Pick A Polish: Essie - Neo Whimsical

Hello everyone. I hope you are all well, I'm in a surprisingly good mood for a Monday!

So for this week's Pick A Polish manicure Essie - Neo Whimsical was chosen.

For a swatch and some nail art click below.

Copycat Saturday: Skulls and Diamonds

Hello lovelies. How are you all? I'm glad its the weekend (as usual) and I am looking forward to a meal out with my friends this evening.

Its time for this week's Copycat manicure and this week I have recreated this design by XOXO Alexis Leigh. I haven't copied this one exactly, I have made a couple of changes (mainly because I don't own suitable stamping plates) but it is definitely very similar.

Click below for full details on this manicure.

Gold Chain V-Gaps

Hi everyone. I hope you are all well. I am feeling super tired today since my body didn't want to let me sleep last night, I think I will be having an early night tonight. 

I have another random manicure for you today. I felt like wearing something a bit more classy (in my opinion anyway) on my nails, I think with all the crazy Christmas nails I had been doing I needed a bit of a palette cleanser. So this is what I came up with..

For full details on this manicure click below.

Soundwave Nails.

Hello lovelies. I hope you all had fun celebrating the new year. 

I wasn't really sure where I was going with today's manicure, I just sat down and thought I would see where the wind took me. The final outcome I think is reminiscent of sound-waves so that is what I have named this manicure.

For full details on this manicure click below.

Copycat Saturday - Tartan Nails

Hi everyone. How are you all? I am enjoying my time off work while it lasts :).

I have the start of another new series to show you today, as you can tell by the title I have called this Copycat Saturday. I find myself more often than not stealing other peoples ideas when it comes to nail art, there are so many cool designs out there to try! But I do feel I should probably try and come up with my own ideas more often. So I have decided to do a copycat manicure once a week, then the rest of the time I shall be forced to think of an idea myself. 

For my first design I decided to go for this pretty, which was a twin manicure by amkuch15 and majikbeenz on instagram. I thought this was seriously cool and on trend.

For full details on this manicure click below.

What I Wore On My Nails - Christmas Work Do.

Hello everyone. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I had a lovely relaxing day and don't have to go back to work until Monday, yay!

Today I am going to show you some nails I wore a few weeks ago to my Christmas work do. I bought myself a sparkly, new dress and needed some nails to match. 

Click below for full details.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 11 - Christmas Trees

Hi everybody. I hope everyone has exciting weekends ahead of them. I am feeling rather under the weather so I think I shall spend mine resting.

Its day 11 of the challenge, just one more prompt after this :(. Today the theme is Christmas Trees. 

I was experimenting with my Color Club topcoat to see what its like with nail art, and it smudged my baubles :(. So apologies for that, CC topcoat is good but not quite as good as Seche Vite in my opinion.

Click below for more.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 9 - Snowmen

Hi everyone. How are you all? I am needing the weekend already!

It's day 9 of the challenge, today's prompt is snowmen. I was really looking forward to today's theme, I have seen so many cute snowmen nails and I couldn't wait to do some of my own.

I came across this design and fell in love so this is what I went with. Plus its based on The Snowman which I used to watch over and over again as a child.

Read on after the jump.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 7 - Christmas Animals

Hi lovelies. I hope you're all well. I have had a super stressful day and need a break but I still have to work tomorrow, waah!

It's day 7 of the 12 Days Of Christmas Challenge and today's prompt is Christmas animals. I thought long and hard about what animals to do, I was planning on trying to do something different. But in the end I just went with very unoriginal Rudolph nails.

You can't really go wrong with Rudolph though can you.

My base colour is OPI - Don't Burst My Bubble.

The reindeer's heads are OPI - A Taupe The Space Needle and the antlers are OPI - Warm Me Up. Although these two colours don't actually look as different as I was expecting them to.

I added the eyes with a dotting tool using Color Club - White and Rimmel - Black Cab. For the noses I used a coat of China Glaze - Hey Sailor and then a coat of OPI - Underneath The Mistletoe. I wish I had used a more bright, glittery red.

I'm not in love with these, but they are definitely not my worst effort. I probably could have made them better but I was a bit rushed whilst doing these.

What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for looking.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 6 - Christmas Decorations

Hi everyone. Happy hump day! Although I have the day off and am working on Saturday, so its not really hump day for me.

We're at the half way point of the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge, today's theme is Christmas Decorations. 

Since this is the first Christmas I have been moved out of my parents house I had a lot of fun choosing all my own Christmas decorations for my flat. I decided to do my nails based on the decorations I have on my tree because I like them so much.

I started with a base of Color Club - White on my index, middle finger and pinky. For my thumb and ring finger I used OPI - Can't Find My Czechbook.

On my thumb I did some tinsel. I used a detail brush and Color Club - White, La Femme - Disco and Barry M - Boots C (what a creative name).

For my baubles I used OPI - Dining Al Frisco on my index finger and OPI - Tiffany Case on my middle finger. The silver is Avon - Mercury Metal and the black string is Rimmel - Black Cab.

On my ring finger I freehanded the snowflake using Avon - Mercury Metal and added a bit of Barry M - Boots C over the top for some added sparkle! On my little finger I did the star using OPI - Tiffany Case. All the round glittery bits are individually placed pieces of glitter from OPI - I Snow You Love Me.

Here's a close up shot my boyfriend took of our Christmas tree to give you an idea of what I was working from. We also have white tinsel with little iridescent sparkly bits, shiny blue baubles and glittery blue stars (in a similar style to that tree).

I really liked these, they have kind of an icy feeling which is what my tree is like also. I'm gonna be sad when I have to take my tree down this year!

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Thanks for looking. 

Pick A Polish - An Unnamed Color Club!

Hello my loves. I hope you are all well. I have a day off work tomorrow, so I am looking forward to having a day to catch up on bloggy stuff. These challenge posts keep creeping up on me too quickly!

Today I have this week's Pick A Polish post to show you, a day late since I was posting for the Christmas challenge yesterday. This week was number 157 in my stash, an unnamed Color Club. I hate having unnamed polishes, but I got this in a set from TK Maxx and I find whenever I get a set of Color Club polishes from there they never have names on.

This a a light pink jelly polish, my swatch shows 3 coats. It was very sheer on the first coat but was quite build-able. There was still a fair bit of visible nail line, more so in real life than in the photo. The formula was good and self levelled nicely. This would definitely be an appropriate polish for a french manicure, so that is what I did a twist on for my nail art...

Over my base I freehanded some french tips using a white cream (another unnamed Color Club). I haven't done proper french tips since my nails were a lot shorter, I think I definitely prefer them on shorter nails.

I freehanded the swirls using a detail brush and Rimmel - Black Cab. My thumb was my favourite.

I added some accents and dots using OPI - This Gown Needs A Crown.

I definitely pushed my freehanding skills with this mani, I'm not 100% happy with the outcome but it is always good to try something different. 

What's you opinion on french manicures? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for looking.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 5 - Bells.

Hi lovelies. How are we all? I have just got home and I am about ready to go to sleep already lol.

Today is day 5 of the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge, its almost half way done. I will be sad when its over, I have been liking Christmas nails a bit too much. Today's theme was bells. I was  a bit stumped with what to do for this one, so I took to google and came across these nails. As soon as I saw them I knew I needed to steal the idea and copy them immediately, and I must say, I loved how they came out!

Here is my version..

My base colour is Essie - Like To Be Bad.

I freehanded the whole design with a detail brush. For the holly I used Barry M - Spring Green, China Glaze - Hey Sailor and Rimmel - Black Cab.

For the bells I used an Unnamed W7 Gold. The white on the ribbons is Color Club - White.

I was super proud of these, I think this is the best freehand design I have done. I spent my day at work sticking my fingers in people's faces to show them off. I didn't want to take them off for my next mani.

What are your thoughts? 

Don't forget to check what the other participants have done for their designs.

My Birthday Cocktail Nails

Hello everyone. How is everyone? I have finally finished work, a late shift on a Friday is not my favourite thing.

Today I am going to show you the nails I wore for my birthday celebrations last weekend. I had a few friends over to my flat and attempted to make some cocktails. Naturally I needed to have my nails matching the occasion so I created some cocktail nails :).

I started with a black base using Rimmel - Black Cab.

I then freehanded the shapes of my cocktails using a white cream so the colours would show up against the black.

I used about a million colours for these nails so here goes... 

Thumb - an unnamed Color Club orange, NOPI - Hit The Lights, China Glaze - Hey Sailor and Barry M - Spring Green.

Index finger - Barry M - Blue Moon, Barielle - Surfs Up and Revlon - Violet.

Middle finger - Sally Hansen - Green Tea, Barry M - Key Lime and Barry M - Ltd Edition Pink.

Ring finger - Revlon - Violet, Barry M - Berry Ice Cream, Models Own - Peach Sherbet and Essie - Fear or Desire.

Pinky - Barry M - Ltd Edition Pink and Barielle - Surf's Up.

I outlined the glasses with OPI - This Gown Needs A Crown.

I was pretty happy with these, definitely fitting with the occasion. My thumb has to be my favourite. 

Which one is your favourite?

Thanks for looking.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 3 - Food

Hello lovelies. I hope you have all had a good day. Mine has been pretty terrible but we won't go into that!

It's day 3 of the 12 Days Of Christmas Challenge and today's prompt is food! This is probably my favourite thing about Christmas, I do love a nice big Christmas dinner. However I decided to do something on my nails that I don't actually like eating at Christmas (there are not many things I don't like eating lol). 

Christmas Pudding! Yeah I don't actually like it, but I have seen other people do nails like this and I think they look cute. The base colour I used was China Glaze - Ingrid.

I then freehanded the drips with a dotting tool and detail brush and a white cream.

I then added the berries with a dotting tool and China Glaze - Hey Sailor and freehanded the leaves with Barry M - Spring Green.

I did some similar nails last Christmas before I started blogging, its amazing to see how much I have come on in a year! I was pleased with how they came out this year, especially in comparison to last year.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for looking.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 2 - Snow

Hello lovelies. How are you all? 

Its day 2 of the 12 Days Of Christmas Challenge and today's theme is snow. To be honest I'm not a fan of snow, I am not a lover of the cold. However snow is very pretty when I am looking at it from the warmth, so I had soo many ideas for this theme.

I finally settled on this idea though..

I started by doing a gradient using Barry M - Blue Moon, an unnamed blue Color Club and Barielle - Surf's Up. You can't see a massive difference between the Barry M and the Color Club, but I quite like the subtle look.

I added a coat of Barry M - Diamond Glitter for a little extra sparkle.

I freehanded the snowflakes using my White Color Club and a detail brush.

I really loved how these came out, they are so wintry and pretty. This kind of snow I do like!

Have you done any wintry designs yet this year? 

Thanks for looking.

Pick A Polish: W7 - Green Dazzle

Hi everyone. I have just got home and am about ready to pass out, is it the weekend yet? lol.

It's Monday so that means it's Pick A Polish time, this week W7 - Green Dazzle was picked from my stash. I picked this up last Christmas time, thinking it would be a good Christmas glitter but I never got round to using it. So this is the first time it has been used, I have so many untried polishes, its unreal!

Green Dazzle is a green leaning teal glitter in a clear base. The photo above shows 4 coats with no undies, I think you could just about get away with wearing it like this but you can still see a bit of nail. I did find that the base is slightly tinted so it did makes my nails look very yellow in the gaps. It was also getting quite thick at this point and was quite slow drying.

For these reasons, I much prefer this layered over another colour. This photo shows one coat over China Glaze - Keep Calm, Paint On. Glitter pay off is good and I found it applied very evenly and smoothly.

Onto the nail art...

The base colour again is China Glaze - Keep Calm, Paint On.

I added the animal stripes on using a striping brush and W7 - Green Dazzle.

I really liked how this nail art came out, sometimes keeping it simple can be more effective. I am also glad I finally tried this glitter out as I do love it layered.

What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for looking.

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge: Day 1 - Presents

Hi everyone. How are we all? I am putting up my Christmas tree today, I'm such a big kid when it comes to Christmas.

I am taking part in the 12 Days Of Christmas Challenge! There are twelve themes which and we will be posting every other day. This is my first ever challenge and I am very excited to be taking part :). I also love Christmas, so this is the perfect challenge for me.

The first theme was presents! Who doesn't love presents? I have to admit these did cause me a few issues, everything just kept going wrong. But I got there in the end.

I used a base of Barry M - Watermelon.

I then freehanded the white cross on with a striping brush and Color Club - White.

I freehanded the bows in China Glaze - Goldie But Goodie and outlined the white with this too. It was the bows which were causing me issues, I couldn't get them right. I am still not 100% happy with how they came out but this was my best try. 

So maybe not my best work ever, but I still have 11 more themes to go so that's plenty of time to do something I like. 

What are your thoughts? Let me know what you think.

Thanks for looking.