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. 

Emoji Dogs

There's no point in denying it, I’m a huge over-user of emojis, but I’ve never really had the urge to translate that into nails. That is until I realised the cute potential the dog emoji holds... i.e. I was stuck for inspiration one day and was browsing my phone and decided to give them a go. These started out just as a test on falsies to see what they’d look like, and I ended up loving them so much I had to recreate them. Typically, the first attempt was much better than these (beginners luck I guess!) but I was still happy enough with them! 

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. 

Barry M - Candy Culture Collection Review + Swatches

It feels like forever since I last did a full review. I find that more and more I prefer using polishes in nail art and reviewing them that way, but now and again I can't resist an old-fashioned swatch post. And the latest Barry M Candy Culture Collection* was just too cute to be able to resist reviewing. It's been so cold and miserable lately that it's nice to have some lovely spring polishes to brighten things up a bit.  These gorgeous pastel shades are from the first ever Barry M scented range. I found that they all smelt strong enough that you knew they were scented, but not strong enough that it was overpowering. Barry M claim that these shades only require two coats and dry with a soft matte finish, read on to find out what I thought...

Rose Gold Quartz

I've been meaning to do rose quartz nails for a while now, I used to have a rose quartz stone when I was younger and I loved how pretty it was. So when the trend came about in nail form I knew that I had to do them. But, despite watching quite a few tutorials on how to do them, I'm not quite sure I've got them right. It's one of those designs that you can wing a bit, but you have to make sure you wing it the right way. I'll definitely play around a bit more because it's such a great look that I want to make sure I nail it (ba-dum-ch). 

Sparkly Burgundy Paisley

Hey everyone! Welcome to my first post of 2018, happy new year! Can you believe we're already more than a week into 2018? Which means one thing and one thing only... it's less than a week until my birthday! It also means that it's probably about time that I wrote a blog post, especially as one of my new years resolutions is to blog more. Today's nails were done using the All That Jazz - Opulance Collection*.  This was the first time that I've painted paisley in ages, so I did them as a bit of a challenge to myself.  I realised after one nail that they were going to take forever so I turned them into accent nails instead... so much for a challenge! I also hadn't done dry brush nails in forever, so I combined the two and I loved the end result

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.