I'm all about that Nail Life...

Hey,

It's good to be back...online! As you may, or may not, know I moved back to uni two weeks ago, which normally isn't a problem, however my new laptop thang doesn't have an Ethernet port and the accommodation only uses broadband...so long story short I finally have a usb to Ethernet adapter that works! Two weeks without a laptop was hard...thank god for the iphone :P.

Anywho, these nails are something I've been thinking about doing for a while now, and I figured that whilst I was on a nude nail hype (and was lacking alternative ideas/inspo) I would utilise my spare time ha! I love using my nails as a way of expressing how I'm feeling or showing what I love, so I was thinking of a phrase to use to show my love of the nail art world, it was harder than it sounds to think of  two four letter words :P I was thinking "nail junkie" but that wouldn't have worked as one letter would have been on my thumb so it wouldn't have flowed. I'm sure I've heard the phrase "nail life" floating around on insta and I think it's pretty perfect, it's kinda funny and it confuses people who aren't part of the community...aka muggles, they're like "what does that mean?!?!" and my reply is always, if you don't know, you don't know ;).
There's something about finger tattoos that I really love however I would never get them done on myself so I compromised and used my nails...I love typography and just letters in general however I am not gifted in that area so I just copied an old favourite of mine; old English.
I practised the type a couple of times trying to get it as small as possible to fit onto my redonkulously slim nail beds and then I just went for it using a nail art pen (haven't used one in a while!).

Basically I loved these nails but like I said, no one else did ha! My sister couldn't read the letters....but that's my sister so she doesn't count ;)

Ok so I'm living in student halls, yep again, and there's this guy who lives next to me but in a different flat, he thinks he can sing...I've got no problem with people singing along to songs in the day time but he is singing at the top of his voice, at midnight to cringy old songs like "Stand by me"....REALLY DOE, why why why is all I think oh and shut the ffffff up...I don't think anyone can understand how embarrassing and irritating this is! He does vocal licks like he thinks he is on x factor...he's really trying but he sounds like he should be singing in a working mans club on a sunday afternoon. GAWD I hate students hahahahaha.
Sorry about that ;)

I'm going to go catch up on the blog posts that I've missed over the past two weeks! Wish me luck ;)

My 21st birthday mani

Hi, so it was my birthday this time last week, I'm 21 now :O
It was hard to decide what to do on my nails, glitter? Cake? etc so I narrowed it down to my two favourite colours at the moment (Nails Inc Baker Street and Illamasqua Stance) and then I thought I'd bring out the stars, unicorn charm, gems and of course 21! I went for an old English font for the numbers as I think it looks cooool and tones down the girlyness of the other nails :P. I've just realised that last year I used illamasqua (see last years nails here - soooo short :O)
I've got to apologise for the photos though as a few are blurred and yes...I resorted to doing the claw!

I did my right hand in low light so I thought it looked ok until I took this photo hahaha

I have to say sorry for how messy they are! They looked ok in real life ;P

 



I got this bag as a present and noticed that my nails totally matched it! Ha (again sorry that the nails are out of focus...I swear I am a photography student :P)
I think the stars look ok, I had been trying to think of a good use for them up to now!

I know I have posted in a while, in fact my birthday was two weeks ago today! I've been all over the place as it's nearly time to go back to uni so I've been doing all those important things like sorting accommodation, student finance buying new stuff etc. And I went to Ipswich for the weekend after my birthday and had a really good time which just makes me want to go back to uni even more, I'm going a bit stir crazy being at home...and I think my nails are suffering, I feel like I've got nothing to inspire me at the moment which sucks but in good news I have just written two more posts up :O so I do have something to show you soon :p.

I really need to start reading and commenting on others' blogs more frequently!

Hope everyone's been well! See ya soon :)

Junk Food nail art

Hi, so I've been mia for a while as, quite frankly, life has been in the way of blogging...you know how time just runs away with you and before you know it it's been two weeks already! My blogging has slowed down again because I just haven't been doing my nails! I've been thinking about my blog compared to others and I realise that I don't have to keep apologising for not blogging all the time, that's not what my blog is about, it's about sharing the nail art that I do with like minded people who don't care how often I post :) my blog is a platform for people to read about what the thoughts were behind the nails and to see more pictures than I give on instagram. So I am finally happy in my blogging skin, as it were ;).

Now I've got over the deep ish let's get on with the happy nail art :D
What do you do when you don't know what to put on your nails? You look around for inspiration, wallpaper, clothing, the internet or in this case your fridge ;) ok so my fridge doesn't actually contain any of the following :( but my head is full of it :p. Of course I'm on about good ol junk food. I figured it was a while since I had done any cartoon style work (if ever) so no time like the present ;).
These nails turned out the way I had in my head which is always a good thing and also a rarity ha!
My base colour is the beautiful Illamasqua Nomad, then I painted the food stuffs on with my little paint brush using various nail polishes, once they had dried I went around the edges with a black nail art pen and then to finish I went and put the all important white highlights on with the white nail pen, that white highlight turns the images from flat to living cartoony foods hahaha.

I didn't do my left hand as I smudged the polish on basically every finger and I really couldn't be bothered to fix it and then do nail art lol
My pinky is chips/fries with ketchup, then nachos with cheese, chocolate cake with caramel sauce and pepperoni pizza mmmmmm my thumb says I love junk food (I'm not sure why it's out of focus, sorry!)

Freakily my mum came home from work and said that it was world food week at the school she works at so obviously I had to do her nails according to the menu ;)

 She has from pinky inwards, pizza, fish and chips, curry (really hard to think of how to portray that ha) burger and on the thumbs a taco and a fajita.

   

She said that everyone at work loved them, especially the chips, they're my fav too, and that they thought they were transfers :p I am quite proud of them hehe.

I'm going to play catch up and comment now on all the blogs I've been neglecting! Hope you're enjoying the beautiful weather (if it's sunny where you are!) see you all soon :)

Green jungle / tropical nail art

Hi y'all!

Tropical prints are obviously in fashion at the moment, even Beth on Corro was rocking a tropical ensemble ;) but yeah I can see the attraction; if you can't go to the rainforest/beach bring it to you and it sure makes you feel a lot happier (espesh when the weather is soooo shocking).

I used Illamasqua Radium (swatches here) as the base for this as it's nice and vibrant! I'm going to go ahead and say it; I am in the love with these nails!! Heheheh

If you have an aversion to knees then you might not like a couple of my pictures...

See it wasn't that bad :P hahahha

Polishes used for this mani, R-L: China Glaze I'm with the lifeguard, Dior Amazonia, Dior Waterlily (I still haven't worn this!!) Essie Going Incognito

Another knee shot coming up but it's a closeup of the nails

That is a little banana on my middle finger :P I liked doing these as it's about layering to make a scene which is something I've never really done before. I just used my little paintbrush to do everything. A trick I have picked up when doing little details such as the pointed ends of the skinny leaves is to try and get it as small as you can and then use the background colour to go over the line and make it thinner from the outside, it is so much easier to do it like that!

I'm not sure how long I'll keep these on, despite my love for them, as my nails grow super quick so manis look scruffy on me pretty quickly due to growth! :( but I got my second HEX order yesterday, so much cutenesssss! I can't wait to use them and show you :)

Have a good weekend!

Illamasqua Poke swatches

Hey,
I'm having a short break from neon, very short as whilst I'm typing this I have a neon on :P so whenever I want a quick mani, I always turn to Illamasqua as I know that they will deliver in terms of quality and fast drying-ness (I sound like a sales rep :p) so I picked Poke, I thought it would have been just a normal purple but the glitter/shimmer brings it to life! The sparkle is blue and so it gives it an electric feel? It might be the purple sister of the lovely radium ;). I used two coats to perfection and a further one to banish the ridges... 

My swatches are a bit off actual colour, it is purple after all, but it is a Cadbury purple, a tad deeper than what I've shown. It's just a gorgeous colour, makes me want chocolate...I want chocolate all the time though...hehe. It's that nice that my friend who hates purple :O said she liked it ;).

I'm leaving my flat at uni today and going home for summer, that means I'll be clearing out a lot of my stuff including polish, unfortunately I won't be able to ship it to America but Europe is okay so I might do a small blog sale if anyone would be interested? If not they'll go on my carboot sale stall :).

I'll be back soon with a Models Own neon, ooh exciting ;)

New York "haul" and other stories (picture heavy)

Hey!
I got back on thursday morning (6am if you will!) and I was sooooo jet lagged hahah I was very grumpy all day :P. It's taken me this long to unpack, adjust to my old life ;) and to change my polish!
I'll show you what I bought and then if you wish you can stick around to look at more pictures, mainly of food, and hear about what I did :).

I know you'll be expecting a mahoosive haul, I was expecting to go cray but I got ill; I had a sore throat and couldn't talk and spent the two shopping days in bed!!! Can you believe it! I had to go to the doctors and I got these massive hideous anti-biotics to take :(. I managed about an hour of shopping before I had to go back to the hostel, I nearly didn't go in Sephora! I'd spent days before when we were being tourists saying "no no I'm going in Sephora when we have more time". I'm so glad they covinced me to go in, it did make me feel a little better ;).

Anyway I only got two lipsticks from MAC, one which is too pale for my coloured lips :( but I love the other! Then we went into Sephora and I got Illamasqua Poke and SpaRitual Dreamsicle (neon) and then from Rite-Aid I got Essie Turquoise and Caicos just cos it was soooo cheap!

If all you wanted was polish, now would be the time to go, I have created a grungey nail look using the neon which I'll show in a couple of days so come back for that!

I had to photograph my beasty tablets!

I like the fact that I got the classic pill bottle though ;).

Some food pictures? These are off my phone so excuse the quality

Our first meal was free massive pizza, the hostel did a pizza night :) a slize was as big as my head I promise!

Had to get my nails in there ;) see how big it is? It was real yummy too, they bought about 7 of these and then when we were leaving they bought even more in!
The next day we went to the ICP and then we got tickets to be in the audience of the David Letterman Late Show which was really cool, the guests were a comedian (Jerry someone?? I don't know but he was funny) and Dave Grohl!!! Soo cooool. Whilst we were waiting though we went to get lunch in Steak 'n' Shake which is next door to the theatre. I had fries as I don't like beef...I asked for large fries....

Is it bad that I ate all those??

 

Next day we were at MoMA all day so we just went to MacDonalds and got hassled by a guy wanting 2 dollars for his train home cos he'd just lost his wallet....we just ignored him lol! I did take a photo of the ketchup though, Fancy Ketchup is just too funny!

 

One evening we went to Dunkin' Donuts....why not :P I had the Brownie Batter Donut....it was quite yummy ;) I'm still waiting on photos from Emmmmmma!!

One of my favourite things that we did was the Highline! The views were lovely and we just had a really fun time up there, plus we got off in downtown and went to this market that had really cool photography inside :D





On our last night we went to this diner and I was still feeling ill but I wanted food but not a lot (hard to find such a thing in America ;)) anyway I ordered Chicken Fingers off the snack menu and this came....

They ain't fingers....they were like 4 chicken breasts! Needless to say I couldn't eat all that!
The final morning we went to a different diner for brunch and most of us had pancakes, especially chocolate chip.....again huuuuuuge

My nails looked real bad at this point, my topcoat (seche Vite) had started to just fall off?? I think it might have been cos we kept going from literally freezing to hot but still it was so strange!

This next photo is something that you Americans might not find so amazing but for me it was like waaaaaah

!! The soup can is real! LOL I had to buy it hahahah. I won the best photo from the hostel with this ;).

Last photo is of me! :O It's a few of us in Hill Country Chicken with our lecturers having dinnnner, I'm the one goofing in the left with short ginger hair ;)  don't know where I'm looking lol!

There you go a very quick overview of my amazing trip! I HAVE to go back now, there's just so much I didn't do (shopping!!) or see or eat ;).

When I got back my nails were in such bad shape literally! I nearly took a photo but I didn't want to put y'all through that ;).

Hope you've enjoyed!

Donut nail art and a croissant?!

Helllooooo. I'm happy because I got a good grade for my first project of year 2 woohoo I thought I was going to do pretty bad but I got pretttty good :). Also I finally got my mits on 3 Rimmel Apocalips and I see what all the fuss is about :D and finally people were very complimentry and shocked at my donuts ;). You know that feeling you get when they say "did you do that yourself......nooooo! It's so good" Hahahahahahah best feeling ever!

 

Yeah I have been trying to do some nail art but all I could think about were donuts, I don't like donuts to eat but I like them on nails so I had to get them out of my system so I could get on with my nail art life :P. There's not much else to say....the base is Illamasqua Caress of course :).

 



 

In my defense this croissant is rather round and it has a hole ;) hehe. I think I like these lol! My right hand donuts aren't outlined because life's too short for that, ain' nobody got time for that! (please tell me someone gets that reference!!) plus my nail art pen is dying, the polish has started getting gloopy and stringy so it would have been too much effort :P no one seemed to notice anyway so it don't mattttter.

As most of you probably know I'm going to NEW YORK!!! Next week man! So I was wondering if anyone knows the best make up shops, cheap eateries, bakeries esp for macaroons (need my macaroon hit!) thrift shops etc etc We are going to Sephora cos how could I not!!! We are staying in Chelsea for reference. Weeeeee so excited! Any good galleries also, we are going to MoMA and Whitney.

Another gorgeous Illamasqua swatch - Caress

Hi! Another day another Illamasqua beauty! They really are my favourites :) Caress is a pale blue that is by no means a boring snoozy baby blue, it is soft but bright which makes for a very flattering combination. No lobster hands here. This is the perfect Cinderella blue, the colour of her ball gown is this colour in my head :D.

 

Warning: Mahoosive ridges ahead....I had no time to smooth them with topcoat! Sorrrrry.

 



 

Two smooth coats. Dries lovely and glossy on its own. Quick dry time. Perfection in a bottle!!! If you've never tried an Illamasqua polish I implore you to get at least one! I haven't heard much about Caress as it's quite an old polish but for me it deserves more attention!

 

Check back soon for some tasty nail art ;) oooh spoilers ;P

 

Have a good week! 

Illamasqua Radium Swatches

Hello, today's swatch is a colour that won't be to everyone's tastes but is totally mine and probably yours too Lizzy ;). Radium is a bright lime/electric green with darker green shimmer throughout, this doesn't make it shimmery but it adds dimension and shine to the colour. The shimmer is visible under artificial lighting though and it looks great!  

You are probably bored of hearing me rave about Illamasqua's quality so I'll skip it ;) but just so you know, this was a perfect two coater....

This colour is real bright but not neon bright which is a nice way to enter the neon trend I think, good for spring/summer but I loved wearing it now in winter, got a few dodgey looks from people thinking I had moldy nails but meh muggles will never understand a colour like this and that's why I love Illamasqua sooooo much :). 

                                       

I love their bottles, they feel so nice to hold and are easy on the eye ;). I've been eyeing up the new collection I'mperfection and am thiiiiis close to getting two of the speckled polishes, they're just so cute but I don't think I will as I can imagine only wearing them once (look at me being all mature and reasonable! What's happened??) but yeah, they look good on shorter nails, probably wouldn't look so good on mine ;). 

If you follow me on Instagram you'll have seen that I did do some nail art over this but I just couldn't decide and ended up disliking it and took it off within a couple of minutes of having it on :P so I didn't take a picture but you can see it in the instagram side box thing here if you wish. 

What do you think to Radium? Yay or nay? 

Illamasqua Kink swatches

Hey, tonight I have the beauty that is Illamasqua Kink from the Theatre of the Nameless collection, which was the first collection I saw from Illamasqua and I wanted these rubber finish polishes as soon as I saw them but I wasn't into spending a lot of money on make up then ;).

Kink is exactly my kind of colour, green and earthy, it reminds me a lot of Essie Going Incognito actually which is a colour I love :). As you'd expect from Illamasqua it was nearly opaque in one coat but I ended up doing three, you all know how deep my ridges are :(, but if you have nice smooth nails two would be plenty!

 



 

These are swatches without topcoat and you can see that the finish is still shiny but not glossy. I personally love the finish, I prefer it to straight matte to be honest, there's just something about the softness.

The pictures are pretty colour accurate in my opinion, forest green I believe!

 

My giveaway ended on sunday and I finally got around to picking the winner and I've already emailed her, the winner was Zsuzsa Vamosi! So congratulations to her :) yay! Thanks to everyone who entered! 

Hope you enjoyed

Illamasqua sale haul

My babies were delivered yesterday :D

All were £5 apart from Raindrops which I paid full price for....the RRP is £81 for all these so I think I got a good deal and free shipping yay!

Kink, Faux Pas and Vice from The Theatre of the Nameless collection (rubbers) Radium, Caress and Raindrops
I'm very happy to add these to my collection as you'll know how much I love my other Illamasquas :) I'll take an updated photo tomorrow for my stash post :)

So which would you like to see?

My stash (Picture heavy!)

Hello, by popular demand, I spent some time yesterday photographing my stash. Now this is only about half of it, the other half is at home so I'll have to photograph them when I get home in Easter!
As I don't have that many here with me I figured I would divide them into brands and do them like that. 

All names will go L-R and bold names are ones which I have swatched, they won't be linked but you can simply search the name in my blog to find it.

First up is my precious Dior rainbow :D

 

Forget me not, Riviera, Lucky, Bitter Orange, Gold Nugget, Waterlily, Saint Tropez, Nirvana and Amazonia

 

 Blue Boy and Graphite

 



Monogamous, Nomad and Stance I need more Illamasqua, I love all these!

Sweets Way,Pudding Lane, Baker Street, Chester Terrace, Park Crescent, Chelsea, Holland Park Avenue, Fenchurch Street and Hampstead Gardens which I intend to swatch tomorrow for you :)

Nude, Vivid Purple, Pink??, Black, Blueberry Ice cream, Blue?? and Blue Plum

Gold Foil, Boots Xmas LE (currently on my toes), Gold Glitter, Gold Mine, Yellow Topaz Glitter and Silver Diamonds

Riveting, I'm with the Lifeguard, Westside Warrior and Swimsuit....nailed it! 

Sand Tropez, Little Black Dress, Going Incognito, Gemma and Saint George

The Hungry Asian - Sea Creature, Funky Fingers - Tinsel Town and Sand and Stillettos, Androgynie, Fowl Play, Unknown (Urban Outfitters), Sneeze Breeze (Seriously need to wear this!!) and Vote for purple

Kiko 338, Kiko 332, Kiko 346, Holographic, Intense Plum and Fantasy Fire. 

Phew! Like I said this is only about half my collection, I could only bring as many could fit into my box so that's why the rest are being neglected at home :P. If you like to see a swatch of any of the colours please let me know!

And this is how I store them and my nail art stuff, not the usual way lol

I feel kind of bad for just shoving them all in there but I ain't got time to arrange them by brand and colour! Hahah. Ain't nobody got time for that ;)

So there you go my half stash! My uni stash haha, I have a hankering for Taylor by Shimmer as I saw A Polish Addict's swatch and just fell in love!

Like I said if you wish to see a colour swatched then comment :)

Nude embellished claws!

Hello my lovelies!
Thanks for sticking with me despite my flakey posting! I'm going to try to post on mondays and thursdays every week for definate and then if I change my nails before the posting dates then I'll do a post, it's pretty much what I used to do but with a bit more structure haha.

Anyways onto tonights nails, these came about as I wanted (and still do) to do baroque nails using a lot of embellishment over nail art but I don't have the correct colours with me at the moment so I did these instead. I wanted a nude base as I didn't want them to be too over the top ;). I started with Illamasqua Monogamous which you've all seen before on my blog, if not click here :). Then I added a topcoat, which I thought wasn't fast drying but apparenty it is.....and then I simply placed the gold leaf (imitation gold ;)) and pushed and pulled the leaf until it looked right. After that had dried I did another layer of topcoat then added the studs.
Then finished with a third layer of topcoat, phew.

I love the way the gold leaf looks! It's so easy and so cool, it looks really shiny and fun hehe. I like these nails too much, they are quite subtle but they still make an impression. What annoys me about having nice nails is the fact that muggles assume that I do no housework because my nails are always neat and long, they just have never discovered a good topcoat! It's a good topcoat that will make these embellishments stick around ;) they nearly got caught in my hair in the shower this morning though hahahaa.

All the little studs were from ebay for about a pound and the pearls and gold leaf were from a local craft shop for a couple of quid!

I'm not sure if you've noticed but I now have my instagram feed on the right hand side, so if any of you are on instagram my username is the same as my blog name: abbienail  :)