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.

Detailed Pink Florals

When I posted my Gold Lilac Rose nails the other week, I said that I wanted to recreate them in pink, and I couldn't resist doing that straight away. I decided to play around with them a bit more and this time I did the roses using acrylic paints, as I never really use acrylic paints anymore and I thought I'd see how they looked. They were super easy to work with, but I think I got a bit carried away with the roses and I don't quite like them as much as the last ones - practice makes perfect I guess! I also added polka dots and hearts rather than gold foil this time, and I like how it brings these a fresh look... although I do miss the gold foil a bit I must admit! 

Gold Lilac Roses

Happy Sunday everyone! Although there's only an hour of Sunday left. I've had a busy but chilled weekend, and I managed to find time to do a few nail designs today. One of them was this floral design inspired by Follow That Way.  I wasn't sure whether I'd ever be able to recreate one of her amazing florals, the detail she puts into them is astonishing, but I decided to give it a go, and I'm really really happy with how these came out. 

One thing I couldn't decide on was my accent nails, I originally did them with some of the nail negative space and with gold foil down the side but I wasn't 100% on them and the pictures didn't come out very well, so I did these, and then I did gold glitter accents. Of the three, these came out best in photos and I think the fact that they're quite muted means that the flowers stand out a bit more. 

Essie Mauve Roses

Hey everyone! Happy hump day. We've had a gorgeous summer day today in England, which is a bit of a rarity, so I decided today was a good day for some floral nails. Although you know me, I'll find any excuse to post florals, rain or shine. These were done using the gorgeous new Essie - Wild Nudes collection*, which is a permanent addition to their range. Good job too, because it's a completely stunning collection, and as you can see below they work really well together. 

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. 

Pink Glitter Roses

Hey everyone! Happy Monday. I'm starting the countdown again for trip away this weekend, which, as I mentioned in my last post, I spent last week counting down for as I thought it was last weekend... oops! At least I know it's definitely this weekend now. Anyway, on to the nails. I find that despite the fact that I have hundreds and hundreds of nail varnishes, I tend to only use the same colours or ones that I have to review, and as a result so many of my polishes don't get used and get forgotten about. It helps now that I have changed from a Helmer to Alex drawers from IKEA, because the drawers are much easier to use and don't feel like they are about to collapse as soon as you open them. Now I don't just keep a collection of polishes on my desk, and I try to use different colours in my drawers now and again, even though my priorities are products I have to review. Recently I saw on Pinterest that an old Barry M review of mine was quite popular, which included the shade Princess, and I remembered that I owned such a gorgeous shade, and I've been wanting to use it ever since. Then I stumbled upon this design on Pinterest and I knew it would be the perfect design to use the polish in. Unfortunately it's no longer available to buy, you could probably find it on eBay but for some reason they chose to stop making it, even though it's stunning! 

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.

Barry M Lilac Roses Tutorial

Hey everyone! I'm so excited because today I managed to get my hands on tickets to go see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child! I was in the 'queue' for 5 hours and when I finally got to the end I panicked and ended up booking for ages away (next October) so that I could get hold of the tickets I wanted, but it will be worth the wait. I read the script in one day at the weekend and I loved it. I know there's been some negative opinion surrounding it but I really liked it. Have you read it yet? Let me know your thoughts on it! 

So today I have a tutorial of these rose nails for you. I actually created these ages and ages ago, but I completely forgot that I'd done them somehow! I loved this design when I did them and I'm glad I'm finally sharing them with you. The full tutorial will be after the jump. 

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.

Meebox Review: Gold Glitter Roses

Hey everyone! Today I'm showcasing a 'new' subscription box: the Meebox*. I say 'new' because they've been around for a few months now but they're new to me, and my first experience was definitely a positive one. Each box contains "at least three top brand and indie nail polishes, essential tools, vital treatments and stunning nail art supplies". 

In this Meebox* I got Smith and Cult - Porn-a-thon (RRP £19), Leighton Denny - Feel The Burn (RRP £11), Nails Inc - Chelsea Embankment (RRP £14), Sparkly Nails Square Studs (RRP £1.50), plus three swatch sticks. Some lucky buyers also got a bottle of Chanel polish in their box, but unfortunately I wasn't one of them! Meebox is £20 for a rolling subscription, or £54 for 3 months. Each month has a new theme, this month's theme was 'Red Carpet.' 

I decided to create some nail art with the polishes I was received, I didn't use the studs because once I tried to add them to the design I decided they didn't really work, but the other polishes were all used. I wanted to experiment with a different kind of rose design, I'm still trying to perfect roses, I've done them very similarly for years but I never feel satisfied with them. I was really proud of how these turned out but there's still some work to do too.

Rose Polka Dots

Hey everyone! I hope you've all had a nice weekend, my boyfriend and I have spent the whole day in IKEA finding furniture for our first house together. We move in less than 3 weeks so it's super exciting, but scary too. IKEA is also the worst on a Sunday, it took us an hour to even park, so it's been a pretty stressful day. It's nice to sit and write this and think about something else for a bit. 

Today's nails are these cute polka dot roses. I love doing polka dots down half the nail, it's mainly a result of laziness but I also like how it looks. With this design it stops it looking too swamped, and keeps the roses as the main part of the design. If you want to learn how to create these yourself I created a tutorial over at Divine Caroline, which you can see here.

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

Alice

Negative Space Roses

Hey everyone! This week has been such a mixed bad of emotions for me, I started off the week really sad at the news of Bowie's death. Then I started my new job (which I'm loving so far), and it was my birthday on Wednesday. And then I heard the awful news about Alan Rickman, two greats in one week just doesn't seem right. It's definitely been a week of change.

I was lucky enough to have a few days off before I started my new job and that meant I had time to dedicate more than a few hours to nail art, which gave me the opportunity to experiment a bit more than I usually have time for. I've had the Nails Supreme nail art pens for a couple of years now, but I've never really used them as I've found them to be a bit too watery. I decided to replace the polish in them with an old bottle of Barry M - Cotton, which is the most opaque white polish I've used, and it worked so much better. These nails were just a quick experiment I did using them, I didn't use a basecoat or a topcoat because I was just messing around, but I ended up liking them enough to want to show you them.

Dark Romance Roses

Hey everyone! Today I'm showing you the second roses design that I promised in this post when I mentioned that I hadn't created roses in a while but ended up creating a couple of designs at once.  It's also my first nail art post using the newest Barry M - Sunset Collection*, which I reviewed here. I don't want to claim these to be 'realistic' but they're probably as realistic as I'm going to get as I don't tend to try to make roses look real, ever. With these I really did just mix pinks together until I thought it looked okay and they ended up looking a lot like petals (or at least I think so), I just wish I'd added more detail to the leaves!

Outlined Polka Roses

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I did any rose nails (in fact it's been well over a year as I just discovered from scrolling through my Instagram) but I actually have a couple of rose designs to show you over the next couple of weeks, and I'm hoping to have a third soon enough as well. I hadn't realised that it had been so long since I did any, especially as they're so cute and easy to create. I always love to combine roses with polka dots too, I think they go well together and the polka dots really make the roses stand out. I didn't want to add roses to all my nails and I found they were looking a bit plain once I'd finished so I added polka dots around the edge of my other nails and it was just what was needed to finish off the design.

Geometric Floral Nails for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! I realised earlier that I completely forgot to post these nails on to my blog, they went live a couple of weeks ago on Divine Caroline and I meant to include them in 'tutorial tuesday' but must have forgotten. Anyway, you get to see them now, and that's what matters, right? These were inspired entirely by Moustache Manis, and you can read all about them here, and also see the step-by-step instructions on how to create them.

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

Don't forget to check out the tutorial here

Alice

Outlined Roses for Avon

Hey everyone! Today I have another post I created for Avon to show you, this time I have some outlined roses. I stepped outside my OCD comfort zone a bit with these nails as I didn't try and do them neatly, I just drew the black on quickly and randomly, and I'm so glad I did because I really like how these have turned out. I think the messiness really adds to the design. I think I need to start working along similar lines to The Nailasaurus' new mantra that 'done is better than perfect', because perfectionist tendencies take up a lot of time!

Tutorial Tuesday: Gradient Polka Dot Florals for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! Today I have a brand new tutorial in collaboration with Divine Caroline for you. It's a bit of a mix of designs, and I wasn't entirely sure how to approach the step by step pictures, but if you head over here you can see for yourself whether I managed it coherently or not!

What do you think? Don't forget to check out the tutorial steps HERE

Alice

Nude Roses

Hey everyone! I'm back! I really needed a break from my blog whilst I got my head together, it wasn't a very good week for me and I wasn't really in the mood for blogging much so I'm really sorry about that. I'm hopefully going to be posting a few times this week so keep an eye out. Today's post is some nail art I created for my university nail art society, which you can read more about here. I was teaching everyone how to do a simple rose design but I ended up winging it a bit more whilst I was waiting for people to finish and I really liked how it turned out! I almost feel like it's cheating posting designs from nail art society on here, maybe because they weren't created specifically for the blog, but they're still designs I did and of course I still want to share them, so here you go! 

Because we're sponsored by Barry M, all the colours except the white are by them, so you can find them all on their website here. The white is Graffiti Nails which you can find here.

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

Alice

Tutorial Tuesday: Rose Polka Dots

Hey everyone! Today I have a brand new Tutorial Tuesday for you, this time for this gorgeous rose polka dots that you might remember from here. I had originally intended to post a tutorial for these bow nails today, because I was absolutely certain that I'd posted this tutorial already. However, after discovering (and double checking) that I hadn't, I decided to push the bow nails back a week and post these instead, considering I promised you a tutorial 'soon' over 3 months ago!  I can only apologise for my idiocy.

I wont bombard you with pictures as you've already seen these before, but just as a reminder for the colours I used 2True - Sienna for the base, 2True - Taylor for the roses, MASH - White, Barry M - Key Lime, and these studs from Born Pretty Store.

Step 1: Paint your nails pink

Step 2: Using a dotting tool and white polish draw dots on alternate nails

Step 3: Using a larger dotting tool paint on darker pink spots, more loosely than the white dots

Step 4: Using a thin brush paint on the shapes of the inside of the roses. For this shade I mixed the base colour and the white together to create a more opaque light pink

Step 5: Using the same brush paint on the leaves in green. 

Step 6: Finish off with a topcoat to seal in your design, and you’re done! You can also add studs whilst the topcoat is still drying if you wish

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

Alice

Essie - Then and Now: Review, Nail Art +GIVEAWAY

Hey everyone! Today I have an exciting new colour by Essie to show you called 'Then and Now'*. I hope I didn't confuse you too much with the title, I know some of you were probably expecting one of my comparison posts between my old work and new work,  but alas, today is just some new work, which hopefully you shall enjoy just as much! Essie have teamed up with Then and Now to create this gorgeous grey/brown shade. You can buy it here on their website but I will also be giving away a bottle to one lucky reader, you can enter using the Rafflecopter widget below.

For these nails I started off with 2 extremely easy coats of Essie - Then and Now* and I used Nicole by OPI - Spring Break* and Nicole by OPI - Selena* for the roses, along with Rimmel - Misty Jade* for the leaves, all topped off with a coat of Seche Vite.

Giveaway image

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The rules of the giveaway are under the 'Terms and Conditions' part of the widget, please make sure to read all the rules before entering but for those who are reading for those all important words, it is open internationally.

What do you think? Do you like the colour/nail art? 

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