No Place Like Home - Meebox December Review + Nail Art

Hey everyone! I'm back with another Meebox review, this month's (well, last month's) box was themed 'No Place Like Home'*, and is of course based on the Wizard of Oz. It includes an amazing £63 worth of products for just £20, which include:

Kure Bazaar – Pigalle (RRP £14)
Zoya Goldie (RRP £11.50)
Leighton Denny – Jailbird (RRP £12)
MoYou Fairy Tale Stamping Plate (which is Wizard of Oz themed) – (RRP £5.99)
MoYou Stamper- (RRP £2.99)
NCLA Gingham nail wraps (RRP £13)
Ard as Nails – cuticle oil (RRP £5)

I love that there's always a theme to each box, but I think this might be my favourite theme so far. And of course there was no option but for me to create some Wizard of Oz nails with the polishes, I used all the products for this nail art, they all went so well together I couldn't resist.  

Blue Checkers/Gingham

Hey everyone! I decided to redo my orange checkers nails from the other day in my favourite nail polish colour: blue. I really love the look these nails have and I think I prefer them even more in blue. I probably will end up trying this in other colours too, now I've realised how simple they are to create. It's not as hard as it looks, just paint your base, stripe in white, and fill in the centre of the stripes in light blue ... although that sounds really patronising probably if you're only just starting out! A good striping brush goes a long way, I've recently been using these (mainly the smaller one) from Born Pretty Store but I've also used a variety of others over the years. If you want to try out those brushes, you can use my code KHL91 to get 10% off. 

I used Barry M - Sky Blue* for the base, then I used Barry M - Cotton* for the stripes, and a mix of the two colours for the lighter blue. Then I added Seche Vite topcoat to seal it all in. Unfortunately I wrecked these in the middle of taking photos by hitting them on my lightbox (it'll teach me to wait a bit longer!) so I didn't get to take more than one photo unfortunately, but I'm sure there will be more versions in the future.  

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

Alice

Orange Checkers/Gingham

Hey everyone! I couldn't really decide what to call this post as I'm not sure whether these really are gingham or not. With my previous gingham designs (see here and here) the white has always been the base colour. Here, however, the orange is the base colour so I'm not sure if it's just a checkered design or if it can still be classed as gingham, you'll have to let me know! This design came about because I realised that Barry M - Cotton* is incredibly opaque for nail art, so when using it for stripes it doesn't go blotchy, which is an issue I normally have when striping with white. All the lines created with this are solid, and it made it easier to do these.

Tutorial Thursday: Gingham Studs for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! This was supposed to go up last night but the schedule didn't work, so here you go! After I posted my gingham nails last month, I had a lot of requests for a tutorial, so I teamed up with Divine Caroline to bring you one! I knew that I really wanted to combine them with more autumnal colours. I'm really liking deep reds this year, even though they stain no end they also look great, and I love how these turned out. Adding polka dots almost like studs was more of an afterthought when I realised that I didn't really want to do all the nails with gingham, and I think it ended up working really well. If you want to see how to create these yourself click HERE to go to the Divine Caroline website.

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

Alice

Gingham Man at the Helm Book Inspired Nail Art + Review

Hey everyone! I've been meaning to do gingham nails for ages, they've been at the top of my to-do list for over a year, but I just haven't plucked up the guts to do them. Anything involving line work puts me off, I don't feel confident doing lines, and they often go awfully as a result, and as gingham is just lines, I've always been a bit wary of doing it incase I mess it up. So when Penguin got in contact a couple of weeks ago and asked me to do some gingham nails inspired by the cover of their new release, Man at the Helm* by Nina Stibbe, it was the push I needed to finally do the design. 

I'm a huge fan of books, up until uni (which destroyed my free time) I never really had my head out of a book, now I only tend to read on trains, and ever since I got my car that's become a lot less regular as well. However, this summer I've really rediscovered my love of books. I've always been a staunch hater of e-readers but I got one a few months ago to save me lugging books around betwen uni and home, or on holiday, and I took it on holiday with me and read 4 books in a week, so they're pretty handy in a way, but I'm still a staunch supporter of having a book in hand. Especially when the cover is as lovely as Man at the Helm's. Which of course you wouldn't get to see if you were just reading it on Kindle. I've also done a few designs based from the cover of books before, and I've done a design of Penguin's own book covers, so it was an honour to be contacted by them.