Nailvengers Assemble: Halloween Nail Art for Avon

Hey everyone! It's the end of the month which means another Nailvengers Assemble post, if you don't know what I mean by that, read this post. I'm teaming up with Sammy of The Nailasaurus, Lucie of Lucy's Stash, Allie of Brit Nails and Amelia of xameliax once again to bring you Halloween nails, with this spooky combination look I created for Avon. I'm heading out the door in 5 minutes so this post is very rushed I'm afraid, but I'm super excited for tonight, halloween is one of my favourite days of the whole year and I've been looking forward to it for months! 

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

Alice

Tutorial Thursday: Halloween Black Cat Nails for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! Today I have a design that I've been really excited to show you, cat nails! I wasn't sure that these were going to work out as I planned in my head so I was so proud of them when they did. I've left my halloween costume for tomorrow until the absolute last minute so I'm just going as a cat (how original) so I might re-do these nails to go with my costume, or maybe some other cat design. I've created a tutorial for these for Divine Caroline so you can see how simple these are to create yourselves, if you dont want to do the smaller cats you can always just do the larger ones. See the tutorial here. Also these only take two colours: Barry M - Lychee and Graffiti Nails - Jet Black. ALSO, Graffiti Nails currently has 50% off everything for halloween, use the code 'SPOOKY' at the checkout. Go on the website here.

Don't forget to check out the tutorial here. 

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

Alice

Tutorial Tuesday: Dracula for Beauty at Tesco

Hey everyone! Yet another tutorial for you today, I asked in my giveaway a few weeks ago what you all wanted more of and you said tutorials, so I'm currently spamming you with them. Today's tutorial is in collaboration with Beauty at Tesco, and is done using products all available in their range. As halloween is only a few days away I thought it was about time I whacked out some halloween designs. I always struggle to come up with anything original at halloween so after a bit of thinking I decided to do a peeking Dracula design. However I forgot of course that Dracula isn't Dracula without his fangs, which aren't on the nail, so if you would prefer to have the fangs in you can always have the face higher up the nail. 

If you want to see the steps, head over to their Instagram here.

You can follow Beauty at Tesco on Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter, and visit their website here, and blog here.

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

Alice

Tribal Nail Art for Avon + Tutorial

Hey everyone! Just a quick post tonight, I have no reason behind it except that I've spent my whole evening listening to 1989 and that's enough of an excuse for me, I absolutely love this album, can't wait to torment my friends by repeatedly playing it for the next few months! Anyway, tonight's nails are some tribal nails I created for Avon last month, they were meant to be a simple look but I ended up getting a bit carried away and they're definitely not simple anymore. I also created a tutorial for these so hopefully you can follow it, I got a bit distracted between steps so there's a bit of a jump.

Tutorial Thursday: Gingham Studs for Divine Caroline

Hey everyone! This was supposed to go up last night but the schedule didn't work, so here you go! After I posted my gingham nails last month, I had a lot of requests for a tutorial, so I teamed up with Divine Caroline to bring you one! I knew that I really wanted to combine them with more autumnal colours. I'm really liking deep reds this year, even though they stain no end they also look great, and I love how these turned out. Adding polka dots almost like studs was more of an afterthought when I realised that I didn't really want to do all the nails with gingham, and I think it ended up working really well. If you want to see how to create these yourself click HERE to go to the Divine Caroline website.

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

Alice

Floral Fury

Hey everyone! I've spent my evening watching 'Cuban Fury' and now that it's fresh in my mind I couldn't help naming the post after it! For those of you who haven't seen it, it's definitely a feel-good film, and it's pretty funny too! I should have really been doing seminar work but sometimes you just gotta watch a film and pretend uni doesn't exist (...right?). Okay, I know it's a terrible idea but just for one night! 

Anyway, these nails were done in our university nail art society, as we're always a bit pushed for time they're not the greatest I've ever created but I thought they were at least worthy of being posted here! I'm not sure of the base colour (I think maybe it's Barry M - Cosmo) and the white and pink are Barry M nail art pens. 

Tutorial: Autumn Birds for Barry M

Hey everyone! I hope you've all had a good week! I'm hoping next week will be a bit better for me. You may or may not have noticed but I decided to take a few days break from blogging, it's not been too long but things were getting a bit on top of me so I thought a few days break might do me good, I haven't even turned my laptop on for 3 days, which for me is a very weird occurrence. Now I feel ready to get back in to blogging, I'm going to try and post a lot more as I have a huge backlog of posts to show you. 

Today's post is another tutorial I created for Barry M, my last design was this toadstool design and you all seemed to love it, so hopefully you like this one just as much! I absolutely love birds, and I knew I wanted to incorporate them into a tutorial at some point, I still get requests to do a tutorial for my Rob Ryan bird nails, but for now this shall have to do! Tutorial steps will be after the jump

Cosmopolitan Blog Awards 2014 - Pictures + nails!

Hey everyone! I'm definitely a bit late with this post, as the awards happened last tuesday, I have no excuse except being too busy with uni to comprehend writing this, but now I'm trying to put off writing an essay, so what better time to do it? Thanks to all your wonderful nominations, this year I went along to the awards with Lucy and Sammy, and I had high expectations from last year, which were completely shattered! It was an amazing night, and I may have had one (or two) too many cocktails, but that only made the evening even better. It was lovely to spend time with Lucy and Sammy again too, we don't get to see each other much so when we do it's great to have a catch up! Thankyou to Cosmo as well for hosting such an amazing night, and to you all once again for making it possible for me to be there!

Hugs for Emily - Clouds and Stars

Hey everyone! Today's post is a little different, as it's dedicated to my wonderful friend Emily of Very Emily, who's been going through a tough time recently and we, her blogging friends, were invited by Sarah (Chalkboard Nails) to take part in 'Hugs for Emily', where we recreate one of Emily's designs. I've raved about how fantastic I think Emily is before, but she really has done so much for me, in blogging and in life, I'm proud to call her my friend and I wish there was more I could do than paint my nails to help relieve her problems. 

I decided to recreate this clouds and stars design of Emily's. I really loved the combination of bright and dark colours, and the addition of glitter. It's cute and simple, but also looks fab. Emily's original design was done using cut out nail vinyls, but as I don't own them I had to freehand them and they don't look quite as perfect obviously!

Fruit Nail Art for Avon

Hey everyone. It's been a busy week for me, with the Cosmo blog awards on Tuesday, and my trip to Fosse Park in Leicester yesterday, I'll be posting about both in the next couple of days, but it's been over a week since I posted my own nails on here, so I think it's about time I show you some nail art! I created this fruit nail art for Avon a couple of weeks ago, and if I'm honest I was expecting it to turn out to be a bit of a failure, especially the kiwis. Last time I attempted kiwis a few years ago they were just a big mushy mess, so I'm glad to see my skills have improved at least a bit since then!

Gel Series, Part 3: Removing Gel Manicures

Hey everyone! Part 3 of the gel series was supposed to be 'applying and removing gel manicures' with a video tutorial for the application but unfortunately I still cant get my iMovie working so I'll put the video up as a part 4 whenever I can fix it, however long that might take! You can see part 1 here, and part 2 here. Part 3 is the removal of gels, and I know that for some this can be the most daunting part of gel manicures. I often hear people saying that they don't want gels doing as they will damage their nails. Gels SHOULDN'T ruin your nails, unless they are applied and/or removed badly.  Today I'm going to compare two gel removal kits, and also talk about what to do when removing gels to prevent damage.

I'm doing nails at New Look, Fosse Park, Leicester!

Hey everyone! I have some super exciting, slightly last minute news for you today. This Saturday I'm going to be doing nails with Graffiti Nails at New Look, Fosse Park in Leicester. It's going to be between 10-4, so pop along any time between then for your nails doing by me! You can have either nail wraps or a nail design done, there will be a choice of 4-5 designs available, which you'll be able to see on the day. I can't wait to meet you!

Hopefully I'll get to meet some of you there!

Alice

Gel Series, Part 2: Practising Gel Manicures

Hey everyone! I'm a bit late with posting this, but part 2 was actually supposed to be a video and unfortunately my iMovie has broken and wont open so I'm going to try and fix it but if not I'll have to have a rethink for part 3! So instead, part 2 is a collection of all the nails I've done on other people (and on myself) using gel in the past 2 months. If you missed part 1, where I compared gel starter kits, you can see it here. Because these nails were all done at different times of day in different places the picture quality is definitely not consistent so I apologise in advance!

Ciate x Vente Privee Sale - Floral Nail Art

Hey everyone! Today I have some more nail art brought to you by Ciate and Vente Privee, you can see my last design (which explains who Vente Privee are if you're not sure!) from a few months ago here. The sale started on Wednesday at 6am and it's a limited time flash sale, finishing on monday. It is for members only but it's super easy to become a member, just click here and fill in the details and you're done! There are some fantastic discounts available, for instance the Beach House Set* that I used to create this design normally retails for £22, but you can get it for just £8 in the sale! There's also other gift sets on sale, and colours on their own too, it's definitely worth having a look at if you really love a bargain (and who doesn't?), you can see the full sale here.

Gel Series, Part 1: Comparing Starter Kits

Hey everyone! Today I'm starting a brand new 3 part series on gel nails. I should be posting today, tomorrow and Saturday night, but I wont make any promises because we all know how great I am at time keeping! If not everything will be up by Sunday. My first part in the series is a comparison of three gel polish starter kits. I've got the Gelish Pro 5-45 Kit*, the Elegant Touch Lux Gel Starter Kit*, and the Red Carpet Manicure Gel Polish Pro Kit*. I'd like to point out before I start that I am not qualified to do gel nails (although I am hopefully going to be soon!) and these are purely my perspectives as a consumer, and of course as a blogger. Gelish is a more salon-based brand, but both Elegant Touch and Red Carpet Manicure are for home use, and I think it's useful to compare the three to see their pros and cons.