Digital Dozen Does Books - Day 1 'Phosphorescence'

Hey everyone! I am now a member of the digital dozen, I have actually been a member for a few months but I've not had the time to complete the challenges. If you dont know what the digital dozen is, it's a group of nail bloggers who post 5 days a week once a month, based around a theme. This month's theme is books. As a massive book lover I'm surprised how hard I found it to come up with ideas for this week. I haven't even got 5 ideas yet! (Any suggestions are welcome in the comments). 

Today's post was quite easy to think of though, as this book is right at the front of my bookshelf (I have so many books that I have to put some behind) and I've been meaning to make it into a nail design for ages. The book I chose is 'Phosphorescence' by Raffaella Barker, which my younger teenage self read a LOT. You'll probably find that the majority of my posts this week are books for children or teenagers, as their covers seem to a thousand times more inspiring, and this of course is no different. This will be quite a picture heavy post so I'll put the rest on a read more after the first picture. 

$30 Born Pretty Store GIVEAWAY!

Hey everyone! Today I have my second giveaway for you. I was meant to post this 2 months ago (!!!) to celebrate having my blog for a year, but I've been SUPER unorganised, and for that I apologise. So this instead can be to celebrate June, and I will end the giveaway on my sister's birthday so that there is at least some form of celebration! This giveaway is kindly sponsored by Born Pretty Store, and I would like to give them a huge thankyou for doing this for my blog! I would also like to thank my wonderful friend Emily who designed my giveaway picture. 

Giveaway rules:

• There will be one prize - a $30 gift card to spend on whatever you want at bornprettystore.com (and remember, they have free international shipping! And you can use my code KHL91 for 10% off)
• Entrants must be 18 years or older, or have parental permission in order to enter
• The winner will be chosen randomly using Rafflecopter, which uses random.org
• Whoever wins must respond within 48 hours of me choosing, otherwise I will pick another winner
• The closing date is the 19th June at 12am 
• This giveaway is open internationally
• For the option to 'leave a blog post comment' you must state which post of mine you like most and/or what you would like to see more of on my blog, it's always great to hear your feedback, even if I have to blackmail you into it ;)
• And finally, good luck everyone!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Seven Deadly Sins: Week 7 - Pride

Hey everyone! This is the last post in my Seven Deadly Sins challenge, and I'm quite sad to see it go. I'm hoping to bring it back next year if the other challengers will join me. This weeks sin is pride, and the prompt is to 'brag about how good you are at...'. I'm not big on bragging, but I feel that I am quite good at gel pen paisley designs so I thought I'd do another one, hope you dont mind!

For this I used Barry M - Bright Pink and Barry M - Red, I'm going to do a quick tutorial on this design for Licila so you should see that soon! As always I also used a Muji 0.38mm gel pen, topped off with a coat of Seche Vite.

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

Alice

Butter LONDON Spring 2013 Collection Swatches

Hey everyone! I have some more fabulous Butter LONDON polishes to show you after yesterday's post, this time from the Spring 2013 collection. You probably all by now that I'm a sucker for pastels, so I absolutely love all 6 of these, especially Fiver. 

Butter LONDON Glitter Swatches

Hey everyone! Today I have a selection of glitters from ButterLONDON to show you, as I mentioned yesterday in this post. This was my first time trying ButterLONDON and I must say that I'm really really impressed. As always the rest of the swatches will be after the jump

Beauty and the Beach 2 Competition - My Entry

Hey everyone! So for my second post today I'm bringing you my Beauty and the Beach competition entry. I'm sure most of you know what it is but for those who don't it's a beauty competition held by Travel Supermarket for a chance to win £500 or £1500! All you have to do is upload an entry inspired by the beach, you can find the rules here, but it ends tomorrow so be quick (I am the queen of last minute!). I know this is a nails blog, but of course I'd like to be in with the chance of winning the full amount, so I hope you'll excuse pictures of my face! I'll put them after the jump and the nails before for those of you who dont.

The Nails

So for the nails, I went directly with the 'beach' theme, and painted a beach on my nails. My style is definitely more cartoon-ey so I wanted to stick with what I know best. I decided to add things you can find and do on the beach.       On my thumb I did a rock pool with a crab next to it, on my pointer finger I did flip flops, on my middle finger is the edge of a picnic rug, on my ring finger is a bucket and spade and a sandcastle with a flag, and on my baby finger is a starfish. 

To do these nails I started off with a base of Butter London - Fiver, and then I sponged on Barry M - Blueberry, but I decided it didn't look very good so I used a paintbrush to make it more of a straight line. Then, on the tips of my nails I sponged Butter London - Cuppa. Then I got a tiny piece of sponge using tweezers and sponged on the white for the foam of the waves. I then mixed Barry M - Blueberry with some white to create the 'waves' with a tiny brush, and I used the same white (MASH - White nail polish) for the clouds (which unfortunately haven't shown up too well in photos). The yellow on the rug, sun and bucket is Clinique - 70 Degrees and Sunny, the red on the rug, flag and spade is Essence - Redvolution, and the crab is redvolution mixed with a tiny tiny bit of brown, the green on the flipflops is Clinique - Hula Skirt, the orange starfish is Clinique - Juiced Up, the black detailing, such as the birds, is China Glaze - Liquid Leather, and the darker brown for the stones and sandcastle is Barry M - Mushroom, either on its own or mixed with white. I did all the details with a tiny cut down brush. (Phew that was a big paragraph)

Seven Deadly Sins: Week 6 - Envy

Hey everyone! I'm a couple of days late with this post, I've been enjoying the sunshine and freedom from exams for a few days, but now I'm back! We're nearing the end of the challenge now unfortunately, and I'll be sad to see it go, perhaps I'll redo it next year! We shall see. This week's prompt is for envy and it says 'who would you like to be? let us know by recreating another challenger's work'. I would like to be Ana, who is a very lovely friend of mine, so these are loosely inspired by this design and this design by her, but I tried to make it my own as much as possible.

The colours I used for this were:

Butter LONDON - Bit Faker*

Barry M - Blueberry

Butter LONDON - Molly Coddled*

Essence - Upper Green Side

Barry M - Bright Pink

There were tonnes of Ana's designs that I would have loved to recreate but I really wanted to use my new ButterLONDON glitter polishes (review coming soon) so I decided to create these with a base of 'Bit Faker' which you can buy here at lookfantastic.com. I am surprised by how much I like this polish, copper colours are not usually my thing but it looks really beautiful, as you can see from the swatch below. This was 2 coats of Bit Faker with 2 coats of Seche Vite top coat. 

Butter London - Bit Faker

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

Alice

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