Minty Chip Swatch!

Hey there everybody! Here I am with another post! I am so glad that my nails are back in action! I'm still steering clear of false nails until my nails are a little longer, but then I guess I won't even need them! I finally caved and ordered a bottle of OPI Nail Envy, so hopefully that will help my nails along too!

So today I bring you a swatch of a Lush Laquer polish today. I can't remember if I've mentioned them on this blog before but I bought 4 mini polishes: Minty Chip, Party Hearty, Fuzzy Peach and Thanks a Latte. I haven't really had a chance to wear them yet (much like a lot of the polishes I own). When I looked down at my nails today and saw the polish was chipped I jumped at the chance to paint my nails again. I immediately went for the Sally Hansen in Green Tea that I snapped up from Poundland the other week, and then I remembered Minty Chip would go perfectly on top! I was right it was a match made in heaven.

I'm actually impressed that I managed to get these taken in natural light! I ALWAYS paint my nails too late to be able to get pictures in the sunlight, but today I managed it, and I'm glad I did. It really shows off this polish. This is one coat of Minty Chip over two coats of Sally Hansen Green Tea. I finished it off with Sally Hansen No Chip topcoat to seal in the glitter. With my nails looking so good at the moment, I doubt this polish will last long before I want to paint them again! I feel like I'm rediscovering my love for nail polish all over again! I would definitely recommend that you check out Lush Laquer on Etsy.

Let me know what you think!

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!

12 Days of Christmas: Day 12: Santa Claus!

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays my little rose petals!!

I hope that you all get some good presents and that you eat and eat until you are stuffed! It isn't Christmas until you've eaten so much that you genuinely need to lay down! At least in my house anyway! This year I'm going to a restaurant for a 5 course dinner, that should be fun!

Anyway onto the manicure, so today's theme is Santa Claus! Originally I was going to paint his jacket on all of my nails, and then I bought this polish from Claudia at Holographic Hussy in her blog sale, and I completely changed my idea. Here they are:

They are supposed to be Santa in the snow! I used Barry M Blue Moon as a base and then my white Saffron polish to paint the snow on the ground. Then using a dotting tool I painted santa with red, black and ivory polishes. Finishing it off with a healthy coat of Glitzology Snow Day to make it look like Santa is in a snow storm! I really love this glitter polish, it really looks like the snow and is perfect for Christmas, it's a shame I didn't have it sooner for some of the other challenges.

So what do you think? 

I've had so much fun with these challenges and they've certainly helped my to improve over this month! I just wanted to thank the ladies over at Overpolished and Pink and Polished for creating this wonderful Christmas challenge and making me more confident in my nail art!

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas! Let me know what presents you get in the comments!!!

12 Day's of Christmas: Day 10: Elves!

Hello again my little rose petals!

The challenge is almost done :') I've has so much fun and I'm definitely going to be joining more challenges in the future! Please let me know in the comments if you've enjoyed what I've been doing!

I wanted to make cute little elves on my nails, and I knew that I wanted to use my Green Envy by Saffron as I love the colour so much! I used dotting tools and nail art brushes to paint these cute little fellows! I know they aren't perfect, I didn't have a lot of time this morning to paint them!  

I hope you like them! Sorry for the short post today but a post is better than no post at all!

Let me know what you think in the comments, I love reading them!

12 Days of Christmas! Day 7: Snowflake!

Hello my little rose petals!

I am aware that I am a day late for this challenge, I had a seriously busy day yesterday and I just didn't have time to paint my nails! Today however I will be painting my nails lots! I'm trying to get all my 12 Days of Christmas challenges photos done as I am working from the 21st-24th and I won't have any time for my nails :-(

Anyway on with today's manicure:

I'm really happy with how these turned out! I used to fear free hand painting but now I just get on with it! I used Rimmel's Lasting Finish in Your Majesty and then painting the snowflakes on with my White Saffron polish and a nail art brush! I love how simple they turned out and I think they are really pretty! I'll definitely be wearing snowflakes again!

Let me know what you think!

12 Days of Christmas: Day 6: Gifts!

Hello my little rose petals!

I completely forgot we had a challenge today until I got the email so I had absolutely NO IDEA what I was going to do. Fortunately I have managed to come up with something fairly decent! Also apologies for my horribly stubby nails, I really couldn't be bothered to wear falsies today! Here they are:

Sorry for the poor quality pictures, the auto focus on my camera is totally screwed and it won't take decent pictures. Hopefully Santa will bring me a new one (doubtful). I used the Barry M Magnetic that I got from a friend yesterday for Christmas! I've been wanting a magnetic for so long, and I finally have one! Then I used my konad white polish and Cheeky plate #16 to create a swirly pattern on top so it looked like wrapping paper. I then used red striping tape across my nails and finished it off by drawing a red bow with red polish and a dotting tool. I'm really happy with how these turned out overall but I'm kind of gutted that the red bows aren't more opaque!

Sorry this was a quick one guys! Hope you enjoy :) Let me know in the comments what the worst and best presents you've ever gotten for Christmas are!

12 Days of Christmas Day 4! Snowmen Nails!

Hello there my little rose petals! I'm posting this one a day early because I'm busy all day tomorrow! Today is the fourth in the 12 days of Christmas challenge, I can't believe how quickly it is going! I'm really having fun with this challenge and I hope you are too. So to my manicure!

One thing I'm noticing throughout these challenges is how much better I am getting a free hand painting. I'm not perfect but I'm certainly beginning to impress myself! I love snowmen so I wanted to focus on just them but to spice it up each nail has a different background colour! I also gave them little scarves just to add a little more colour so that the manicure didn't end up being too black and white! I think they turned out ok, I'd have liked them to be a little more perfectly polished but I'm so new to this polishing thing I kind of have to give myself a hearty pat on the back :-)

Let me know what you think? And in the comments write your best Snowman memory :-)

12 Days of Christmas Day 3! Candy Canes!

Hello my little rose petals!

Today is the 3rd challenge in the 12 days of Christmas challenge that I am participating in this year. I had a lot of positive comments about my reindeer manicure from challenge 2 which made me smile so I hope I'll get a few more comments this time!

My Cheeky plates finally arrived this morning and i was delighted to see that there were some candy canes on one of the plates. I also managed to find some lollipops and decided I would go with a manicure of sweet treats! Here it is:

It isn't my favourite manicure ever and I'm sure that the million other ideas I had would have looked much better than this, but I'm going to stick to my guns! The little pink splodge is supposed to be wrapped candy but you can't see it very well in the photos. 

I started off with the Green base and decided to use two coats just to make sure the polish would really pop. Then I stamped the Lollipop and Candy Cane onto each nail. Finally I added detail onto the Candy Cane and the lollipop with a dotting tool, and then created my little candy wrapper at the top of each nail.

Hope you enjoy it!

Check out what the others doing the challenge have created below:

12 Days Of Christmas Challenge Number 2! Inspired by a Christmas Song!

Hello my little rose petals a late post for you this evening!

I have bee a very busy bee today meaning I have only just managed to finish my nails for today!

Once again I am wearing false nails. Three of my nails broke off and I had to chop them all right down :( Luckily my new false nails had arrived so I didn't have to paint on my severely stubby nails!

Today is the second day of the 12 Days of Christmas challenge and the theme is 'Christmas Song'. Originally I did want to go with 'Merry Xmas' by Slade (seeing as my surname is Slade). However the only idea I could think of then was to write Merry Christmas on my nails and I thought that would be pretty boring. So I decided on Ruldolph the red nosed Reindeer! I based my look on this post by Coleyyyful! And here they are:

The cleanup looks a little bad as I had to put false nails on and the glue made the white polish cling a little more but overall I a really REALLY pleased with how these turned out! Here are the polishes I used:

From left to right: Saffron #21: Gold Shimmer, Saffron #25: Chocolate, Saffron #11: White, Saffron #29 Pillar-box Red, NYC: Black

I painted my nails with the white then used different sized dotting tools to paint on my little reindeer friends! Then I finished it off with a top coat to seal it in! I'm so pleased with how my blog is shaping up and I'm really enjoying this Christmas challenge, it's certainly getting me into the Christmas spirit!

Hope you enjoy them! What's your favourite Christmas song?

Check out what the others participating in the challenge came up with here:

12 Days Of Christmas Nail Art Challenge! Day 1: Christmas Tree!

 I am so excited to be sharing my first EVER Christmas Challenge Manicure! Today's Challenge was Christmas tree and I immediately had an idea! Here it is:

Basically I knew that there was no way that I'd be able to paint Christmas trees on every single nail as my skills aren't that great right now. So instead I decided that I would create a tree on one nail and then make the other nails look like close up's of the tree, with tinsel and baubles. I'm pretty impressed with how good I am getting at painting my nails, I hardly had any cleanup this morning. Here are the polishes I have used:

From left to right: Saffron #15: Green Envy, Saffron #11: White, Saffron #29: Pillar-box Red, Saffron #21: Gold Shimmer, Saffron # 07: Silver Glitter Specks, Saffron #08: Gold Glitter Specks

Yes I used all Saffron Nail Polishes again! I just have so many colours that are perfect for these challenges, I promise that soon this blog will stop being a Saffron fangirl blog. Anyway I started by painting all the fingers, except the ring finger, with the #15 Green Envy. Then painting both ring fingers with #11 White. Then I focused on creating my tree. I used the Green Envy and a small brush to paint the tree carefully. Then I used a dotting tool and #08 Gold Glitter Specks to add a large piece of glitter on top of the tree (like a star), and adding smaller pieces of glitter onto the tree as baubles. Finishing it off with #29 Pillar-box Red and a dotting tool to add a few more 'baubles' onto my tree. Then I turned my attention to my other nails. I chose a slightly larger dotting tool and #21 Gold Shimmer (which as a side note is a really nice colour on its own), to create my tinsel. To do this I just dotted the colour on carefully making sure each dot was connected. Then I used the #29 Pillar-box red and the #07 Silver Glitter Specks to dot onto my nails to look like the Baubles on the tree! I'm so happy with how this turned out and I'm proud to be part of this challenge!

Let me know what you think, and email me pictures of your Christmas Manicures, I love to look at them all!

Check out what the others taking the challenge have done below: