanation tonight, just nails. I'm tired and I need to sleep, it seems to be a common occurrence than I post late at night and then dont have the energy to write much, so I'm sorry about that! These nails were inspired by the recent sunny weather we've been seeing in Britain, although I'm not quite sure we're up to palm tree standard yet!

The base was 70° and sunny by Clinique, which I'll be reviewing in the next few days, sponged with Barry M - Passion fruit, I then top coated that and used the Black Barry M nail art pen to create the palm trees.

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

Alice

Gradient chevrons

Hey everyone! I'm not going to say much today because I have an exam first thing Friday morning and I'm so so underprepared I could cry, but I wanted to post so you lovely people are not kept waiting. This design came about after a bit of experimenting. I was trying out China Glaze - It's a Trapeze, and I thought I'd try layering it over another colour rather than wearing it alone. I'm sure this has probably been done but I've not seen it (let me know if you have so I can check it out!). I then decided to add a gradient, but being someone who isn't great with simplicity I then also had to add chevrons (are they chevrons? or are they just triangles? I dont know, but to me they are chevrons!).

I used a base of an no-name W7 polish I got in a set from TKmaxx, and I can't remember the colours I used for sponging because this was a while ago but I know the red and pink are definitely by Barry M.

I really like how It's a Trapeze looks alone and I definitely want to try it out a bit more in the future. 

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

Alice

Seven Deadly Sins: Week 3 - Greed

Hey everyone! I'm a little late with this week's seven deadly sins post, I dont really have any excuse for that except that I forgot to edit the pictures last night and then it was too late, so sorry about that! This week's prompt was 'go wild and use your most expensive and precious polish'. I dont own many expensive polishes because I have a £3 maximum spend (the student life is super fun) but I did recently recieve these awesome Clinique polishes, as you saw here, which retails for £12 (I also have another few Clinique polishes to show you soon!) and last winter when I saw China Glaze 'Glistening Snow' I had to splurge a massive £6 (!!!) to buy it straight away, so I thought I'd mix the two together, along with my always-expensive top coat: Seche Vite. 

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

Alice

I don't just do my own nails!

Hey everyone! So, as I mentioned in my last post, I currently don't have a laptop. :( I have about 10 posts done for you but I can't edit them and I can't get them off my old laptop just yet. I was meant to be starting a nail challenge this week but unfortunately I can't, so I will hopefully be catching up next week if I can somehow get photoshop!

I've decided instead then that ill post the only thing I can from my phone, and that's other people's nails,  ones from my Instagram or ones about to go on my Instagram (@onenailtorulethemall) so here's a collection: 

I really enjoy doing other people's nails, I know some people prefer to stick with their own but i'd love to do it professionally! If you want to know any colours just ask :)

Hope you like them! Let me know what you think in the comments.

Alice

Neon gradient + tribal nails (and an announcement!)

Happy Easter everyone! I'm going to hopefully be posting twice today because I'm going to quickly try and do a 'Then and Now' post for tonight because I didn't have time to do one last night. But I just wanted to show you these neon gradients I did, and then decided to add a tribal design to. I shall have a tutorial coming up for this soon if you're interested? These were meant to be my 'easter' nails for this year but I fancied something a little different to the usual pastel combinations.

I actually quite liked the design with just a neon gradient but as always I knew I wanted to add more to it, oops. The base for this design was MASH - White, which is meant to be for stamping but as it's so opaque it works great as a base too. The neon colours were Models Own - Toxic Apple, Orange Sorbet and Pink Sorbet, all of which as you can see are really bright and great neons, I would definitely recommend getting them if you haven't already got them. As neons tend to be quite translucent they're great for gradients. 

(The number 2 is there as it's part of the tutorial)

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

Also, today is my blogiversary! This little blog is one year old today, I had started a Tumblr 8 months previously so it's not a year since the start of my 'nail art journey' but it is via blogger! I shall be having a little giveaway soon to celebrate so stay tuned! 

Alice

EDIT: the tutorial can be found here

Rainbow gradients + paisley nails

Hey everyone! It's been a while hasn't it? (Well, a week but still!) I intended to post a then and now piece on Saturday but I didn't find any time to edit the pictures before I went home for the weekend and I didn't take my laptop in case I fell over in the snow, so here is my first chance to post. But rather than doing my then and now post I'm going to show you some different nails that you will have seen slightly already if you're following me on instagram, and I shall post my then and now nails this Saturday instead. I have quite a busy week planned in blogging, the only day there will be no post this week will probably be tuesday (aka tomorrow). I have some wonderful new Barry M nail varnishes to show you, and lots of lovely nail art ideas planned around them, and I also have other exciting products and designs to show you, so I hope you'll stick around to see!

Anyway, on to today's nails. Last time I did paisley nails I had a couple of comments that I should try them in different colours, because as you might recall I just did them as a test of gel pens on top of some glow in the dark polishes, so the colours weren't that exciting. But I couldn't really decide what colour to choose and I've been meaning to do rainbow gradients for ages, so I thought why not, and I mixed the two together. The outcome reminds me of some hippy fabric in the 60's but I quite like it! I've also included a picture of the rainbow gradient alone at the end of the post just in case you dont like the paisley! 

I used Essie - Blanc as a base and then sponged on Barry M - Lemon, Collection 2000 -Fruit Loop, Barry M - Blueberry, and China Glaze - Refresh Mint. And once that was completely dry I drew on the paisley print with a 0.38 Muji Gel Pen (seeing as though so many of you asked me what I used last time). Unfortunately I wasn't patient at all with top coat and I did smudge the pen a bit, but that's not the case usually, I was just a bit hasty. Although I dont think it looks too bad really. I decided to also add an accent nail using Born Pretty Store studs like the ones in this post.

And a bonus picture of the rainbow gradient alone:

I think my gradienting skills could probably do with a bit of improvement still but I still like how these turned out! What do you think? 

Alice

Glitter Gradients #2

So this is not what I intended these to look like, as I showed you in my Collection 2000 hot looks review post here 'Shimmy Shake' looks really good layered over black. So I thought that it would also be good for glitter gradients, oh how wrong I was. This must have been my 6th attempt because it was just too thick and it smudged instantly, with these I managed to get a picture before that happened but they still didnt last very long! Anyway, they still turned out okay-ish, but they just look like an other glitter gradient, rather than a super awesome layered one, hope you like them!

Alice

Gradients and hearts

Hi guys! I should have a new tutorial up in the next few days, my camera unfortunately didn't focus on ANY photos because it was low light so I have to do them again :(
Anyway, I have another old mani for you today because the inspiration and motivation is still not coming! Hope you like them :)

Alice

Collection 2000 Hot Looks: review and nail art

Hey everyone! I've still not taken the easy way out and gone home yet, battling through it (though I wish I didn't have to) so again I'm bringing you a post that I did before I came here. The lovely Hannah from Collection PR was so quick in sending me these and I intended to be quick in posting them. I swatched them straight away but the stress of moving got in the way and I've only just got around to editing them. I hope you enjoy my first official review even if it took longer than intended! All pictures were taken in natural inside light. I'll show you swatches first and then at the end I'll show you the nail art I created with these 4 polishes, but I'm warning you now of the extreme overload in pictures you're about to receive!

Pink Gradients Take 2

Hi everyone, sorry it's been a bit quiet around here for a few days, I've just moved away to uni and I'm feeling pretty low at the moment. I've not done my nails and I dont want to either. This is a design I did a few weeks ago in preparation for such a thing, and some of you may have seen this on my instagram before I added the studs. I'm trying to improve my gradient-ing skills because they're never very ombre and I dont think these are much better, though I liked them a lot more once I added the studs, hope you all like them too!

Alice

Blue Mix 'n' Match

So after the pink mix and match I decided I really liked how they turned out and I wanted to try something similar with blue (my favourite colour if you havn't yet noticed haha) and I like these even more than the pink ones! I hope you do too

I used a base of Barry M - Blue Moon, with Essie - School of Hard Rocks for the darker blue and China Glaze Electric Feel for the lighter blue

       
                              

Alice

Day 31: Recreate your favourite challenge.

So that's it, the challenge is over! I've really enjoyed doing it but whilst the inspiration was good it was stressful to manage everything alongside getting a post up everyday. Today I decided to do gradients again, they're super easy and I think I need to improve on them a lot because mine are never very smooth, the sponge effect is always very obvious. I also felt that my original post's colours weren't obvious enough so I changed them around a bit (and I made it into a 3 colour gradient instead)

I used China Glaze - Something Sweet and an unnamed light pink and an unnamed darker pink. Hope you like them!

Alice

Motel Rocks

Hi everyone! A break from the challenge today to bring you a tutorial for some nails I did for a website called Motel Rocks, it's a clothes website and they have some really lovely stuff. You can check out my post on their blog here and check out their website here.

Alice

Day 22: Inspired By A Song

When I was thinking through this challenge there were never any dispute over which band's song I'd be basing my nails around. It was always going to be Mumford and Sons. Unfortunately their songs aren't very transferable to nail designs, so I picked the most obvious and went with 'Little Lion Man'.

If you've never heard of them, open a new tab/window now (don't quit this post because what would be the point in me writing it eh? And you wouldn't get to see the nails) and go to youtube. I'd recommend Dust Bowl Dance or Thistle and Weeds, but they're one of those bands that makes a brilliant song absolutely every time, so just type in their name and go with the flow if you must. I'm ranting on about them now I know, but they are brilliant musicians. I went to see them live at the beginning of June when they came to Huddersfield (whut?) and they were just as good, if not better, and that says something about a band.

ANYWAY, here are the nails, which I'm sure is what you came here to see. I used Barry M - Yellow and sponged on Revlon - Mad About Mango. Then I painted the lion just by mixing Barry M - Mushroom with Barry M white/black for the lighter and darker shades of brown using a very small brush and then used acrylic paint for the details. Hope you like them!

Alice

Day 21: Inspired By A Colour

First of all, a letter to whoever made this challenge, WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS MEAN. End of letter. I took it to mean inspired by the name of a colour, but then still couldn't decide what to do. So I sat in front of my box of polishes and went through loads with no inspiration, and then I came across China Glaze - Sea Spray and inspiration hit.
Now I know this design is not original, both MrCandiipants and The Nailasaurus have done designs similar, but I loved them both and I'd always known I wanted to recreate something similar, so here we go. I was going to add a surfer, but I didn't have time :( hope you like them anyway!

Alice

Day 19: Galaxies

So here's what was supposed to be yesterday's post: galaxies. I didn't know how these were going to turn out but I'm pretty happy with them. Though my nails are waaaay to short, I don't think they've been this short since I used to bite them. I have to leave the house in less than 5 minutes so this is a super quick post, hope you like them!

Extra picture of the beautiful Barry M - Black Glitter

Alice

Day 17: Glitter

Let me get one thing straight before I write this post, I am not a glitter person. I dont like glitter on my clothes etc, and I dont like it on my nails. Unlike with the clothes though it's because I dread taking them off because I use remover pads rather than polish remover and cotton buds so I can't use the foil method. That being said, if I can try forget about removing them I quite like the look of them, even though I dont own very many (aka 5). I wanted to do a gradient (surprise surprise) and also decided to mattify it.. so here you go :)

The nude is Models Own and the glitter is China Glaze - Blonde Bombshell topped off with Rimmel Lycra Matte Top Coat

Alice

Day 10: Gradients

I was a bit worried about today's challenge because I've never done gradients before, but it is SO easy. I was told a variety of methods of doing them but I actually found it easier to sponge with just one colour. I was so proud of these for a first attempt but my camera failed to pick up the colours properly, I promise that they weren't as similar in reality. I think gradients will be my new thing to turn to because they really are super quick and easy. Hope you like these nails!

I used China Glaze - 'For Audrey' and Barry M 'Cyan Blue' topped off with seche vite


Alice