First Anniversary Giveaway!!

Hi!
In celebration of both the blogiversary and my lovely readers!! I am giving one lucky person a brand new WAH nails book of nail art!! Woohoo. This was the book that really helped my nail art to develop, it gave me my basic skills so make sure you enter :).

You must be a follower of my blog to enter, I'll be checking so if you aren't click that follow button! And yes, it is open internationally :)

If you choose to blog about the giveaway you may use the above photo :)

Sneaky peak inside ;)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

It's all because of my best friend that I am able to give this away, she bought it me for christmas not realising that I already had it so she said I could sell/give it away :) so thank you Nicola!!

OPEN INTERNATIONALLY :)

So get entering :)!

New blog design

I just wanted to touch base and say hi! Also I've given my blog a bit of a make over, I like it ;) I hope you all do too!
I will be hosting a giveaway tomorrow so be sure to check it out and enter :).
If I had made a new years resolution it would have been to give my blog some more love; post more often and read more blogs. I feel bad as I haven't been reading any for ages, I started reading through my lovely Lizzy's archives (posts from the past few days! Those are archives to me :P) and I envy the dedication and time that she puts into her blog, I wish  could be more like her :).

I am back at uni now and whilst I'll have loads of work to do, I'll also have my routine back; work in morning and afternoon then paint nails in evening and photograph the following day at lunch :P. If I had a lightbox then I'd be able to take photos any time but I prefer natural light which is slowly returning!

I can't believe I've only been blogging for a year at the end of jan! It feels like I've been here for ages, especially when I see how my nails have changed and nail art skills have improved.

So I hope to see some of you tomorrrrrrow :) hope everyone's had a good start to the week :)

A selection of nail arts...

Hey, I hope everyone had a good christmas :)
I obviously did thats why I had no time to post hahaha. I did some christmas nails but I also have a couple others that don't need their own post so I thought I bung them all together in one ;).
First is my mixed christmas nails; pretzels, starbucks coffee, icicles and autumn leaves. The base colour is Barry M Blackberry?? from the Gelly collection, it's gorgeous!

Next is something a bit abstract, I was going for a night sky but it kind of just looked like colour blocking :P

Finally these are the nails I am STILL wearing since christmas eve, hence why they are so scruffy!!

I am doing my new years mani tomorrow so I'll try to post it before midnight ;). Also I'll be holding a giveaway soon :)
I seriously need to file my nails sooooon, they're freaking everybody out hahahah
Anyway see you soon!

Christmas glitter gradient

Howdy!
I know the title says christmas but this works all year long, plus the colour isn't necessarily associated with this time of year but who cares it's christmas after all ;).
I didn't realise until after I had made these that they look like effie trinkets nails from the reaping! Ha but mine are a bit more bling if that's possible??
The base colour is Illamasqua Stance, which is still my favourite purpley pink :) the gold glitter is Barry M gold glitter....imaginitive as always....which I may have said will never be an opaque glitter, in a previous post, well for this purpose it's perfect. The large glitter pieces are some loose glitter that I bought from my favourite place ;). I literally should be banned from there.

 

 

 

 I like these nails alot, they are extremely simple and easy and quick!! The loose glitter cost 99p and will last me forever. The only problem I had was that when I put topcoat on it smudged the gold colouring off so I had to blob the topcoat on but that wasn't a big deal as I'm used to having to do that with nail art anyway.

 

I bought some nail glue yesterday in order to glue those tricky silver/clear rhinestones as using topcoat to stick them makes them go misty! :( so I figured nail glue wouldn't? I'm not sure but I'll let you know how it goes. But anyway I was worried that people would think my nails are fake lolol as everyone always does, I don't blame them though, my claws are pretty long...my thumbs are an actual inch long!

 

I go home for christmas on friday so I imagine I'll squeeze in my real christmas nails on christmas eve!! And if I get any polish for it you know I'll show you guys, I can't wait to see if anyone else gets some!

 

Have a good rest of the week!

 

Christmas nails no.3 snowflakes

Hey! I've been looking at some lovely snowflake nailart so I have done some ;). I wanted white over a dark colour, I chose my oldest nail polish: Barry M Vivid Purple. I've said this before but it's the purple twin of Barry M Navy and y'all know how much I luuurve Navy ;). Vivid purple is a gorgeous shimmery silky cadbury purple vampy, that despite its age it's still applies perfectly!
I added my new favourite Barry M Silver Diamonds over the top, only a thin coat though....ugh it's just so nice!

Soooo pretty! After the glitter was dried I took out my ol' wah nail art pen in white and drew the snowflakes on, I tried using the striper but it's pretty awful for small work so I just pen'd it ;).

 

 

 Then I added pearls and my new multicoloured black studs (which have turned totally black as I didn't put a topcoat on so I guess the colours have rubbed off :() to finish off the look. I love the pearls they make it feel super christmassy! I tried to think of different snowflakes for each nail, to give a bit of variety ;). They were all easy to do, just a cross with two diagonal lines for the base then add smaller lines to make the shapes :) or circles in the case of my index and middle fingernails.

 

My next post should be about nail art embellishments and where to buy them as I know that it can be quite frustrating to find them if you don't know where to look or what to search for!



Camo on camo et Tipsyzine!!

Hey, I know I keep saying this everytime but thank you for sticking with me! And woohoo to 150 followers! I cant promise that my posting will get more even as deadlines are coming up :( so I have less and less time to do my nails never mind blog! I feel so bad though cos I should have posted this agessss ago...I've been up to Lincoln since thursday to visit an old friend and only got back yesterday, it was fun but the journey back was soooo long. Anyway I didn't have time to post before I went, I've only just removed this nail art, that means I've had it on for an entire week!!

I noticed that a couple of people had been looking for camo nail art so I thought I shall re do them as my skills have improved ;). The thing about camo nails is that they are redonkulously easy. I didn't even use a base colour, just did it straight onto mty base coat...how cheeky of me ;). I used Barry M Gold Foil and Black, Models Own Purple Poppy and China glaze Westside Warrior and a dotting tool.

 

Some of you may know of Astrowifey (my love for her is eternal) and her new project of making a magazine dedicated to nail art well I sent off some false nails in summer which unfortunately didn't make the cut however when I opened it I saw my nails as one of the 7 instagram nail people to follow!!! OMG I was so shocked as I was not told of this, it was such a nice surprise though!

 

Look it's my nails!!! @abbienail is my instagram btw ;)
So cooooooool, I posted a picture of this onto my facebook and got 40 likes on it!!
Tipsyzine is pretty awesome, I even got a poster that is proudly hung on my noticeboard featuring nails by Haus of Lacquer :). I think Tipsy is still available to buy from tipsyzine.com so if you are interested in nail art then defintely check it out!

Christmassy Glitter nails





 

Hey everyone, hello new followers too! I haven't had this many new readers in ages :) anyway carrying on from my last post, here is some more christmassy nails. This time I have used another loose glitter from the ol' craft store, pumpkin glitter ;). I dumped a load of this on each nail then I went over the top with a thin coat of Barry M Red Glitter and it created this lovely warm red-orange glitter that is amazing! So christmassssssssy I can't handle it ;). I'm going to keep using these loose glitters to show that you don't need to buy the latest glitter polishes to create gorgeous nail looks! 

 



 

You can't really get the feel of just how glittery and pretty it is in real life! I was going to add nail art over the top but it's too pretty, I can't do that to it :P.

My motto this christmas is don't buy glitter nail polish buy glitter! Yeah it'll take about three thick coats of topcoat to get smooth but it's so worth it. Most glitter only costs 99p! Woohoo. I'm in this frame of mind as I really want Models Own Northern lights but I can't justify spending £5 on a polish I'll probably ony use once so I'm going to try to recreate it with glitter hehe.

 

I might add something over the top but just not yet ;).