Negative Space Floral Studs

Do you ever just see a design on Instagram/Pinterest (or wherever) and instantly know that you have to recreate it? Because that's what happened to me with these nails. I saw these nails by Mikutsutaya and instantly fell in love. Mine are nowhere near as elegant as hers, but I still love how they turned out.

Mice and Cheese

Happy Tuesday everyone! I've got something slightly different from the usual florals and patterns today with this mice and cheese design. I saw a few similar ideas floating around on Pinterest, and I stumbled across this design, and I loved the idea so much that I had to recreate it. I tried these first on false nails to see how they looked, and I must admit my first attempt was slightly better than these, but I hope you still like them! 

Glitter French Triangles

And just like that, Christmas is over. I hope you all had a lovely one. I'm counting down the days to the next festive period already, it's definitely the best time of the year. I'm lucky in a way that my birthday is only 3 weeks after Christmas so the fun isn't quite over yet, although it does mean that once my birthday is over I have to wait a whole year for any more celebrations! 

One of my Christmas presents this year was a wonderful new lightbox handmade by my dad. He built my last one but unfortunately it only worked with my old camera, so it was time for an update, and he pulled all the stops out this time. Of course I couldn't resist taking some photos in it, and here are the results!  I've seen this design around a few times on Instagram, but these in particular were inspired by Hey Nice Nails and I'm really pleased with how they turned out. 

OPI Khaki Tribal

 It feels like forever since I last did tribal nails, especially ones that take ages. I'm too much of a perfectionist so tribal nails annoy me a lot because I don't quite have the skill to make them look like I want. Nevertheless, I do like them, and I'm pretty happy with how these ones turned out. I didn't have a clue where I was going with this design, I just wanted to have a play around with the OPI - Iceland Collection* so I decided to see where it would go. I did intend to do the design on all my fingers but I really liked the line design on it's own so I left those as accents. 

Nails on Tour: Ibiza Long Weekend

Hey everyone!  It's been a while since I did a 'nails on tour' post, but as I mentioned in my last post I recently went to Ibiza and I decided to show my nails on tour once again. I did actually take the photos to do a post like this when I went travelling in April, but have never got round to it and now I think it's maybe too late. Let me know if you think I should still post them, I went to 7 different countries in 2 weeks so there's a lot of content! Anyway, here's my long weekend in Ibiza:

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. 

Lilac Negative Space Flowers

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I last posted as I've been away to Ibiza (post coming soon with my holiday nails) and we've also been evicted from our house out of the blue for no reason! Having to move house for the third time in 2 years definitely wasn't in my plans, especially when we haven't been given a reason why. It's been very stressful, so as you can imagine it's been hard to find the motivation to post. However, we're feeling hopeful that we might have something sorted, although I don't want to jinx it, so I thought it was time for a post. 

Today's nails are using the OPI Fiji Collection* again, this is definitely my favourite OPI collection in a long while, I just can't get enough of it. There's such a great range of colours and so many options for nail art. If you missed my last look you can see it here. I couldn't resist creating some more florals with the collection, although these are slightly simpler than the last! 

Negative Space Stamping

Hey everyone! Can you believe it's already Wednesday? I've been to the cinema tonight to see Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, which by the way is hilarious but if you don't like inappropriate films it definitely wont be for you. They really don't hold back. But if you don't mind that kind of thing then I'd definitely recommend it because me and my friend were in stitches. I love a good cheesy comedies, and I'm a huge fan of Anna Kendrick so it was great for me. 

Today's nails are some that I created ages ago and I was so proud of them when I did them but before I took pictures I ruined the thumb bail and when I tried to fix it I didn't like how it came out second time around. Nevertheless, I still wanted to post the design, which I did when I was experimenting with stamping quite a lot. I seem to go through phases of experimenting with it and then going back to freehand and I'm in a freehand stage at the moment.

Copper Triangles

Hey everyone! Hope you've all had a lovely weekend. I was meant to have quite a busy one but I was far too ill yesterday to do anything so i just painted my nails and watched TV - a perfect day really, had it not been for me being ill! Luckily I'm feeling a bit better today and I managed to get some holiday shopping done. I found a skirt today that I think I'll be doing some nails inspired by, so keep an eye out for that! 

Today's nails are as a result of me just playing around a couple of weeks ago. I really wanted to try out Barry M - Copper Mine* from the Molten Metal Collection* as I'd seen a few people using it and it seemed like the perfect mix of copper and rose gold. And it is! I love it, but of course I couldn't just wear it plain. I decided to play around with some nail art pens that I'd not used in a while, and then I added some triangle studs from She Sells Sea Shells, which I bought absolutely ages ago but never got around to doing any designs with.

Paint All The Nails Presents Neon

Hey everyone! It's nearing the end of the month again, and that means it's time for another Paint All The Nails link up, and this month the theme is 'neon'. I wasn't actually going to join in this month because I don't own many neons at all and I didn't think I could create anything worthwhile. Just as I'd given up on the idea of participating, the new Models Own - Polish For Tans* collection dropped through my letterbox. I haven't received anything from Models Own for at least a year, if not two, so it was a nice surprise and also a strange coincidence. I felt like I had to create something using them for the prompt as it felt like fate, and so here I am! I used all 5 polishes from the collection for this nail art, and I'm still wearing them now. I'm not used to wearing something so bright so they keep catching me by surprise, but I ended up really liking them. 

Negative Blue Marble

Hey everyone! I hope you've had a good start to the week so far. Monday's aren't always the best days but mine wasn't too bad. Today I've got a quick post with these blue marble nails. Is there a term for the new trend of half negative space nails? I feel like there should be if there isn't because "halved nails" sounds a bit rubbish so I just tend to stick with calling them negative space. Despite the lack of a name, I love this trend and there are so many different options (basically you could just cut any design in half) that I doubt I'll get bored anytime soon. Although I do try not to do it as much as I'd like because otherwise it might get a bit boring to read about! For this design I was struggling to think of a design as I was in 'swatching mode', and I saw a "halved" design on Instagram and knew that's what I wanted to do, so I just went where the design took me. I decided the combination of this and stamping marbling would work quite well, and I was really happy with the results. 

First Day of Spring, Negative Space Florals

It was the officially the first day of spring on sunday, and it's probably the first time it's been sunny and vaguely warm too, despite the fact that the first day of spring is normally always rainy and cold! So in celebration I decide to show you some spring nails, these aren't my first spring nails this year because I will put spring nail art on even when I'm eye deep in snow, but they can at least be my first official start of spring nails. For today's design I created a load of designs on a nail wheel, and I was playing around with negative space florals for this and I really liked the outcome, so I ended up recreating it on my nails. These were actually my moving day nails, and I wore them for almost two weeks (I was dying to change them by the end!) but they held up really well. 

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.

Negative Space Saran Wrap

Hey everyone! I hope you're all managing to stick to your new years resolutions so far now that the first week of January is officially over. I haven't actually started my 'get fit' resolution as my birthday is next week so I want to be able to eat as much cake as possible. However, second on my list of resolutions is to try more indies, and this is exactly what I've done for this design. I've been trying out some Ard As Nails polishes, and for this design I used Olly* and Sharona*, but you'll see the rest soon too. 

For these nails I was completely inspired by this design by Chelsea Queen from ages ago (took me forever to find that link!), but rather than doing watercolour nails I wanted to do saran wrap. I also tried to make it my own a little bit so of course it's nowhere near as gorgeous as the original, but I'm still pretty happy with how they turned out.

This is my first manicure using Kiesque's Liquid Pallisade*, and it has absolutely revolutionised doing nails for me. I know it's been around for a while but I've not really dipped my toe (or should I say finger) in at all and I can tell I've definitely been missing out. I've already done 4-5 designs using it and I'm sure there will be more, but this is the first to be posted. No more faffing around with tape (although I'm sure it will still get use somewhere). I'll be doing a full review on it soon but I think it's clear that I love it. 

Negative Space Florals for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! Just a quick post on these negative space florals I created for Divine Caroline. You can read all about them here and see the tutorial on how to create them. You all know how much I love negative space designs, but I've always done smaller florals and I really wanted to try something a bit different (ish). I just wish I'd made them matte, because I feel it brings out the design a bit more.

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

Alice

Negative Space All The Nails!

Hey everyone! Today's post is another monthly link-up from a Facebook group I'm part of called Paint All The Nails. Each month we do a non-compulsory monthly link-up with a theme we've all voted on. This month's theme is 'negative space', and I'm sure you all know that this was definitely my vote. There's so many designs you can do with negative space and I always love how they look. Funnily enough, I must admit that I completely forgot about this month's link up being today, and on Saturday (which is the only day I paint nails at the moment) it didn't even cross my mind. But, it happened to be that my subconscious clearly remembered, because I had an urge to do negative space nails, and I did. So rather than panic when I remembered I'd forgotten, I had a design waiting for me, and it's actually one of my favourite designs I've done. These nails were based off this post by Sakura Nail&Beauty on Instagram. The design instantly stood out to me, but I must admit I thought it might look better on shorter nails, so I gave it a go and I ended up loving the finished result. If you want to see what the other girls created this month then check out the InLinks below!

Negative Space Daisy Nail Art

Hey everyone! I hope you've all had a nice weekend. I've never appreciated weekends more than I do now that I work full time and so I have to try and get as much out of them as I can. Saturday is my 'nail day' where I try and cram as many designs in to one day as possible, and then the rest of the week I live at my boyfriend's house where I have no nail polish (shock horror). This week however it's my graduation so I'll be able to hopefully paint some graduation nails on Tuesday night in time for Wednesday! Today's nails are these cute negative space daisy nails. As you all know I love negative space designs and I've done a couple of floral ones before, but I really liked the idea of doing daisies for an even more simplistic look and I love how they turned out. I wore these all of last week and I couldn't stop staring at them the whole time.

Revamped French Manicure Florals

Hey everyone! So yesterday's manicure was a freehand french manicure, and I mentioned in the post how they had been ruined once I added topcoat. Rather than taking them off entirely I decided to add flowers to them to disguise the lack of straight line and I really ended up likely the end result. I wore these for quite a few days until I spilt acetone on them and ruined them and it was time for something new. Revision has meant I've not been painting my nails much recently but I hope to be back in the swing of things soon! Less than two weeks to go and I will be finished with university for ever, it's bitter sweet but it's definitely time.

Mani Swap with Dahlia Nails

Hey everyone! It's been a while since my mani swap with Dahlia Nails (which you can see here), and we decided that it was probably time to do a new one. If you haven't of Dahlia Nails, it's run by two lovely ladies, Jo and Emma. They're both great at nail art and you can check out their blog here. I was actually having trouble picking a design to recreate because there's so many I like! In the end I chose to recreate their 'Spring Dotticure' design. They've recreated my Negative Space Florals and my Spotted Owl designs, and they've both done them brilliantly. I think it's a nice/funny coincidence that me and Emma chose such similar designs to recreate!

Negative Space Chevrons for Avon

Hey everyone! Today I just have some super simple nail art to show you all. I must admit these looked a lot more effective in person than they do in the pictures, but hopefully you get the gist. All you need is a basecoat, one colour, some tape, and a topcoat. I applied the basecoat, and once that was dry I cut my cellotape into triangles and applied to the top of my nail, then I painted my nails as usual, removed the tape, and added topcoat. Voila! I got a lot of compliments on these when I was wearing them, and I think they'd also look great with pastel colours, considering spring is on its way (supposedly).