Chevron Nail Art

Hi everybody! Today I'm using the purple gradient from yesterday as the base for some chevron nail art. This is a bit out of my comfort zone as I had a lot of trouble using the nail vinyls when I first got them. If you aren't in the nail art community or you just have no idea what Nail Vinyls are, let me direct you to this website and this instagram. Linda, the creator of Nail Vinyls reposts pictures and videos on her instragram on how to use the various products in the Nail Vinyls range. They make doing certain nail art a whole lot easier. However, until I did these nails, I thought very differently about them.

When I first received the Chevron Minis in the mail I was very excited about them because I had been seeing almost everyone's posts on Instagram about them and chevron is such a fun design that I wanted to try them out for myself. I was mega disappointed though because they just didn't work for me the way I had seen them work for so many other girls in the nail art community. I was frustrated to say the least when it pulled the base colour up and then dragged the top colour around as well. I did what the instructions recommended but I quickly gave up. Thinking back to it, I know it was my fault as I didn't top coat the base colour before using the Nail Vinyls and I was just really impatient about the whole thing. This turned me off them for a while and I sort of forgot that I even had them until recently.

Now, flash forward to this afternoon when all of a sudden I had the idea to use them on top of the purple gradient I did. I'm so incredibly glad I had a sudden brainwave to try them out again because I'm in love with the way they've turned out and I now understand where I went wrong the first time I tried to use them. As the gradient had been top coated with a fast drying top coat the day before, it made it super easy to put the vinyls on and then remove. That's the secret to it all (although not such a secret because Linda suggests this in the FAQs on her website). I was just too eager to try them out initially that I hadn't wanted to top coat them and then wait an extra 10-15 minutes. I will have to try that method out though instead of waiting a whole day after applying a fast dry top coat, so stay tuned for that post!

Now, onto the photos! I used Black Satin - Ulta3 and you can find the purple polishes here.

I love, love, love how it's turned out! I can't believe I waited so long to try them out again. I think I'll definitely be making a few more purchases from the Nail Vinyls website in the near future!

Sorry this post was a bit wordy, I guess it turned into a mini review but I felt the need to share my experience because in the end it turned out great, which is just a reminder to keep practising and trying and eventually things should work out the way they're supposed to!

Purple Gradient/Ombre + Tutorial

Hello everyone! Today I have another simple tutorial for you all. While filming this I realised I've been using purple a lot lately so I'll try to mix it up next time!

This tutorial is just an easy purple gradient/ombre, I've done a bunch of them before so it's nothing new to the blog so let's just jump to the polishes, pictures and video!

Polishes used:
White On - Sally Hansen
Palette Play - Ulta3
Spring Break - Ulta3
Lotsa Fun - Ulta3
Insta-Dri Anti-Chip Top Coat - Sally Hansen

I hope the video has the right pace to it for people wanting to try this out, it was a very tedious filming process as I discovered a new setting to film, which means better quality video, but it meant I had a shorter amount of time to film and I put this over two SD cards and still had to delete some footage like painting the base colour and doing a proper clean up. But clean up is easy as long as your cuticles look neat and free of polish. I also realise this isn't such a dramatic gradient but it's still just as eye catching and a cool design to show off your new found skills! Plus you can use ANY colours with this design, it's all up to you.

Colourful Leopard Print + Tutorial

Hello lovelies! Today I have another tutorial for you, and even though there are so many leopard print tutorials out there, I thought I'd do my own just for the sake of it. I'm still tweaking the way I film, you'll notice that this set up is different to my first video and I think it works better for the positioning but it's a little annoying as the camera was right in the way, but it works well so I'll see how I go next time I film.

As you may know, I was not a fan of leopard print until I did it for the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge in September last year and ever since then I've enjoyed it as long as it's bright and colourful. I don't think I've ever done a leopard print using a lot of colours, I've mostly stuck to one colour theme but this time I wanted to do something different.

Polishes used:
White On - Sally Hansen
Palette Play - Ulta3
Party Shoes - Ulta3
Butler Please - Essie
Mojito Madness - Essie
Black Satin - Ulta3

Insta-Dri Anti-Chip Top Coat - Sally Hansen

Hope you enjoyed this post! Don't forget to check out the video above and watch it on YouTube because it's easier to view.

I'll be back again during the week with some new posts!

July BellaBox Review

Hey there everyone, it's time for another bellabox review! This month's theme was American Beauty and just like last month I didn't really see the theme in the products I received, but I guess they were relevant.

I'll start this review of by mentioning flat out that I was disappointed with this month's box. I loved the first one I received, had mixed feelings about the second one (but ultimately liked it) and now, my third box has just left me feeling a bit annoyed.

As you can see from the above photo, I essentially was given three lip products as the bigger Paw Paw cream can be used for lips too. And don't get me wrong I love lip products, I currently have three balms in use (one in my bag, one next to my bed, and one in my make up drawers) and six spare. Six. That's a lot of balms, believe me I know it's a lot and they'll last me a long time. And I know that there's no way bellabox would know I essentially have nine lip balms but it's still a little disappointing to basically receive two of the same product.

However, let's get on to the reviews (please note I haven't tested them all, but you'll read why that is):

1. Anastasia Lash Genius Waterproof Topcoat ($39.00) - I'm not a huge fan of waterproof mascara because I feel like it ruins my eyelashes even if I'm very gentle with removing it. That being said, I haven't used a waterproof mascara in years but I imagine my opinion hasn't changed on them. The Anastasia brand is really good quality, I constantly see beauty bloggers and vloggers raving about their various products. I myself am a huge fan of the clear brow gel I received in my May box. This is a nice addition to my makeup collection and will be useful for summer. I haven't yet tried it out because I don't think I need waterproofing right now, but I've read some pretty good reviews and it sounds promising.
2. Designer Brands Cosmetics Paw Paw Plus Lips ($4.99) - I might be the only person on Earth who isn't a fan of Paw Paw ointment. I don't know why, but I just never got into it and preferred my Chapstick and Blistex instead. However, I don't hate the product, I'll often borrow my sister's if we're out and I haven't bought any lip balm. So I don't hate it and I don't love it, but this one is just like all the others you'll find, only in a more reasonable lip product size.
3. Innoxa Mineral Trio Eye Shadow ($14.95) - I've recently been getting more and more into wearing eyeshadow so this is the product I'm probably the most happy about getting. It's a good little trio of wearable, shimmery colours. I swatched the colours quickly and there wasn't a massive amount of pigmentation but I think the white will be a good under eyebrow and inner corner highlight and the brown will be a good outer corner colour. I can't see myself wearing the green as much as I would the white and brown, but who knows, if I can make it work, I'll wear it. I'm happy with this product because I never would have purchased it myself so it's nice to have something a little different. 
4. Designer Brands Cosmetics Paw Paw Plus Ointment ($4.99) - See number 2 because this is the exact same product to me, just in a bigger size. I might even give this to my sister because I really don't need it.
5. She Aromatherapy Fruit Gloss Tube ($12.95) - (For some reason this isn't on the bellabox website at all which is weird considering it was in the box) Once again, I find myself annoyed at a product in this box, which isn't bellabox's fault, it's just personal preference to me. I hate tubed lipgloss. I'm more of a matte lipstick kind of girl so this isn't a useful product to me. It does smell great though and goes on smoothly; it's not thick like I find other tube lipglosses to be. But I might give this to my best friend as I just don't want it and she might get more use out of it.
6. Natralus Pure 100% Aloe Vera Gel ($14.45) - (Bonus gift) This came in a sachet so I haven't tested it yet as I don't want to waste it. But everyone knows how good aloe vera gel is so I'm sure there are no faults to this product. I do actually have aloe vera plants in my backyard so I've never needed to go out and buy aloe vera gel so it'll be good to compare the product to the plant when I do use this one.

Overall, I'm not that pleased with this months box, and it's a bit disappointing because I received this on my birthday so I was really looking forward to some awesome goodies, but I'm very grateful for the time and effort the people behind bellabox put into making them and sending them out, so thank you to them. I'm already looking forward to August's box!

Birthday Nails!

Hello everyone! Today, the 24th of July is my 22nd birthday! So of course, I did my nails to match. I didn't do anything over the top, just something simple to signify that it's my birthday today, so this will just be a quick post.

I had no idea what I was going to do, I did want to water marble but for some reason it just wasn't happening, so I did some quick sponging instead using two Essie polishes: Butler Please and Peach Daiquiri, and an Ulta3 polish called Palette Play. I then used a white polish to write the numbers and also topped the other nails with Stop The Press by Ulta3. This was my first time using it and it was everything I hoped it would be, I'm in love with this black and white glitter!

So here are my birthday nails!

It's a simple mani that I'm very happy with and so far I'm having a lovely and relaxed day!

Thanks for reading!

Inspired By... #11

Hello lovelies! If you follow me on Instagram you would have seen these nails and the inspiration behind them already as I posted about them on Friday and Saturday. But I had to do a full post on them anyway!

I went to a friend's engagement party on the weekend and I wore the dress below. I absolutely love this dress, which my best friend bought me last year for my 21st, and the nail art possibilities to go with it are endless! I didn't even know where to start, however I didn't have a lot of time on Saturday so I went with something very simple: a gradient.

For the first time in a verrrry long time, I didn't start with a white base. I went straight on with Revlon's Tulip (an amazing shade of pink that's very buildable). I wanted more of a subtle gradient as it appears on the dress so on the bigger, flat side of a triangle sponge I painted a small strip of the pink polish with a slightly bigger strip of My Boyfriend Scales Walls - OPI, a bright white, above it and then I gently sponged it on, making sure to blend the colours from about halfway up the nail. I think I only did one coat of the sponging as I didn't want it to be so strong and bold.

I'm not a massive fan of pink nail polish on myself, even though I buy it so often, but I think with the colour toned down it looks okay against my skin tone.

That's it for today, hope everybody had a great weekend!

Purple Gradient Dotticure + My First YouTube Tutorial!

Hey everybody! I am super excited to be doing this post for you today. As you can tell from the title it involves my very first YouTube tutorial. Over the past week I had been deciding whether or not I wanted to start making tutorials, but ultimately I decided why not! Now, it's not the best quality as it was a quick decision and I haven't played around with the cameras settings properly yet and I'm not about to go out and buy an expensive camera in case this whole thing doesn't work out. So please excuse any quality faults etc, but do leave me some feedback if you have any!

You'll notice this is a remake of some nails I did a few weeks ago, back then I used blue polishes and this time round I'm using purple polishes.

The polishes I used were (from darkest to lightest):

Devil's Advocate - Essie

Spring Break - Ulta3

Palette Play - Ulta3

Bond With Whomever - Essie

White On - Sally Hansen

With a base of OPI's Nail Envy and a top coat of Insta-Dri Anti-Chip by Sally Hansen

Please check out the video below and like/comment/subscribe etc. I don't know how often I'll be posting videos as it took most of the day to shoot, edit and upload this one (the most annoying part was finding music for it), so once I get the hang of it I'll figure out what my schedule will be! 

Let me know what you would like to see a video of next! 

Thanks for reading/watching!

Inspired By... #10

Hi everybody! Once again, I found myself on an unexpected blog/nail break. There were a lot of things going on in the past two weeks, my grandparents came to stay, I worked more than normal, I had some health issues and my nail area was moved temporarily, which all caused me to just feel out of place and unable to do my nails. But this weekend I was able to sit down for the first time in ages and do nails that I had been planning to do for a while.

My nails today are inspired by this picture, which I'm currently using as my phone's lock screen, that I found while browsing for pretty backgrounds and such.

My mani of course, isn't an exact replica because I wanted the purple to be brighter and the lime green/yellow to be more of a lime green. I will point out, that the colours on my computer are slightly different to the ones on my phone anyway.

I don't think I've ever done a gradient with four colours, I know I would struggle to do three but I'm quite pleased how it turned out. I realised the trick was the paint thin strips and spread them out by stamping the sponge more. However, it irks me how the green looks so out place compared to how smooth the three other colours merge together. But, oh well!

The colours used from bottom to top:
Jelly - Ulta3
Daiquiri - Savvy
Manic Panic - Australis
Azure Martini - Savvy

I have plans to knock out some more nail art in the next few days between work and such so look out for them and hopefully I don't disappear again! Enjoy your weekend!

Bright Splatter Nails!

Good morning everybody! 

If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that I love doing splatter nails. I've done at least five different variations of them on my blog and I'm going to keep doing them forever. I'm not sure if I've ever said this before, but splatter was the first ever design I tried and it's what really started my love for all things nail art. So I am forever in love with doing them and seeing how they all turn out, because it might be the same method, but if you use the right colour combos and change it up each time, you'll always get a fresh new and fun mani that's different from other splatter designs you've done. 

Plus it's a super easy method, just get some straws and lightly dip them into your polish (or drip some onto your paper and dip into the polish there, but that's never worked for me) and then blow through the straw onto your nail! Some extra tips are to tape your fingers, which makes for easy clean up and obviously use different straws for the different colours. I find a white base is always good to start with, just because the colours pop even more, but you can use whatever base goes with your colour combo! That's the best part of doing splatter nails, it's very versatile.

These are seriously such amazing colours together!
Jelly - Ulta3 (green)
E-Nuf is E-Nuf - Essie (pink)
Avenue Maintain - Essie (blue)
Manic Panic - Australis (purple)

There was a massive mess when I had finished these but it's totally worth it and if you use the proper stuff, it's an easy clean! Make sure to top coat it with a thick fast trying top coat as it smooths it all out and keeps the bumps to a minimum.

Let me know what you think and I'll be back again soon with some more nail art!

June Favourites

Hey everyone! I seriously cannot believe June is over. I swear I was only just writing my May favourites, and I know everyone says that all the time but I literally have no idea what I did with the month of June! But, here we are again and here are my favourites.

Nails:

These were my favourite designs for the month! The first one is a crappy phone photo of a mani that never made it to the blog because of various reasons but I plan to recreate it in the future and photograph it before it chips etc.

I bought quite a lot of new polishes this month and because of that I think July will be a no-buy month (or at least I'll try). I haven't swatched or tried them all out, majority are still sitting on my untried shelf, but I know I wouldn't buy any polish that I didn't like. You can check out my instagram on the side of my blog to see the polishes I've bought!

Make Up: 

I bought a lot of make up this past month as well, some of my favourites were:

• Chi Chi's Viva La Diva Lipstick in Hollywood Wannabe and Bring It On - both are matte finishes, which is my favourite finish in a lipstick, plus they're so pigmented! These are my first ever Chi Chi lipsticks and I'm already in love; I want a lot more.
• e.l.f Cosmetics Studio Blush in Tickled Pink - I'm a sucker for blush and I had heard a few good things about the e.l.f blush so when they recently had a 40% off sale, I picked up a few products (most of which I haven't tried out yet) and had to get a new blush. It's very easy to apply and has a great colour pay-off even when you use a small amount.
• Real Techniques Expert Face Brush - I had been on the hunt for a good brush that allowed me to buff my foundation into the skin as flat brushes weren't working. This was on sale when I got it so it was a few dollars cheaper, but it's worth it. I'm very happy with how my foundation sits on my skin now.
• L'Oreal Base Magique Primer - You would have read about this in my bellabox review last week but I've since used it a few more times and I really love it. It's velvety finish really leaves a good base for my foundation and I've found my skin hasn't become too oily too quickly during the day when I wear this. I will definitely be buying this.

Skincare:

If you live in Australia, you would have heard about the skincare goody bag that Priceline had two weeks ago, well I picked one of them up and have found a few new favourites from either the bag or what I purchased to get the bag.

• Biore Deep Pore Charcoal Cleanser - As I discovered very quickly, this product is quite drying so I only use this once or twice a week when my skin feels particularly gross or after a long day of wearing make up. It's such a good cleanser, it's very strong and cools your face which makes it feel really refreshing. It seems to do what it says it does, so I'm happy with that!
• People For Plants Mist Toner - When my skin became particularly dry I used this to refresh and hydrate it. I had never used a mist toner before this and now I don't think I would ever go back to normal toners. It's quick and easy and doesn't make me feel like I'm just wiping all the toner away while applying it. Plus it smells great and is free of any nasty stuff.

I got so many products in the goody bag that I can't possibly try them all at once otherwise my skin will hate me even more, so I've slowly been going through them and finding new favourites but so far, the two above are the ones I've been using the most and the ones that have been the best.

This is only a small favourites post because even though I bought a lot, I haven't used them all because I always take my time with new products, so I hope you enjoyed this quick favourites for the month of June!