Arched Studs

I've been sorting out my laptop recently to try and speed it up and I realised when I was going through my 'to post' folder that I never posted these nails using the China Glaze Chic Physique* collection. They were just some quick nails I did using the brushes from the bottle, and I'm not sure how I feel about the studs! 

Peach Daisies

Where has the sun gone?! It's back to being all rainy and miserable. I'm flying to Berlin tomorrow and the weather isn't looking much better there either! Anyway, enough weather chat, these nails are enough to brighten things up after all. I did these as a quick mani when I was struggling for ideas, and I wasn't 100% because they make me think of fried eggs a bit, but I like them enough to not hide them away in my deleted folder forever so I'll let you decide: eggs or flowers?

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. 

Aztec Accents

After a nice relaxing Saturday having afternoon tea, I decided it was probably time to start editing the multitude of designs I've had sitting on my computer for months. I annoy myself with my tendency to do loads of designs that I never get around to editing. Finally this design gets to see the light of day, and I'm pretty pleased it does. There's something so striking about aztec designs, and I love how the dark vampy green brings out the black and white. 

OPI Iceland Abstract Splodges

Can you tell by the title that I had absolutely no idea what to call these nails? I'm sure there is a name for this style but for the life of me I can't think what it is. That's what happens when you leave blog post writing until after a full day of work, and having your brain fried by Peaky Blinders. Whatever they are called, these are loosely inspired by Nina Nailed It. I've seen this type of design floating round Instagram for a while now, but I know that she originated this kind of look and I always love her designs but I wont pretend that mine will ever look as good as hers! 

I wanted to have another play around with the OPI Iceland Collection*, it's such a gorgeous muted collection but there are so many options for nail art I just couldn't resist. Considering it's an autumn collection I feel like I managed to create quite a bright mani out of the shades, but I'm sure there will be more moody colours that will show their face on the blog soon. Considering my last mani with the collection wasn't very moody either. 

Gold Leaf Marble

I can't believe it's already Autumn, I know it's so typical as a Brit to talk about the weather, but it really doesn't feel like we had much of a summer. I must admit though that Autumn is one of my favourite seasons, I love any excuse to wear something from my extensive jumper collection, and I love cosying up under a blanket on an evening with some candles lit. 

I do have a tendency to regress back into summer colours in my nail art however, so I tried my hand at doing something a little more autumnal this time around. Can you believe I've never used gold foil before? I've had a little pot of gold flakes that was given to me by my good friend Very Emily years and years ago, and I'd totally forgotten I owned it. However, I've seen so many designs on Instagram recently using gold foil that I just couldn't resist doing some myself, and I remembered that little pot hiding away in my drawer and decided to give it a go. 

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. 

Crazy Flowers

Sometimes a design looks much better in practice than it does in reality, and this is definitely one of those designs. I was inspired by this design I found on Pinterest but I tried to make it my own and just ended up with a design I wasn't really that pleased with. I decided to post them anyway because they're not the worst nails I've ever done, even if they're not the best either. I think if they were more cohesive they would work a lot better, I should have probably just stuck with the original design, but you live and learn I suppose! 

I used Bourjois - Bleu Mysterieux, and Barry M - Cotton as the base colours, then I used Sally Hansen - Redgy*, Sally Hansen - Pink Cadillacquer*, Orly - Light As A Feather*, and Deborah Lippmann - Walking on Sunshine for the flowers. The studs are from Born Pretty Store. Finished with a coat of Seche Vite. 

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

Alice

Essie Periwinkle Stars

Honey I'm hooooommeeeee. I'm finally back! And I'm hoping this time I'm back for good. I decided to take a couple of weeks off to focus on moving house, Christmas, new year and just generally getting my life back in order. November and December were tough and eventful, but I feel like I've come out the other side now and I want to throw everything back into my blog. I've missed it a lot, this is my outlet, and I wish life hadn't got in the way recently, but I had so much to deal with that it was easier to let this aspect of my life slide a little bit. Now I'm feeling more normal and happy I'm ready to find my passion again. 

I've barely even painted my nails over the past 2 months, it's not just that I've barely been posting but I really haven't actually done any designs. I genuinely don't think I've stopped for 2 months though, I've kept myself busy every single day to cheer myself up and I've not had much time for anything else. However, I made some time to sit down the other day and just paint my nails. Nothing too extravagant, but something that says 'hey I'm back and I'm sorry for abandoning you all', and something that says 'this is still what I love doing', so I hope I've done that with this incredibly simplistic design. I actually even made the time to paint both hands (don't fall off your chair in shock) for the first time in months and months.  

Burgundy Geometric Stripes Nail Art

Hey everyone! Whilst you're reading this I'm hopefully sunning myself or in a pool right now, so I'm sure you can understand why I'm not quite willing to accept that Summer is pretty much over and it's almost Autumn. So when I received the new OPI - Washington DC Collection for Autumn I couldn't face doing a full review just yet, not until after my holiday at least. Instead, I compromised and decided to create some nail art using the collection. I was inspired by these nails on Pinterest. I'm super into Pinterest at the moment, only about 3 years too late. I never really got into the initial hype, but recently I've been using it a lot for work and decided to give it a try again for my blog, and I've ended up finding loads of inspiration. If you want to check out my pins you can see them here.

Models Own Dare To Bare Collection Skittle Nail Art

Hey everyone! Hope you're all having a lovely week so far, I'm in countdown mode for my holiday now so I can't wait for the week to finish. Although I go away on Sunday, I've not yet sorted anything, which is making me feel slightly stressed! It'll be so nice to get away and to not have to think about anything for a while, I haven't had more than a 4 day weekend since last June so I desperately need this time off, and apparently it's 32 degrees in Majorca at the moment so let's hope it stays that way. 

Anyway, today's nails are a skittle of the 5 new Models Own Hypergels from the Dare to Bare collection* . I thought that it was very handy (see what I did there, ba dum tss) that there were 5, as it meant that I could show you them all in one go. These are actually my first Hypergels from Models Own and I was definitely impressed with them as a first time user. I can really tell the difference between the regular polishes and these, largely due to the application as it's much easier. I always love a good nude design or shade, so 5 in one collection is the dream and they all work really well together, perfect for a skittle mani. Full details after the jump.

Celestial Cosmetics Dracarys Flowers

Hey all! Just a super quick post today, but I wanted to show you these floral nails I did using Celestial Cosmetics - Dracarys* (see my review here). I did these a while ago but I wasn't 100% on how they came out so I've put off posting them for a while. I'm not sure what I was trying to go for with them but they definitely weren't as planned! However, I'm really behind with editing at the moment so this was one of my only edited posts. I need to get on top of stuff because I'm going on holiday soon and I want to make sure I have enough posts for whilst I'm away! 

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!

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.

Multi-coloured Mermaid Scales

Hey everyone! I've had the busiest week ever, I've barely even see my boyfriend because I've been getting back home late every night, so it's nice to have had more of a relaxing Friday night (watching the original Ghostbusters - which I've never actually seen!). This has meant that finally I have time to write a blogpost without falling asleep midway through!  As I mentioned in my review of June's Meebox I created some nail art with the nail vinyls included in the box. I wanted to try them out with different colours so I used a number of colours from the Celestial Cosmetics - Pun-tastic Collection*, which I'm really loving using at the moment (as you saw in my last post). I also used the She Sells Sea Shells starfish studs from the Meebox to complete the design.

June Splash Meebox Review + Nail Art

Hey everyone! Today I've got another Meebox* to review for you. You can see my previous two reviews of the February and April boxes here. June's box is themed 'Splash' and is a mermaid-inspired box. It's a unique one, because it's entirely made up of indies. The 3 polishes, whilst usually a mix of different brands (both indie and regular), are this time all from A-England, the shades are: Whispering Waves, Gloriana, and The Blessed Damozel. The box also contains:

Mess No More liquid nail tape from Mini Mani Moo Nails

Fishscale nail stencils from Nail Mail

Starfish and Conch Shell studs from She Sells Sea Shells (which is apparently also a tongue twister when I try and spell it because I wrote that wrong 3 times!). 

There's also a couple of unique discount codes in the box too. For £20 a month you couldn't ask for more really, you're definitely getting value for money as the A-England polishes alone are worth £11 each, so that's £33 before you've even considered the rest. Mess No More is worth £10, the stencils £4 and the studs £3 so you're getting far beyond what you've paid for. Subscription boxes are nothing new, but to have a brand that consistently delivers value for money is rare, and in my experience of Meebox so far, and what I've seen on their Instagram for month's I've not reviewed, they consistently deliver. Of course I had to create some nail art with them. I didn't use the stencils (admittedly I completely forgot until it was too late) but I've used them in another design that you'll see soon.

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. 

A-England Stamping

Hey everyone! Although I've got tonnes of reviews to show you at the moment, I'm really missing posting nail art, so I thought I'd take a break from the reviews for tonight and post a design instead. I've been experimenting with stamping a lot recently, it's always been one of those things that I really couldn't master, and whilst I still wouldn't class myself as 'good' at stamping, I'm definitely starting to see improvements. I still make mistakes, and I'm sure I will for a long time, but it's great to see where I've been going wrong and try to improve on that. Whilst swatching some A-England polishes recently I decided to try stamping with them, and I think the final look really suits the 'rustic'/historic theme of A-England polishes. 

Then and Now: Flowers and Beads

Hey everyone. It's been a very long time since I did a 'then and now' type post, I actually did these nails and another design I'll show you next week just after christmas, but I wanted to post them on a Thursday as a kind of #ThrowbackThursday type post, but I kept realising on Fridays that I hadn't posted them. Turns out Thursdays kind of pass me by. So upon realising today was Thursday, I made sure I sat down and wrote this so that another Thursday doesn't come and go. My friend Very Emily has also recently been doing Throwback Thursday posts and I've absolutely loved seeing hers, so I hope you like mine too.

Today's 'Then and Now' post is based off these nails I did around 3 and a half years ago, which many people said at the time were Marc Jacobs-esque. These were actually really popular when I first posted them, so it will be interesting to see if there's a similar reception for these. It's also really interesting to see how my photography has changed, although admittedly the original nails were from when I started to get a hang of where I wanted my blog to go. So you can see 'my' pose starting to develop, and my nails are relatively short compared to some of my really early posts. I've also included a picture after the jump for those too lazy to click the link

I kind of prefer the original nails, weirdly enough, because I think I went a bit OTT with the studs on my latest version, but my photo quality is definitely an improvement, and my skin care is much better too. I found that despite having hundreds of blue polishes, I apparently don't possess a proper navy, so I had to use a very gloopy bottle of a W7 navy. Although this just gives me an excuse to buy more polish! 

Evixi Gel Polish Review + Nail Art

Hey everyone! After doing the Paint All The Nails link up last week I was so inspired by the other ladies who all creating amazing stamping marbles (where you put polish onto the stamper and smush it onto your nail essentially) + stamping, that I couldn't resist giving it a go myself. I love saran wrap nails, but these are even easier to create, and much less messy. I'll definitely be trying them again. I love how with the colours I used here they look like a really beautiful set of clouds at sunset/sunrise.

Trying out this technique seemed to also be the perfect excuse to get cracking on my review of Evixi Gel Polish, I've been trying it out for a couple of months so I can give you a proper review, but this is the first nail art I've done with it on my fingers. I did some nail art on my toes, but this is definitely a fingers-only blog (so don't panic that I'm about the show you pictures of my feet). The design on my toes lasted for well over a month before I got sick of them growing out and took them off, but they were still going strong. I also did some nails on my friend Alice, which lasted her 3 weeks before she picked them off (tut tut), so I can definitely attest for them being long lasting. 

The bottles and lamp are also gorgeous, whilst the bottles are similar to Gelish in their shape, their design is unique and is what really enticed me to reviewing the polish. They look classy and expensive, whilst actually being cheaper than most gel polish, if not all, priced at just £7 for one bottle. You could get a full kit with multiple polishes for under £100 which is virtually unheard of for gels.  Just as a warning this post is quite image-heavy, but I wanted you to get a good idea of the kit and the polishes so bear with me! Full post after the jump.