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.

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. 

Essie Spring 2016 Collection Review + Swatches

Hey everyone! Hope you're having a lovely weekend so far. The European Championships are on, which means I'm being roped into watching a lot of football with my boyfriend. Or alternatively, it means I have a lot more time to do nails because I don't want to sit and watch TV! I never watch football, but there's something about international football that's slightly more exciting, and I do end up getting sucked in even when I hate to. 

Today I'm reviewing the Essie Spring 2016 collection*, I wanted to include this with my post about the Rankin event but I thought it would make the post too long. I've already shown the collection in this nail art, but I wanted to show the colours individually too. This is the first full Essie collection I've reviewed, and I hope it's not the last, but I was very impressed. I don't own many Essie shades, I don't have the need to buy many new polishes (as you can imagine) so apart from my trusty bottle of Essie - Beyond Cozy which I bought ages ago, I only have one or two others. This collection consists of some 'typical' spring shades, but also some darker shades that make the collections lightly unusual. 

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.

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.  

Essie Gel Couture #essiexrankin

Hey everyone! This weekend in the UK was a bank holiday weekend, I know it was also Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. so I hope you all had a lovely weekend. Without sounding like I'm starting a pity party, I had the worst weekend. My car was smashed up with a hammer, I got food poisoning and my camera charger blew my electrics and set off my house alarm. They say bad things come in threes, that's a big enough three for me. Nevertheless, my nails have been a welcome distraction, and I've been writing up some blog posts to try and get ahead a bit.

Today's post is about my day at the #essiexrankin event a couple of weeks ago. I was kindly invited by Essie to join the event to promote their new Gel Couture range, and have my portrait done by the one and only Rankin. I'm still pinching myself that it actually happened, it was such an amazing opportunity, and one I definitely won't forget in a hurry. 

I was given the chance to pick out a shade from the Gel Couture range to highlight in my picture, this is the shade I chose, called Spiked With Style:

Celestial Cosmetics - The Valyrio Collection Review + Swatches

Hey everyone! Today I have a brand new (to my blog) brand to show you: Celestial Cosmetics! I was recently asked if I wanted to review for Celestial and I jumped at the chance, my new years resolution this year was to try more indies, so any chance to do so is great. And these certainly didn't disappoint. This is The Valyrio collection*, and it consists of three holo shades and three shimmery/glittery shades. Don't let the word 'shimmer' put you off because these really are stunning shades. The Valyrio collection was designed by my lovely friend Christine of Serenity Nails, based around Game of Thrones. I know this is shocking, but I've actually never seen Game of Thrones, so I don't understand the names. However, the names are actually based on the language of Valyria so I don't believe they're direct references to characters. I've also created some nail art with a few of the shades so keep an eye out for that over the coming weeks