Polished Art: September 2012

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Liz and Lisa at Lozlosa

Mari at Nailista

Greta at How Was Your Day?

Miss L at Beauty by Miss L

Gini at Sassy Paints

Pam at Nail-E-Glance

Thursday, 27 September 2012

31 Day Challenge - Day 13: Animal Print

A little while ago, we were at my boyfriend's auntie's house for a barbecue. Their neighbours have all sorts of pets, and they took us round to see some of them. They had a few poison dart frogs (which apparently are only poisonous in the wild because of the food they eat) and there was one yellow one, who was sooo cool. So that little fella is my inspiration for today's animal print manicure for the 31 day challenge (I know it's two days late - sorry!).

I used a base of Rimmel Sunshine, and a black nail art pen for the detail. My nail art pen was having one of those days where it just likes to gush out, so this all got a bit messy, and ended up being one of those designs that looks so much better in my head...

I'll do my best to get back up to date with this challenge, although..er...I haven't done my floral design for day 14 yet so you're definitely not getting that tomorrow. Sorry! I promise to be a better blogger next week!

Take a look at all the other animal print manicures that the girls have come up with:

Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner

Kat at Hooked On Polish

Diana at Nails By Diana

Aly at Wonderland Beauty

Meredith at Perfectly Polished

Nicole at The Color Republic

Kate at The Painted Pony Nails

Cee at Absolutely Cee

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Liz and Lisa at Lozlosa

Mari at Nailista

Greta at How Was Your Day?

Miss L at Beauty by Miss L

Gini at Sassy Paints

Pam at Nail-E-Glance

Sunday, 23 September 2012

Best of British

Ah, what lovely weather today! For those of you not in the UK...I'm joking. It's horrendous out there. But oh well! Who needs sunshine when you can curl up with a hot chocolate and look through what all us British bloggers have been up to this week.

Wendy from Wendy's Delights is feeling purrrfect with her Blue Furry Mani with easy to apply nail stickers!

Emma tries her hand at dry drag and becomes The Girl Who Plays with Fire at Emma's Little Corner.

Helly at the Nail Newbie is showing British brand W7 some love by showcasing their gorgeous Lava Flow.

A little recreation of some Bee style nails, with actual stingers from New York Fashion Week, a Fred Butler Creation from Enigmatic Rambles.

Has twenty three days gone by already? Northern Nails' 30 Day Challenge is still going strong, the themes now are all full of inspiration!

Lyndsay from Pie's Eyes is back from her holiday and showing off her colourful Rainbow Manicure she created with her latest Kiko haul!

Sally of Nail Pron is talking about a nailmas Christmas challenge, adding to her stash and doing nails to match her mood.

Sam from Polished Art re-created an old nautical-themed manicure for day 12 of the 31 day challenge (19 to go!).

PishPosh and Polish is featuring Red and Black polishes on her blog this week. See them here! Which is your favourite?

Claire at nuthin' but a nail thing is still continuing on with the 30 Day challenge and her favourite so far has been TRIBAL NAILS. What's been everyone else's favourite challenge?

Ruth goes overboard with the half moon effect to create an easy curved stripe look!

Want some inspiration for elegant nails? Lucy from Lucy's Stash did Lace & Roses nail art featuring OPI, Konad and A England.

Feeling the need for something pretty and super sparkly? PrettyKittyClaws has Smitten Polish You're Turning Violet, Violet blinging out her nails!

Vic's feeling a little behind with the times as she's only just done her first set of galaxy nails. She found a fabulously blinging star to go with them though.

Lou had a quiet week this week trying out her new Indie polishes from KBShimmer, which is quickly becoming her favourite polish brand.

Alexis at Glitter Tips tried some Autumn butterfly nail art.

Sarah Louise plays with her Image plates from MoYou / OMG Nails and creates a Crosses & Dot's manicure.

Despite being poorly, The Crumpet has kept up with the 31 Day Challenge and has even had time to launch a Zoya Giveaway - so make sure you enter!

Next week I'll have the next few instalments of the 31 day challenge for you, we've got animal print and flowers coming up! I'll try to get a few more manicures up, but my boyfriend's coming down to join me in Kent tomorrow, so I apologise in advance if my blog is neglected for a few days!

Saturday, 22 September 2012

31 Day Challenge - Day 12: Stripes

It's the weekend, yay! I'm back in Swansea this weekend for my cousin's wedding. I'm writing this on Thursday night, so I'll let you know how my attempts at travelling around London to get here went!

Today's challenge theme is stripes. I decided to recreate an old manicure that I did, hopefully with improved skill and technique... I went with a nautical theme.

I used a base of Barry M Matt White, and then used OPI Chick Flick Cherry and China Glaze Man Hunt. I used striping tape for my lines - I'm getting a little better at all this taping business, but as you can see, I've still got a ways to go!

Here's the old manicure that I based this design on. This is from...erm...sometime between October and February...

What do you reckon? Do you prefer the old or the new one?

Thursday, 20 September 2012

Glitter Skittles

Ok, I'm totally abusing the word skittles here...but I didn't know what else to call them. I mentioned yesterday that I did a mani this weekend that I didn't want to take off, and here it is!

I've included two seemingly identical pictures to hopefully show the glitter as best I can - on the left in in natural light, and the right is with a flash. This glitter is from Claire's, but I can't find a name (or even a number!) on the poor thing. As embarrassing as it potentially is walking into Claire's as a 23 year old woman, they do have some super pretty glitter polishes. And this was only £2.50. Happy Sam :D

It's made up of gold, pink and green hexes, all quite muted tones, and there's also very fine silver glitter (I think it's silver...it looks gold in that photo though..hmm) which you can see on my thumb nail. The bottle is chocka with glitter, so I was rather surprised when this went on so sparsely. Since I wanted a full on glitter bomb, I went for dabbing it on, and this is about four coats of that. It's still very pretty when it's sparse, but it's not what I wanted for this look :)

I was all adventurous and used a couple of other polishes that I don't really use - George Gnome and 17 Forever.

This is such a simple manicure, but I think it's so pretty. For anyone who's fairly new to nails, you should give something like this a go. Sometimes it's about having the confidence to wear a random colour on a couple of nails rather than doing something really intricate and complicated :)

Wednesday, 19 September 2012

31 Day Challenge - Day 11: Polka Dots

Happy Wednesday! My boyfriend's back from sea today (although I don't get to see him until Monday - argh!); it's nice knowing he's back on solid land and isn't getting stressed with work :)

So today is day 11 of the 31 day challenge. I have a confession...today's manicure is one from the depths of the vault. I fully intended to do a new one. The thing is...since I've started work I tend to do 4 or 5 on the weekend ready for the posts for the week ahead. So what happened was I was on manicure 2 this weekend, but then I really really liked it and didn't want to take it off. So I never quite reached the polka dot manicure on my list...

But anyway, here you go! It's still nails, and it's still polka dots, so it's all good!

It's from before I shaped my nails square and everything...weird. The polishes I used were Collection 2000 French White and a Special FX polish without a name.

I promise my stripes manicure on Saturday will be brand new just for you!

Check out the other ladies participating:

Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner

Kat at Hooked On Polish

Diana at Nails By Diana

Aly at Wonderland Beauty

Meredith at Perfectly Polished

Nicole at The Color Republic

Kate at The Painted Pony Nails

Cee at Absolutely Cee

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Liz and Lisa at Lozlosa

Mari at Nailista

Greta at How Was Your Day?

Miss L at Beauty by Miss L

Gini at Sassy Paints

Pam at Nail-E-Glance

Tuesday, 18 September 2012

Purple Leopard Print

This was an attempt at sensible work nails, that possibly went slightly awry... I still wore them to work though, of course.

It's just a basic leopard print (I was feeling uninspired). My black nail art pen was misbehaving, so the lines ended up being thicker than I'd have liked.

The polishes used are OPI Skull and Glossbones and Planks a Lot from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection. I am totally in love with this collection, every colour is so pretty! I just need to order Steady As She Rose and then I'll have a full set...

I should just mention that Planks a Lot is much warmer toned than it appears here. It's so frustrating when your camera won't capture the colour properly. I get it all nicely ready and in focus and all that to take the picture, and it looks fine on the screen, and then I press the button and it comes out blue... So please don't use this as a colour reference for this polish!

So while I had this on I went on a little shopping spree. I won't tell you how much I spent. One of the polishes I picked up was Barry M Silvery Lilac. I was too impatient to take my manicure off before trying out my new polishes, so I just whacked them on top.

This is one coat of Barry M Silvery Lilac on top. I really like the effect :) Although I probably wouldn't bother with an accent nail if I was to do this again, as you can't really tell my ring finger's a different colour.

What do you think of Silvery Lilac as a layering polish? Do you like to prolong the life of a mani by adding something to freshen it up a few days later?

Sunday, 16 September 2012

31 Day Challenge - Day 10: Gradient

Good morning everyone :) We're a third of the way into the 31 day challenge (that means we've been doing it a month...is that right??) and today's challenge is gradient nails. If you've been following my blog for some time, you will be aware that when me and gradients get together, challenge is certainly the right word.

So with my not-so-great track record in attempting gradients in mind, I'm actually rather pleased with how this turned out. The only problem is that they're sensible work nails, so frankly they're boring. I wish I'd added some detail on the ring finger - a little butterfly in the corner or something, that would've been pretty.

Not too shabby...

My technique still needs a little work (clearly) but I'm getting there! I used OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons (you're seeing a lot of this lately in my work manicures!) and OPI Sparrow Me The Drama.

So we're in to the second third of the challenge now, which means patterns! The first of these will be polka dots on Wednesday.

Take a look at how everyone else's gradient nails turned out:

Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner

Kat at Hooked On Polish

Diana at Nails By Diana

Aly at Wonderland Beauty

Meredith at Perfectly Polished

Nicole at The Color Republic

Kate at The Painted Pony Nails

Cee at Absolutely Cee

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Liz and Lisa at Lozlosa

Mari at Nailista

Greta at How Was Your Day?

Miss L at Beauty by Miss L

Gini at Sassy Paints

Pam at Nail-E-Glance

Best of British

It's that time of the week again to find out what all the lovely ladies in the British Nail Bloggers group have been up to this week :)

Helly at the Nail Newbie shows her nubs some love with Dollish Polish Expecto Patronum.

Wendy over at Wendy's Delights has won a Giveaway from The Hungry Asian and her prize Twenty Ten has been swatched here. Also, go check out The Hungry Asian's blog and polishes available at Etsy. Going from one extreme to the other see Wendy's Summery Manicure using tape to create a simple & easy square design!

Claire at nuthin' but a nail thing has been continuing on with the 30 Day Challenge with Rainbow Gradient Striped Manicure.

Emma at Emma's Little Corner has a little success after a frustrating week of failures PVA experiment Blue and Black gradient mani.

Ruth has some more fun with gradients this week, refusing to accept summer is over!

Lou once again is on a bit of a Chanel kick with one of the Fashion's Night Out Limited Editions.

Charlotte at Charlottes-nails has been busy with apples and glitter this week for the Fall into Autumn Challenge.

Its the end of the favourite things challenge for Steph, here's Steph's Day 10 Favourite Mani. Steph can't wait for the next challenge, will you be joining in the fun?

Lyndsay from Pie's Eyes drops in from her holiday in Spain to show off some NEW Holographic Polish from Kiko!

Putting her nubbins to good use this week, imPRESS - Press on Manicure false nails were put through there paces over on Enigmatic Rambles' blog.

PrettyKittyClaws put her Nails Inc Sprinkles to good use with a pretty Cupcake Mani.

Sam at Polished Art unleashed her inner geek with this physics-based rainbow manicure as part of the 31 Day Challenge.

Jo at Northern Nails has reached the half way point in the 30 day challenge this week was all about the nail art!

Nada has got her hands on her first set of Models Own nail polish and has swatched them! Check it out!

Laura at She Who Does Nails has been continuing the 30 Day Challenge and did a cool rainbow nails design using a dotting tool!

Polished Criminails sticks to the British theme this week by showing us 4 of the new BarryM Gelly Nail Paints in the shades Prickly Pear, Grapefruit, Satsuma & Pomegranate.

Kerry at JustTalkNails shows off the new Barry M Burgundy Croc effect teamed up with A Englands Iseult.

Vic has been on a major polishing spree this week (13 manis and counting) but she just can't decide whether she wants to show you delicate print or holo bling.

So that's it for this week's round up! I'll be posting my next manicure for the 31 day challenge later on today!

Saturday, 15 September 2012

Awards

OK...so over the last few weeks (months) I've received a number of blog awards. I've put off posting about them until I had time to do them properly and look through all the blogs I follow to choose suitable people and all that business, but it's all gotten a little out of hand and it's clearly never going to happen.

So, instead, I am just posting a thank you post. Please check out all these lovely ladies blogs :)

First up, I received the Beautiful Blogger Award from Jane at Hen's Nest.

I was given the Appreciation Award from Mandy at Chameleon Stampede.

I received another Versatile blogger award from Caroline's Nails.

And lastly, Lexie at Blackfox Nails, Jas at Blingtastic Nails and Steph at Never Mind Suzi all awarded me the Liebster Award!

Thank you all so much! Sorry for not doing them properly, but they are very much appreciated. Knowing that people enjoy reading my blog is what makes it worth doing!

Justice for the 96

This is a bit of a wordy post, but it's all very important, so please stick with me and read it.

This week, the Hillsborough Independent Panel published their report on their findings from examining the documentation related to the Hillsborough disaster. As some of my international readers may not be aware of this event in history, I'll attempt to summarise (or there's a pretty concise summary here). On 15th April 1989, there was an FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. There was overcrowding in the terraces at the start of the match, which led to a crush, causing the deaths of 96 people. Liverpool fans were blamed for causing the crush, with claims being made that drunken, ticketless fans had forced their way into the ground. All sorts of horrendous headlines were written about the things that the Liverpool fans (including the deceased) had apparently done.

For the 23 years since then, families of the Hillsborough victims, survivors and fans of Liverpool FC have been campaigning for the truth about events this day to be told, and for full disclosure of all documents relating to the initial investigation.

This was eventually granted, and the Hillborough Independent Panel was set up, in order to analyse all the documentation. On Wednesday, the results of their investigation were made public. In addition to what people already knew and wanted made public - that the Liverpool fans were in no way responsible for events that day - there were many shocking findings. Over 150 statements were edited to remove comments about the police being disorganised, or that suggested there was any sort of chaos prior to the crush. The false information that was fed to the press about the behaviour of Liverpool fans that day came from the high ups in South Yorkshire Police and a local MP. And this goes right to the top - Margaret Thatcher rejected the initial investigation report because it made the police look bad. Perhaps most upsetting is the fact that of the 96 who died, 41 could have been saved. The coroner ruled a cut off time to the investigation of just a few minutes after the crush, stating that everyone was either dead or brain dead by then, and that no events after this time would have had a significant impact. Turns out this was yet another lie; the post-mortem shows that 41 of these people were not killed outright in the crush, and had they received medical attention they potentially could have survived. You can read the whole report, or find out more about the panel here (it's not a pleasant read, I cried my eyes out).

So now that the truth is out there, the next step is for those responsible to be brought to justice. If you live, work or study in Liverpool (unfortunately it's not open to anyone else), please take a moment to consider signing these petitions here and here for the removal of the knighthood's of Irvine Patnick and Norman Bettison for their role in the cover-up. And remember, sharing is caring.

My boyfriend's mum (who was at Hillsborough that day, and pregnant with my boyfriend as it happens) suggested I do some justice for the 96 nails. So here they are:

Thursday, 13 September 2012

31 Day Challenge - Day 9: Rainbow Nails

Hello again :)

Here, as promised, are my super geeky rainbow nails!

A nice little bit of dispersion for you!

For the base colour I used Barry M Grey. The white was done using a nail art pen, and for the prism I used 2true No. 49. Then for the spectrum, from red to violet, I used Barry M Bright Red, Max Factor Bright Orange, Rimmel Sunshine, Barry M Spring Green, China Glaze Manhunt and Jessica Ruffled Bottoms.

Next up the challenge is gradient nails *ponders whether or not to do something involving graphs...*

Check out all the other rainbow nails :) There are some really great manicures today!

Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner

Kat at Hooked On Polish

Diana at Nails By Diana

Aly at Wonderland Beauty

Meredith at Perfectly Polished

Nicole at The Color Republic

Kate at The Painted Pony Nails

Cee at Absolutely Cee

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Liz and Lisa at Lozlosa

Mari at Nailista

Greta at How Was Your Day?

Miss L at Beauty by Miss L

Gini at Sassy Paints

Pam at Nail-E-Glance

My Favourite Things: Final Post!

Good evening ladies (and gentlemen?). Today is the final day in the My Favourite Things challenge, hosted by Kelly over at Ooh La La Polish! The theme for today was to recreate our favourite mani from the challenge.

I decided to recreate Becca from Horcrux Nails' Favourite Animal mani, because of it's awesomeness. I do feel this should come with a little disclaimer. My attempt really does not do Becca's nails any justice - so please check out the original! Mine looks like a child did it (I'm blaming the lighting...).

Yeah...bit of a mess. But I love the idea nonetheless! The green is Barry M Spring Green, and then we've got Barry M Bright Red, Jessica Ruffled Bottoms, a combination of Max Factor Bright Orange and Rimmel Sunshine, and China Glaze Man Hunt. The black and white are both nail art pens.

And with that, the challenge is over! Don't forget that if you want to take another look at all the manicures I produced for this challenge, you can click on the Challenges tab at the top of this page :)

Wednesday, 12 September 2012

Sensible Work Nails

Happy Wednesday all my lovely followers! I can't believe there's now over a hundred of you! Thank you all so much :) It sort of snuck up on me a bit, so I don't have a giveaway planned, so perhaps when I reach another milestone :)

A spot of housekeeping first - you may have noticed, I've added a few tabs to this blog. There's now a Challenges tab, where you can view pictures of challenge manicures for all the challenges I've done, all in one place :) Challenges will be added when they finish (with the exception of the My Favourite Things challenge which is already up). There's also a Tutorials tab. This only has my one tutorial at the moment, but I'll add to that as I create more. And remember, if you want to see a tutorial for anything or have any ideas for nail art you'd like to see me try, you can leave me a comment, Facebook post or even drop me an email.

Anyhoo, on to the nails! So, as you may or may not be aware, I've recently started a new job working in a hospital. I don't know if I'm allowed to wear nail polish...so I'm wearing it until someone tells me I can't. I am, of course, trying to be rather stealthy about it, so nothing too outlandish. So you're going to see a lot of these colours over the next few weeks!

So here's one of my sensible work manicures.

It obviously wasn't that stealthy, as someone asked me what polish it was because they really liked it. Understandably. It's OPI Stranger Tides, and I adore it. I bought the Pirates of the Caribbean mini set like 2 weeks ago, if that, but I'm considering buying a big bottle of this already so I never run out... The dots are OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons. I think it looks really pink against Stranger Tides, but on it's own it's very much a beige-toned nude. Topped of with Seche Vite, naturally.

In other news, on my way home today I walked into a stinging nettle. My face still hurts.

Tuesday, 11 September 2012

My Favourite Things: Flowers

I was intending to come back for this second post with a far more positive outlook, along the lines of - yes, I may live in a dump, but hey! I get to fire x-ray beams, whilst making sound effects (sound effects aren't necessary, but they add to the firing experience). But then I went into the bathroom. Both bathrooms. Both made me disappointed in humankind.

Today's theme for the My Favourite Things challenge is flowers. A little while ago I did this manicure for another challenge, and at the time I thought it'd be nice to do it again some time with something like tulips instead of sunflowers. So that's what I did :)

Bit of a Barry M fest here - I used Berry Ice Cream, Blueberry Ice Cream, Matt White, Bright Pink, and a green nail art pen.

Thursday is the last day of this challenge! I still haven't decided what to do...hmm...

Teal Tuesdays: Geometric

Hello! It's time for another Teal Tuesdays post. Sorry it's so late! I had a flat viewing after work today, and I've been looking online for more flats since I got home. I haven't even had my tea yet - that's how committed I am to escaping from staff accommodation AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. I just wasn't made for shared accommodation. I went in the kitchen this morning and there was dough all over the counter from where one of my flatmates had been rolling it out last night... And every time I step in the water that someone hasn't cleaned up after dripping everywhere after their shower, I get a little bit closer to committing homicide. I am a woman on the edge. And I've ran out of chocolate.

But anyway, you don't care about that. So here are my geometric nails! I'll be honest, I wasn't really feeling this theme, but I do quite like how they turned out.

I can only apologise for the fact that my fingers look like they belong to an 80 year old woman (or possibly man). I'm blaming all the alcohol gel I use in work. Definitely nothing to do with all the acetone...

Oh, I should probably tell you what polish I used as well! It's Barry M Teal, and I cheated and used blue and green sharpies for the lines.

So, we have inlinkz again, because we're all fancy these days :D So go check out what every one else came up with this week!

Monday, 10 September 2012

31 Day Challenge - Day 8: Metallic

Today's theme in the 31 Day Challenge is metallic. I had a few ideas for this, mostly involving abstract/brushstrokey type manicures (one based on a Vienetta...perhaps I'll do that another time). In the end though, I just decided to unleash my inner (ha) geek and go with a more literal interpretation.

Behold, my metallic nails.

I was hoping to include some atomic numbers as well but I didn't leave enough room...

The polishes are Barry M Gold Foil and Copper, and Stargazer 232. I probably shouldn't have used Copper, it's totally the wrong finish, but it's...well, copper.

In case you don't frequently study your periodic table, and have forgotten your chemical symbols you learnt in school, we've got gold, titanium, copper and potassium.

Just wait until you see my rainbow nails on Thursday...they're divinely science-y. I wonder if anyone can guess what they might be...?

Anyhoo, check out all the other lovely ladies and their metallic manis:

Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner

Kat at Hooked On Polish

Diana at Nails By Diana

Aly at Wonderland Beauty

Meredith at Perfectly Polished

Nicole at The Color Republic

Kate at The Painted Pony Nails

Cee at Absolutely Cee

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Liz and Lisa at Lozlosa

Mari at Nailista

Greta at How Was Your Day?

Miss L at Beauty by Miss L

Gini at Sassy Paints

Pam at Nail-E-Glance