Gelish - Rocketman Collection review and swatches

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! 

A Winning Combination

Hey everyone! Happy Monday. It's taking me forever to write this post tonight because I'm catching up on Doctor Who, so forgive me if there are any random words in here that are definitely because I'm distracted! I've been loving playing around with the OPI Fiji Collection* recently, I think it's my favourite OPI collection for a long time, there are so many potentials for designs because there are so many great colours. I've done a couple of designs with them already, but this one is by far my favourite. I feel like grey and yellow is always a winning combination, it's the theme of my living room, and I'd have it as the theme of my entire house if my boyfriend would allow it. But for now I'll just have to settle for grey sofas and yellow cushions ... and grey and yellow nails of course!

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!

Tweexy Nail Polish Holders

Hey everyone! I'm glad to be able to sit down and concentrate, I've been doing a charity fast today for work and I've never been so hungry, and I've really struggled to concentrate today. I have so much more respect for those who do Ramadan now, I couldn't do it for a whole month, a day was hard enough! But I did it, I wasn't expecting to but I did and I'm pretty proud of myself, because all I do is eat usually. 

Today's post is about Tweexy* nail polish holders, designed to keep your polish bottle in place and make it easy to access whilst you paint your nails. Tweexy* is the original nail polish holder, and whilst there have been many copycats since, their design was perfected over two years to fit all bottles and fingers, and is guaranteed for 10 years. So whilst they may seem a little bit pricier than their copycats, it's because they're of a much higher quality. Full post after the jump

Tweexy* is designed to fit every nail bottle shape. I tried it with multiple different shapes and sizes and they all fit and stayed in place. You can also move your fingers without fear of the bottle falling out as the rubber grips the bottle.

I decided the best way to show you my thoughts would be do a pros and cons of Tweexy holders:

Pros:

- Stays steady whilst you paint your nails

- Doesn't pop out/stays very stable in the holder

- Ideal for people who paint their nails with their hand steady

- Adjusters on the side so you can simply lift away without smudging your nails

- Easy access to the nail polish

Cons:

- I felt like I was breathing in the polish a lot more because it was closer to my face (I get very close to my nails when I'm painting them)

- I usually hold my hand in ridiculous ways when I paint my nails so I found it hard to paint them neatly. However, this is just a matter of personal preference so for many people this wouldn't be a problem

Overall the only cons were really down to my own personal weird ways of painting my nails, rather than any issues with the product itself, so I was pretty impressed.

I decided to test it with Orly - Road Trippin* because I liked how the bright yellow contrasted with the turquoise, but also because Orly bottles are quite large and I wanted to test whether it held it, which it did.

I also created a boomerang video of me wearing my Tweexy which I'll be posting on my Instagram.

You can find Tweexy on Amazon for £14.95 + Free Postage

What do you think? Do you want to try out, or have you already tried out, Tweexy? Let me know in the comments!

Alice

*The products in this post were provided to me for review but all opinions are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way

Guest Post for Very Emily

Hey everyone! Today I've got a guest post over at Very Emily for you all, you can see the full post here, which also includes a tutorial for this design. All info is on Emily's blog.

Thanks again to Emily for having me! 

Alice

Throwback Thursday - Neon Stripes

Hey everyone! It's almost the end of the week, just one more final hurdle and we'll have reached the weekend. I've got lots of birthdays this weekend (sister, mum and grandma), and it's fathers day too, so not only am I busy, I'm also poor! It'll be nice to have a meal with the family though, and eat cake. Diets have to go out of the window when there are so many birthdays to celebrate. Anyway, it's been a while since I did a Throwback Thursday post, despite the fact I've actually had these images for well over 2 months. Thursdays just seem to pass me by, and suddenly it's Friday and I have missed the day to post once again, but this week I finally remembered! 

This was the original post for these nails, which I did for the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge back in 2012. They ended up being quite popular, which I wasn't expecting, and a few years later I recreated them in pink here. But I wanted to go back to my original design and give it a new lease of life. The first time around I remember waiting hours and hours for tape to dry and getting frustrated at how messy it was. This time around Seche Vite was my friend, and so was liquid palisade, which made it a lot easier and a lot quicker to do.

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).

Hello! for Avon

Hey everyone! (Or hello! if I want to match the nails). Today I've got a really simple design to show you that I've always uhm'd and ah'd about posting.  I created these for Avon in November last year and despite the fact they're neat and colourful, I've never been quite sure of them. But the more I've scrolled past them the more I've realised it's time to post them. I also dont really post that many designs with text so I thought it would make a nice change. 

Butterfly Sunset Gradient Tutorial for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! Just a quick post from me today to direct you over to a tutorial I did for Divine Caroline. I tried gradients over a white base for the first time and it worked so much better, thats definitely (partly) where I've been going wrong. I really liked how these turned out. I wasn't sure whether I should have used pinker tones but I like the sunset look with the white silhouettes of the butterflies. If you want to create these for yourself (or switch up the colours) head over to my tutorial here.

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

Alice

Pineapples for Avon

Hey everyone! When you're reading this I'll hopefully be thousands of feet in the air on my way to Cyprus. Hopefully not scared out of my wits like I usually am but it's probably likely. Today's nail art is some cute pineapples I created for Avon. I wanted to mix them up and not do a full set of entire pineapples so I added an accent nail of smaller pineapples. I loved wearing these, they got a lot of attention but they were also super cute and fun, so hopefully you like them too!

Be Happy with Avon

Hey everyone! Today's been a bit of a rough day for me. I haven't got any particular reason, do you ever have those days when you just feel down for no reason? Well, I do, and I'm blaming it this time on the fact that it's Friday 13th. However, I have plenty of reasons to smile and be happy and although it's easy to forget that sometimes, these nails are an easy reminder! The bright background colour definitely helped to brighten my mood. Especially when it's started snowing again and it's supposed to be spring ... will it ever stop?! 

The base for these was Avon - Lemon Sugar, and then I used acrylic paint for the detailing, finished off with a coat of Seche Vite.

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

Alice

Barry M - Autumn/Winter 2014 'Tribal' Gellies Collection Review and Swatches

Hey everyone! Today I have a long-overdue review of the six gorgeous new gellies from Barry M for Autumn 2014. I've heard this described as the 'Tribal' collection and an email from Barry M said the same thing, I don't know if that's an official term for the collection but I think it suits it. It also suits just being an autumn collection, as the colours are so perfectly autumnal. I've already done quite a bit of nail art with these which will be coming up soon, and I'm sure I'll be doing plenty more designs! 

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. 

Gradient Polka Dots

Hey everyone! The more keen eyed of you may have noticed that I just posted a design, all of ten minutes ago. But apparently I completely forgot that I already posted it, two weeks ago. I feel like such a dingbat, but I'm blaming the fact that it's hot and it's 1:30am and I really need to sleep! I didn't want to leave you without a design though, so here's a quick and simple polka dot gradient look. I created this gradient for Avon, and you can see the steps to create it on their Facebook page, but I decided to add polka dots to it just to see how it would look, and I really think it makes the design 100x better!

Review Week, Day 2: Deborah Lippmann Spring Reveries 2014 Collection Swatches

Hey everyone! I'm back to day 2 of review week, this time with some Deborah Lippmann polishes. You may have seen my previous reviews here, and here, which included some of the Spring Reveries collection, and now I'm back to show you the rest of the collection. I have loved the polishes I've tried so far, and these are no different. We all know my love of pastels so this collection is just perfect for me!

Rimmel London Sweetie Crush Nail Polish Collection Swatches and Review

Hey everyone! Today I have a brand new review for you. I've been meaning to post this for a few days but I just haven't had time to write it, I'm back at uni now and absolutely swamped with work, but I'm doing my best to balance it with my blog I promise. Today's review is the gorgeous Rimmel London Sweetie Crush collection. A month or so ago I received an amazing package from Rimmel (with some gorgeous biscuits inside), and this collection was one of the many treats included. There was also all their recent Rita Ora polishes, some of which you'll see over the next couple of weeks. 

Graffiti Nails - Swatches Part 3

Hey everyone, sorry for not posting for a few days, I was working all weekend and now I'm having a few personal issues, and so I'm not going to promise that the schedule is going to get any better at the moment, but I'll do my best! I'm really sorry if not. This post alone has taken me more than 48 hours to pluck up the courage to write. But today I have the final part of my Graffiti Nails review, and I know you've all been looking forward to it so I couldn't put it off. The colours today are Jet, Ice White, Mellow, Deep Red and Morning Mist, and you can get them all on the Graffiti Nails website for £3.99 if you're in the UK, and if you buy 3 then postage is free!

Review Week, Day Four: Deborah Lippmann Polishes

Hey everyone! I'm so excited for today's post, because this is the first time you've seen Deborah Lippmann polishes on my blog, and these are gorgeous polishes to start off with. I have two polishes from the Spring 2014 collection to show you and a couple of polishes from upcoming collections!

Nicole By OPI - Selena Gomez Collection Review and Swatches

Hey everyone! Today I have a review of half the Selena Gomez NOPI collection. These have recently become available in the UK in Superdrug, so this is my first time trying any NOPI polishes and I'm definitely impressed. As you can probably tell from the title of this collection, the shades are all inspired by Selena Gomez, and as a result they're very bright and girly, but that's not a bad thing. This is definitely a collection to brighten your autumn wardrobe up. The rest of the review will be after the jump!