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. 

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! 

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! 

Summer Blues

Hey everyone! The weather here has FINALLY been sunny and it's been so nice to be able to go out and do stuff over the past few days and not be drenched/windswept when I get back in. I've been having a few days relaxing to celebrate finishing my dissertation and it's been so nice to just not have to worry about it for the first time in months. Today's nails are some summer flower gradients I created for Divine Caroline, I also have a tutorial on their website for you to use if you want to create these yourself.

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

Alice

Happy Easter!

Hey everyone! I hope you've all had a lovely easter weekend, I still had to work Saturday but I got Sunday off so it's fine. I've had a really relaxing day, especially now I've finally finished my dissertation! I feel so relieved. Today's nails are some quick easter nails I created for Avon. I was going to do all the nails patterned but I ended up liking it on alternate nails, so I left them like that. I think skittle nails always work well for Easter as well, especially in pastel.

Tutorial: Autumn Birds for Barry M

Hey everyone! I hope you've all had a good week! I'm hoping next week will be a bit better for me. You may or may not have noticed but I decided to take a few days break from blogging, it's not been too long but things were getting a bit on top of me so I thought a few days break might do me good, I haven't even turned my laptop on for 3 days, which for me is a very weird occurrence. Now I feel ready to get back in to blogging, I'm going to try and post a lot more as I have a huge backlog of posts to show you. 

Today's post is another tutorial I created for Barry M, my last design was this toadstool design and you all seemed to love it, so hopefully you like this one just as much! I absolutely love birds, and I knew I wanted to incorporate them into a tutorial at some point, I still get requests to do a tutorial for my Rob Ryan bird nails, but for now this shall have to do! Tutorial steps will be after the jump

Kitty Kats

Hey everyone! I’m away in Brighton at the moment and I’m writing this from my hotel room, but apparently I only have half an hour worth of internet so I best be quick. Today’s post is some cute little cats very loosely based on this design by At Your Fingertips. I did intend to copy it directly, but as always happens with me, I overcomplicated it a bit, although I’m glad I did because I really like how they turned out!

The base for these nails was Deborah Lippmann – On The Beach*, which I’ll be doing a review for along with a few other polishes later in the week, and then I used acrylic paint for the details, topped off with a coat of Seche Vite

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

Alice

Tutorial Tuesday: Glitter Jellyfish

Hey everyone! Today I have a brand new tutorial tuesday for you, this time for some cute little glittery jellyfish. Don't forget to check out the tutorials tab at the top of my blog to see my previous tutorials! I've wanted to do jellyfish for ages, and I was really tempted to do them with needle dragging but I was in one of those 'it will probably fail so I wont even try' moods, and I'm quite glad because I like how these turned out. Perhaps I'll try needle dragging some time in the future instead. I'm starting to run out of ideas for tutorials, what would you'd like to see on future tuesdays? I only have a couple more tutorials left to post before I need to make some new ones, so any suggestions are welcome. Just don't ask for Christmas tutorials, I'm one of those spoil sports who doesn't even like the mention of Christmas before December begins. Anyway, the rest of the post will be after the jump! I've seen a few of you saying that you prefer it that way, as you can scroll through my blog much easier

Digital Dozen Does Books - Day 5 Penguin Books

Hey everyone! I'm sorry this post is (2 days) late, things have been super busy for the past 2 days and I barely had time to do these nails, let alone post them. I managed to find a few hours free yesterday to do them, and I intended to post them straight after, but these took much longer than I ever anticipated. Anyway, for day 5 of digital dozen book week I chose to do a selection of penguin books. I absolutely love the look of these books, and I've been meaning to do these nails for ages, so this week was the perfect opportunity. 

The books I used were chosen at random, and I based it more around whether they'd fit on my nail rather than whether I'd read the book, although I'm sure you'll still recognise most of the titles. These nails are the most frustrating nails I've ever done, they took so much longer than I thought they would and they kept going wrong. I also couldn't fit on the author's name or 'penguin books' in full, because my nails aren't big enough, but overall I'm pretty happy with how these turned out.

To do these I started with 2 coats of Jacava - Mont Blanc* and once that was dry (sped up using my Beauty Narcotix Mini Ultimate Fix Quick Dry Spray*) I used striping tape and Essie - Fear & Desire for the orange, I didn't really want to wait for that to dry as well so I sprayed my mini Ultimate Fix once again, then I used acrylic paint and a cut down brush for the details. 

Ultimate Fix Spray

A bonus bottle shot of my Mini Ultimate Fix*. Perfect for your handbag

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

Alice

*Some of the products in this post were provided to me for review, my opinions are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way

Then and Now: Week 15

Hey everyone! It's been a while since my last 'Then and Now' post. I think until the end of may (when my exams finish) I probably wont be doing it every week, but I shall try my best! This week's post I wasn't actually going to do, because I really hated the original nails and I remember taking them off after about 10 minutes, but I decided it would be a good test of how far my skills have come if I could make the same design look good, and I think it worked because I really like how they came out, I think they ended up looking a lot like buttons actually. As always the 'then' post will be after the jump 

Over the top tribal print

Hey everyone! I've been traveling all day and I really just want to crawl into bed so this post wont be a long one I'm afraid. 

To do these nails I used these brushes from Born Pretty Store, I absolutely love this set, I'd say my favourite is definitely the smallest one. I'd definitely recommend getting them if you're just starting out with detailed nail art because they're great for variety. Don't forget to use my code KHL91 for 10% off!

These nails were definitely not planned out, I painted a base coat of Essence - I'm Bluetiful and decided to add some white acrylic paint detailing, but it looked a bit plain so I added red, yellow and blue acrylic paint, and Collection 2000 - Ninja to add some extra detail to the design. Personally, I feel like it ended up being a bit too much, but for some reason I still really like them. 

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

Alice

Then and Now: Week 14

Hey everyone! Today's 'Then and Now' post is a little different, because I've been wanting to redo this design for a while, but it's actually still online, and the photography isn't too bad in it, but I never had a top coat when I did them and I had no idea about cuticle clean up so I really wanted to see how different they looked. I've not looked at the old design for a long time and in my head it was a lot more detailed than it actually is, so my newer design is actually pretty detailed because that's how I imagined it, but hopefully that's a good thing right? As always the old design will be after the jump, but if you cant wait you can see it still on my tumblr here

Guest post for The Crumpet!

Hey everyone, I've done a guest post for The Crumpet, head over there to see it, here's a sneak peak:

Hope you like them! I'm afraid there will be no Then and Now post tonight as I'm super super busy, I'm going to try my absolute best to get them done for tomorrow but if not they'll be up monday for sure!

Alice

Shiny Owls

I know you've already seen these nails in yesterday's post for xameliax, but I really wanted to show what these look like shiny. You all know my obsession with matte, but for once I couldn't decide which looked better, so I left it up to Amelia to decide. So considering the pictures are already edited I may as well post them, see the original post on Amelia's blog for more information, the only difference is that I used Seche Vite top coat for these instead of Essie - Matte About You 

Hope you like them! Let me know what you think in the comments :) 

Alice

Guest post for xameliax

Hey everyone! Second post today, do you feel special? You should! I'm afraid I'm just linking you to another post again because I've done a guest post for the lovely xameliax, so if you want to read more about these nails you can do so here

Hope you like them!

Alice

Then and Now: Week 12

Hey everyone, today's then and now post is a little different from previous posts as I actually have two examples of what these looked like 'then'. There's probably a years difference between all the posts so you can see how much I've improved each time (I also apparently was incapable of keeping my nails a similar length previously). As usual, the 'then' posts will be after the jump

Barry M Lychee nail art

Hey everyone! I couldn't think of a very interesting title for today, but it only tells the truth, today I have some nail art using Barry M Lychee for you. I know the whole idea of the polishes is that they're super shiny but you know how I am with matte, and this design looked a bit odd shiny. These nails were inspired by this design by mani--ac on tumblr. It really stood out to me and although I couldn't find a blue that exactly matched it (clearly I need more nail varnish) I decided to try it anyway. 

For these I used Barry M - Lychee, Collection 2000 BMX Bandit, white acrylic paint for the dots, and striping tape for the triangles. I dont really have much else to say about these because they're so simple, but I hope you like them!

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

And dont forget to enter my GIVEAWAY

Alice

Oh how I love you... Rob Ryan valentines nails

Hey everyone! I'm very excited to show you today's post as I'm super proud of it. I know I should probably be modest but I love Rob Ryan and I'm so happy to have his work on my nails finally! If you dont know who Rob Ryan is I suggest you do some googling, he's a British artist who does lovely paper cut outs and screenprints which have been transferred onto many things. And you can find his blog here. This year for christmas I got a mug, a calender and a money box. And today's design is based off the money box, which you can see below, but I adapted the text to be more valentines-ey. 

I'm really happy with how this design came out, I probably chose a green that was a tad too bright but even so I really think you can tell that they're based on his style. He does a lot of designs with birds and this specific text. 

I used a base of OPI - My Boyfriend Scales Walls, and then I added OPI - Greenwich village using a small, cutdown, detailing brush, which I also used for the birds in Barry M - Bright Pink, the birds feathers in white acrylic paint, and the writing in white and black acrylic paint. All topped off with two coats of seche vite. 

This picture of the money box was the only one I could find online and I dont feel it shows the colours very well, my nails were pretty accurate to the colours of the money box in reality. 

What do you think? Let me know in the comments, I love reading what you have to say!

Alice

Dont forget to enter my giveaway