Christmas Penguin Nails

Hi everyone! Christmas is quickly approaching so I thought I'd do a quick post to show you my Christmas themed nails and how I did them!

Step 1: Paint your nails all black.

Step 2: Draw a white oval leaving some black visible either side

Step 3: Use a dotting tool to make the white of the eyes and a slightly smaller one for the blacks

Step 4: Use a dotting tool to do the orange of the penguins feet then either using a dotting tool making three small dots in a triangle to make the beak or use a brush!

Hope you liked this Christmas themed post! Let me know what Christmassy designs you've got on your nails this year and if you haven't yet maybe this will give you some inspiration!

World Cup Nail Art - Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire)

Hi everyone! So not too long ago I got an email from Emily over at Nailsxo asking if I wanted to join a World Cup Nail Art competition she was running. Now, I don't really know anything about football and I haven't really done much nail art before but that's never stopped me before! The idea was once you'd been allocated your country you had to create a manicure design that reflected that nation and I was given the Ivory Coast!

Again, I have to admit I knew very little about Ivory Coast so of course I used all my powers, by which I mean Google, to research the country itself as well as the culture so I wanted to share a couple of facts I found out!

Location

The official language spoken on the Ivory Coast is French.

As of 2012, the population stood at 22 million making it the 54th largest population in the world.

Average life expectancy is 57 years old. (It's 80 in the UK!)

And it has many names! 

• Conventional long form: Republic of Cote d'Ivoire
• Conventional short form: Cote d'Ivoire
• Local long form: Republique de Cote d'Ivoire
• Local short form: Cote d'Ivoire
• Formerly known as: Ivory Coast

So bearing that all in mind I set on thinking up a couple of designs that I could create and here is the finished design!

I based the design on my thumb to mimic the coat of arms coloured with the colours of the flag!

On my pinky I tried to mimic the referee kit!

And then on my remaining three nails I went with the slightly easy option of the flag but I think it looks very effective in contrast to the other nails!

So I hope you enjoyed reading this slightly different blog post and I'll keep practicing my nail art and maybe write another post when I improve because my hand wouldn't stop shaking drawing those lines! Thanks for reading!

Christmas Gift Ideas - Mistle Toes

Hi everyone! So it's nearly Christmas now which is super exciting so I've decided to write another gift idea post. Again I saw this on Pinterest (and this blog) and though it looked so nice and I'm always one for little pun!

It's so simple to make all you need is:

• A nail varnish of your choice
• Foot cream (although I used hand cream because I couldn't find any foot cream when I went out shopping)
• Cellophane (or a square bag if you know where to get them!) 
• Stapler 

The first thing you need to do is make your bag (obviously skip this step if you already have a bag). Simply cut out a rectangle from your cellophane and staple the edges together leaving enough at the bottom to make a base otherwise you won't be able to fit your stuff inside!

Then simply put your nail varnish and foot cream in your bag and you're pretty much done! If you want to go that little bit further (I didn't!) you could find some fake snow or glitter and put it in the bottom of the bag to add to that Christmassy feel!

Now you have two options here! You can either make your own Christmas mistle toes banner to go around the top (which is what I did) or you can save re-size to your needs and print the picture below which is the one I made!

Once you've got your banner all you have to do is staple it in place and your done! 

Hope you are enjoying these slightly different kind of blog posts & let me know if you make one and how it turned out for you! Thank you for reading! 

Review of 'NYC Rock Muse Smoky Top Coat' in 'Green Day'

Hi everyone! So I was in my local Superdrug and I just had to walk past the NYC stand and I saw they had these new Rock Muse Smoky Top Coats. Now I'm not sure if they are new, or if my local store has only just got them in? Anyway they kind of looked like the Revlon Moon Candy nail varnish which I really wanted to try it out but they are around £7, but rumour is, Barry M is releasing something very similar to it but hopefully half the price! Anywho, as usual it was only £1.99 so I thought I would give it a go!

I've been loving dark, rocky-ish colours on my nails recently so I picked up the black which has green sequins and bits of glitter in, hence the name Green Day! I quite like the rock themed names but I did have a bit of a stuggle finding swatches of it online as googling: Rock, Muse and Green Day, didn't really give me what I was looking for!

I first applied my base coat which is my Barry M one (I found it again!) and I did two coats because I was using black as my base and I really didn't want it to stain my nails.

I then applied my first coat of my base colour. I decided to go for a black, also from the NYC collection, as the smokey top coat although appears dead black in the bottle, but if you apply it straight on your nail it's a very pale and watery black. I think my nails were good to go after one coat of the base colour but

on the odd nail it was a little thin.

I then applied my second coat of the black base colour just to have a really deep black. It seemed to dry pretty quickly and was very glossy which is a huge bonus for me!

I then applied the first coat of the 'Smoky Top Coat' and to be honest I was a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong - it does look really cool! But it wasn't anything like the Moon Candy ones which is what I thought it would be like but I guess I can't blame them for that as they never advertised it as an alternative to it! It is basically the same as a glitter coat.

I don't think NYC is great for glitter nail varnishes as the spread of large bits of glitter and small bits of glitter isn't very even! But I think this is one of the best ones I have tried just because of how the green really stands out against the black when the light hits it! For this reason, I would definitely recommend you check it out!

I didn't apply a top coat as this polish is labelled as a top coat! I just cleaned up all the stray polish and they were done!

I really like how it turned out even if it wasn't like I expected it to be! I think I might go back and have a look what other colours they do that might be more suitable to wearing any time! As much as I like it I think the effect of green and black is quite Halloweeny for me as I don't usually wear stuff like this! Let me know what you think of this more rocky look - would you try it out? Thanks for reading!

Review of 'Instant Nail Effects Crackle' in 'Black Magic'

Hi everyone! So I thought I would try a new thing out on my nails! I got this crackle effect last Chirstmas but I always thought it looked a bit tacky (I still do if you match it with the wrong colour) so I haven't actually tried it until now. I think you can buy it for £3.99 which is the average price for any effect nail varnish Barry M has.

I have been loving the rockish look lately of mixing black with gold and I really wanted to see if I could apply this to my nails. First I painted my nails gold (which I wrote about HERE) which acted as my base colour. On it's own, I'm not too sure about having full gold nails so I probably wouldn't use it without placing some sort of effect over the top.

I then applied the first coat of the crackle effect whilst the gold was still drying (I'd left it about 5-10 minutes but it was still a little tacky). I wasn't quite sure if I should be applying it with a thin coat or a thick. The first nail I did, I painted a very thin coat on, but then found I needed more polish to cover the whole nail. However, by the time I had got some more on the brush the thin strip had already began to crack. So, my advice would be to make sure you have plenty of varnish on your brush and just paint a slightly thick coat over the top of your chosen base colour.

The cracking started almost instantly and it only took about 1 minute for the whole thing to be done. I continued painting all my nails until my whole hand was done.

I like that the crackle is random so every nail is different, but I found, especially with my pinky, that the crackle had basically split into 4 sections. Personally, I think this works best when there are lots of thin cracks all over the nail.

I then added a top coat to give it a lovely shine as the crackle is kind of matt. I LOVE how my nails look as I think it is quite edgy and something different than just a plain colour. I've received quite a few compliments on my nails this week because of it (including a couple from some guys!). I think it works really well with the gold as a base colour, but you definitely have to be careful what you use as a base colour because obviously some will look great and some will just look plain tacky.

I would recommend this product as I think it livens up your nails and although I haven't tried the other colours (I think I'm right in saying you can also get it in purple, pink, blue, white and gold?) I think that black is probably the best colour to get, as in theory it will go with a wider variety of base colours!

Let me know what you think of the crackle effect! Thank you for reading! (:

Review of 'NYC Quick Dry Nail Polish' in 'Full Metal Jacket'

Hi everyone! I bought this nail varnish when I went through the phase of buying nail varnishes from NYC as they were on a 3 for 2 deal and are only £1.79 each anyway. I had picked it up with the intention of using it at Christmas to jazz up my nails, but I thought I would give it a little test now!

It's a very strong gold metallic colour and I wasn't too sure about wearing it as I think sometimes it looks a little bit tacky when people have gold nails. I don't really like gold anything to be honest - most of my jewellery is silver. I think this dislike of gold has come from seeing pirates in films and cartoons with gold teeth.

I applied my base coat, which some of you may have noticed is not my usual Barry M, but in fact my old Collection one! This is basically because I couldn't find my Barry M one when I was painting my nails (although I've found it since).

I then applied the first coat of colour and was pleasantly surprised! With only one coat my nail was fully covered without the usual streaky appearance that lots of the nail varnishes from NYC seem to have. You could definitely get away with only applying this one coat, but I wanted to apply a second more to protect the nail varnish from chipping!

So the second coat made very little difference to the colour, which is great as it proves you can get away with only applying one coat of colour!

I didn't apply a top coat as I wanted to test out something on top of it which you will be able to read about in a few days time!

I love how well this nail varnish goes on and how your nail colour looks the same as the bottle after one coat, but I'm still not sold on the idea of having purely gold nails. If you like having metallic nails then I would, without a doubt, recommend you get this as it is one of the best ones from the NYC collection. If you have never tried metallic nails then this would the perfect one to try out because even if you don't like it you won't have spent a huge amount on it.

Do you like metallic nails or have you never tried them? Let me know! Keep an eye out for what I tried next with this look and thanks for reading! (:

Manicure - Beauty For Everyone

Hi everyone! So I am heading back to school (well technically sixth form) and I thought I would treat myself to a little manicure, so my nails would make a good impression! My friend had given me a manicure voucher for my birthday and I just hadn't got around to using it yet so this seemed like the perfect opportunity! I think I've had a manicure once before (?) and I've had a few pedicures, but they have all been when I have been staying with my aunt up in London so I had never been to this place.

It's called Beauty For Everyone (their website) and is based in Chippenham. When I walked in the first thing I noticed was the adorable interior design. It's very vintagey, which in my opinion gave it such a welcoming and homely feel to the place.

Photograph from Beauty For Everyone Website

I think the lady that did my manicure was called Lauren (I've got a bit of a short term memory so sorry if that's wrong!) and she was absolutely lovely and she had amazingly long eyelashes which I was very jealous of as I'm burdened with having short stubby lashes!

I chose a lovely shimmery purple pink colour which was a China Glaze one but I have absolutely no idea what the exact colour was and completely forgot to ask! Amazingly I've had it for 4 days now and they've barely chipped which is great as I won't need to paint them again for another week! Annoyingly I smudged my pinky nail a little bit as I went into town to pick up some things straight after, but it's not awfully smudged!

If you live in Chippenham or the surrounding area, I would recommend you check them out! They are a little bit expensive in comparison to other beauty salons in the area but are always doing great offers so keep an eye on their Facebook page and you might get a great deal!

Let me know if you ever get your nails done professionally or if you just do them yourself? Thanks for reading! (:

Review of 'MUA Nail Constellation' in 'Pisces'

Hi everyone! So as you know I normally just do plain nail varnish reviews but I thought I would try something different! I'm also thinking of doing some patterned nail tutorials and things like that in the future, if you are interested in that?

This isn't mine by the way, it's actually my sisters and she kindly let me borrow it so I could try it out. I believe you can buy them at £3 from MUA which is a brand you can only find online or in Superdrug and I'd not heard of this brand until pretty recently but they basically do super cheap make up and from what I've heard most of it is actually pretty good!

So I am using the colour Pisces (which is actually my star sign) but I think I am right in saying there are 4 other ones in a variety of colours. This one is mainly green with bits of pearly pink and white infused into the mixture.

I have already painted my nails with a colour I found to match the green balls best which I got from the NYC and you can read a review of that HERE . I didn't have any that matched the pearl or white but I think it would have looked more effective if I had been able to use a pearl colour as my base.

So what you have to do is paint your desired nail with your base colour and whilst it is still wet and tacky pour the small balls onto you nail. This can be a bit messy so make sure you have something underneath to catch the mass of stay ones! Once your nail looks fully covered gently push the balls down onto your nail and then apply a clear top coat on top to secure them.

My whole nail is covered! Honest! It's just that the green balls blend in the my base colour

I only chose to do one nail thus acting as an accent nail because I had never tried anything like this and thought it might be a little bit too much if I did all my nails like this!

Although the bottle is very well designed to pouring the balls out it is a bit tricky getting them back in. For some reason I couldn't remove the funnel part of the bottle as you are supposed to do so I have to try and pour the stray balls back through the tiny hole they came out of! I managed to get there in the end but it was a bit annoying.I'm sure by removing the funnel it is a lot easier to pour the balls back in but I was just unable to do so.

Excess balls 

I quite like the overall effect although I did find it strange to have things sticking out of my nail! Considering the price of £3 I would recommend this as it is a great way to jazz up your nails although personally I would try a different colour out as I don't think this one was right for me!

Let me know if what you do to spice up your nails and also if you would be interested in me doing some tutorial/nail pattern design things in the future! Thanks for reading.