Gingham Man at the Helm Book Inspired Nail Art + Review

Hey everyone! I've been meaning to do gingham nails for ages, they've been at the top of my to-do list for over a year, but I just haven't plucked up the guts to do them. Anything involving line work puts me off, I don't feel confident doing lines, and they often go awfully as a result, and as gingham is just lines, I've always been a bit wary of doing it incase I mess it up. So when Penguin got in contact a couple of weeks ago and asked me to do some gingham nails inspired by the cover of their new release, Man at the Helm* by Nina Stibbe, it was the push I needed to finally do the design. 

I'm a huge fan of books, up until uni (which destroyed my free time) I never really had my head out of a book, now I only tend to read on trains, and ever since I got my car that's become a lot less regular as well. However, this summer I've really rediscovered my love of books. I've always been a staunch hater of e-readers but I got one a few months ago to save me lugging books around betwen uni and home, or on holiday, and I took it on holiday with me and read 4 books in a week, so they're pretty handy in a way, but I'm still a staunch supporter of having a book in hand. Especially when the cover is as lovely as Man at the Helm's. Which of course you wouldn't get to see if you were just reading it on Kindle. I've also done a few designs based from the cover of books before, and I've done a design of Penguin's own book covers, so it was an honour to be contacted by them. 

Etoile Pumpkin Bunting Washbag Inspired

Hey everyone! mybag.com sent me this gorgeous Etoile washbag* which is called 'Pumpkin Bunting' on their website, and I was instantly inspired to create some nail art from it. I was going to do all orange bunting but I decided to add a couple of accent nails in lime green to make it a bit more interesting and I really like how they turned out. I feel like I maybe should have used a darker lime green so it showed up on the white a bit more, but in person they weren't as contrasty so it wasn't an issue. 

Tracey Beaker Nail Art - Bog Off!

Hey everyone! Today I have some nails that I'm very excited to share with you: Tracey Beaker nails! My friends have a running joke that I look like Tracey Beaker (I don't, they just know it irritates me), and they once even hacked my facebook account and changed everything to be Tracey Beaker. I think to this day I still apparently attended the dumping ground as a school! I know some of you wont have a clue what I'm talking about at all, or why I have 'bog off' in the title, but you'd have to watch to understand. Tracey Beaker started off as a book by Jacqueline Wilson, who was my favourite writer when I was younger, and was made into a childrens TV programme by the BBC. Her favourite phrase was 'bog off' and she would never admit she was crying, it was always hayfever instead. It sounds truly awful I know, and to an extent it was, but it's the kind of thing you hate to love and love to hate. 

I saw this design over at Nancy MC nails and I instantly knew that I had to recreate it, it was almost a *drop everything and run to the desk* kind of situation, but I was at work so I did have to wait a few hours to do them. Nancy also described her as someone she loves to hate, so it must be true! You can see her original design here. Of course, Nancy is the queen of cartoon nail art, so mine aren't anywhere near the standard of hers, but I'm still pretty proud of them, and I've had a lot of comments on them which is always a good sign. They took about 2 hours to do because I didn't want to muck up the face, and they were definitely worth it. I even put a gel topcoat on top (post coming soon) to make sure they wouldn't chip at work! I might regret that when it comes to removing them...

Guest Post for Very Emily - Tribal Jelly

Hey everyone! Today I have a guest post over on my dear friend Emily's blog, which you can see here. It was about time I repaid her back for the guest posts she's done for me in the past, including this one that you saw a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, I'm not going to say anything about the nails because you can head over to Very Emily to see all the info there.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments. And dont forget to check out the post HERE for more info

Alice

Tutorial Tuesday: Galaxy Hearts Nail Art for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! I'm SO excited to show you these nails, I did them about 3 weeks ago and I've been waiting for them to go live on Divine Caroline so I could show you. I saw this design a few months ago and I just knew that I had to recreate it. I was entirely sure how to go about it and when I looked online I saw that there weren't any tutorials, so I decided to make one myself, and wing it along the way. For the full steps click HERE to go to Divine Caroline.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments! And don't forget to check out the tutorial HERE

Alice

There's only just over a week left to vote for your favourite blogs in the Cosmo Blog Awards, I'd really appreciate your votes for 'Best Established Beauty Blog' if you feel I deserve it! You can vote here, and if you don't want to vote in the other categories you can just press next.

V Festival 2014 Nail Art for Avon

Hey everyone! This weekend in England has been 'V Festival', I'm not a festival kind of girl. I love music, but I'm not a fan of standing up for long periods of time, or getting muddy, or camping, so festivals are definitely not for me! Nevertheless, Avon asked me to do some nails in honour of V Fest, so of course I obliged. I did the logo on the thumb, along with the Virgin heart from the logo, and then I did musical notes on the other fingers. It was actually a lot quicker to do that I expected so if you like this look, even just with the musical notes, I promise it doesn't take too long to do!

Like an idiot I deleted my other photos, so this is the only one I have!

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

Alice

There's only just over a week left to vote for your favourite blogs in the Cosmo Blog Awards, I'd really appreciate your votes for 'Best Established Beauty Blog' if you feel I deserve it! You can vote here, and if you don't want to vote in the other categories you can just press next.

Nails on Tour

Hey everyone! So I've just (a week ago) got back from a wonderful holiday in Italy, which you may or may not know from a few of my previous posts. I decided whilst I was there that I wanted to do some holiday pictures on my blog, but I also wanted to include my nails, so I decided to take a photo (or two/three) a day with my nails to document what I did. I also wanted to document how well my nails fared. I was wearing Red Carpet Manicure - Red Carpet Reddy*, as I've been trying out gel manicures recently (post coming soon), and it fared brilliantly. I got a teeny chip on the side of my thumb on the last day (you'll see why below) but apart from that they were pretty much perfect until I took them off. 

3 Ways to Reuse Your Nail Polish Bottles, with Click Fragrance

Hey everyone! It's been a few days but I just needed some time to recover from my holiday, I don't really know why I've been so tired after having such a great time, but I could have slept solidly for the past 4 days having had the chance! I've got a holiday snaps type post (including nails) coming up in the next few days but for now I'm going to be showing you 3 ways to reuse a nail varnish bottle over at Click Fragrance. You can click HERE to see all the information and steps. You may or may not have seen a couple of these ideas used elsewhere, but hopefully it has a unique enough twist for you all to be interested!

What do you think? Will you be using any of these ideas? Do you already? Let me know in the comments! Don't forget to check the link here

Alice

There's only just over a week left to vote for your favourite blogs in the Cosmo Blog Awards, I'd really appreciate your votes for 'Best Established Beauty Blog' if you feel I deserve it! You can vote here, and if you don't want to vote in the other categories you can just press next.

Sunset Nail Art for Avon

Hey everyone! Today is the last day of my holiday, it's weird writing this before my holiday has even begun but hopefully it's been a good week, both for me and for my blog! I've had a couple of great guest posts, and also posted a bit of nail art along the way, hopefully you've enjoyed it! To tide you over until I'm properly back here are some simple sunset nails I did for Avon, they're nothing special and the palm trees are a bit wonky, but I think the crooked look isn't TOO bad.

Guest Post from Very Emily: No Tools Nail Art

Hey everyone! Another guest post for you all today whilst I'm away, this time from my wonderful friend Emily, you've seen her nails here before and she was kind enough to agree to do another blogpost for me, and I absolutely love the design she's done! Anyway, I'll leave it up to Emily to tell you more about the design:

Hi everyone! I'm Emily from the blog Very Emily and I'm so honoured to be guest posting on One Nail To Rule Them All today. I absolutely adore Alice's work, I always look forward to seeing what she creates. I just love her nails and her amazing style. Her work is always flawless!

For my guest post I came up with a simple design using only three colours that requires no tools! On my pointer and pinkie I used a black polish, you can use any black you have lying around, I used Jessica Black Lustre. On my ring finger I layered a white polish, Essence Hattrick in this case, as a base.

Then I layered a blue colour on my middle finger, here I used Rimmel Blindfold Me Blue from the Rita Ora collection. On my ring finger I used a stippling technique similar to the dry brush method. You wipe off most of the polish from your brush and just randomly dab it on your nail to create a fun abstract print. I really love how simple it is!

Then I added some bling on all nails except for my ring finger! I used gold steel balls and placed them on one by one in a triangular line-up. I purchased mine from Born Pretty Store.

Feel free to stop by my blog over at Very Emily to see more nail art, swatches and reviews. Huge thanks to Alice for having me and I really hope you like these!

Thankyou so much to Emily for doing this for me, I absolutely love that ring finger!

Alice

P.S. Thanks to all your wonderful nominations, I've been shortlisted for the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards for 'Best Established Beauty Blog', and in order to be in with a chance of winning I need YOUR votes, once again. So if you feel my blog is deserving of the title, I would really appreciate your votes here (or you can click on the image on the right hand side which will take you to the same page)

Tutorial Tuesday: Beach Nails for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! I'm currently sunning myself in Italy, so these beach nails are absolutely perfect to post this week. Last year I did nails almost identical to this and I had tonnes of questions asking how I did them, so I finally got around to doing a tutorial, just in time for the next summer time to roll around! You can see the tutorial HERE on Divine Caroline, but there's a sneak peak below!

What do you think? Let me know in the comments! And don't forget to check out the tutorial here

Alice

P.S. Thanks to all your wonderful nominations, I've been shortlisted for the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards for 'Best Established Beauty Blog', and in order to be in with a chance of winning I need YOUR votes, once again. So if you feel my blog is deserving of the title, I would really appreciate your votes here (or you can click on the image on the right hand side which will take you to the same page)

Guest Post from The Nailasaurus: Let Me See Your Peacock!

Hey everyone! Whilst I'm off sunning myself in Italy, The Nailasaurus has kindly offered to do a guest post for me. I'm absolutely honoured to have her on my blog. Whilst Sammy is now a great friend of mine, she was my original inspiration for starting my blog (not sure if she knows that actually but it's true!) and so it's a bit like having blogging royalty posting on my blog! I'll let her explain the nails to you:

There’s no doubt that Peacocks are one of nature’s most majestic and beautiful creatures. Those iridescent feathers and that magnificent plume are the perfect inspiration for some nail art. Thanks to a stamping plate, I’ve got the pattern down but found it a bit tricky to mimic the peacock colouring on my nails this time around. I think it’ll take a couple more tries until I’ve got it nailed.

For this nail art, I used piCture pOlish Swagger as my base colour and stamped on the feather design using W7 Purple Paradise. Purple Passion is a metallic purple shade but stamped over Swagger, it looks bright indigo – I like it!

The stamping design is from MoYou Stamping Plate Tropical 06.

On my ring and pinky fingers, I topped Swagger with Essence Only Purple Matters.

It’s all topped off with Glisten & Glow HK Girl.

 Thankyou again Sammy! I absolutely love these nails and I hope you all do too!

Alice

P.S. Thanks to all your wonderful nominations, I've been shortlisted for the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards for 'Best Established Beauty Blog', and in order to be in with a chance of winning I need YOUR votes, once again. So if you feel my blog is deserving of the title, I would really appreciate your votes here (or you can click on the image on the right hand side which will take you to the same page)

Rainbow Gradient Spots - Guest Post for Lucy's Stash

Hey everyone! I'm currently sunning myself in Italy, but as Lucy is also away, I agreed to do a guest post for her. You can head over there to read more about these nails and see more photos!

Alice


P.S. Thanks to all your wonderful nominations, I've been shortlisted for the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards for 'Best Established Beauty Blog', and in order to be in with a chance of winning I need YOUR votes, once again. So if you feel my blog is deserving of the title, I would really appreciate your votes here (or you can click on the image on the right hand side which will take you to the same page)