Negative Space Ferns

Hey everyone! If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen that I was in Ibiza a couple of weeks ago. I went for a long weekend with my boyfriend and another couple, and of course I had to do some nails to mark the occasion. I had a flick through Pinterest the night before I went (leaving it to the last minute as always) and I came across these nails and knew instantly they'd be perfect for Ibiza. I decided to recreate them with a light pink background, and a simpler version of the ferns because I was a bit pushed for time! 

More details on how I created these below, and tomorrow I'll be doing a post about my 'nails on tour', if you haven't seen these posts before you can catch up here. 

Detailed Pink Roses

Hey everyone! Do you ever do a design and whilst you're painting it you just know you're gonna love it? That was how I felt about these nails. I pushed myself slightly out of my comfort zone painting the roses and I was so proud of how they turned out. They were inspired by these fabrics I found on Pinterest, and I decided to combine two of the designs to go hand in hand, but I kind of wish I'd just done the roses on all fingers.  I wore these for a week and I couldn't stop staring at my nails the whole time. I was especially pleased with them because I have so little time to paint my nails these days and I sometimes worry that I'm losing the skill, so it was nice to see that I haven't. It's definitely given me the bug to try out some more designs that are slightly out of my usual style once I'm back from travelling so watch this space. 

Crazy Flowers

Sometimes a design looks much better in practice than it does in reality, and this is definitely one of those designs. I was inspired by this design I found on Pinterest but I tried to make it my own and just ended up with a design I wasn't really that pleased with. I decided to post them anyway because they're not the worst nails I've ever done, even if they're not the best either. I think if they were more cohesive they would work a lot better, I should have probably just stuck with the original design, but you live and learn I suppose! 

I used Bourjois - Bleu Mysterieux, and Barry M - Cotton as the base colours, then I used Sally Hansen - Redgy*, Sally Hansen - Pink Cadillacquer*, Orly - Light As A Feather*, and Deborah Lippmann - Walking on Sunshine for the flowers. The studs are from Born Pretty Store. Finished with a coat of Seche Vite. 

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

Alice

Vintage Orly Flowers

Hey everyone! Hope your Monday wasn't too bad, I've actually managed to be productive and relatively healthy today so it feels like a winner of a day (and there's only 20 minutes of it left UK time). I finally got around to doing some designs on Saturday and it was so nice to sit down and have the time to do a design I like once again. I decided to search for some inspiration on Pinterest and when I came across this design by La Paillette Frondeuse I knew instantly that I had to recreate it. I'm so pleased with how these turned out, I took them off pretty much instantly afterwards to do some other designs and I've been regretting it ever since. But as it's the first day of spring (even if the weather doesn't match) it seemed fitting to post some spring nails today.

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

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.

Nailbox Review + Nail Art

Hey everyone! For a long time what the UK has been lacking is a nail polish subscription service, the US have quite a few but it's taken quite a while for the idea to reach us here. So when Nailbox got in contact with me and asked me to try out their subscription service I jumped at the chance. Each month you get three to four polishes and one or two extras. With this month's box I got four nail polishes and a cuticle pusher. All of them were from decent brands, so you're easily getting value for money. You can pay for a one-off box for £15 or an annual subscription for £13.50 per month, it's definitely worth it for what you get. If you want any more information you can check out their FAQ page here. I decided to create some nail art with some of the polishes I received, I wanted to do the dry brush technique that I tried for the first time last month but with different colours, and I really like how it turned out.

Tutorial Tuesday: Glitter Jellyfish

Hey everyone! Today I have a brand new tutorial tuesday for you, this time for some cute little glittery jellyfish. Don't forget to check out the tutorials tab at the top of my blog to see my previous tutorials! I've wanted to do jellyfish for ages, and I was really tempted to do them with needle dragging but I was in one of those 'it will probably fail so I wont even try' moods, and I'm quite glad because I like how these turned out. Perhaps I'll try needle dragging some time in the future instead. I'm starting to run out of ideas for tutorials, what would you'd like to see on future tuesdays? I only have a couple more tutorials left to post before I need to make some new ones, so any suggestions are welcome. Just don't ask for Christmas tutorials, I'm one of those spoil sports who doesn't even like the mention of Christmas before December begins. Anyway, the rest of the post will be after the jump! I've seen a few of you saying that you prefer it that way, as you can scroll through my blog much easier

Orly Black MegaPixel FX Review + Nail Art

Hey everyone! Today I have another review for you (I have a lot to get through), using the new Orly Black MegaPixel FX polish*, but this time I've included a bit of nail art. I'm actually really proud of these nails and I kept them on for a whole 3 days! Hopefully you will like them as much as I do. There's quite a few pictures in this post so I'm going to put them after the jump.

Which is best? Comparing Base Coats

Hey everyone! Today I'm back with another 'which is best?' post, this time on base coats. I will be comparing Orly - Bonder, Zoya - Get Even*, Barbara Daly - Goodbye Yellow, OPI - Matte Nail Envy, and Dior - Long Lasting Base Coat. I've had a few comments asking why I chose the things I chose to compare, it was either because they were there, because they were provided for review or because they're what I love to use. Before I start I just want to say that I only use one coat of base coat, and this is what these comparisons are based off, I read somewhere the other day that sometimes people use up to 4 coats and I don't know what is the usual amount but I always just use the one. 

Comparison No. 1 - Smoothness: 

1. OPI - 10/10, may just be because it's matte but definitely feels smoothest
2. Dior - 9/10, smooth and shiny 
3. Orly - 8/10, feels quite sticky (in order to bond). but definitely dry and smooth
4. Barbara Daly - 8/10, smooth but picks up any bumps in the nail (although 2 coats of it sorts this out)
5. Zoya - 3/10 doesn't really do what it claims to do, feels very sandy. My little finger was the least smooth nail and continued to feel that way

Comparison No. 2 - Drying Speed:

They all dried at pretty much the exact same speed so there's not much comparison there

Comparison No. 3 - Does it do what it says?

1. OPI - 10/10 yep definitely, my nails were very brittle from years of biting and this did wonders for my nails, they're now really strong
2. Orly - 10/10, definitely good at 'bonding', it's impossible to peel designs off when using this (something I have a bad habit of doing) and it definitely doesn't chip, I love this base coat just as much as OPI - Nail Envy, which is saying something
3. Dior - 9/10, just claims to be a base coat so it definitely is that, it's also long-lasting which it claims to be, although not as much as the Orly
4. Barbara Daly - 8/10 - i've never used it for a prolonged period of time so I don't know if it does end up whitening the nail, but it does give the immediate appearance of white nails when it's on, so as a base coat it would be good for negative space nails if you usually have quite white nails
5. Zoya - 2/10 nope, doesn't even out, in fact makes it more bumpy if anything (quite a rough texture)

Comparison No. 4 - Overall thoughts:

1. OPI - 10/10 lasts forever, I've been using this for over a year about 60% of the time and it's barely made a dint in it as you can see. It's also a brilliant base coat and does what it says
2. Orly - 10/10 great base coat, does what it says, dries quickly and is very smooth, also seems to last forever, it may look unused but i've used this a good 20-30 times
3. Barbara Daly - 8/10, never had any problems with it but haven't used it for long enough to determine whether it permanently makes the nails white, definitely does a good job at making them appear so
4. Dior - 9/10 does what it says and dries quick and very smooth, if it wasn't for the price I'm sure this would be an incredibly popular base coat 
5. Zoya - 2/10 dries white so wouldn't be good for a base for negative space nails, dries quick, but aside from that isn't really that great, doesn't do what it says and is quite annoying to use (pretty thick)

Day 25: Inspired by fashion

Hello everyone, I'm afraid I'm not a massive follower of fashion, in fact most of the 'fashionable' pieces of clothing in my wardrobe are those that I barely ever wear, so for this challenge I turned to trust Google images and put in 'fashion' and then chose the first thing that caught my eye.


I used Orly - Glowstick and Barry M - Matt White and Black with tape to create these nails, hope you like them!

Of course as is always the case with neons it was difficult for the camera to pick up, but I promise you it was incredibly bright, and you'll just have to take my word for it ;)

Alice