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 ;)

Nude comparisons!

It's finally here, the promised nude comparison post :P

When I first started getting into polish (all those years ago ;)) I couldn't understand the fascination with nude polishes, I was like why would I want to paint my nails in a flesh colour when there's the entire rainbow and more to use!! But now I see the attraction (this must be growing up ;P) they are good as palette cleansers in between more cray manis, they make your fingers look longer and make you look more put together and polished (sorry!).

I only used 4 polishes in this comparison as these are the 4 most similar - in terms of opacity and finish, I have Illamasqua Monogamous  and Barry M Nude too but they are too different to the others.

Lets get into it then! 

In the bottles they don't look that similar however when they are on the nail they look completely different to how they do in the bottle...

OPI - My Vampire is Buff: Two coats, my favourite as it feels cleaner than the others. £11.50
Essie - Sand Tropez: Two coats, looks more like a cement grey than a flesh tone however when worn alone it looks a lot more neutral. £7.99
Gosh - Highschool Flirt: Two coats, very similar to MVIB but slightly warmer. £3.99
Maybelline Forever Strong - Rose Poudre: Two coats, pink toned beige. £4.09

Like I said my favourite by far is MVIB with Highschool Flirt as a close second, it definitely is the closest to my skintone and looks flattering on everyone that I've seen wearing it! The only downside is the price that we pay for OPI in the UK in shops, I got mine from Sally's Salon Services, obviously you can get them cheaper online but you know I like instant gratification ;).
 
There are still some Essie nudes that I'm interested in and L'Oreal are bringing out their new nude collection with lipsticks and polishes so I'll probably get those too ;) If I was in the US I'd definitely check out RGB x HIPP nail foundations and tints because they look awesome!!

Hope you enjoyed this post :)

Recent nail looks

Hey remember me? :P
Life is just getting in the way of my nails at the moment but it's my 21st birthday next week :O so I need to think of some fitting nails!

Anyway I have amassed a small collection of photos of random nails that I've done but aren't worthy of a whole post dedicated to them so I thought I'd show you them now :)

A while ago when I had Chanel Bel - Argus on my nails I did a dry marble look with Azure and took photos but never got round to posting it!

See it's easier to see the difference when compared to Bel Argus on its own :P I thought it looked really pretty! It was super easy to do just blob both colours on and mix with a pointy stick/brush/toothpick whatever! I added some pearls and HEX charms to complete the look...

Iphone photo sorry! On my thumb I went for the water reflecting light...I'm not sure if it worked but I put a turtle swimming across it hahah

I recently acquired OPI- My vampire is Buff in the continued search for my perfect nude...

still not perfect but a really nice nude anyway! It gives that polished look that I sometimes enjoy to rock inbetween my more in your face manis :P (nude comparison post coming up!)

And I've had this very simple nail art on on for over a week now!! I cut my nails down seriously this week too, they were well over an inch long :O I'm not sure that you'll be able to tell that they have been shortened though as they are still very long :P

So I am loving the whole negative space thing that's happening at the moment! I put the polish a little beneath my natural tip as I didn't want to go for a French mani look :P

I think I am going to have a solid colour for a couple of days whilst I plan my birthday nails!!
Hope everyone is well! And thank you to those loyal readers/commenters you make this worthwhile and I love you! Especially you Lizzy!!! :)

3D rose bush nail art

Hey lovelies, me again! :)

Today, as promised is some nail art, which you may remember reading, I said I was enamoured with and that is still true...I was totally inspired by the roses that I received in my diy nails lucky dip bag and so I decided to paint some roses and then contrast those with the 3D roses.
This is one of those rare occasions where the finished product looks how you imagined it or maybe even better than you thought! I was so happy with these once I had finished them :p.
I went with Gosh Highschool Flirt (swatches here) as a nice neutral base which could handle the colours of the various flowers.

I painted the flowers on and then I stuck the roses down with nail glue and then I did the leaves to make sure they looked right alongside the roses. I must admit that after my other rose nail art I felt pretty confident that I'd be able to just whack these out but I had to redo the first few that I did until I got back into the swing of it :p infact my left hand took about 2 hours whilst my right only took 55 minutes! And that's with mixing the colours and dropping the glued flowers onto my legs and fingers...bahahaha.

Hey this time I actually had real biscuits at hand ;)

I used a lot of polish for this mani, Flossgloss perf, kiko featured heavily for the green and darker purple, models own Lilac Dream, China Glaze ...Lifeguard for the leaves and then black and white by Barry m for mixing and highlights. I went over everything with seche Vite and nothing wanted to come off until I wanted them to, a few flowers refused to be removed so I was forced to piggle them off!
I loved wearing these, so pretty and cute too, received a few compliments on these, I do enjoy peoples faces when I tell them that I paint them myself hehehehe but who doesn't enjoy that :p.
That's what I like about doing roses; if you get them right then they look impressive, more impressive than they actually are (but shussssh don't tell the muggles that!) ;)

I hope you're all having a good week! See you soon

Birthday mani - Illamasqua Monogamous and The Hungry Asian Vote for Purple

Hi, today I have my first Illamasqua to show you, weeheee it's Monogamous a gorgeous rubbery finished fleshy nude...on everyone else, on me it pulls quite yellowy but not as yellow as the photos show though. It had a good formula and a decent brush and despite the finish it was no trouble to apply.

This is two coats, it was almost a one coater but there were some bald patches. This is the only photo I can use as my canyons are back :( and all the others are weird colours haha. To make it special for my birthday I added Vote for Purple by The Hungry Asian which is a gorgeous mix of purple and silver different sized and shaped glitter. It's special for me as I don't often wear glitter but I love purple and this is pretty and delicate but still sparkly :). I used one thin coat as I wanted it kind of sparse (which is hard with such a jam packed glitter)

I had to include the macaroon picture as they are my favourite treat but they are super hard to find in the UK outside of London but now a new bakery has opened up in Nottingham which makes them!! Wooo, they aren't as good as the ones from Paris but they'll do, the chocolate ones are to die for though! I only wanted to try macaroons because Blair from Gossip Girl used to order Pistachio flavour ones direct from Paris ;).

I know I'm getting at least two polishes for my birthday so I'll post them tomorrow or the next day :) have a good day/night!

Floral print on the worst franken EVER

I just need to mention the removal of Zuza was baaad, I didn't use a basecoat for some unknown reason and so after I took it off I had zombie nails, not fun. Anyway for the design I had in mind I wanted a different nude than I had i my stash so I decided to mix my own. Bear in mind I only actually own two nudes both of which I've shown on here so I mixed both of those together with lots of white and I ended up with basically a slightly lighter version of Essie Sand Tropez with a touch of pink. For some reason I added some clear ? and oh man it became the worst thing to apply, I know how Frankenstein must have felt when he created his monster. I'm not sure if it was the extreme heat that made the formula so crap or just the clear but ugh it was like painting with glue! Hence the bad photo

 It bubbled and lumped and was stringy and gloopy but I kind of like the colour but only for this design :P. The design is my interpretation of this tee shirt I have, I got it donkeys years ago from Topshop but I still love it. I thought it would make for pretty cool nails and I think I was right ;)

 The little finger nail went wrong but I couldn't be bothered to re do it especially with that awful formula haha. By the middle finger I was really into the swing of the design. So that's why the better fingers are from the middle onwards, it always happens that way! I used my nail supreme pens in red, blue and pink, the black was done with my wah pen and the green is Barry M Spring Green applied with a dotting tool. 

This design looks a lot better in real life, it's not quite translating onto pictures as well as I'd like, it looks okay in this one though ;) it's so hard to take photographs of your right hand using a camera that's made to be used with your right hand :P. The good thing about this design like so many that I do, it doesn't matter if you mess up a bit like I did as it's easy to cover and making the flowers was easy as it's block colour so you can expand the shape. I think I captured the spirit of the design ;) well without showing my bf the tee shirt that it was based of he said 'that looks like your tee shirt!' Not bad for a boy eh? ;) I wish I had a bit more order to the black lines but I guess that would defeat the point of the design, hahaha. 

You might have noticed that my right thumb has a chunk of polish missing and that is because when I was cutting some cheese I slipped with the knife and sliced into my nail! I'm so lucky that my nails are really thick and that the knife only took the top few layers of my nail of otherwise it would have gone right through my thumb! I don't have much luck when it comes to sharp knives and cheese lol I sliced my finger open when trying to open a packet of cheese on my first day at uni, it was horrible lol sorry for that gory story :P. 

Maybelline Pro Rose Poudre Swatches, studs and soppyness

You've been warned from the title that this is about to get soppy (only a bit I promise) but first the polish. Can you believe that this is my first nude polish! I saw this on makeupsavvy.co.uk a while ago and decided it would be a good place to start, I was right lol it looks quite dark in the bottle maybe too dark for me on first appearances however I think it's a decent match. It's quite beigey with pink undertones. 

This is only two coats that glided on so easily, a really lovely formula, it dries quite dull but obviously that's not a problem when I was going to Seche Vite it anyway :). These polishes cost £4.09 which is an odd price right? But I think this is worth it, I really like it. 
I bought some studs off ebay for £0.99 you get 75 little gold studs in a resealable bag I'd been wanting some forever but I kept forgetting to get some hahaha. To put them on I used a cuticle stick thing as for some reason they stuck to it :P and then just pushed them around until I was happy that they were lined up properly. 

I am cray about this, honestly I love this!! I think it looks so chic and sophisticated (first time for everything ;)) nude and studs are a timeless combination that everyone should try once, they look great, easy nail art :D. 
Here's where it gets soppy, tomorrow is mine and the boyfs two year anniversary, I know that it's not a very long time to some people but I like to celebrate the little things in life. So here is the final touch to my mani my fake tat ;) I used Orly Ma Cherie (which the lovely Anna sent me) and dotting tools to create the heart and my white nail art pen which as you can see is going stringy, oh noes. 

The claw....sorry about the hideous flash!

I'm really happy with this mani :) my only quarrel is the photos, I always do my nails at night for some reason lol so I am forced to use flash, I don't think they're that bad? 

Can I just say that I'm super happy that my nails look smooth for once!! No canyons!!! Woo this must be a miracle working polish!

Have a good night/day lol