Fast Food

Long time no see! I've had such a hectic few months because... I bought a house! It's been so so stressful but we're finally in and it's so exciting. I don't quite have a nail room set up yet because unfortunately we have a bit of a leak, so in true Blue Peter fashion ... here's one I made earlier. 

Grumpy Cats

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I did any non-floral nails so I decided to mix things up a bit with these grumpy cat nails. They weren't supposed to look so moody, but once I'd painted a couple of the cats and they started to look sullen I decided to just go with it. After all, cats are pretty moody right? At least mine is anyway! I've always considered myself a cat person but I'm definitely becoming a dog person too now, and I can't wait to get my own place so I can actually get pets! These were pretty straight forward to create, but full details are after the jump.

Essie 1000th Shade - Aim To Misbehave Nail Art + Review

Hey everyone! Hope you've all had a lovely weekend, we had a bank holiday weekend in the UK and it was so great to have 3 days off. Less than two weeks now until my holiday where I'll have a whole 9 days off and not have to think about anything. This weekend I spent time with my friends, shopping for my holiday and of course doing tonnes of nails. In fact I feel like I've wasted my day off today in a way because I've been inside catching up on reviews all day instead of enjoying the sunshine - the sacrifices I make eh? Haha.

Anyway, today's nail art is something fun and bright to match the weather we had here today, even if I didn't get to enjoy it. Essie recently released their 1000th shade: Aim To Misbehave*, which is this gorgeous fun and shimmer golden yellow shade. It's such an honour to be able to show their 1000th shade on my blog. Whilst I don't have a tonne of Essie polishes, I love all the ones that I do have, and they were some of the first polishes I ever owned (thanks eBay!) so the brand holds a special place in my heart. Especially as they organised for me to have my photo done by Rankin!

Saran Wrap Outline + Tutorial for Barry M

Hey everyone! I know I said that this week would be Barry M week but once again life has got in the way! I'll be posting the posts I intended to post tomorrow and sunday, as I still need to swatch them. Instead today I'm showing you another tutorial I created for Barry M. I debated over whether or not to post this, as the response on Barry M's Facebook page was incredibly negative, but this page is a record of the designs I've created, and I personally really like the design, so here you go: saran wrap outlines!

Tutorial Tuesday: Drips

Hey everyone! Today I'm starting a new feature called 'Tutorial Tuesday,' I have a tonne of tutorials to show you but I never seem to post them. I've added a tutorial tab to the top of my blog due to Sarah's fabulous suggestion, but it made me realise that I just don't have enough tutorials. So for at least the next 10 weeks I will be doing a tutorial every tuesday for you all, I hope you like it!

Today's tutorial is for my drip nails, I did these quite a while ago and a tutorial was requested, so to whoever requested it I'm very sorry it has taken so long

You will need:

·      Barry M – Lychee (or a cream/nude polish)

·      Barry M – Blueberry ice-cream (or a blue polish)

·      Barry M – Berry Ice Cream (or a lilac polish)

·      Barry M – Dragon Fruit (or a pink polish)

·      Barry M – Black and White nail art pens

·      Small brush

·      Top Coat

Step 1: Paint your nails with a base of Barry M – Lychee

Step 2: Using a small brush paint a basic outline for your drips, this doesn’t need to be perfect

Step 3: Colour in the lines from the previous step

Step 4: Using the black Barry M nail art pen, outline the drips

Step 5: Using the white Barry M nail art pen, draw the reflections for the drips

Step 6: Finish off with a topcoat to seal in your design, a matte topcoat is great for making the drips really stand out

And that's it! What do you think? Let me know in the comments

Alice

Digital Dozen Does Fashion: Day 4

Hey everyone! First of all I just wanted to announce that the giveaway winner has been chosen and contacted, and she has replied. Nail Girl's will announce her name on their Facebook page in the next few days I think. Anyway, I'm really sorry I didn't post last night, I was just too tired. I'm so happy to have a day off tomorrow! Day 5 will be tomorrow, and my very delayed 'which is best' for matte top coats will hopefully be Sunday so there's quite a bit coming up in the next few days. 

Today's post is based on another La Moda satchel, which has unfortunately sold out in this particular colour, but this is similar for those who fancy it.

The base of this is MASH - White, the nude is Butter LONDON Cuppa, the red is Jacava - Crimson Crush and the black is acrylic paint.

I decided to again mix the outside and the inside into one design, but it took me quite a while to work out how. This design was actually a bit of an accident because I had originally intended to post my nails fully with Cuppa but I forgot and painted them all with white and had to improvise! Nevertheless, I'm really happy with how it came out!

What do you think? 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

Digital Dozen Does Fashion: Day 1

Hey everyone! I'm back with another week of digital dozen posts for you. I unfortunately missed July but hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this week's post. I've just started a new job though so I might dwindle later in the week but we shall see. I apologise in advance if that does happen! 

So for the first day I'm bringing you some nails inspired by this* gorgeous La Moda satchel. I'm going to put the rest of this post after the jump because it's going to be a pretty long on.

Barry M Nail Art Pens Review

Hey everyone! Today I have a post which I'm super excited to show you, using the 4 new Barry M nail art pens. They were released in Superdrug and online today (10th April) and will be released in Boots on the 17th April. As you will see, I highly recommend getting at least one of these pens because they're awesome and completely unlike any other nail art pens I've tried before. More after the jump!

Pop out nails

Hey everyone! I dont really know what to call these nails, so 'pop out' shall have to do. Unless you have any better ideas? I was inspired to do these by Nancy Mc Nails, mine are nowhere near as good as hers but I aspire to be as good as her one day! (Teach me your secrets Nancy!) I love this new pink I got from Very Emily and I really wanted to use it, so I put the two wishes together and created these.

I originally did these shiny as Nancy does, but I didn't feel like they were photographing very well so I added a matte top coat (any excuse, ey?), but I've included a shiny picture for you to compare and tell me which you prefer. 

To create these I started with a base of Essence - Free Hugs which is a brilliant vibrant pink and I'm sure you'll be seeing a lot more of it on the blog. Then I added China Glaze - Liquid Leather around the edges with a small paintbrush, and any mistakes I just went over in pink. Then I added a line of MASH - White Nail Polish, and topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite. And then to make it matte I added MASH - Matte top coat (which is half price on their website at the moment by the way!). 

Here's the design shiny, which do you prefer?

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Alice

Trying out the pens again!

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a fantastic christmas, mine was lovely but unfortunately now I feel really ill and working with nail varnish tonight really hasn't helped! Anyway, today I decided to try out using pens for nail art again, I got a lot of questions about them last time so here is where to get them if you're interested. They're also the only pens I'll ever use for writing for some reason because I love them so much!

I thought it would be nice to do something using China Glaze 'Something Sweet' which I've wanted to use again for a while. I was going to do some more paisley print but I didn't think you guys would want to see the same design again, at least not for a while! So I decided to do some flowers, and although they looked pretty good plain I decided to add a bit of Barry M Gold Foil, and now I kind of wish I'd added white too but I still quite like them.

Hope you like them! Alice

Nudey drips

Oh what's that? More matte nails? Of course! I couldn't resist, I'm sorry, but I did originally do these shiny (technical terms) and didn't really like how the photos came out unfortunately, so I added matte and now they look awesome-r (duh). I love these cartoon drips, I see them everywhere so unfortunately I dont know who they originated from, if you know let me know and I'll give correct credit!

For the base I used OPI - Did you 'ear about Van Gogh, and then using a dotting tool I put on Barry M -Berry and China Glaze - For Audrey, later outlined and highlighted in acrylic paint.

Do you think I should have kept them shiny or is my neverending use of matte as awesome as I see it to be (hint hint)? Alice

Nude flowers/return of the matte attack

Hi girls! I wasn't actually going to post today, but then I saw this lovely post on instagram and I just had to do it. You all know my love of matte nails so of course it was instantly appealing to me, and as soon as I got back from university I sat down and started on them. They were relatively easy to complete, I've just cut one of my small brushes down even smaller, it was my first time doing it and I think it could actually do with being smaller but it will do for now, and so I wanted to use it for a bit of outlining to see how it looked.

Firstly I painted my nails nude using Nails Inc 'great pulteney street' from the colour burst set (can you tell I love that set yet? haha) and then I used a dotting tool to place random dots of Barry M - Berry, Barry M - Red, Unnamed dark purple No 7 (no label, boo!) and Models Own - Blooboo. Then I used a small brush (not the cut down one) to paint on the leaves in China Glaze - Gaga for green, and then I outlined it all in black acrylic paint and a very small brush

I've always loved the look of things outlined in black (especially when it's matte), what do you think? Let me know in the comments! 

Alice