Glitter Spots

Today I want to talk about the Essie Concrete Glitters collection*, because I've totally fallen in love with it. I sat down to do some nail art with them and ended up doing three different designs because I felt so inspired by all the colours! 

This was the first design I did, and it was completely inspired by Betina Goldstein (who by the way is totally killing it at the moment!). I used all the colours from the collection except Stay Up Slate. 

Minnie Mouse Polka Dots

Hey everyone! It feels like forever since I last wrote a blogpost. I've been busy with the whole house buying malarkey, although I do post a bit more regularly on Instagram if you don't already follow me on there. I'm at the Scratch Star Awards on Sunday, I'm nominated for Best Nail Art blog and I'm really excited! 

These nails were inspired by the Papier x Disney collection. I really like the collection as a whole, but I loved how these translated so easily into nails. They didn't take me very long either! They're just slightly extravagant polka dots really. 

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! 

Giant Polka Dots

Hey everyone! Did you have a lovely Valentine's/Galentine's day? I went out for a curry and watched a rom com while eating chocolates, pretty damn great! I'm so glad you all loved my floral nails from my last post, I'll definitely have to recreate them with different colours because I love them as much as you all seemed to! 

Today's nails are super simple, especially compared to the florals, but as I so rarely do simple nails it was nice to do something that only took a few minutes. These were inspired by i_heart_nailart on Instagram, and I just loved the look so much I had to recreate them. 

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! 

Pink Half Polka Dots

Hey everyone! Hope you're all having a lovely week so far. I've spent my evening baking cookies as we're having a bake off at work tomorrow. Luckily that means I can't eat them all, which I would usually as they are super yummy! Today's nails are some that I created ages ago, probably February time. They're simple but effective and I love this half and half polka dot look. 

Dotty Flowers

Hey everyone! It's the end of the weekend again, why does it always come so quick? I've had a really lovely weekend with friends and my boyfriend but I've got absolutely zero nail stuff done. Saturday is usually my nail day but I just didn't have a chance (and sometimes it's nice to have a day for me). So today I'm showing an older post that I'd not got around to posting because I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. I was sent the Winstonia - Berry Wine Brushes* to review and I've used them in most of my designs for the past couple of months but this design was the first time I played around with them. I liked the design more in person so I've debated whether or not to post them or not, but this blog should be a diary of all my designs, good and bad, so here you go. I'll do a full review on the brushes soon, but I want to get a bit better at using them first.

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.

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

Nude Dotticure

Hey everyone! I decided to take a bit of a break having posted every day last week (especially because I'd just started a new job), but I have so many nail designs to share with you that I just couldn't resist posting today. This is a very simplistic design that I did after seeing this design by Just1Nail on Instagram. I think I probably made my polka dots a little too small to call it an exact replica of her design, but I like how they look anyway.

Christmas Polka Dots

Hey everyone! As I mentioned yesterday in my Secret Santa nails post, I actually created two designs inspired by Peachy Polish, but I was a bit more unsure of these nails and I didn't think they turned out as well as yesterday's design. However, I still wanted to post them because this is after all meant to be a documentation of designs I've done, good or bad. Valesha's original design is much much better than mine but if I wasn't comparing mine against any others I think I'd probably like them. 

Green Autumn Leaves

Hey everyone! Today has felt more like autumn than any other day so far, I woke up to the loud noise of the wind and the entrance to work was littered with leaves. So it felt like the perfect time to post these nails, which I'm also currently wearing. I feel like I've jinxed it and made it all the more autumnal by wearing them! Luckily I've got a nice new coat to keep me warm, but it's always nice to get home at the end of the day and get warm in bed whilst you can hear the wind outside.

Grey Half Spots

Hey everyone! I've been debating whether or not to post these nails, as they didn't really turn out how I envisaged. I'm not really sure what I wanted them to look like, but I definitely wanted the accent nail to be a bit more bright and bold. I thought the yellow would work a lot better than it did, it just doesn't stand out enough, especially not for photography's sake. However, this is a diary of my designs, good and bad, so here you go. It's simplistic but there's something about it I really like (except the accent nail).

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.

Gelish Ooh La La Collection Polka Dot Nail Art

Hey everyone! Here are the full pictures of the nails I wore on my holiday, if you want to read about it you can see my post here. I don't often apply gel nails to myself as I change my polish so often it's difficult to test them out properly. But as I was going away for a week I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try out some of the new Gelish Ooh La La Collection*.

Nails on Holiday

Hey everyone! So last year when I went to Italy I did a post titled 'Nails on Tour' where I posted pictures of my nails in front of all the things I got up to on holiday. It's one of my favourite posts to look back on as I have some really great memories from that holiday, so I wanted to do the same this year when I went to Cyprus. Last year me and my friend did lots of touristy things and adventuring, but this year me and my boyfriend did a bit more relaxing than exploring. I did however still manage to take a few photos to show you. 

I had such an amazing time with perfect weather, the post-holiday blues are definitely bad this year! If you're looking for a hotel to stay at I'd 100% recommend the Atlantica Oasis in Limassol. It took us so long to choose a hotel, but we definitely made the perfect choice. It's family-friendly so there are lots of children but as a couple we still had an amazing time. This was our first experience of all inclusive, so we did a lot of eating, and all the food was gorgeous. I pigged out on pancakes all week because they were unlimited and it was brilliant!

On my nails I'm wearing Gelish - Postcards From Paris*, with an accent nail of Gelish - Escar-go To France*, both of which are from the new Ooh La La collection. You might remember the glitter from my Monthly Favourites, and it certainly didn't disappoint on holiday! I'll do a full post on the nails separately. Read more after the jump.

Navy Polka Dots

Hey everyone! I've now done two exams and I only have one left next week, I'm starting to taste freedom (and regular posts!). I created a load of really simple nail art designs one night a few weeks ago and I'd completely forgotten about the pictures until I was looking through my files last night, so here's one of them. It's not much, but I always think that polka dots are a really effective design. They're also always noticed by people, which is sods law because designs that take hours don't tend to get noticed!

Mod Nail Art for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! Sorry for the radio silence, as I mentioned last week I have exams this week so I've been busy studying and it was also my boyfriend's 21st this weekend so I've not really been on my laptop much. My first exam is tomorrow, I'm not feeling overwhelmingly confident but I've done as much work as I can do so we'll see. Today's nails didn't exactly turned out as I had planned. I was given the prompt of 'mod nails' by Divine Caroline and I did a bit of googling on mod patterns and decided to wing it based on a variety of patterns. I'm still not sure whether I like the end result or not. I did end up wearing these for a good week, but only because I didn't have time to take them off! I think they ended up looking a bit like bacon and my flatmate thought they looked like DNA strands, neither were really the effect I was going for! If you like them you can see the tutorial on how to create them here.

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

Alice

Summer Blues

Hey everyone! The weather here has FINALLY been sunny and it's been so nice to be able to go out and do stuff over the past few days and not be drenched/windswept when I get back in. I've been having a few days relaxing to celebrate finishing my dissertation and it's been so nice to just not have to worry about it for the first time in months. Today's nails are some summer flower gradients I created for Divine Caroline, I also have a tutorial on their website for you to use if you want to create these yourself.

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

Alice

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!