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 #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 #14: French/Valentine's Day

Right so scrap all that rubbish about it being too late for Valentine's Day, I decided to combine both of the day 14 options and create a quick Valentine's French manicure!

My nails are a little short for french tips at the moment really, so I cheated and absorbed a little of my nail bed into my tip.  By a little...I mean most of the tip is nail bed.  I've only got about a mm of tip at the moment, and I still managed to break a corner off my middle finger!

So here you have my naked nails.  Well...I touched up my ring finger slightly because I've got this massive white spot where I must have bashed it a few weeks ago and it's still got about halfway to go before it grows out.  Boo.  The tips are Barry M Matt White, dotted with OPI Flick Chick Cherry.  Then I picked a few hearts out of KleanColor Twinkly Love.

Twinkly Love is a rather thick polish, and you can see that it's a bit gunky around the hearts here.  I probably could've done with dabbing some of the polish off after placing the hearts, or maybe just another coat of Seche Vite to smooth it all out.

What do you think?  It's weirding me out a bit having such white tips...they certainly don't look like that underneath the polish!

Flip Flop #12: Matte

Helloooooo!  It's Friiiiiidaaaaay!

I have wine, and I have chocolate, and I've just got some wonderful news, so I'm feeling rather great!

A brief aside...there's some program on the telly and they keep showing really close up of him holding things and he's got proper skanky dry skin around his nails and bruised nail beds.  Yuck.  Get yourself a nail blogger for the close ups!

Anyhoo, the choices for Day 12 were Drips or Matte.  I've attempted drips before as part of my boyfriend's birthday manicure (on my nails, not his!) here.  It is something I'd probably like to have a go at doing as a full manicure at some point, but I wasn't feeling it last night, so I went with matte instead.  Interestingly (or not, actually) literally everytime I type 'matte' (yes, even then) I always type 'matter' first and have to delete the 'r'.  Very odd.  I wonder if it's from typing up too many physics things about the interaction of radiation with matter...  Or perhaps from typing 'what's the matter?' every time my teenage sister begins a little rant (I don't know if you actually read my blog Amber, but if you do, I'm joking of course...).

So I've been enjoying chucking some matte top coat over everything recently.  Buuut since it was the theme for this manicure, I felt it should be a manicure that was based around matte-ness rather than just any old manicure mattified.  I'm not sure I'm making sense.

But here's what I did anyway.

I used a Special FX polish that sadly has no name, then topped it with the Rimmel matte top coat.  And THEN...well.  I tried to stamp with normal top coat, but that didn't work.  I thought maybe it was because it was cheap and the formula wasn't great, so I Seche Vite'd all my nails, and then tried to stamp with the matte top coat.  That didn't work either.

SO, I re-matted everything and decided to do dots.  Although by this point I couldn't be bothered dotting all my nails, so I just went for the index and middle finger nails.  The dots were bigger than I intended...I think my little topcoat pool was too deep!  Then on all my other nails I added a stripe of top coat down the middle.  I'm not sure this really shows up in the pictures, but you can see it if you know it's there lol.

All in all, a bit of a faff.  A nice way to have some subtle nail art though, if you're going somewhere bolder nails wouldn't be appropriate :)

I realise I'm not yet caught up with the challenge, but just a little advance notice that I might get further behind next week!  I'm being kicked out of my flat for the week for some building work to be done, so I'll only have a limited selection of my pretties with me.  But I'll do my best.

A Holly Jolly Christmas Challenge: Rocking Around the Christmas Tree

Happy Monday!  If Monday's can be happy...

Today's the first day of my Holly Jolly Christmas Challenge, yay!  Here's what's coming up in the challenge:

So today's theme is Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.  For some reason, I was really struggling to come up with an idea for this one!  I mean, it really shouldn't be that hard...just something involving a tree. But no...nothing.

Eventually I settled on this simple but fun dotticure :)  And I actually really like it.  It's so bright and glittery, what more could you want?

Goes without saying of course that I had to take a picture of them with a tree ornament and next to the Christmas tree.  Not overkill at all.

I used Barry M Matt White for my base, and then had a bit more of a Barry M fest using Barry M Spring Green, Bright Red and Gold Foil.

I then went over these colours with glitter!  I used Barry M Red Glitter, and China Glaze Champagne Kisses and Winter Holly.

Here's a less tree-y picture...

Don't forget to check out all the other lovely ladies participating in the challenge, by following the links below!  Alternatively, you can view everyone's manicures on the Holly Jolly Christmas Challenge Pinterest Board.

Also,I failed miserably at using all my untrieds in November. I think I may actually have more than I started with.  So I'm still going with that anyway!

China Glaze Champagne Kisses

China Glaze Winter Holly

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

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

Pink Fridays #1

Happy Friday!

As you may or may not be aware, October is breast cancer awareness month.  Breast Cancer Care is a charity that provides support and information to people affected by breast cancer, and as part of their fundraising in October they do Pink Fridays :)  This basically involved you doing absolutely anything to make your Friday pink - wearing pink, eating pink, there's even a page on the website where you can make your photos pink.  You can find out more about the charity, make a donation, or register for a fundraising pack for Pink Fridays here.

In my case, of course, I am painting my nails pink!  I'll be posting a pink manicure every Friday in October.  So here's my first one for you:

Disclaimer: This is my first attempt at a bow (in case it's not obvious...haha).

I used Barry M Bright Pink and Matt White, and a pink nail art pen for the bow.

I'd love to see how you're turning your Fridays pink for breast cancer awareness.  Post your pictures on the Polished Art Facebook page!

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

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

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.

31 Day Challenge - Day 6: Violet

Here's post number 2 of 3! It's day 6 in the 31 day challenge and the theme is violet! For this mani I attempted to use tape again. It was more successful than previous attempts, although still not perfect.

I used some craft scissors to cut tape with a squiggly edge, and then I added the dots using a dotting tool.  The polishes are Jessica Ruffled Bottoms and Stargazer 232.

And here's what coming up  (if you don't know it by heart by now).

Have a ganders at all the other violet nails 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: Polka Dots

Evening all :)  This is day 5 in the My Favourite Things challenge hosted by Kelly at Ooh La La Polish!  I'm posting this slightly early so it doesn't clash with my Teal Tuesdays post tomorrow.

The theme or today is polka dots.  I still wasn't ready to take off my Holographic Hero, so I just went for a dotticure on top of it :D  I was aiming for a gradient-type look.  It's  not quite how I envisioned it, but it's alright :)

The dots were done using OPI Roadhouse Blues and a dotting tool.

Next up in the challenge is stripes.  I've prepared two manicures for this, so now I need to decide which one to use...hmm...

Brown and Blue Stripes

I was feeling brown and blue, and stripes and dots yesterday, so this is the manicure I ended up with.

I used OPI Over The Taupe, Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream, Barry M Bright Pink, Collection 2000 French White and a white nail art pen.  Topped off with Seche Vite of course.

It's a little different to how I'd initially pictured it, due to a lack of skill with the striper brush, but I'm really pleased with how it turned out :)  I just think the colour combination's really cute.

Blue Dots

A little bit of housekeeping first - I've added the option of following this blog by email, so if you don't have or want a Google account you can be updated when I post by email.  Alternatively, I've added a Facebook like button, so you can follow the blog on Facebook.  That one took me a while to work out so please use it :p  It's great seeing that people from all over the world are viewing my blog, but I'd love to know who you are, so please follow via one of the three options so I can find out a bit about who you are :)

Anyhoo, now for the nail art.  I saw this manicure on Chalkboard Nails a little while ago, and I think it's so beautiful, so I wanted to try something similar myself.

I did this while I was away in London for a few days, so I had limited supplies (and no clean up brush...evidently).  I used Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream, 17 Seabreeze, Collection 2000 French White and Barry M Red Glitter, topped off with Seche Vite.  By the way, my Seche Vite is doing my head in - does anyone know if the thinning drops are any good or if I'd be better off buying a new bottle?

This is such a quick and pretty manicure, I'll definitely be doing it in a few other colour combinations :)  What do you think?  Is this something you'd wear?