Girly Girl Challenge - Day 8: Girls just wanna have fun!

Its the last day of the challenge :( boooo. I'll have to find another challenge to join in on as I've enjoyed this one so much, big thanks to Lindsey from Neverland Nail Blog for letting me do it. This one's about showing our fun side and since it was the last one I felt I should do something celebratory so I attempted some cupcake nails, its my first attempt so be kind! :D

I had a slight issue with my topcoat smudging one nail but it looks fine from far away, lol, so I left it. I like having the different versions on each hand and i'm happy with how they came out. I cant wait to see what everyone else does for the last one.

Ashley of Follow The Yellow Polish Road

Stephanie of A Little Polish

Kelly of Devilish Polish

Jodi of Captivating Claws

Danielle of Polish. Glitter. Rock & Roll!

Olivia of Unprofessional Nails

Kate of This Charming Kate

Bethany of  A Plethora of Nails

Lizzy of The Do It Yourself Lady

Eugenia of Talon-ted

Johanna of Neues vom Kellerkind

Amanda of Nox Nails

Ashley of Smashley Sparkles

Sarah of See Sarah Swatch

Emily of The Lacquerologist

Jess of LuvMyLacquer

Tressa of O' Natur Nail 

ChiChi of I'm just me...ChiChi 

CR of Color Me Silly

Amanda of Berry Polished 

Robin, Erin, and Anna of Polished Cousins

Girly Girl Challenge -Day 7: Sugar,Spice and Everything Nice

I can't believe this is the second to last mani in the Girly Girl Challenge. I've really enjoyed doing it and its kept me a bit more "regular" blog-wise, lol.
Today was Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice - That's what little girls are made of! Show off your sweet (or spicy) inspired nails. So I wanted to do something sweet inspired but do something I hadn't tried before. I also wanted to use my newly acquired BeYu Brilliant Shiraz 209. And then something on my blogger dashboard caught my eye, a "caviar" mani. I absolutely love this, I've started to really like textured nails since I bought Floam. This particular black base with black microbeads reminds me of a particular sweet I loved when I was in school and I would have loved to have recreated this, but I don't have any black microbeads :( so I was going to do it red, as there were blackcurrent and raspberry versions of the sweets. In the end I went with a red/green version as it was a bit more sparkly but if I can get hold of a picture of those sweets I liked, I will definitely just do a red version.

I used 2 coats of Barry M Dusky Mauve, 1 coat of BeYu Brilliant Shiraz 209 and 1 coat of Pure Ice Heartbreaker. I then mixed red and green microbeads and tipped them on to my nail, pressing them down to make them stick into the wet coat of heartbreaker on my ring finger. I added a topcoat to help them stay stuck down :)

Girly Girl Challenge - Day 6: Who Inspires You?

Today's challenge was to be inspired by a female role model. I chose Drew Barrymore to tie in with day 5. I found a great picture of Drew from after she did Whip It, with dipped hair and it gave me an excuse to try out sponging. I used 2 coats of Orly Hook Up and sponged on A-England's Camelot about half way down the nail. I then added a small amount of Voodoo Doll on top of the black to make it a little more interesting. I think the sponging worked as a way of creating a similar look of "dipped" hair.

And here's the picture I found

The challenge is hosted by Lindsey of Neverland Nail Blog and here is a list of the other girls doing it. 

Ashley of Follow The Yellow Polish Road

Stephanie of A Little Polish

Kelly of Devilish Polish

Jodi of Captivating Claws

Danielle of Polish. Glitter. Rock & Roll!

Olivia of Unprofessional Nails

Kate of This Charming Kate

Bethany of  A Plethora of Nails

Lizzy of The Do It Yourself Lady

Eugenia of Talon-ted

Johanna of Neues vom Kellerkind

Amanda of Nox Nails

Ashley of Smashley Sparkles

Sarah of See Sarah Swatch

Emily of The Lacquerologist

Jess of LuvMyLacquer

Tressa of O' Natur Nail 

ChiChi of I'm just me...ChiChi 

CR of Color Me Silly

Amanda of Berry Polished 

Robin, Erin, and Anna of Polished Cousins

Models Own New Beetlejuice Collection: Indian Ocean, Tropical Sun & Copper Pot Swatches

I've been looking forward to the release of Models Own new beetlejuice polishes since they announced it on their facebook page. I own the entire collection and I really like them, they are perfectly priced and although not completely original they're all great colours. They can be bought directly from Models Own for £5 each, or the collection (6 bottles) for £20 which is an absolute bargain.

I'll start off with a bottle shot :)

I was most looking forward to Indian Ocean (one on the left). It looked like such a delicate yet interesting shade. It was very sheer, with a glass fleck effect, so I think I'll be finding a nice baby blue to layer it over in future. I used 5 coats for the picture below.

And then I layered it over a few other colours (I love it over the pink and light blue)

Next I tried out Tropical Sun, which is a gorgeous tangerine shade with little bits of glitter in. I used 3 coats.

The formula is great on this one, not too sheer and dries pretty quickly. The finish was super shiny.

Last but certainly not least was Copper Pot, this is my favourite of the 3, I cant really explain why but the colour is really unique, too me, I own nothing like it.

Girly Girl Challenge - Day 5: Gotta Love Chick Flicks

I know a lot of girls struggled with this one, either because they couldn't pick a film (not really liking the genre) or had problems choosing the inspiration from it. I had the opposite problem, at first I thought Oh I dont really like chick flicks, this is going to be an issue. As it turns out I love a lot of them, lol. I actually did my nails so many times with so many different designs but I couldn't pick just one. I did a really girly mani for Legally Blonde and then a really not girly one for Whip It but I've decided to post my really simple one for 50 First Dates. I'm an absolute sucker for Adam Sandler films and I adore Drew Barrymore (I did do an 80's inspired one to go with The Wedding Singer but I hated it).

I'll be honest its been awhile since I saw the film and I didn't have time to watch it again but I remembered there being lots of water in it :) so I wanted to create something similar to the ocean, something nice and simple. I did want to add some art to it but its just so pretty on its own.

I used 2 layers of Barry M Indigo, which has been sat in a box since before I was interested in nail varnish and 1 coat of Pure Ice Heartbreaker. Indigo is the most beautiful colour and will be great for layering, I will have to use this more often. Barry M polishes are really cheap, decent quality and they have an amazing array of colours.

And here's a cute picture from the film :)

Girly-Girl Challenge Day 4 Inspired by the Runway

So it's day 4 of the girl girl challenge, today's was inspired by the runway, which game me an excuse to ogle dresses I can never afford and to be honest would probably look ridiculous in :)
I looked at a few trends and "orange" called out to me, I haven't worn orange since Halloween, I actually like how it clashes with everything and really stands out. I found this dress in Erin Fetherston's spring line and thought it was awesome.

I used two coats of Zoya Jancyn. I then added dots of glue to my accent fingers, let the glue turn clear and become tacky and then put foil on them. I use craft foil as its cheap and comes in so many colours.

I'll be honest and say I wanted to do lines of metallic orange but couldn't get the foil to stick uniformly. So I had to make do with an irregular pattern but I really liked the way it came out. I put on a thin layer of topcoat to protect the foil.

The challenge is hosted by Lindsey of Neverland Nail Blog and here is a list of the other girls doing it.

Ashley of Follow The Yellow Polish Road

Stephanie of A Little Polish

Kelly of Devilish Polish

Jodi of Captivating Claws

Danielle of Polish. Glitter. Rock & Roll!

Olivia of Unprofessional Nails

Kate of This Charming Kate

Bethany of  A Plethora of Nails

Lizzy of The Do It Yourself Lady

Eugenia of Talon-ted

Johanna of Neues vom Kellerkind

Amanda of Nox Nails

Ashley of Smashley Sparkles

Sarah of See Sarah Swatch

Emily of The Lacquerologist

Jess of LuvMyLacquer

Tressa of O' Natur Nail 

ChiChi of I'm just me...ChiChi 

CR of Color Me Silly

Amanda of Berry Polished 

Robin, Erin, and Anna of Polished Cousins

Girly-Girl Challenge Day 3 - Delicate Elegant

Today is the third day of the Girly-Girl Challenge hosted by Lindsey of Neverland Nail Blog. "Adorn yourself with a lovely pattern, color or technique". I was struggling with this one, none of my stamps seemed quite right and none of the techniques I know seemed to work with delicate or elegant, so I went with the "color" option.
And I only own one color that fits the bill, Clarins 220 Patient Pink. Its a very delicate shade of pink with a really nice shine and very subtle flakies, that are similar to the ones in Illamasqua's raindrops. I added some little pearls to make it more elegant :)

I suppose this would be great for a wedding manicure. The Clarins polish itself built up nicely and could be used for work or for a nice shimmery french manicure, its very pretty but subtle.

Floam!

I saw swatches of this a while back and thought it looked really unique but I couldn't find out where to get it so promptly forgot about it. Until I came across it on the blog that belongs to the lady that makes it, Nailventurous. I had to get some, there really is nothing else like it out there, I ordered it from Ninja Polish and it came really quickly. I have to admit to not knowing what "floam" actually is or was, I've googled it and I'm not really any the wiser but its the polish I like so I don't mind. Its basically like blue and green glitter in a clear base, only the glitter isn't shiny :) I used color club's new bohemian as a base, you could layer floam though as its really dense and dries quickly. This is 2 coats of new bohemian and 1 coat of floam.

I decided to add another layer of floam to make it more opaque.

And then topped it off with fast forward topcoat from china glaze

This is now one my favourite polishes, I cant wait to try it on some other bases and I think it'll be interesting to stamp over. Amy (Nailventurous) will be opening her etsy store soon but you can find her on facebook as well.

Cult Nails: Toxic Seaweed

This is my one and only Cult Nails polish and I adore it. I've worn it a lot since I bought it but not got round to blogging about it, mainly because I have trouble photographing it :) I got it directly from Cult Nails themselves, they are a great company and ship nice and fast.

I have managed to get a few pics today as I'm wearing it to go out. Its a great polish as it looks so complex without me having to do any "nail art" so it looks more interesting. It applies really easily (I wear it over a green base) and the best way to describe it is as a dark green jelly with glitter and flakies. Apparently the flakies are the same as some found in their infamous Unicorn Puke/Clairvoyant so once they've run out they wont be able to make it again, I might get a back up bottle. I found it dried a little gritty so I popped on a top coat so it looked and felt super shiny.

Girly-Girl Challenge Day 2 - Gimme That Bling

This is the 2nd mani of the Girly-Girl Challenge, todays is "diamonds are a girls best friend, so put some sparkles on those nails!". I tried out a white nail with silver glitter and diamantés across the tip but I wasn't loving it and I think my nails would need to be longer to do it justice.

And my Dior Waterlily turned up this morning so I was dying to try it out :) I teamed it up with the shiny A-England Saint George and used a needle to swirl the colours together on my nails. I added Nostalgic's Underground and some little crystals on my ring finger.

Girly-Girl Challenge Day 1 - Think Pink :)

This is the first mani for my first challenge (see previous post for details)
The idea for today is Think Pink - wear your favourite pink polish and nail art. I only own 2 pink polishes so that was an easy choice, I had to go with Illamasqua Obsess. Its a gorgeous shade of pink all on its own but I decided to glitz it up a little and added Nostalgic Nail Lacquer Magic Dance on top (I think she is restocking today, weird coincidence)

I then used Barry M Lilac Foil to stamp my ring finger

But I liked it so much I decided to do them all :)

Girly-Girl Nail Art Challenge

I'm going to be participating in my first nail art challenge :) starting tomorrow. Every Tuesday and Thursday I shall be doing the mani from this list.

The challenge is hosted by Lindsey of Neverland Nail Blog and here is a list of the other girls doing it.

Ashley of Follow The Yellow Polish Road

Stephanie of A Little Polish

Kelly of Devilish Polish

Jodi of Captivating Claws

Danielle of Polish. Glitter. Rock & Roll!

Olivia of Unprofessional Nails

Kate of This Charming Kate

Bethany of  A Plethora of Nails

Lizzy of The Do It Yourself Lady

Eugenia of Talon-ted

Johanna of Neues vom Kellerkind

Amanda of Nox Nails

Ashley of Smashley Sparkles

Sarah of See Sarah Swatch

Emily of The Lacquerologist

Jess of LuvMyLacquer

Tressa of O' Natur Nail 

ChiChi of I'm just me...ChiChi 

CR of Color Me Silly

Amanda of Berry Polished 

Robin, Erin, and Anna of Polished Cousins

I'm looking forward to having a reason to stick to a schedule for blogging and also coming up with ideas to match the days :)

Rainbow Dotting Mani

I just noticed that there is a nail art (specifically dotting) competition on one of the blogs I follow http://www.chalkboardnails.com and it ends today. I'm trying to step out of my comfort zone manicure wise and do things I'm not very good at, lol, so I figured why not give dotting another go. I actually don't own a dotting too so I had to make do with the end of a hair clip :)

This is what I started with:

Then I played about with the hair clip:

It is by no means perfect but I'm happy with it and I think will purchase some actual dotting tools so I can get different sized dots more easily :)

Green Layering Experiment

So the idea was simple, I wanted a mani to match my hair, which was green...sort of :) my hair never goes one shade when I dye it, its now a greeny blue. I went with Bettina Mojito as a base, I love this green, it takes 2 coats for decent coverage but its easy to work with. I then popped on a layer of Max Factor max effects Graffiti to give it a slightly blue tone. I couldn't resist putting on some flakies to liven it up a little, I used Nfu Oh 39, its not a subtle flakie its pretty densely packed but goes on smoothly. And then to top it off I used my newly acquired Nostalgic Underground..

It was so shiny and complex looking, I was happy but I think it was a little too shiny for me so I got out my trusty matte top coat and I loved it even more.

Here it is in the sun:

And in the shade:

And more importantly it matches my hair :) I added some scales to my ring finger.