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. 

Lost City - Meebox May '17 Nail Art + Review

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I did a review of Meebox thanks to my unscheduled break, so I actually have two different boxes to show you at the moment, the first of which is the 'Lost City' Meebox* from last month. When this landed on my doorstep I was a bit stumped on what to create with the contents of the box, which were:

Annika - Blue Lagoon
Cuccio - Pier Pressure
Ruby Wing - Hello Sailor
NCLA - Take It Off Soy Remover Sheets
House of Wonderland Decals (exclusive to Meebox)

Worth more than £40 in value (despite the box only costing £20 a month, or £18 if you pay for 3 months), they're definitely worth trying out if you haven't already. All these brands were completely new to me, and pushed me to create something I wouldn't usually do.

Anyway, I was struggling to come up with a design so I decided to completely wing it. I've never used water decals before so I started with those on top of the Cuccio polish, and I accented with Ruby Wing - Hello Sailor over Pier Pressure. Then I decided to play around with striping tape, and by the end of it I really loved the result, and I hope you do too!

The Illustrated Nail Inspired - Direct Line Signature Styles

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Hey everyone! Today I've got a really exciting post for you. I've teamed up with Direct Line For Business to promote their new Signature Styles campaign* with The Illustrated Nail, aka Sophie Harris-Greenslade. This campaign is to launch Direct Line's new Health and Beauty insurance proposition, and it includes three videos with influencers in the industry (including Sophie's which you can see after the jump). Sophie created her 'signature style' to reflect the personalisation of Direct Line for Business' ability to create a policy that's just right for your business. You only pay for the cover that your business needs. 

 I loved the sound of this campaign, as I believe all bloggers have a 'signature style'. I believe mine to be my style of photos, but also the cartoony nature of my designs (do you agree?). The Illustrated Nail has definitely got a 'signature style' and I knew that I wanted to do some nails inspired by her to promote the campaign. I've done nails inspired by her before, and as Sophie is known for florals and block colours, I decided this time I'd go for block colours having previously attempted her perfect florals. Although it was hard to pick one design, I was inspired by these nails. 

Barry M Rose Gold Geometric

Hey everyone! Hope you're all having a lovely weekend. I've had quite a busy weekend so far and we're off to Chester today to go the zoo and do a bit of shopping so another busy day ahead. Whilst I'm waiting for my boyfriend to be ready I thought I'd write a quick blog post as I haven't had much of a chance recently. I created these rose gold geometric nails a couple of weeks ago whilst I was playing around with the gorgeous autumn releases from Barry M. Their recent Molten Metals collection from a few months ago contained a copper shade which was close enough to rose gold that I thought that they wouldn't possibly create anything closer. Well I was wrong, their newest releases include Twinkle Twinkle*, a limited edition polish especially for Superdrug. You'll know how much I love creating nail art with rose gold if you've been followers of my blog for a while, so of course I had to do something with this. I wasn't really sure where I was heading when I started these nails, but I just went with the flow and I really liked the end result. 

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.

Blue Celestial Geometric

Hey everyone! How has another week gone already? August is absolutely flying by. I've had a really busy week, last night I went to see Wicked which was absolutely amazing. I've never seen it before but I went with a friend who has seen it 3 times now and I can see why she keeps going back. I'm going to try my hand at some Wicked nails this weekend so we'll see how those go.

Today's nail art is a result of me experimenting with these* brushes from Winstonia. I did these nails a couple of months ago when I first received the brushes and I completely forgot I did them. I've been practicing with them since and you will have seen them in many designs, but I was happy with how straight I managed to keep my lines here. I used the smallest brush for this design, and I was really impressed with it, although it took me a while to get used to as it contains harder bristles than I'm use to.

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.

Gelish Glitter Geometric

Hey everyone! I decided to take a few days break from blogging, after my awful weekend last week I really just wanted some down time and to spend a bit of quality time with my boyfriend. There's always something to do when you're a blogger, and it can start to weigh you down sometimes. I'd never give it up but sometimes I need to step away for a few days, even if I feel guilty about it. But now I've had a few days break I'm feeling refreshed and ready to write a new post. Tomorrow I'm off to the Scratch Star Awards where I'm nominated for Best Nail Blogger. I'm nominated against Sammy and Lucie so I stand no chance but I'm excited to see them both and other blogging friends and have a good time. 

Today's nails are created using the products of one of the sponsors of the scratch awards: Nail Harmony UK, the UK base for Gelish. Although, these aren't the nails I'm wearing to the Scratch Awards, I'll post those when I post about the event.  I've made no secret of the fact I love Gelish, and they've released so many amazing polishes recently so I've had lots of additions to my collection. The base for this nail art is one of those recent additions: Primrose and Proper*, from the Botanical Awakenings collection and it is a lovely subtle shade which works so well for this design, which was again inspired by Sophie of Nancy Loves Nails. I know it's very similar to this design I did a few weeks ago but I really wanted to retry the design with a gel white rather than a nail polish white, and I decided to add a bit of extra glitter too.  

Candy Coat Gel Polish Review + Nail Art

Hey everyone! Today I want to introduce you to a new gel polish brand called Candy Coat, who are offering the latest subscription box to the market, but with a twist: their boxes contain only their own gel products. I always love to discover new and exciting brands, especially ones that are being innovative, and so this really stood out to me as an interesting concept. Candy Coat offer two options:

Option 1: The colour box. This is not a subscription, so you can buy whenever you please for as little as just £35 a month (if you're in the UK) you get 10 colours and a topcoat and basecoat, which is crazy cheap. Full prices here. 

Option 2: The subscription box. This is (as the titles suggests) a subscription, but with this you get 3 Candy Coat colours and goodies including accessories, tools and candy (of course) for £18 a month.

I received neither of the above, instead I received 7 gel colours* and a topcoat* and basecoat*, plus some goodies. So I decided to pull a few of the colours together and create some nail art, plus some flat lays because who doesn't love a good flat lay? More after the jump.

Barry M + Ovacome #TealTips

Hey everyone! We've had our first week in the new house now, and it's starting to feel more like home. We're completely unpacked now, including my nail polishes (thankfully!) so I decided to paint my nails for the first time in the new house. I wanted to show my support for the Barry M + Ovacome campaign for #TealTips. This is the fourth year of the campaign, and the idea is that by wearing teal nails it becomes a talking point about the disease's symptoms. Barry M will be donating half of every £3.99 online sale of their Green Berry nail paint to Ovacome to help beat ovarian cancer before the end of March. You can also post pictures of yourself wearing the official Teal Tips colour on Facebook and Twitter and nominating a friend to do likewise. You can also make donations (if you're in the UK) by texting OVAC00 followed by the amount (e.g. OVAC00 £5) to 70070.

Matte Glitter Triangles for Avon

Hey everyone! I've had such a busy week, my life normally seems to revolve around sleep and work but this week I've managed to catch up with friends and I've just been to see Spectre tonight. I enjoyed it but I must admit I think I prefer Skyfall, although it seems like I'm alone in my opinions. Today's nail design is not a Halloween design, instead I'll be posting Halloween nails for the rest of the week. Unfortunately I haven't finished editing my pictures yet so they'll have to be squeezed in somewhere else. These are just some simple triangle nails combining glitter, matte and regular nail polish to create a multilayer effect. I dont think I've ever really used all three in a design together so I was pretty happy with the outcome

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).

Geometric Floral Nails for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! I realised earlier that I completely forgot to post these nails on to my blog, they went live a couple of weeks ago on Divine Caroline and I meant to include them in 'tutorial tuesday' but must have forgotten. Anyway, you get to see them now, and that's what matters, right? These were inspired entirely by Moustache Manis, and you can read all about them here, and also see the step-by-step instructions on how to create them.

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

Don't forget to check out the tutorial here

Alice

Polka Dot Triangles

Hey everyone! The rain is crazy loud on my attic window right now and as I can't sleep I thought I'd write a blogpost, but who's complaining? This is one of the designs that I'm not particularly proud of, it's been sitting in my 'to post' pile for nearly 2 months because I'm such a perfectionist and these don't feel 'perfect' enough, but your comments on my last post persuaded me to post, so here you go! I seem to have had a multitude of nail art with triangles recently, but I love how they look for some reason, and I may or may not (I do) have more coming up.

Swapping Designs with Dahlia Nails

Hey everyone! Today's post is something a little different, a design swap with the lovely girls over at Dahlia Nails. They each recreated one of my designs, and I recreated one of theirs. They've recreated by Rob Ryan nails and my Pink Leopard nails so you can click HERE to go see that. For my recreation, I chose this gorgeous triangle design. I was trying to choose between a few designs that I really liked (and may still do), but something about this one just stood out to me.

Graffiti Nails Triangles: Guest Post for Popping Nails

Hey everyone! Today I've done a guest post for Charlie over at Popping Nails so you'll have to head over there [click HERE] to see it. The nails were done using all Graffiti Nails polishes, if you havent checked out the website you can do so here. Don't forget if you buy 3, postage is free, so you could buy all 3 polishes used to create this look!

Don't forget to head over to Charlie's blog here for the full post

Alice

Nude Squares

Hey everyone! Finally I have some nail art for you, which isn't just part of a tutorial (although hopefully you actually like the tutorials so it's not an issue!). I've had a mixture of ideas going round my head for a while and with the help of a friend I finally put 2 designs together which I think work pretty well. I was inspired by a design I saw posted on Instagram ages ago with no logo and no credit (and I've just tried for 20 minutes to find on google but I can't find any sign of it, let me know if you know the original), and I decided to repeat these nails, which were originally based from this tutorial by Pack a Punch Nails. 

The base for these nails is Barry M - Lychee, and the black and white is acrylic paint, I used striping tape from here to create the squares, I used these brushes for the triangles, and I finished it off with a coat of Seche Vite.

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

Alice

Blue Triangles

Hey everyone! Just a quick post from me tonight. I've had this design done for over 3 months now but I've just not got around to posting it, so I thought it was finally time. I unfortunately can't actually remember the lighter blue colour I used for this as it's been so long and I own so many that are so similar, but the dark blue is Layla CE33.This was all done using striping tape (I dont keep normal tape to hand most of the time) and finished off with a coat of Seche Vite.

What do you think?

Let me know in the comments!

Alice

Tutorial Tuesday: Geometric Colour

Hey everyone! I'm back for another Tutorial Tuesday, although it's now technically Wednesday in the UK as it's 1am, it's still Tuesday in many other parts of the world, so hopefully it still counts! I'm so glad you all liked last week's tutorial so much, starting this off as a weekly thing seems to have been a good idea so far! Don't forget to check out my Tutorial tab to see all of my past tutorials and keep up to date. Anyway, today's tutorial is based on this design, which seemed to be a popular choice for tutorials. I've made the triangles a bit more centralised in this design, but the principle is the same and hopefully you will be able to translate it to look more like the original if you wish!

For these nails I used 3 coats of Shimmer Polish - Karen as a base, and then 2 coats of Seche Vite top coat. Unfortunately I can't seem to find Karen in the Shimmer Polish shop, but there are plenty of other fantastic glitters for you to have a nosy at!

Now for the tutorial! (Aka the reason you're all here)

You will need:

- A glitter base colour

- A small brush

- Top coat

- A multitude of different colours, I used:

·    Barry M – Blueberry

·    Barry M – Passion Fruit

·     Barry M – Mango

·    Barry M – Key Lime

·     Barry M – Prickly Pear
·     Barry M - Peach Melba

·    NYC - Lexington Yellow 

Step 1: Paint your nails with a glitter base colour. When that is dry use a topcoat to smoothen out the surface for the next steps

Step 2: Using a thin brush (see previous picture) draw the outline of where you want your shapes to be, it’s best to do this colour by colour

Step 3: Fill in the gaps from the previous step

Step 4: Repeat the previous steps with each individual colour; be careful to leave a gap in-between each triangle so that your glitter base is still visible.

Step 5: Finish off with fast drying top coat to smoothen your design and to speed up drying time, and then you’re done!

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

Alice

Digital Dozen Does Fashion: Day 3

Hey everyone! Another quick post so I can go to sleep tonight, but today's fashion inspiration isn't THAT closely related to the nails. I was loosely inspired, but hopefully you can still see where I was coming from.  I have quite a few photos so I'll put the rest after the jump