Honeymoon Nails: Dragonflies

Aloha!

As I mentioned a few months back, we went to Hawaii on our honeymoon.  It was literally the most amazing thing ever.  We stayed at the Fairmont Orchid on the Big Island, and oh my word, it was paradise.  I was all for just staying there (I think we'd have got away with it for a few months at least?) but my husband said we had to leave :(

So, these are not the nails I wore on my honeymoon.  My honeymoon nails were just my wedding nails, which after about two days of playing in the sea were frankly disgraceful.  So they came off, and I went naked for the rest of the honeymoon.  Oo-er.

Rather, these are nails inspired by our honeymoon :)  I have a few of these to show you, but I'm starting with dragonflies!

The resort had loads of these lovely koi ponds all around.  I thought Bridal Falls was the most appropriate to share!

While we were standing looking at the fish one day, we saw these lovely purple dragonflies flying over the pond.  So pretty! More creatures should be purple, definitely.  So I decided a purple dragonfly manicure was in order.

I used a base of Barry M Elderberry.  I drew my dragonflies using my trusty Barry M Nail Art Pen in Black (seriously, when are they going to make more colours...?) and filled them in using Barry M Vivid Purple and Star Gazer 232.  I then added a little Above the Curve Diva P onto the tips and wings for a bit of sparkle.

This was actually the first time I'd been outside of Europe.  I'm not really much of a holidayer, although I do enjoy city breaks and sightseeing.   I've now totally got the bug though, although I basically just want to keep going back to Hawaii lol. What's the best holiday you've ever been on?

I'm Married!

Okay so I've actually been married for two months, BUT I am now finally getting round to blogging!  I have been working away doing lots of manicures today to show you over the next few weeks, but I thought today I'd show you what nails I had for my wedding :)

I'm just not a french manicure kind of person (plus I'm absolutely flipping terrible at doing them).  I wanted something a little different, but also didn't want to go wild and do something that I'd look back on in a few years and say "what on earth was I thinking...?".  So, I decided to keep it simple and go for a plain colour.  Believe it or not, it genuinely took my like a year to decide on these nails, and I now own about 7 different nail polishes in this shade, but in the end it had to be the polish that inspired the whole colour scheme (don't tell my husband) - Barry M Peach Melba.

For my bridesmaids, I went with a glitter gradient of Barry M Gold Glitter over OPI My Vampire is Buff, to match their gold and pearl accessories.

What are your thoughts?  Would you go more traditional or more adventurous?

(Shout out to Amber Skye Photography for our wonderful photos :) )

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

Colourful Tree

This was actually a manicure that I did for a guest post for a fellow blogger who was getting married.  I guess things got even busier than she expected and this never got posted.  The plus side is I have a post ready written and just have to paste it here - woohoo!

Given the circumstances of the guest post, I thought it would be nice to do a weddingy manicure!  What with my wedding coming up (although this was a good year ago!) I thought it would be nice to try out a potential wedding manicure for myself. We’re having a beach theme, and sort of peachy-corally (okay, they're orange) bridesmaids.  So I whipped out my Barry M Peach Melba and every nail polish I own that could be considered shell-coloured, and started creating my masterpiece.  Er...unfortunately, it didn’t quite turn out as I’d envisioned, so out came the nail polish remover and I turned to good old Google for some inspiration.

I found this lovely picture:

I don’t quite have the skills to recreate that on my nails, so here’s what I came up with instead:

I used Barry M Matt White for my base.  For the tree trunk I used Barry M Bright Purple, and for all the dots and details I used Barry M Guava, Nails Inc Grosvenor Street and Knightsbridge Green, Max Factor Cactus Green and Bright Orange, and Rimmel Sunshine.  There’s a little bit of green Sharpie thrown into the grass as well, just for good measure.

For my thumb, I picked out a few of the details from the original image.

It’s not as neat as it could be, but it’s bright and summery, and perfect for the lovely weather we’re having here in the UK at the moment!  I shouldn’t imagine that’s going to last long though...

Glitter Comparison

A little while ago they had W7 Multi Dazzle in Poundland.  I got a little overexcited and bought three, despite the fact I already have ample supply of multicoloured glitter toppers.  But er...they're good for presents and stuff...?

Anyway, when I got them home, I thought it would be worth seeing just how similar it was to the glitters I already had.

Here's the line up:

Left to right we have: Technic Carnival, a classic cheap multicoloured glitter; W7 Multi Dazzle, my Poundland bargain; BeautyUK Intergalactic, which I was sent to review a little while ago, and Barry M Amethyst Glitter.

In the name of fairness, I used two coats of each polish.

The obvious one that stands out here is Barry M Amethyst Glitter - this is clearly intended to be a full coverage glitter rather than a topper.

Slightly less obvious is the difference between BeautyUK Intergalactic and the other two.  Intergalactic contains a mixture of square and hex glitters, whereas the other two only contain hexes.

So that leaves Carnival and Multi Dazzle.  They've swapped sides no just to confuse you - Multi Dazzle on the left, Technic on the right.

I really can't see a difference in composition here - they both seem to contain the same size and colour glitters.  Carnival is a little more dense though.

So, I've hopefully mostly justified owning several seemingly identical glitters.  And, added bonus, if you're after Technic Carnival but can't be bothered waiting for delivery, pop to your local pound shops and see if they have any W7 Multi Dazzle in stock :D