Monthly Favourites: June

Hey everyone! Today I'm going to be starting a new monthly feature: Monthly Favourites. You may have seen some Youtubers, and some bloggers posting these, and I decided it would be a fun thing to start doing. I will be including both make up and nail polish, as you'll see from this post, but it will definitely always include nail polish (because they are of course my favourite). Sometimes it will be all review products, and other times it will be products I've bought myself, but whichever they are they will always be my honest favourites. Most of the nail polish will be reviewed separately too, this will just be a summary, or a preview depending on the timing.

This month in my favourites I have quite a varied selection of stuff! After the jump there will be more information, but here are the 5 products, in no particular order:

1. OPI - Live Love Carnaval*

2. Dr. Hauschka - Eyeshadow Duo*

3. EVE LOM - Radiance Lift Foundation*

4. So Susan - Deep Space*

5. Barry M - Summer Matte Collection*

Wimbledon Nail Art for Barry M + Tutorial

Hey everyone! In the past week I've been busy creating 5 tutorials for Barry M and I can't wait for you to see them. Today I'm going to be showing you how to create these simple Wimbledon nails, and the rest will be coming over the next week or so. As you may (or may not) have gathered, I'm not a very sporty person. I don't like football, I don't like rugby, I don't like, or understand, cricket, but I do however absolutely love tennis. So my excitement was real when Murray won Wimbledon last year, and I'm really really hoping he'll do it again, but we shall see! In honour of Murray, here are my Wimbledon nails (steps are after the jump)

Tutorial Tuesday: Floral Foxes for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! Today I have some nails for you that I've been super excited to show you ever since I created them a few weeks ago. They were inspired by this design on Hey Nice Nails' Instagram and I absolutely love how they turned out. If you want to see how to create them yourself head over to Divine Caroline here for step-by-step instructions. These nails were also my first experience with the Barry M Summer Matte collection (I used Copacabana* for the fox) and I was really really impressed, it was so opaque and easy to use. I also tried this out on a nail wheel with a purple fox using Rhossili* too and I love how that looks so maybe one day I'll create that on my nails!

What do you think? Let me know in the comments! 

Don't forget to check out the steps here

Alice

A Bit Dotty

Hey everyone! I have yet another design I created for our university's nail art society today (if you don't know what I'm talking about, read this). I seem to have been stockpiling them a bit. I'm not really sure where this design went, we were doing polka dot hearts, I think, and I just kind of went off on a tangent a bit. I think they're a little bit busy, but they still look okay

Nude Negative Space

Hey everyone! This week has been crazy busy, I can't believe how fast it's gone. One week of summer is now over, but there are plenty more to come! I actually created these nails quite a while ago, we did negative space nails in our university nail art society, but they were a little rushed because we were pushed for time so I'm not overly proud of them. I know recently I just seem to be posting stuff I moan about, but I promise you that this week's tutorial tuesday I really like, so watch out for that. I'm creating a lot of stuff at the moment that I love but it wont be out for a couple of weeks or so.

Polka Dot Cats

Hey everyone! Last week I mentioned that I keep delaying posting because I really don't like a lot of the stuff I have prepared and I keep wanting to wait until I have something better to show you. Someone in the comments argued that this blog is supposed to be a documentation of designs, good or bad, so I'm stepping outside my comfort zone and posting these. These definitely looked better in my head, as tends to be the case whenever I try and do cats. I think if the cats had turned out more realistic then I would like this a lot more, the polka dots and the blue work well, but the cats just went terribly wrong! I don't want to just sound like I'm moaning, they're not THAT bad, and cats are always cute (even when they don't look like cats), but the perfectionist within me is unhappy with these, for whatever reason that may be!

Fathers Day Nail Art for Avon

Hey everyone! Today I have some simple father's day nail art I created for Avon based around my scrabble love letter nails (although of course they were nail wraps, so these aren't quite as perfect). I hadn't realised that it was father's day in countries other than the UK today, but I just googled it and saw that it was, so this wont seem as odd to most of you as it would with mothers day, which always seems to be on different days! 

Tutorial Thursday: World Cup 2014 Nail Art for Click Fragrance

Hey everyone! Today I have a tutorial of these super easy World Cup nails to show you, in collaboration with Click Fragrance, the steps are on their blog here. If you didn't know (and you probably should) the World Cup opening ceremony is tonight. I'm not a huge fan of football (which may be blasphemy to some), but it's the perfect opportunity to some nail art a bit different to what I'd usually do! This might look difficult to do but I really don't think they are. The footballs are a little bit fiddly but you can always just ignore the lines that join the hexagons to make things a bit more simple if you prefer. Don't forget to check out the steps here.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!
Alice

Tutorial Tuesday: Negative Space Florals

Hey everyone! Today on Divine Caroline I have a brand new tutorial for you, this week for these cute negative space floral nails. I'm super excited to show these to you because I absolutely love how they turned out and I wore these for almost a week because I just didn't want to take them off. Check out the full tutorial here.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Alice

Polka Dot Triangles

Hey everyone! The rain is crazy loud on my attic window right now and as I can't sleep I thought I'd write a blogpost, but who's complaining? This is one of the designs that I'm not particularly proud of, it's been sitting in my 'to post' pile for nearly 2 months because I'm such a perfectionist and these don't feel 'perfect' enough, but your comments on my last post persuaded me to post, so here you go! I seem to have had a multitude of nail art with triangles recently, but I love how they look for some reason, and I may or may not (I do) have more coming up.

Models Own Nail Art Tool Kit Review + Love Letters Nail Art

Hey everyone! I've been having a few days break from blogging because I feel like most of the stuff I have waiting to show you is pretty low-par, and I just haven't been able to bring myself to edit something that I'm not particularly proud of. I've created a few nail art designs recently that I'm insanely proud of, but they wont be going up for a few weeks as they're work for companies etc. so I only have a few posts I did weeks ago before my exams. Once exams are over next week I hope to create lots and lots of awesome nail art, so I'm sorry if the designs I post this week aren't 100% great, sometimes ideas dont work out as great in my head as they do on my nails.

BUT I do like these nails, I'd completely forgotten I had them hiding away in my Models Own folder as I thought I'd posted everything during review week and I stumbled across them earlier and knew I finally had something worth posting. I was sent the Models Own Nail Art Tool Kit* a few weeks ago and I've actually been using it quite a lot. I used the flat brush for clean up on all my nail art. It came through my postbox at the perfect time in fact because my old one had fallen to pieces only the day before and I was all ready to purchase a new one.

For these nails I used the Detailing Brush, the Striping Brush and the Dotting Tool, along with the Flat Brush for clean up, all of which I was really impressed with. I did cut the detailing brush down a bit, as I always tend to, but otherwise I left them as they were.

Outlined Roses for Avon

Hey everyone! Today I have another post I created for Avon to show you, this time I have some outlined roses. I stepped outside my OCD comfort zone a bit with these nails as I didn't try and do them neatly, I just drew the black on quickly and randomly, and I'm so glad I did because I really like how these have turned out. I think the messiness really adds to the design. I think I need to start working along similar lines to The Nailasaurus' new mantra that 'done is better than perfect', because perfectionist tendencies take up a lot of time!