Just some pictures of nail art really...

Hello hello!

Thought I'd share some images of nail art I did before and during Christmas but didn't get around to uploading until now. Over the past couple of weeks I've not really been in a very arty frame of mind - I still paint my nails religiously (at the moment I'm sporting Nails Inc Victoria, AGAIN) but I've been mainly wearing one colour and SHOCK HORROR absolutely no design, not even an accent nail or a bit of glitter. Nothing. Nada. Eeek! Despite the fact I bought the new Topshop nail art pen before Christmas, I've been all about the plain nails lately. Hopefully some of these designs will inspire me again.

Also, if you're a fan of the WAH Nails blog, you should check out the absolutely AMAZING Boom Nails - this girl has some ridiculous talent when it comes to nail art.

Enjoy!

I've spotted (hahaha) a lot of people wearing this lately and thought it was super cute so had to give it a go. Unlike a regular polka dot pattern, dalmatian spots have to vary in size and are a lot more haphazard - you'd think that'd be easier to do but I found it quite tricky! Colours used are Models Own Snow White and Barry M Peach Melba, then I used the Models Own x WAH Nails nail art pen for the black details.

Spots and stripes - pretty standard really. I used a striping brush for the stripes (duh) and the end of a hair grip for the dots. Colours used are Models Own Bloo Boo and Snow White.

I fancied going a bit OTT for our Christmas night out so used my absolute favourite Models Own Pink Punch, covered it with Models Own Juicy Jules for a bit of sparkle then decided to add some leopard spots as well using Models Own Snow White and the nail art pen for leopard spots. My Models Own pen is currently not working, (I think the nib is blocked) so I can't do any leopard designs for the time being... sniff...

Basically copied this design from WAH nails but used two shades of blue instead (H&M's Blue My Mind and U Must Have This). This looks a lot more complicated than it actually is - I started off painting my nails with GOSH Holographic for the silver stripe (I figured this wouldn't layer very well over the other polishes so thought It'd made sense to make it the base) then used a striping brush to create the zig zag shapes - easy!

Products of the Month - September

Gosh I'm such a video-er lately! I'm really enjoying making vlogs at the moment (hope you enjoy watching them!). If you've noticed that this video is a much better quality than the last couple I've uploaded, it's because I have an HD video camera, and when I upload to Youtube it takes HOURS. So I've been experimenting with reducing the size to make the uploads faster, but obviously that means the quality is reduced too, boo. So I didn't bother with this one (it took about five hours to upload though - does anyone else have this issue?!)

Also, after all the trouble I went to attempting to keep my videos under fifteen minutes long, or editing them if they went over, Youtube have now informed me that I'm allowed to upload vids that are longer than fifteen minutes! Oh Youtube, you are a wiley devil. I'll probably still try and keep them below fifteen, because any longer than that and it gets a bit boring, but at least now I won't have to worry about my horrendous editing skills!

Products featured;

Models Own Pink Punch

Models Own Bronzing Powder in Sun Goddess

Models Own Eyelash Curler

No7 Eyeshadow Blend and Contour Brush

Bobbi Brown Corrector in Light Bisque

Bobbi Brown Creamy Concealer in Warm Ivory

Topshop Powder Blush in Pop

Fiddy (per)Cent

As you probably know, last week Models Own held another 50% off everything sale on their site and I, along with the rest of the blogging population got very excited. I was actually a bit worried that the sale would go live while I was away on holiday in Herefordshire and I'd miss out completely, but fortunately, due to technical problems, it actually got delayed for a couple of days, which meant that I could still snap up plenty of half price goodies when I got home. Happy days. My package arrived on Thursday and I'm so pleased with what I bought.

Don't you just LOVE getting packages???

Top; Powder Duo Bronzer in Sun Goddess, Eyelash Curlers and Lipstick in Pinky Red. Bottom; Smash Up Silver, Pink Punch, Blooboo, Snow White, Top Turquoise and Cream Eyeshadow in White Pearl.

I know that Models Own is most well known for its nail polishes, but I decided to get a few other makeup products too. I've not tried everything out properly yet, but I'm LOVING the bronzing powder, the darker shade is perfect for contouring and the lighter one makes a lovely blusher. Of the nail colours I bought, so far I've only tried Pink Punch and Blooboo but I'm looking forward to giving Top Turquoise a go too, as I know it's a very popular one. Pink Punch is probably my favourite product so far, it is the most ridiculously bright pinky/coral colour I've ever owned. I've been dying to find an obnoxiously bright fluorescent pink for a while now and this is definitely it!

What did you buy in the sale? Have you tried any of the above products? What did you think?

Pow pow

You've got ONE DAY left to enter my giveaway!!! Quick, before it's too late!

So I *may* have lifted a tiny corner of my makeup ban this weekend when I spotted the new Models Own/WAH Nails nail art pen in Boots. To be fair, the black nail pen I already had is broken, so I did need a new one - this was clearly a very necessary purchase.

The Models Own/WAH pen has been out for a good while now, however, they seem to have improved upon the original design as the one that I bought is a bit smaller than the first one they released. Like I said, I already had a black nail art pen (I bought a random 'Flags of the World' nail art kit on sale in Debenhams ages ago) but the Models Own one is definitely superior - the nib is so fine, perfect for drawing really tiny details. I tried it out on a few of my favourite designs and came up with this;

Colours used - Nail Polish by H&M in U Must Have This, Collection 2000 Hot Looks in BMX, Models Own in Pink Blush and Natural Collection Nail Tip Whitener. Black detail done with Models Own/WAH Nails nail art pen, pink and yellow details done with random nail art pens.

I love a bit of mix 'n' match goodness, though I wish some of the lines were a bit smoother - it's just so darn fiddly though. I'm right handed, so when it came to doing my right, my left hand was SO shakey! (which is why I've only shown the one pic - the other hand is shockingly bad in comparison...)

I used the images below as inspiration - they really do put me to shame though - how on Earth do they get everything so neat?!

WAH Nails

Effiesmakeupbox

What do you think? Have you got the nail art pen? Any tips for getting everything super neat? I need to know!

oh boy oh boy oh boy

This is just a quickie really, just in case you haven't already seen. Something wonderful has happened;

Barry M Instant Nail Effects in Black Magic, Pink Fizz, Blue Print and White Frost, £3.99 each available NOW here

Models Own Smash Up in Yellow, Blue, Purple, Pink, Orange, Turquoise, Silver, White and Black. £6 each, available online from April and at Boots (Black and Silver only) from April 20th

Just THINK of the possibilities! I'm so excited, I just did a little dance of joy. I've definitely got my eye on Smash Up in Turquoise, but to be honest, I want them all.

What do you reckon? Models Own or Barry M? Or both? Which colours are you lusting after?

Products of the Month - January

Wahey, joy of joys, it's monthly vlog time again!

Products featured;

Blistex MedPlus

Blistex Lip Massage

Oilatum Natural Repair Face Cream

No7 Purifying Sauna Mask

Models Own Juicy Jules

Models Own Purple Ash

After reading this post yesterday by the lovely Dani, I decided to join her in her foundation-free-February challenge - eek! My skin's been really rubbish lately and I think that slicking on a layer of foundation every day probably isn't helping, so for the next month I'm going to try and go without. I'm not wearing any in the video above and you can't really tell, but I'm certain that when I'm getting up for work tomorrow morning and my skin looks all dull and tired, it's going to be a struggle not to reach for the Revlon PhotoReady. I won't be giving up my bronzer though, oh no, I'm not brave enough to make THAT much of a sacrifice yet!

Marvellous marbling

Colours used - Barry M Nail Paint in Fuchsia and Bright Purple, Models Own Pink Blush, Topshop Stolen Sapphires

In my ongoing quest for crazy-amazing nail art, I decided to give water marbling a try. I'd been meaning to do it for ages, but it looked quite messy and time consuming so I kept putting it off. However, after MJ posted her amazing Topshop-inspired nails, I knew I had to give it a go, so after watching a couple of Youtube tutorials, I got to it.

I think the results look cool, (my favourite is the middle finger of my left hand - look how swirly it is!) but it really is quite a massive faff. There are absolutely loads of tutorials on Youtube, so if you do want to try this for yourself, I'd suggest checking those out, but basically, you take a bowl of water, drip some different colours of nail varnish into it, swirl them around with a toothpick (I actually used one of those mini umbrellas you put into cocktails because we didn't have any toothpicks...) then press your nail onto the surface of the water, so that the design sticks to it.

The most difficult thing about this method is that you have to work really quickly. The nail varnish dries on the surface of the water and forms a kind of film after about a minute, so you can only do one or two nails at a time, then you have to clear the water of any remaining varnish (using a toothpick/cocktail umbrella) and start over with more drops. Also, I found it really tricky to actually get the drops of nail varnish into the water - they just wouldn't drip! I ended up sort of waving the brush over the surface of the water to encourage a drop to fall from it, but in my panic and/or enthusiasm I managed to throw the brush onto my bed, thus resulting in a massive blue splodge on my bedcover. Doh!

Also, as you can imagine, it gets quite messy. You can't really avoid putting your finger into the water, so you end up having to do a lot of clean up afterwards with nail varnish remover. You can wrap sticky tape around your fingers as a guard, but I couldn't be bothered with that because I'm silly.

All in all, I really like the effect, especially because every nail looks different and unique, so I'd say it's definitely worth giving it a try, but only if you've got a lot of time, patience and tape on your hands.

mental.

This is silly.

Bottom row - Models Own nail polish in Black Magic, Purple Grey, Purple Ash, Becca's Brown, Nude Beige, Grace Green, Feelin' Blue, Pink Blush, Coral Reef and Red Alert.

Middle row - Barry M Nail Paint in Instant Nail Effects: Black Magic, Grey, Bright Purple, Fuchsia, Berry Ice Cream, Strawberry Ice Cream, Pink Flamingo and Mint Green, Nails Inc Kensington Caviar Base Coat and Top Coat, Sleek Nailed Polish in Brownie.

Top row - ASOS Paint by Ciaté in Lily and Chloë, 17 Fast Finish Nail Polish in Catwalk Couture, 17 Lasting Fix Nail Polish in Parma Violet, 17 Fast Finish Nail Polish in Pink Grapefruit, 17 Lasting Fix Nail Polish in Orange Soda, 17 High Gloss Nail Polish in Raspeberry Mocha, Topshop Nails in Stolen Sapphires, Chanel Le Vernis Nail Colour in Particuliere.

Around the edges - Random nail art pens that were on sale in Debenhams.

I don't know how this has happened. I'm going to put myself on a ban from buying nail varnish for a while; clearly this obsession is solely to blame for me being skint at the moment.*

*not really. That's down to being on a crap wage :S

Role models

As any regular readers might have noticed, I've slowly been becoming more than a little bit obsessed with nail art and nail varnish. I wear nail varnish every day (I hate seeing naked nails!) and I paint my nails at least a couple of times a week, because I get bored really easily and always want to change things up. It's even gotten to the point where, not content with just painting my own, I keep demanding that my sisters let me paint their nails too. My collection of nail varnishes is increasing at a frighteningly rapid rate, and if you ever happen to go into the Liverpool One branch of Superdrug, there is a fair chance that you'll see me, pale and twitchy, lurking around the Barry M section, asking people to spare some change so that I can get just one more hit nail varnish. Ok, maybe that last bit is a slight exaggeration, but I think you get the point - I LOVE NAIL VARNISH!.

It probably comes as no surprise then, that when cheap and cheerful cosmetics brand, Models Own, recently had a 50% off everything sale online (to celebrate getting 10,000 'Likes' on their Facebook page - wowza!) , I got quite seriously excited. I was already a fan of this brand as it has a MASSIVE range of nail colours available, as well as other cosmetics such as lipsticks and eyeshadows and it's really reasonably priced (I think most products are priced around £5/£6) . Having previously tried a couple of their products (they recently started stocking it at my local Boots) I knew I had to get all over this sale like a Premiere League footballer on a cheap WAG wannabe (oooh! Topical!). Here's what I bought...

Nail Polishes: Red Alert, Coral Reef, Pink Blush, Purple Grey, Black Magic

Pearl Pink Powder Eyeshadow

Brushes: Angled, Blending, Shading

As my nail varnish collection is already full of unusual colours, I decided to go for some 'standard', traditional colours instead. Red Alert is a proper fire engine red, because everyone needs a red nail varnish don't they? Black Magic is a rich, shiny black, for when I'm feeling a bit vampy ;) Pink Blush is super pink and girly and Coral Reef is a vivid coral, leaning more towards a kind of reddish orange (you can see some better images of Coral Reef on my new nail art page). I also bought Purple Black which is an absolutely brilliant dupe for Chanel's new Paradoxal - check out The Swatchaholic's comparison of the two - they're very similar and the Models Own version is about a quarter of the price! Not satisfied with just buying nail varnish, I had a little snoop around the rest of the site and also got the Pearl Pink powder eyeshadow; a gorgeous shimmery powder that works really well as a highlighter on the brow bone, and the three eyeshadow brushes, all of which are really good quality (I especially like the blending brush for blending shadow into the socket). And the cost for all that? £18! Not bad eh?

Apparently, because the traffic during the sale was really high, a lot of people couldn't actually get onto the Models Own site at all, which must have been really frustrating (I remember the same thing happening during the farce that was the Outnet 'Everything for a £1' Sale - NIGHTMARE). I didn't have any problems when I made my order, but I think I waited until the second day of the sale and probably did it quite late at night to avoid traffic. The only issue I had was that I didn't recieve my makeup brushes until a week after my other stuff, despite the fact that they were all ordered at the same time. I wouldn't really have minded this, except Models Own didn't give me a heads up to say that the brushes would be arriving late, and didn't even respond when I emailed them asking where they were; the brushes just arrived, with no note or anything, a week later. Not the best customer service in the world, but I imagine that week was particularly hectic as everyone seemed to go a bit mental for the sale! And it's only quite a small thing, the overall transaction was very easy and the first batch of stuff did arrive really quickly.

All in all, I'm a big fan of Models Own, and I'm really glad I took advantage of the sale. I've just revisited the site and had another look through all the nail colours and I've already got my eye on a few more... this won't end well... I fear I might have to start attending Nail Painters Anonymous...