Halloween Challenge #1: Classic Orange and Black

Hello!!!

So I decided a little while ago that I was going to join in with the Halloween Nail Art Challenge in the Challenge Your Nail Art group on Facebook.  Here are the prompts (and a very cute graphic!):

I saw this a little while in advance, giving me plenty of time to prepare.  And it's only 4 prompts, so there is some small chance that I may actually finish it.  So how many manicures did I prepare in advance?

None.

I am a fool.

I am DETERMINED to actually do this though, so I have just been furiously painting my nails, and here's my first challenge manicure!

Yes, I did indeed attempt a water marble.  Yes, I have lost my mind.  I think it's not my worst attempt though...?

I used Barry M Black and Max Factor Bright Orange.  Then I added W7 Orange Dazzle on my little finger nail, and painted the stem of my pumpkin with Barry M Spring Green.  I'm pretty happy with this actually :)  Although, I confess, it's only on the one hand...  Must remember to take it off before work tomorrow!

Have you done any Halloween nail art yet?  I'd love to see - leave your links in the comments or post a picture on my Facebook page!

And don't forget to take a look at all the other orange and black manicures!

An InLinkz Link-up

Colour Me Crazy: Red

Hello lovelies!

I hope you've all had a lovely weekend :)  I had to pop in to town yesterday for a few bits.  I somehow lost my shopping list en route though so I ended up just buying clothes.  Totally essential of course...  Today I had a MUCH needed lie in and general lazy day.  I'm so exhausted after going to Liverpool last weekend for my hen and home the weekend before for a wedding, I was desperate for a lie in!  Thank goodness I had a weekend off before hen night number two :p

So, I've been a member of British Nail Bloggers for aaaaages (you may have noticed the tab here).  This week they started the Colour Me Crazy! Challenge.  It's a once a week challenge, which I should hopefully be able to keep up with (I'm sure we all remember the 30 Day Challenge fiasco...).

So here is my manicure for the first challenge prompt - Red.

I finished putting all my polishes on swatch stick this week (well, okay...I underestimated my collection so I ran out of sticks) so an ombre seemed like the thing to do now that I have all my polishes in some sort of organised fashion where I can easily compare them :D  Rather unhelpfully, the last three polishes have photographed as almost the same colour though...

From dark to light, I used Max Factor Ruby Fruit, Ciate Dangerous Affair, OPI Chick Flick Cherry, Liz Earle Knockout and Ciate Mistress.  The random pattern - not sure what they're supposed to be but it's one of my go to patterns - was drawn on using my Barry M Nail Art Pen in Black.

Please take a little look at all the other lovely red manicures this week:

An InLinkz Link-up

New Technique: Watercolour

Hellooooo!

Last week you voted for me to try out the watercolour technique!  I have to say, I wasn't looking forward to this.  I did, rather sensibly, actually google a tutorial for once though.  I happened across a cheat's version, and I was oh so tempted...  But no, I stuck with doing it properly.  I glanced at a few tutorials to get the general idea, but I don't remember which ones, sorry!

So, the grand unveiling...

I really liked it...although I don't know if I like it in the photo.  I used a base of Barry M Matt White to begin with.  Then, using one colour at a time, I added one or two dots to each nail, then used a nail art brush dipped in acetone to sort of smudge the polish around a bit.  My top tip: use less polish than you think you need; the first colour I did was the purple, and my blobs were too big so it didn't go as faint as I'd like.  Oh, and topcoat over your base colour!  Otherwise you'll end up taking off some of your base when you start with the acetone, and no one wants  to see naked nail!

The other polishes I used are Jessica Ruffled Bottoms, Nails Inc Grosvenor Street, and Max Factor Bright Orange and Cactus Green.

Thank you to everyone who voted, it's lovely getting you all involved!  Don't forget to pop over to my Facebook page to vote for next week's new technique.  Acrylic paint is winning at the moment, so if you'd rather see me attempt needle drag or DIY spotted, get voting!  And if you have any other suggestions for new techniques you'd like to see me try, just leave a comment :)

Untried Challenge Day 7: Oldest

Going for a stab in the dark here...I think this is my oldest polish: Max Factor Ruby Fruit.  I'm assuming this because, back in the day before I was nail polish addicted, I loved Max Factor make up.  Some things never change though, so back then I also didn't like paying lits of money for things.  So I used to buy make up twice a year when they had those offers on in Boots with the free bag of goodies when you spent £15.  And I'm assuming this is a polish I got in one of those, because it's really not a colour I'd buy (unless I was drunk and/or caught up in the nail-polish-buying moment, in which case anything goes).

So anyhoo, here it is!  My oldest untried.

There's a reason I've left Ruby Fruit unused for this long - it's ugly.  It was actually really pretty on the first coat, it was more of a fuschia colour.  But far too thin and streaky to wear as one coat, so you have to build it up to this rubbish colour.  I also decided to change the rules of this challenge, and I decided that black and white polishes are also allowed.  So I added some Barry M Black tips and dotted with OPI OY-Another Polish Joke from the Euro Centrale collection.

I was really impressed with the OPI actually.  In the bottle I though it was going to be a bit of a rubbish translucent gold-y sort of colour, because it looks similar to another brand I have which is a bit poor on the nail.  I was fully ready to dot over my dots several times to get an opaque colour, but it only took one go!  It's packed full of shimmer, very pretty indeed.

Don't forget to take a look at how all the other ladies in the challenge are getting on!

Jonochi at Just Add Polish

Masha at Lost In Lacquer
Raine at Lacquer Lily

Amy at Fancy Side

Amanda at Designer Nail Accents

Patricia at Polished and Glittered

Lizajane at Organic Neglect

Blueberry Pie at Blueberry Nails

Kristina at Lacquer Fetish

Missy at Gnarly Gnails
Uni at Acetone FIles
Erica at Coat of Mani Colors 

Flip Flop #26: A Theme You Missed

The choices for day 26 were a theme you missed or your favourite polish.  Now, I can't possibly choose between all my little pretties, and I thought it would be more interesting to go for a theme I missed :)

Back on day...whatever it was...I decided not to do a stained glass manicure because I thought you needed jellies to do it.  It seems I was getting confused with a manicure that I think I saw on Chalkboard Nails?  So anyway, I decided to do a stained glass manicure for this day.

It's not the tidiest of manicures, sorry!  I used a base of Barry M Matt White so I could get away with one coat of all the stained glass colours.  I used China Glaze Man Hunt (I seem to be using this all the time recently!), Barry M Bright Red, Red Glitter, Lemon Ice Cream and Bright Purple, and Max Factor Bright Orange.  Then I used a black nail art pen to outline all the little panels of glass.

Only two days left, you never know I might even get this challenge finished by the end of March!

Flip Flop #24: Rainbow

So I had this amaaaazing idea of doing a rainbow across all my nails, with a pot of gold at the end.  It would've been epic.

However, time is something I seem to be constantly lacking recently.  Plus I couldn't bring myself to spend all that time doing it only to have to take it off for work in the morning (Although apparently my nails have been noticed...they were discussing in a meeting possible jobs I could do, and one suggestion was something involving drains and yuckiness - as if that's happening - and one of the women just said 'Have you seen Sam's nails? I don't think she'll want to do that..').

So anyway, I did these super lazy rainbow nails instead.  Sorry.  All of my manicures have been a bit poo lately.  To be honest, I'm looking forward to the challenge being over so I can go at my own pace a bit more.  If I ever say I'm going to do a month long challenge again, please stop me.

From left to right, I used Barry M Bright Red, Max Factor Bright Orange, Barry M Lemon Ice Cream, Max Factor Cactus Green, Barry M Spring Green, China Glaze Man Hunt, OPI Roadhouse Blues and Barry M Vivid Purple.  Phew!

I really love my middle finger :)  My index finger didn't photograph very well did it?  You can't even see the red!  I like the ring finger as well, although it's very subtle.  Maybe it would've been good with a little green on that nail as well?  Oh and apologies for the tipwear, I decided it was a good idea to do dishes (must be coming down with something).

Flip Flop #21: Dots

The other option for today was flames - this is something I want to try using the needle drag technique (actually I saw a tutorial for this on YouTube, so I could do that for one of the other challenge days), but I had a dotty idea that I wanted to try out.

I used OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons, and then dotted with Max Factor Bright Orange and Cactus Green, and Hello Kitty Play Ya.

I'm really pleased with this :)  I love the bright colours on the nude base.  If I was to do it again though I think maybe I'd either do all the nails the same or have it so the pattern joins up across all the nails.  what do you think?

Flip Flop #8: Colour Blocking

You may have noticed that the URLs for some of these posts say flip flip instead of flip flop, because I type flip flip in the title every flipping time!  Sometimes I notice before I publish, sometimes I don't lol.

Anyhoo, I shall be playing catch up today and tomorrow!  I had a lovely weekend back at my parents, although they fed me far too much and I left 3 pounds heavier than I arrived (that can't be good in a weekend can it?).

So here's day 8 of the Flip FLOP Challenge.  The choices were Colour Blocking or Black & White.  Since I require far more guidance for inspiration than colours, I went for colour blocking.  I'm not sure if colour blocking has to involve tape, I suppose anything involving block of colour counts, but I always think of tape manicures, so that's what I did.

If you're an older follower of this blog, you may know that tape manicures are a bit of a nemesis of mine.  Nowhere near the level of water marbles, but they give me grief none the less.  I just can't get my lines clean!

However, I am very pleased with myself on this occasion.

I couldn't face the faff of painting, drying, taping, painting, drying, taping...etc etc.  So I just painted my nails white, taped off sections with striping tape, and then painted these sections, leaving me with white borders when I removed the tape.

I love them.  Definitely something I'd do again, and they were relatively quick to do.  The only faffy bit is getting the tape to stick to your nail instead of your finger (presumably tweezers are a solution to this...).

I used Barry M Matt White as my base colour, then filled in my sections with Max Factor Cactus Apple, Jessica Ruffled Bottoms and Hello Kitty Play Ya (cutest bottle ever...).

Carrots!

This is an idea I had for a while, but yet another one that I just hadn't got round to doing!

Carrots!  I was a little bit lazy and didn't add detail on to my carrots, but it was late and I was tired, and I thought I'd just make a mess if I tried to do something that precise lol.

I used Barry M Matt White and Spring Green, with Max Factor Bright Orange for the carrots.

Now, on to other matters.  I appear to have lost my mind and signed up to a 28 day challenge in February.  Very sensible...  I shall do my best, and we'll see how it goes!

Here's the schedule, just click the picture to be taken to Jill's blog :)

Animal Print

Well thank goodness it's Friday.  Ugh.  I've had a migraine since Tuesday and I'm exhausted.  I could do with just sleeping until Monday morning, but I need to pick up my Seche Vite from the sorting office, so I'll have to surface at some point tomorrow.  I also need (read want) some new clothes.

As you'll know by now, I do love my animal print.  So today I have a selection of animal prints for you in this safari skittle!

The elephant skin was a bit of a fail...I tried using cling film for it.  In hindsight, it would've been better to have just painted it one shade of grey, then when it was almost dry pushed it so it all wrinkled up (as I'm oh so good at doing unintentionally).

Not too many polishes to list!  Hopefully...erm...Max Factor Bright Orange, Barry M Grey, Matt White and Black, China Glaze Kalahari Kiss, and OPI Warm and Fozzie and Skull and Glossbones.

You can see my tutorials for leopard and zebra print here and I have one on the way for the tiger print :)  The giraffe print is one of the water decals from Born Pretty Store that I reviewed here.

What are your plans for the weekend? :)

Layla Bubbly Effect

After lusting after OPI Spotted for however long it's been since it was released, but refusing to pay that sort of money for a polish I wasn't even sure I'd actually like, the other day I bought a Layla Bubbly Effect from Sally Magpies.  By the way, if you've never visited Sally Magpies before, go have a look now!  She imports loads of foreign brands that you can't get in the UK, so that we don't have to pay silly postage costs getting them.

Anyhoo, I bought Layla Bubbly Effect in Black Forest, but it is also available in a few other colours.  I decided to use it over a multicoloured blobby base (technical term there).

So this needs to be applies super thin.  I did my ring finger first, and thought I'd wiped all the excess polish off, but like the brush needs to be almost dry.

The colours underneath are Max Factor Bright Orange and Cactus Green, Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream and Bright Purple, and Rimmel Sunshine.

I love this look though.  I think it'll look great just over one bright colour as well :)

And here's a close up of the most succesful nail.

This is what the underneath looked like by the way.  I was going to sponge, but then decided that since it was being covered up I could just brush it on.

Did you manage to get your hands on OPI Spotted?  Or do you know of any other dupes?  I've also seen a load of people doing a DIY Spotted effect using water, which looks pretty awesome.

A Holly Jolly Christmas Challenge: Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

Evening all :)

Today is day two in the Holly Jolly Christmas Challenge, and the theme is snow!  For this manicure I decided to recreate one that I did last here.  Here's this year's effort.

I used Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream for my base, then used Barry M Matt White, Black, Spring Green and Bright Red, and a little blob of Max Factor Bright Orange for his nose.

And here's last year's attempt.  Shocking photo...apologies.

It's...er...more or less identical.  Not much development there then!

Next week's theme is Deck The Halls.  I'm expecting to see a lot of glitter...

Don't forget to check out all the other ladies participating in the challenge!

31 Day Challenge - Day 25: Inspired by Fashion

I am back on it with the 31 day challenge!  Boom!  I am also slightly tipsy, but there we go.  Shizzle happens.

Today's challenge prompt is inspired by fashion.  I'm not particularly interested in fashion (as is presumably evident to anyone who's seen me).  I wear clothes like, because you have to don't you, but that's about as far as our relationship goes.  But I had a little Google, and I found a dress that I thought would translate nicely into a manicure.

Here's the dress:

And here are the nails.

Glequins would have been perfect for this!  I don't have any though, so I just went for dots of Max Factor Bright Orange over a base of OPI Skull and Glossbones, with tips of 17 Seabreeze.

I had a bit of a manicure session this morning, so I'll be posting daily to get back up to date!

Check out all the other participants in the challenge:

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

Nail Narcotics

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful 

Mixed Mama

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Patty Greenberg

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 

Chameleon Stampede 

Pam at Nail-E-Glance 

Me, Myself and Polish

Halloween: Pumpkins

Happy Halloween!

I may be several days behind with the 31 Day challenge still, but I do have some Halloween nails for you today :)

I've planned on doing these for ages, and they took me a good hour to do.  And I hate them.  They look like they were done by a child.  Or, like, someone who doesn't do nail art.  I'm very disappointed in myself.  Anyhoo, they are at least fun I suppose!  Here you go:

I used Max Factor Bright Orange, and added the details using Barry M Black and Max Factor Cactus Green.  I was going to make them glow in the dark as well, but then I had to go to bed...  I do need my beauty sleep.

I'm loving seeing everyone's Halloween manicures!  What are you wearing on your nails today?

31 Day Challenge - Day 18: Half Moon

Good morning lovely people :)  Sorry this post is late (again).  We moved into our new flat this week, and I've had my first piece of coursework for my masters, and various other excuses...  I actually did this manicure on Sunday, I just didn't get round to taking a photo until yesterday.

So anyhoo, day 18 of the 31 day challenge is to create a half moon manicure.  I gave it a good go, but as you'll be aware if you've followed my blog for any length of time, I am rubbish at anything resembling a tape manicure.  I did consider freehanding the half moons on, but I thought I should at least have a go at using stickers.

My colour choice was basically inspired by what polish I had that's a really good one coater.  And in my hungover state I decided orange and silver would be a perfect combination.  So here you have it, my retro-futuristic half moon manicure:

I used Max Factor Bright Orange, Stargazer 232 and then added some little dots on with OPI Roadhouse Blues.

I don't particularly like it to be honest, but I've had looaads of comments about them.  Funny how you can do a manicure you adore and no one notices, and then when you don't like one everyone's saying how much they like it!

Have a look at all the other (probably better executed) half moon manicures produced by the ladies yesterday:

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

Nail Narcotics

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful 

Mixed Mama

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Patty Greenberg

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 

Chameleon Stampede 

Pam at Nail-E-Glance 

Me, Myself and Polish

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

Nail Narcotics

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful 

Mixed Mama

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Patty Greenberg

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 

Chameleon Stampede 

Pam at Nail-E-Glance 

Me, Myself and Polish

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 :)

Paralympics

So today is Friday...I'm sure for a lot of you this is a "Yay, it's almost the weekend!" sort of occasion.  For me, it's a "Argh, only three days til I have to work!", my last day of work being the 22nd June...  Oh well, for those of you who haven't been spending your summer slacking off, happy Friday!

I have some Paralympic nail art for you today.  I would like to say before I show you...it's a little bit messy, and one of the colours is a bit off, but it took me aaaages, so be nice!

I think I need to cut down one of my nail art brushes, they were all too fat to do the little blue stripes on the two!  Anyhoo, the colours I used are Barry M Matt White (you should really be able to guess that one by now) and Blueberry Ice Cream, Max Factor Disco Pink and Bright Orange, and China Glaze Exotic Encounters.

In other news, my sister's just discovered she's going to have her Headteacher for some lessons this year, hahahahahhhhaha.  She's gutted :D

Anyhoo, hope you're all enjoying the Paralympics and the last few days of the summer holidays!

My Favourite Things: Stripes

Happy Thursday!  Today is day six in the My Favourite Things nail art challenge hosted by Kelly at Ooh La La Polish! and the theme is stripes.

I've got a fairly simple mani for this - I just wanted to play around with zebra print a little bit more.

I used Barry M Matt White and Teal, and Max Factor Disco Pink.

Next up is glitter!  I'm hoping I can find some PVA glue to try out using that as a basecoat, as I really don't think I can face removing glitter!

31 Day Challenge - Day 3: Yellow

Happy Sunday!  Today is day 3 in the 31 day challenge,  and the theme is yellooooow.  Fortunately, I did these nails a few days in advance, so I'm still happily sporting my holographic polish.

I did these nails initially trying to replace what has been missing in my life this summer...

He's got his hat on as well, you just can't see it.  The sun's actually out today though, woohooo!  I don't remember what to do with sun though...do I go sit in it?

I used Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream and Lemon Ice Cream (mmm...ice cream), Max Factor Bright Orange and 17 Nightshade.  Oh, there's also a layer of Barry M Matt White underneath it all (yellow polish isn't allowed near my actual nail surface since...an incident).

Next up is green nails on Wednesday.

Take a look at all the other yellow 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

Nail Narcotics

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful 

Mixed Mama

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Patty Greenberg

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 

Chameleon Stampede 

Pam at Nail-E-Glance