Christmas Holly Berries

Hey everyone! Happy Christmas Eve Eve, I thought it was about time I posted some Christmas nails. These mistletoe with red berries were inspired by a plate from Matalan (see below). I actually did these in early November but I felt embarrassed to post Christmas nails so early... so I took it to the other extreme and now I'm posting two days before Christmas, oops! 

I used OPI - My Vampire Is Buff as the base, and then a mix of greens to create the leaves. I used OPI - Big Apple Red, and then acrylic paint for the white and black detailing. Finished with Barry M - Matte topcoat. 

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

Alice

Gelish Forever Fabulous Collection - Review + Swatches Part 1

Christmas really is the busiest time of the year isn't it? I feel like I've barely stopped recently, and I've got to go away with work this week so I've got even less time than usual.

 I've been so busy I haven't had the time to write up this review, even though I tried the products a few weeks ago, so I'm sorry for the delay in getting this out to you! 

The Gelish - Forever Fabulous collection* is a bumper collection of TWELVE new shades for winter.  There are some really great colours in this collection, and I've split it into two halves so you can see them all in more detail. This is Part 1, and Part 2 will be along shortly. 

Christmas Gift Guide 2018

Sit tight folks, it's a long post today. For the first time ever I bring you my Christmas Gift Guide! 

There is a wide variety of products in here, for those who love a bit of elegance, or for those who want to do gel nails at home (or remove them), or those looking to bring a bit of extra sparkle to their Christmas. I hope you like the products I have chosen to show you, I hope there is something in here for all nail lovers. 

Dainty pink flowers

Hey everyone! Sorry for the radio silence recently, blogging had to take a bit of a back seat while we were having our kitchen fitted, but now it's sorted I'm back and I've got quite a lot coming up for you!

To start with I've got these simple pink flowers, These were just a quick design I did on a Sunday evening so that I'd have something to wear to work in the week and I really loved how they turned out. 

Spotty Halves

Just a quick post today to show you these nails. These were super easy to create and were originally inspired by a tea light holder that can be seen on my Instagram. 

Burgundy Polka Flowers

I had the busiest weekend decorating half the house in readiness for new carpets today, and I'm so excited that they're finally in. That's it, I'm finally an adult because I'm excited about carpets, what have I become?

Today's nails are just a quick design using Barry M's Autumn 2018 Gelly Hi Shine collection, super simple but I love how they turned out. 

Gelish African Safari Collection Review + Swatches

It's my favourite time... a new Gelish collection! The African Safari collection is a lovely group of autumnal shades, and it makes me feel cozy just looking at it. It can't just be me who's excited for big knit jumpers, and sitting in front of the fire with hot chocolate (especially now I have a wood fire in my new house!). Read on for my full thoughts on the colours. 

Fast Food

Long time no see! I've had such a hectic few months because... I bought a house! It's been so so stressful but we're finally in and it's so exciting. I don't quite have a nail room set up yet because unfortunately we have a bit of a leak, so in true Blue Peter fashion ... here's one I made earlier. 

Rainbow Ombre Stars

Hey everyone! We're getting so close to moving house now, or at least I hope we are. It seems to have taken forever to go through, but I can't wait to be in now. I'm struggling to access my desk at the moment due to there being stuff everywhere, and I'm also struggling to find the time to do any nails, but I did manage to squeeze in this quick design using the OPI - Grease Collection*

Arched Studs

I've been sorting out my laptop recently to try and speed it up and I realised when I was going through my 'to post' folder that I never posted these nails using the China Glaze Chic Physique* collection. They were just some quick nails I did using the brushes from the bottle, and I'm not sure how I feel about the studs! 

Minnie Mouse Polka Dots

Hey everyone! It feels like forever since I last wrote a blogpost. I've been busy with the whole house buying malarkey, although I do post a bit more regularly on Instagram if you don't already follow me on there. I'm at the Scratch Star Awards on Sunday, I'm nominated for Best Nail Art blog and I'm really excited! 

These nails were inspired by the Papier x Disney collection. I really like the collection as a whole, but I loved how these translated so easily into nails. They didn't take me very long either! They're just slightly extravagant polka dots really. 

Essie Spring Brush Strokes

Hey everyone! The weather has been so lovely this week, it’s been such a shame to be stuck in an office! I hope it carries on this weekend so I can make the most of it. It might officially be summer now but I’m looking back to spring with these nails as they’re done using the Essie Spring 2018 Collection. 

Ice Cream Nails

Is it just me that really struggles to eat healthily when the weather is nice? I just can't resist ice cream, and chocolate, and ice cream, and cake, and ice cream (getting the trend yet?). So while I was eating an ice cream at the weekend, I decided that it made some great nail inspiration... and this was the result! 

Gelish - Make A Splash: Review + Swatches

Hey everyone! I had such a mare trying to get this post up. I managed to get my review done soon after I received them, and as I went to plug my memory card in, the whole thing wiped! I've no idea why. After a lot of panicking from me, and help from my boyfriend, I actually managed to receive the photos, hours before I was due to go on holiday. So I thought therefore I'd write the post on holiday, but then Blogger wouldn't work on my phone! 

We're finally here... so here is the gorgeous and fun Gelish Make A Splash Collection. I love how bright these gels are, the perfect summer shades! There's also a Cellophane Coat included with the collection, which is described as an 'iridescent overlay' and just adds a bit of shimmer, scroll down to have a look. 

Navy Florals

Hey everyone! Don't you just love the fact that there are two bank holidays in May? It goes so quick! I'm really excited for the end of the month, because not only is it pay day (always the best day) I'm also going to Spain! Time to get some proper sun. In honour of my holiday, I've got some very non-summery nails. Although I suppose they do have flowers on them... that's summery right? 

Big Brush Flowers

 Can you tell I didn't know what to title this post? At least it's catchy...ish! As is a common theme with my blog, I did these a while ago but hadn't got around to editing the pictures. These were inspired by @nailsbyharlig on Instagram. I really loved her easy-to-follow tutorial and couldn't resist creating some of my own!

Peach Daisies

Where has the sun gone?! It's back to being all rainy and miserable. I'm flying to Berlin tomorrow and the weather isn't looking much better there either! Anyway, enough weather chat, these nails are enough to brighten things up after all. I did these as a quick mani when I was struggling for ideas, and I wasn't 100% because they make me think of fried eggs a bit, but I like them enough to not hide them away in my deleted folder forever so I'll let you decide: eggs or flowers?

Multicoloured French

Hey everyone! Sorry for the recent radio silence, I’ve had A LOT going on, I don’t want to tell you anything just yet because I don’t want to jinx it (it’s not blogging related so I’m not doing the whole “oh I can’t tell you yet because it’s a secret” thing don’t worry!) but once it’s finalised I will probably not shut up about it. So enjoy the silence while it lasts! 

Today’s nails were inspired by someone I think... which is probably the vaguest thing I’ve ever said on here but I won’t lie - I painted these almost a year ago and I have no recollection of what made me do them! This blogpost is full of vague and unhelpful statements I’m sorry! 

Negative Space Floral Studs

Do you ever just see a design on Instagram/Pinterest (or wherever) and instantly know that you have to recreate it? Because that's what happened to me with these nails. I saw these nails by Mikutsutaya and instantly fell in love. Mine are nowhere near as elegant as hers, but I still love how they turned out.

Gelish Royal Temptations - Review and Swatches

Hey everyone! Hope you enjoyed the super long Easter Weekend, I certainly made the most of it with a spring clean but also a few days of chilling out. I feel much more refreshed! 

Today I've got the gorgeous Gelish - Royal Temptations Collection* to show you. I've made no secrets of my love of Gelish, and this collection is no different. I really feel that the formula of the new bottles is so much better than the old, so much so that I've pretty much stopped using all my old bottles! Read on for my thoughts on the collection. 

Hedgehogs In Love

Hey everyone! Are you as excited for the bank holiday weekend as I am? 4 days off! I can’t wait. I was planning on doing nothing but my diary is already starting to fill up with mundane tasks, hopefully I can find plenty of time for nails! 

This design was meant to be for Valentine's Day but I completely forgot to post them until it was too late, so instead I decided to do the complete opposite and instead wait long enough that they wouldn’t be associated with Valentine’s... and here we are! 

Heard It On The Grapevine

Hey everyone! Can you believe it's almost the end of the month? March has gone so quickly, and I can't wait to have a long weekend for Easter! To celebrate what should be the start of spring (why is it still so damn cold?) I wanted to do some light and spring like nails. I wasn't really sure where I was going with these (which is often a theme with my designs if you hadn't noticed!) I just knew I wanted to do some grape nails, but they looked a bit plain with just grapes so I ended up adding some vines and it definitely made the design work 100% better. 

Fun fact: did you know grapes are a berry? And if you did know that... don't tell me and make me feel like an idiot for having to google it! 

Mice and Cheese

Happy Tuesday everyone! I've got something slightly different from the usual florals and patterns today with this mice and cheese design. I saw a few similar ideas floating around on Pinterest, and I stumbled across this design, and I loved the idea so much that I had to recreate it. I tried these first on false nails to see how they looked, and I must admit my first attempt was slightly better than these, but I hope you still like them! 

Detailed Pink Florals

When I posted my Gold Lilac Rose nails the other week, I said that I wanted to recreate them in pink, and I couldn't resist doing that straight away. I decided to play around with them a bit more and this time I did the roses using acrylic paints, as I never really use acrylic paints anymore and I thought I'd see how they looked. They were super easy to work with, but I think I got a bit carried away with the roses and I don't quite like them as much as the last ones - practice makes perfect I guess! I also added polka dots and hearts rather than gold foil this time, and I like how it brings these a fresh look... although I do miss the gold foil a bit I must admit! 

Do It With Feeling

I've recently been watching The Bold Type on Amazon Prime**, and so when the opportunity arose to work with Amazon for an Instagram post on these nails, I couldn't resist doing one of my favourite quotes from the show. 'If you can't do it with feeling, don't'. Obviously the full quote didn't fit but I love the phrase 'do it with feeling' on it's own too. 

If you've been following me for a while (and by a while I mean... more than 5 years) you might remember that I used to do some of my designs with ink pens rather than brushes or tools. Well today I'm bringing back the old school, because the quote is written with my favourite Muji pens, just like in the old days. I haven't used anything except a Muji pen to write with since I was about 14, so it makes sense that I'd use them for my nails too! 

Essie Winter 2017 Collection review + swatches

I feel like an idiot, this post has been sat fully written in my drafts for more than two months, and I was under the impression that I'd posted it! It's a bit delayed, but it's such a beautiful collection I wanted to post it anyway. So here's my review of the Essie Winter 2017 Collection*. 

Porridge Nails

Yeah you read that title right, these nails are inspired by something you would probably consider very uninspiring: porridge. Inspiration really can be found in the strangest of places!

 I have porridge every day for breakfast at work, and I've stared at the Moma* packets sitting on my desk for weeks without realising that my next inspiriation lay right in front of me... turns out it can strike when you least expect! So when Moma asked me to team up with them, I knew that it would work because not only are their packets are so bright and colourful, but it's also a product I enjoy and wouldn't mind sharing with you all. 

Swirls and Foils

Do you ever see something and just get hit by a burst of inspiration? That's what happened to me with these nails. I saw a design by Kara Nailed It and I knew instantly that I wanted to create my own version of them. I slightly adapted the colours, the use of gold foil and put them on all my nails, but otherwise my inspiration was her. I used the same technique she did, which was to blob all the colours together on my nail and then mix them together with a dotting tool (is there a name for that?).

I really loved how these turned out. They were so quick to do (except my middle finger which I kept having to redo because it wasn't behaving.. does that ever happen to you when it's always the same nail messing up?), I've never tried this method before but it's definitely something I'll do again. 

Marvel: Thor Ragnarok Nails

Hey everyone! I've got something a bit different for you today. Marvel asked me to create some Thor: Ragnarok inspired nails for my Instagram but I couldn't resist posting them here too. My blog is after all supposed to be an archive of all the designs I've done, so it feels wrong to have posted them elsewhere and not on here! 

My middle three fingers were inspired by Pop Vinyl figures of Thor: Ragnarok, and then I added a hammer and lightening to my other nails to encapsulate the true Thor-ness of these nails. This is a different type of design to what I usually do, but I really enjoyed challenging myself and I am 98% happy with how they came out... I just wish my hammer looked more like a hammer! 

Giant Polka Dots

Hey everyone! Did you have a lovely Valentine's/Galentine's day? I went out for a curry and watched a rom com while eating chocolates, pretty damn great! I'm so glad you all loved my floral nails from my last post, I'll definitely have to recreate them with different colours because I love them as much as you all seemed to! 

Today's nails are super simple, especially compared to the florals, but as I so rarely do simple nails it was nice to do something that only took a few minutes. These were inspired by i_heart_nailart on Instagram, and I just loved the look so much I had to recreate them. 

Gold Lilac Roses

Happy Sunday everyone! Although there's only an hour of Sunday left. I've had a busy but chilled weekend, and I managed to find time to do a few nail designs today. One of them was this floral design inspired by Follow That Way.  I wasn't sure whether I'd ever be able to recreate one of her amazing florals, the detail she puts into them is astonishing, but I decided to give it a go, and I'm really really happy with how these came out. 

One thing I couldn't decide on was my accent nails, I originally did them with some of the nail negative space and with gold foil down the side but I wasn't 100% on them and the pictures didn't come out very well, so I did these, and then I did gold glitter accents. Of the three, these came out best in photos and I think the fact that they're quite muted means that the flowers stand out a bit more. 

Emoji Dogs

There's no point in denying it, I’m a huge over-user of emojis, but I’ve never really had the urge to translate that into nails. That is until I realised the cute potential the dog emoji holds... i.e. I was stuck for inspiration one day and was browsing my phone and decided to give them a go. These started out just as a test on falsies to see what they’d look like, and I ended up loving them so much I had to recreate them. Typically, the first attempt was much better than these (beginners luck I guess!) but I was still happy enough with them! 

Aztec Accents

After a nice relaxing Saturday having afternoon tea, I decided it was probably time to start editing the multitude of designs I've had sitting on my computer for months. I annoy myself with my tendency to do loads of designs that I never get around to editing. Finally this design gets to see the light of day, and I'm pretty pleased it does. There's something so striking about aztec designs, and I love how the dark vampy green brings out the black and white. 

Barry M - Candy Culture Collection Review + Swatches

It feels like forever since I last did a full review. I find that more and more I prefer using polishes in nail art and reviewing them that way, but now and again I can't resist an old-fashioned swatch post. And the latest Barry M Candy Culture Collection* was just too cute to be able to resist reviewing. It's been so cold and miserable lately that it's nice to have some lovely spring polishes to brighten things up a bit.  These gorgeous pastel shades are from the first ever Barry M scented range. I found that they all smelt strong enough that you knew they were scented, but not strong enough that it was overpowering. Barry M claim that these shades only require two coats and dry with a soft matte finish, read on to find out what I thought...

Rose Gold Quartz

I've been meaning to do rose quartz nails for a while now, I used to have a rose quartz stone when I was younger and I loved how pretty it was. So when the trend came about in nail form I knew that I had to do them. But, despite watching quite a few tutorials on how to do them, I'm not quite sure I've got them right. It's one of those designs that you can wing a bit, but you have to make sure you wing it the right way. I'll definitely play around a bit more because it's such a great look that I want to make sure I nail it (ba-dum-ch). 

Sparkly Burgundy Paisley

Hey everyone! Welcome to my first post of 2018, happy new year! Can you believe we're already more than a week into 2018? Which means one thing and one thing only... it's less than a week until my birthday! It also means that it's probably about time that I wrote a blog post, especially as one of my new years resolutions is to blog more. Today's nails were done using the All That Jazz - Opulance Collection*.  This was the first time that I've painted paisley in ages, so I did them as a bit of a challenge to myself.  I realised after one nail that they were going to take forever so I turned them into accent nails instead... so much for a challenge! I also hadn't done dry brush nails in forever, so I combined the two and I loved the end result