It's Mint To Be!

Hi lovelies. I'm so happy it's the weekend! I am going shopping tomorrow for some holiday stuff :).

Two (of the many) polishes I have purchased recently that I have been dying to use are Girly Bits - Mint To Be and Moyra - 853. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and use them both in one manicure :).

Read on after the jump for more.

Pick A Polish: Barry M - Majesty

Hi everyone. I hope you are all well. I have a case of the Monday blues today, I want another 3 day weekend!

In an attempt to brighten up your Monday I have this week's Pick A Polish to show you today. This week I have been using Barry M - Majesty which is one of their textured glitter polishes from their Royal collection.

Read on after the jump to see this polish.

Glitter Gradient Tutorial.

Hello lovely lacquer-heads! I hope you are all well. I'm still having foot troubles so I've been off work today to try and rest it, it still doesn't seem to be getting much better though :(.

I have my first ever tutorial to show you today.. I have been meaning to do a tutorial for ages and I have finally gotten around to it. I recently did a quick glitter gradient for a night out, and I posted a quick snap of it on a Facebook group the next day and initially I didn't plan to blog about it. However people seemed to really like it and a couple of people asked me how I did it so I decided why not get my bum in gear and do a tutorial for it :).

To see my tutorial read on after the jump.

Autism Awareness Jigsaw Nails

Good afternoon my lovelies. One more day until the weekend, we are getting there!

Today I am going to show you the manicure I did in honour of Autism Awareness month. I don't actually know anyone with autism so this isn't a subject I am very knowledgeable on, but I know it is a very good cause and I'd like to do my bit to help raise some awareness. If you want to find out more about autism you can do so here.

For full details on this manicure read on after the jump.

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.

Winter Textured Gradient.

Hello everyone. I hope we all have exciting weekends planned. I'm having a few friends round this evening to celebrate my birthday so I am spending the day sorting out things for that. 

Today I have some simple nail art to show you. I have seen a few other people do gradients with textured polish and I wanted to have a go too. I decided to go with a wintery, icy feel to match the current weather. I made the stupid mistake of not bothering to tape my fingers up before doing the gradient.. big mistake. Clean up took hours (literally), it made me want to cry! 

I used OPI - Tiffany Case and Barry M - Lady for my gradient.

I did this by painting the two colours next to each other on a sponge and then sponging it onto my nail.

I didn't really get them to blend together very well, gradients aren't my strongest point anyway but I found it even harder with textured polish. I think sponging has made the polish look more textured also, possibly a little too textured. It ended up looking a bit lumpy in places. 

I wasn't completely happy with how these came out, but I have seen other people pull this off. So I think I may just need to practice my gradient skills a bit more. 

What are your thoughts? Have you tried anything similar?

Thanks for looking.

Half & Half Textured Manicure

Hi everyone. I hope you are all well. 

Today I have quite a simple design to show you which was inspired by this look by Stephanie of A Little Polish. I just loved the mixture of different finishes and the colour scheme so recreated  it on myself. I apologise that these photos are so dark, my boyfriend had been messing with settings on my camera and I couldn't figure out what he had done! He fixed it in the end though so these are the only dodgy photos.

I started with a base of Sally Hansen - Cinnasnap and added a topcoat at this point. I tested out a Color Club topcoat for this, instead of my usual Seche Vite. I have to say I was impressed.

Once this was dry I used a striping brush to draw a line across my nail with Barry M - Countess. I then filled one half of the nail in using the brush from the bottle.

I don't love my version as much as the one I was inspired by, but its still pretty. I think I needed a lighter textured polish than Countess, but that was the best I could do in my stash.

Are you still loving the textured trend?

Thanks for looking.

Pick A Polish: Barry M - Lady

Hello everyone. How are we all today?

Today I have the start of a new series to show you. As you may have gathered by the title I have called this Pick A Polish. Like many other nail polish addicts I have an ever growing stash, but a lot of my polishes tend to get neglected and sit untried for prolonged periods of time whilst I keep going back to the same few bottles. So I have decided to pick a polish at random from my stash (using an excel spreadsheet and a random number generator so I can't cheat) once a week. I then have to create some nail art with said polish and I shall be posting the results.

Today was the turn of number 312... Barry M - Lady. I lucked out with this one as I only got this recently and was planning on playing with it soon anyway.

I decided to do something simple, I settled on a dotticure as I haven't done one for ages and I do really love them.

I started with a base of Models Own - Nude Beige.

I then added the dots with Barry M - Lady and a few different sized dotting tools.

I didn't add a topcoat as Lady is a textured polish

Here is a swatch of Lady on its own. I used two coats for this photo, the formula was good and easy to apply. There is still a bit of visible nail line but this didn't bother me. I think with three coats it would be opaque. It dried fairly fast which is important as if you want to keep the texture you can't slather it with a fast dry topcoat. So it gets a thumbs up from me!

Have you tried this polish? What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for looking.

Nude V-Gaps With My New Barry M's

Hi everyone, happy Halloween! 

I have been terribly boring when it comes to Halloween this year, so I am going to carry on that tradition and post something completely unrelated to Halloween. I have had some of Barry M's new releases sitting on my side for a while ready to be played with, so I decided to do something with a couple of those.

I started with an extra coat of Nail Envy to try and make my nails look a bit nicer. 

Using striping tape I taped off the triangle shape at my cuticles and painted over the rest of the nail with Barry M - Vanilla, which is one of Barry M's new matte polishes. I only needed one coat of this, very impressed!

Then using a striping brush and W7 - Black I freehanded the black lines.

Next to the black lines I added Barry M - Majesty using the same technique. This is one of their textured polishes.

I didn't use a top coat for this design, obviously as I used matte and textured polishes.

I was very happy with this design, this is the first time I have done nail art with negative space but I really like the effect and I will definitely have to try it again.

As for the Barry M products, I was also very happy with those. They are very easy to work with and I love the effects.

Have you tried any of Barry M's new releases? What did you think?

An InLinkz Link-up

Pink Textured Nail Art

Hi everyone. Its the weekend! I have finished my six day week and I am looking forward to having a day off tomorrow :).

Today I have a very girly design to show you. I picked up a textured polish by Seventeen whilst in Boots a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to see how it compared to other brands like OPI as this one is so much cheaper. But I couldn't simply just swatch it, I wanted to do some nail art. So this is what I came up with...

I used a base of OPI - I Theodora You on all my nails apart from my pinky which is Seventeen Rock Hard Couture Nail Effects in Bijoux Baby. Despite that all being a bit of a mouthful, I did really like this polish. The formula was easy to work with and I only needed two coats. I loved the colour, baby pink with gold shimmer running through it.

I top-coated the nails with I Theodora you on and then added Bijoux Baby over the top of that. 

For my thumb and ring finger I did an abstract rose design which was inspired by this post by Work Play Polish. Mine are no where near as good as hers but I still liked them.

On my index finger I added a couple of dots with a dotting tool.

I stuck on the studs on my middle finger using my topcoat. 

I really enjoyed wearing these and I would totally recommend the Seventeen textured polish. I am interested to see if the rest of their polishes are as good.

Have any of you tried anything else from this range? Would you recommend them?

Thanks for looking.