Pastel NOTD

Currently watching: The Big Bang Theory

Hi girls! I hope you're all having a lovely Saturday and enjoying the sunshine :-)

Inspired by the sight of the sun, I decided to use pastel shades for my manicure today. The only problem is that I only have four pastel shades and I wanted each nail to be different. I used orange as my fifth colour but on reflection I may have been better with Eyeko Vintage Polish as the orange was just too bright (just between you and me: I almost texted my boyfriend to ask him to buy Barry M Peach Melba for me so I could redo my manicure but stopped myself).

Here are the colours I used:

I started stamping white Hello Kitty images on my nails but they didn't turn out well so I turned to be usual quick-fix solution...

Barry M Nail Effects :-)

My new favourite polishes to layer pink crackle polish over are now:

Do you like this manicure? How many pastel shades do you have?

Bye for now,
Laura

Friday's Fashion: OOTD

Currently watching: Beaver Falls

Good morning girls! TGIF, right?

Exciting news: yesterday I discovered how to use my camera's timer! I had a play around with it, trying to capture my OOTD for you, and although trying to get a decent photo of my outfit was difficult, here are my best shots:

Trying to remain anonymous

My accessories

What do you think, girls? Firstly of my outfit and secondly of the pictures? Am I better showing you my clothes on the hangers or are you willing to stick with these kinds of photos as I work on improving my poses and image quality?

Bye for now,
Laura

Thursday's Tag: Best Blog Award!

Currently listening to: The Warblers

Good morning girls! Sara from Sara Loves Pretty Little Things recently gave me this award:

Thank you so much Sara! You all know I am a big fan of Sara's blog so if you don't follow her already, I'd really recommend heading over to her site for a look now :-)

The rules of this award are:
Link back to the person who gave you this award
Complete the form below
Share 7 random things about yourself
Award 15 bloggers this award and notify them of the award

Okay, so onto the form:
Name your favourite colour:
Purple

Name your favourite song:
Tough one, I have a lot of songs I really love. I think I'll go for Awake by Josh Groban though.

Name your favourite dessert:
Sticky toffee pudding/pear and chocolate crumble/banana cake/carrot cake

What makes you mad?
Sniffing, swearing, vulgarity, hypocrisy, bad teaching, injustice

When you're upset you...
Cry

Your favourite pet:
I haven't had any pets

Black or white?
Either, though I've been told clothes-wise that I suit white better than black

Your biggest fear is ...
Cats

Your best feature is...:
My nails I suppose

Everyday attitude:
Well I'm in college just now, gearing up for a six week revision period before I sit professional exams which could cause me to lose my job if I fail so at the moment, my everyday attitude is fear, stress, frustration and irritation!

What is perfection?
Perfection does not exist

Guilty pleasure:
Old American teen dramas :-)

7 random things about me:
When I started this blog I didn't know it was going to have such a focus on nail art. I wish I had chosen a more appropriate name.

Until recently I had never tasted coffee. Then, due to a mocha disguised as a hot chocolate, I had my first sip. Not for me.

I have been working in my current role for almost a year

I can't imagine ever feeling inspired to go to the cinema again. I have seen too many bad films that have failed to move me this last year.

I love Sudoku

My 86-yr-old grandmother has the same model of mobile phone as me

I would like to learn Spanish

I would now like to pass this award on to:
Colour Me Pretty
Red Hair and Black Nail Polish
Paint That Nail
Let Them Have Polish
A Place For My Nails
Polish Infatuated
A Daisy Chain Dream
Spellbinding Nails
My Nail Graffiti
Nail Stories UK
Opinionated Little Finger
Nails and Whatnot
Precious Polish
Sekmet's Purple Castle

Congratulations on your awards girls :-)

Bye for now,
Laura
PS I know I only tagged 14 bloggers, originally I had 15 but the 15th person was recently given this award!

Tuesday's Talons

Currently reading: ICAEW Taxation Study Manual (let the good times roll!)

Good evening girls! I'm posting rather late in the day but oh well, better late than never.

Bad news to start us off I'm afraid. A lot of you lovely ladies left me comments recently saying that you really liked the length and shape of my nails. I did too, in fact I loved my nails, but during the past couple of weeks I felt they were getting too long so yesterday I filed them down. My beautiful nails have gone!

I had planned to file them right down but in the end I couldn't bear to do that, partly because I have very small nail beds so if I filed my nails below the tips of my fingers, I would hardly have any nail left to paint. Anyway, they are now a lot shorter than they were and it's going to take us all time to get used to them (!) but I have high hopes for their rapid growth.

Today's manicure features Barry M Blue Moon as the base with a new (to me) Miss Sporty bronze/gold shade for stamping.

The only good thing about short nails is that I can happily use the full nail images from the old Bundle Monster collection and my MASH plates :-)

Thumb, middle and pinkie nails were stamped with m78
Index and ring nails were stamped with BM11

I love this colour combination, I really do. It's the first time I've used this polish but I knew I could rely on Miss Sporty to stamp well.

My only problem was placing the stamp. This was the most successful nail.

So girls, what do you think of this manicure and what do you think of my short nails? What is your ideal nail length?

Bye for now,
Laura

Top 10 Award

Currently listening to: Higher Window by Josh Groban

Hi girls,

Did you all have a good weekend? I'm starting this week on a high note with the Top 10 Award which was kindly given to me by the lovely ladies at Sara Loves Pretty Little Things, Paint That Nail and D.I.A.N.A. Thank you all so much!

The rules of this award are:
*Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award
*Nominate and inform 10 bloggers you wish to give this award to
*List your top 10 cosmetics

The 10 bloggers I wish to give this award to are:
Red Hair and Black Nail Polish
My Nails: A Love Affair
Life and Polish
Cosmetic Cupcake
A Random Rabbit's Ramblings
Taya
Nicole- Top To Toe
My World
Oomph
The Best Beauty Blog


Enjoy the award girls :-)

Now on to my top 10 cosmetics:

1: OPI Avoplex High Intensity Hand & Nail Cream
2: OPI Avoplex Cuticle Oil To Go
3: OPI Original Nail Envy Nail Strengthener
4: Seche Vite fast drying top coat

5: GOSH Primer - this is the fourth primer I've tried and I think it's my favourite. I will write a post on this soon but for now, all I'll say is that it's a daily staple for me.
6: Rimmel Stay Matte Mousse Foundation
7: 17 Even Tone Corrector Stick
8: 17 Mirror Shine Lipstick in Flirtini - the first lipstick I've worn for years. My lips are quite thin so lip glosses and lipsticks generally don't suit me at all but this shade adds a subtle hint of colour without looking foolish.
9: ELF Eyelid Primer

10: Vaseline - a staple in all make-up artists' make-up kits I'm led to believe and apparently good for using on eyebrows, lips and dry patches of skin. However, the reason this is in my top 10 is because until January, I suffered from terrible nosebleeds on an almost daily basis. My doctor suggested I put a touch of Vaseline inside my nose every day to see if this would prevent my nose from bleeding. His suggestion worked for me and I have not had a signle nosebleed in six months.

Do you use any of the products I've featured in my top 10? What products are in your top 10?

Bye for now,
Laura

Sunday's Stamping

Currently watching: Kidulthood

Good morning girls! I hope you're all having a fantastic weekend. I am now back from my holiday in the Lake District and therefore back in the blogosphere. Last week's posts were all scheduled therefore I didn't reply to your comments when you left them but they have now all been read and replied to. Thanks, as always, for your feedback :-)

Today I'd like to show you a manicure I did using a silver Miss Sporty shade as my base with pink (Blake by Ciate for Asos) and purple (Kiko) butterflies stamped over it.

I love this manicure, I really do. And it stayed in great condition for six days!

The original plan was to have two purple nails on the outside, followed by two pink then use blue on my middle finger but I'm glad I decided to alternate between only pink and purple.

What do you think girls?

Bye for now,
Laura

NOTD

Currently listening to: The Script

Good morning!

I think we've all seen recently how bad my freehand nail art is so I went back to stamping :-)

I chosen Eyeko Vintage as my base and then used a blue shimmer (Powder Blue) from Collection 2000 to stamp a full nail image from BM203.

I knew it wouldn't show up well but I wanted something to lift the green as I feel this shade can sometimes look a bit plastic-like.

I then used Asos Lily to stamp floral images from Mash m20

It looked quite nice in reality but it's hard to photograph the detail well. I hope you can at least get an idea of how this manicure looks.

What are your thoughts on this manicure?

Bye for now,
Laura

Monday's Manicure- Yet Another Fail

Currently listening to: Shine a Light by McFly

Good morning girls and welcome to the week :-)

I spend a lot of time reading nail blogs and often I really love other girls' manicures but lack the talent or ability to try similar styles myself. Recently I saw a stunning zip/zebra manicure on Red Hair and Black Polish which I decided to try as Theodora was kind enough to provide step by step instructions. Too bad I didn't follow them! Look at her picture and then look at mine:

What a disaster!
I didn't choose a red base as I had previously worn a red and didn't like the removal issues so I went for Barry M Ice Cream.

I used a brush to outline the *zippers* but obviously my lines were far too thick and I couldn't add dots to make the *zippers* more realistic.

At this point, I knew it was a fail. My animal print only confirmed that realisation. Freehand animal print is not for me. I didn't allow myself enough space to do it nicely either.

Then I was in destruction mode so I stamped random green flowers on the purple base, repeated the stamping on a few nails, and then removed it all. What a waste.

Theodora, I admire your nail art skills :-)

Bye for now,
Laura

Sunday's Stamping

Currently listening to: The Warblers

Hi girls! How are you? How is your weekend going? I'm on holiday in the Lake District now :-) Pictures to feature next week I suspect!

Today's manicure builds on my original rose manicure which I showed you last week I believe.

Can you tell what the difference is?

Originally, my index and ring finger nails were white with two red roses stamped on them. Afterwards, I stamped two exta pink roses on my nails to make more use of my canvas :-)

What do you think?

I actually love the red and pink together but I think it would look better if all my nails were the same. I look forward to trying a variation of this manicure again soon though.

Bye for now,
Laura

Friday's Fingers

Currently watching: The Apprentice

Hello dear readers! Today I'd like to show you another Kiko polish I bought during my May trip to Paris.

This is no255, a dark purple packed full of holographic multicoloured glitter

A really pretty shade but a nightmare to remove

I don't think it will be a polish I will turn to regulaly due to removal issues

Do you have polishes in your collection you avoid using because they're so difficult to remove? Do you like this colour?

Bye for now,
Laura

Thursday's Talons- Ruffian/Half-Moon Fail

Currently reading: Glamour

Good morning girls!

How is your week going? Mine started well but has been going steadily down hill. A week of tax tuition is not fun and this feeling of not being able to get through the exams isn't nice. Musn't grumble though, onto the nails!

I decided to be *brave* and try a manicure that didn't involve using my stamping plates so I settled on a Ruffian manicure and used circular reinforcements as my image outline.

Oh what a disaster. I used a Boots 17 polish in Pink Grapefruit as my base then, once dry, placed the top half of a circular reinforcement sticker on my nails and used Boots 17 Knockout Red to paint above the sticker.

Why was it a nail fail?

Well, some nails smudged, I misjudged the spaces on some nails so the pink area is not of a similar size on all nails and the edges were badly painted, meaning on some nails the red curve actually looks more like a straight line. Disaster.

As soon as I took these photos I removed this manicure. Definitely not one I'm in a rush to repeat.

Have you tried to do a Ruffian manicure? Did you end up with better results than I did?

Bye for now,
Laura

Tuesday's Talons

Currently watching: Top Gear

Good morning ladies :-)

Yesterday's random cracked manicure grew on me a lot during the day, especially the original blue and pink together, yet I still changed my manicure when I got home. Here's what I replaced it with, inspired by Cath Kidston designs:

I used white as my base and placed blue polka dots, using my dotting tool, on all my nails.

I then stamped two red roses on each alternate nail using BM14 and unwisely tried to fit three roses on my middle finger nails. I always make this mistake.

Close up, I love this manicure but from far away the rose details are not clear at all and not many people in real life care so much about my nails that they would ask for a close-up lol.

Do you think this manicure turned out well? Do you feel disappointed if people don't admire your nails?

Bye for now,

Laura