Try a Tutorial Tuesday! Cute Bow Nails!

Hello my little rose petals! Today I bring you YET ANOTHER new feature!

Today I received this wonderful book in the post:

This little beauty is created by Catherine Rodgers a.k.a TotallyCoolNails on Youtube! I had a quick flick through the book and I came up with the idea to try out a tutorial on Tuesdays! This is mainly to make me try new things, but also to give me ideas when I can't think of how to paint my nails! It won't be every Tuesday but I will try and do it as often as I can. 

Today's tutorial comes from page 58 of this book, and is entitled Cute Bow Nails! In the tutorial Catherine used Black and White polishes but I decided that I wanted something a little more subtle, so I chose blue. Here is how they turned out:

I really love these nails, they are cute and girly and definitely make me feel more feminine. I used my Saffron #11 and Collection 2000 BMX Bandit to create this look. I would have posted a picture of the page from the book, but I'm not sure how that would affect copyright law etc. This is also the first time I rounded my false nails instead of squaring them off, which made me feel even more feminine! Being a complete nail art novice there were some problems, my polish started to congeal making it harder to paint with, but I managed  to get around that.

This tutorial was really easy to follow and there are a tonne of tutorials in this book. I will definitely be using it again for this feature, but also I'll be looking at other tutorials such as videos from Youtube and picture tutorials from other bloggers. If there are any tutorials you want me to try out then please tweet me the link (@Alyssia_Rose), and I'll give them a go and let you know how easy they are!

Lucky Dip Mani #1

Good evening my little rose petals! I am pleased to report that my broken nail has grown back enough for me to be able to wear false nails! Unfortunately my natural nails are a long way off of being ok, but this means I can get back into blogging!

Today I bring you yet another new feature for this blog! Lucky dip mani's! I got the idea from Lauren Luke a makeup guru on Youtube. She does a lucky dip makeup look so I thought why not do it with my nails! So here are the rules of my lucky dip:

1. Pick a card showing a number (between 1-3), this is the minimum number of polishes that you must use in your look.
2. Looking away from the polish box, blindly pick out the number of polishes shown on your card. 
3. Once you have your first polishes you may dip to find extra polishes (you can only dip double the amount shown on the card originally) e.g. if the card shows 2, you can dip 4 times.
4. When you are done lucky dipping you may choose out of all the polishes you have dipped. You must use the minimum number shown on your card for the look!
5. You may use any technique to create the look.

Those rules actually make it sound a lot more complicated than it is... but anyway, here's what happened on my first go. My card showed a 2, so I decided to blindly pull 4 polishes, here is what I ended up with and they are also in the order I pulled them:

From left to right: Barry M Ruby Glitter, GOSH Gypsy Blue, Saffron White, Unknown Purple Shimmer

You can imagine my shock when the I saw the first two I pulled out. I thought there was no way that they were going to go together, which is why I decided to pull the extra two out and I was glad when I got the purple shimmer. This being my first attempt at a lucky dip I was pretty bummed that it didn't look like any of the polishes I'd picked would go together. But I swatched the Gypsy blue and the purple shimmer together and it looked like I might be rescued. I chose to attempt striping tape again, even though the last time I tried it the results were no less than disastrous! Here is what I came up with:

I am so happy with how these turned out. They took me a long time (almost 2 hours) but I am so happy with the results! I used the Gypsy blue as a base, and then put on the striping tape. Next I used two thin coats of the purple shimmer polish, and whilst the second coat was still wet I carefully removed the striping tape with tweezers. As you can see I even snuck a little bit of the Barry M Ruby Glitter onto the accent nail!  I'm not really sure it goes but I wanted to try and use as many of the polishes as I possibly could! Finally I sealed it all in with a top coat! Today's mani definitely took me out of my comfort zone, and I'm glad to be introducing it as a feature!

In fact I'd love to see some of my readers giving the lucky dip a go! Please email your name, pictures, blog name and a small description of how you created your mani to: armslade@live.co.uk! I would love to feature a couple everytime I do a lucky dip!

Let me know what you think!!

Glimmer by Erica: Treasure Chest

Good afternoon my little rose petals! As you may or may not recall my nails are currently out of action due to a completely idiotic shaving accident, so my posts are going to be a little sparce over the next few weeks. However I have managed to come up with a sort of solution for now!

My housemate Jess asked me if I could paint her nails before we went out last Friday and I agreed on the condition that I could take photos for my blog. I let her loose on my polish collection and 'Treasure Chest' by Glimmer by Erica caught her eye and so We went with that. Here is how it looks:

I used two coats of Saffron #21 as a base for the glitter polish and then carefully applied 3 coats of the glitter. This polish has gold, blue and read glitters and it really does remind me of a treasure chest. I found myself becoming jealous that I could wear this polish myself. The Glimmer by Erica polishes certainly don't disappoint, I currently own 2 and I have swatch the other already, you can find that post here. One of the things I do find is that these polished are fairly hard to apply, but that's just because of the chunks of glitter. Perseverance with them however, can lead to amazing results such as those seen above! I'm also really jealous that my housemate has such lovely nails, I wish mine would behave themselves! 

I hope you've enjoyed this short swatch today! I'm gutted that I can't paint my nails more. I will be attempting to apply false ones later and if it works then I'll be able to post, but I don't have high hopes for them on top of my broken nail.

Make sure you check out the Glimmer by Erica Shop there are tonnes of sparkly polishes to choose from!

Until next time!

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 1: Red Nails!

Hello there my little rose petals!

I'm finally beginning the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge and I'm really excited about it! I've seen this challenge posted on pretty much every single nail blog that I have read and I've been wanting to start it myself for a while now. Check out the image below to see what the challenges are:

One of the main reasons that I had been putting off this challenge for so long is because I physically didn't have the polishes to complete the first 10 days. I really didn't want to start before I had everything I could possibly need and now I do so I can! (Thanks to the 33 Saffron polishes I bought). I should say that there is no way that I will be doing this every single day, I simply don't have the time for that. Also I'm undertaking a Christmas Nail Art challenge which you can find here if you want to join. My aim is to do 2 of the 31 day challenges a week, if I do more then great, but having 3 Christmas challenges a week to complete too is definitely going to be pushing it. Especially since I'm new to this Nail Blogging stuff!

I also have a confession to make before I go into my first manicure. This morning I woke up and was immediately excited about the fact that I was starting this challenge and then I looked at my nails. To my horror my nails had begun to flake and peel, unfortunately my nails are prone to this. So in today's post and probably for the next few days I am wearing false nails. Normally I wouldn't bother because I find that they don't agree with me, but this time I've cut them right down and shaped them (when normally I'd just leave them). I've got to say I'm pretty happy with how they look and feel and I might think of wearing falsies more often!

So here is my first manicure in the 31 Day Challenge! I wanted to keep it simple today mainly because it took my so long to put on the false nails, and partly because I have other things to do today! I was going to go with plain red but I decided I'd get into the holiday spirit and add a little Gold. Here are the polishes I used:

From left to right: Saffron #28: Bright Red, Saffron #08: Gold Glitter Specks

I bought these two in a massive haul from saveonmakeup.co.uk and I bought 33 polishes for £32.67 at 99p each. Considering how cheap they are I was pleasantly surprised at the coverage that the Bright Red gave, I would have been fine using only 1 coat however I decided on 2 to make it stand out more.

The Gold glitter polish was a little more stubborn. I only used 2 coats of it however I feel maybe next time I use it I may venture to use 3 or even 4 coats of it. The glitter itself has 3 different sized pieces in it from tiny, to small, to medium. For 99p each I can't really complain, these two polishes look great together and I even found myself singing Christmas songs as I was painting them on. So I've finally found something that gets me into the Christmas Spirit... Nail Polish!

Let me know what you think in the comments and tell me if you've gotten into the Christmas spirit yet, or whether you are still in denial!