Taras Talons Order

Hey! Im a day late with this post. Sorry!

A few weeks ago you may know that indie polish maker Tara of Taras Talons had a sale on. Now, this is a brand I have been following on social media for a long time, however I have this little rule with myself that I will never buy a brand for the first time at full price... just in case!! So, of course I had to take advantage of this and buy a few to try.

I ended up with 6 of her polishes and this week I have managed to try out 3: 'Ol' Blue Eyes', 'Candy' and 'Fairy'.

First up was 'Ol' Blue Eyes'. As soon as I opened the parcels I needed to try this out! I am a sucker for a good blue polish and I found instant love with this polish!! It applied smoothly, opaque in two thin coats, is the most amazing electric blue AND it has a beautiful holo shimmer. 

Next I tried out 'Candy'. I loved this in the bottle and it applied well, again opaque in two coats which is great for such a light shade. However something about this polish didn't really do it for me. I think I expected some bigger pieces of glitter in there. I have nothing bad to say about the polish, it's just not a winner for me.

Finally we have 'Fairy'. Again, great application, becoming opaque in two coats. I didn't have to do much fishing for glitter in this which was good, though I did give it a good shake beforehand! This is another polish I really loved and can see myself getting a lot of wear from.

I did do some art over two of these polishes, but this post is going on a bit now so they can wait for another day! Or they are both already on Instagram if you want to check them out @nailsmustbepainted :) 

Rosey Stripes

Hey!
Unfortunately I'm having to rely on false nails this week. I went climbing with my dad yesterday and so I had to cut all my nails short, otherwise they would have been broken anyway.

I really really love how these turned out though and I hope they last and don't all pop off tomorrow!!

I used some striped falsies from Primark to start and a plain white false nail on my index fingers. Then I painted the index fingers pink using George 'Raspberry Forest'. I dug out some old Born Pretty decals I had which matched the pink polish and added a few of these to jazz up the mani a bit! 

Bedazzled

Hey!

Way back in November I bought a 2-pack of Rimmel glitter polishes. Up until now I still haven't got around to trying them out, so this week I decided that whatever I did with my nails I had to use one of them! So that's what I did!

I'm really pleased with how these turned out actually. :)

I used Barry M Black as a base on my index and middle fingers, followed by two coats of Rimmel 'Bedazzle'. I really like the colours in this glitter! I tried to match the other polish as closely as I could to the pink glitter, so I ended up using a really old unnamed pink polish by the sports brand 'Animal'.

Cheerful and Childish

Today's nails are, as the title says, very childish and cutesy. They make me feel cheerful and think of happy times!

I started painting my nails with very little direction or plan. I knew I wanted a gradient, so I picked two polishes at random to start with. I ended up with two Sally Hansen polishes: 'Pinch of Punch' and 'Coastin' By'.

The gradient I ended up with was cute, but felt it needed something else so I opted for some stamping. I used a plate from Born Pretty Store - MLS301, with a cute sweetie design and stamped using Barry M Silver Foil Effect polish.

I like how these turned out. They are very cutesy, remind me of unicorns and magic!! If only I hadn't had to cut all my nails short they would have looked even cuter!

31DC: Recreate your own mani

I struggled to find something I actually wanted to recreate for this!
A lot of my earlier mani's are horrendous designs, which would look no better for improved skills. They were just bad ideas!

Eventually, I found a lace design, which was my first mani posted on Instagram. I liked them at the time and I still like them now, so why not recreate them!

The first pic is the recreation and the second pic is the original.

I can definitely see huge improvements in my painting, clean-up and photography! Don't get me started on that watermark, so glad I downsized a little!!

I do miss that nail shape in the original photo, but working with kids it is just not practical! I don't want to accidentally stab anyone with my nails!

For the recreation I used Barry M Silk Poppy and white acrylic paint.

An InLinkz Link-up

31DC: Fishtail Braid

I have only ever painted a fishtail design once before and I wasn't too pleased with the outcome so I wasn't looking forward to this prompt.

However, I was surprisingly pleased with my mani!

I used Maybelline Berry Sweet, Maybelline Vibrant Fuchsia and Ciaté Silhouette.

Here are some of the other amazing mani's for this prompt:

An InLinkz Link-up

31DC: Complement and Contrast

Day 25's prompt was complement and contrast.
I opted to use complementary colours from the colour wheel. Pink and purple paired with yellow and orange in a colour blocked design.

Sorry about the Instagram photo. I painted and photographed these before I killed my laptop, so the 'proper' photos are still on my old laptop, where I cannot access them. :(

I started with a base of Ciaté Amazing Gracie, then used Sinful Colours Cream Pink, Maybelline Fuchsia Fever , Missguided Missmatch and Ciaté Big Yellow Taxi with striping tape to create the squared pattern.

I really love these!

Check out the other ladies work:

An InLinkz Link-up

31DC: Blobbicure

Before today I didn't know what a blobbicure was!
But I spent a few minutes on Google and soon realised I really didn't like them! Haha!

I needed to find a way to make a blobbicure I actually liked. At least vaguely!

So I made a Girafficure!! :P

I love how my ring and little fingers turned out, but not so much my middle and index fingers! The blobs on those are too far apart.

I used Revlon Buttercup and Revlon Tradewinds.

Check out the other blobbicures:

31DC: Art

For 'Art' I decided to paint Van Gogh's Starry Night.

I very nearly changed my mind after noticing that Tara from Loki's Lacquer also did this painting. I was a little scared about mine being awful in comparison, but I decided to be brave and go for it anyway!

I actually really like how it turned out, although the blue is a little bit brighter than I had intended!

Mine is a little different stylistically to Tara's, which is good as it makes direct comparisons more difficult!

I used an unnamed blue polish from H&M as a base colour, then painted all the details with acrylic paint.

Go check out the other girls' artwork:

31DC: Half and Half

Half and half is the prompt today.

I kept it pretty simple, opting for two similar colours with contrasting finishes: porcelain and glitter!

These are both Ciaté; Sweet Pea from the Dolls House Collection and Gleam Dream, a green and silver loose glitter. 

This mani really reminds me of the sea. The colour is a very sea-green colour and the glitter creates a reflective water-like effect.

I can't stop looking at it shimmering!!

31DC: Dotting Tools

Can't believe I have made it to day 5 without falling behind yet!
Back to work after the Christmas break today though, so it'll only get harder to keep up.

Dotting tools is the prompt for today. I love my dotting tools, but I didn't want to do a plain old boring dotticure for this, so I went with a design I haven't tried before, swirls!

I'm not sure about these. Last night, when I did them, I wasn't a big fan. The more I look at them the more they are growing on me!

I used three polishes from the Ciaté Dolls House collection: Poppet, Paper Doll and Dollface. I think Dollface is a little too subtle, it is almost invisible against the lilac.

What do you think?

31DC: Happiness

Today's prompt is happiness.
However cheesy it is, spending time with my Mr. makes me happy, so I wanted to do a romance inspired mani.

I recycled the base from yesterdays water-spotting mani, stamping flowers over the top (from MoYou Mother Nature plate 01) in Sally Hansen Atomic Alloy, to create a tree-like backdrop. I then used another image from the same plate to stamp the figures with a Black Born Pretty Store stamping polish and freehand painted the word 'love' onto my index finger. 

I love how this mani turned out. Definitely my favourite of 2015 so far!!

Catch-Up: Other Nail Art

Here is my final catch-up post, showing the last of the never-quite-made-it designs!
Most of these are not too bad, I just didn't have time to post every single one.

I am just going to post pictures for this. If I tell you all the polishes used in every one of these, this post will end up ridiculously long! However, if you want to know a specific polish or have a question feel free to post in the comments. :)

Catch-Up: Christmas / New Year Nails

The second post in my catch-up series will show you a few extra Christmas nails I painted, plus some which were not originally intended for New Year, but would work well.

First up, the Christmas nails:

This nail art is based on the film Polar Express, My index finger shows the bell from the movie, my middle finger represents the present Santa leaves for the little boy. My ring finger is supposed to show the train ticket, which has the word 'Believe' punched into it by the conductor.

I used Sinful Colors Blue by You, Sinful Colors Cool Gray, Sinful Colours Nirvana, the gold is an unnamed PS by Primark polish, Rimmel Red, Steady, Go!, La Femme Ultra Green and Barry M Black.

This picture was posted on my Instagram, however I never took any camera pics to add it to my blog, hence why it never made it here. I didn't think it was particularly good, however it ended up being one of my most liked Instagram photos ever! 

I used Sally Hansen Cosmic blue as the background, George Natural White for the moon and painted the details in Black acrylic paint.

Another Instagram pic. These were my Christmas day nails. I didn't have much time for blogging over Christmas, however I did still paint my nails and Instagram is much quicker to use!

I used a red Models Own polish and a Red Models Own Glitter for this, which I don't know the names of as they belonged to my mum! I also used Ciaté Fit for a Queen for my ring finger and I created a stamping decal for the flower.

Now for the New Year Nail inspiration!

I wore this for Christmas eve. I really love it, however that glitter placement took such a long time, And it is pretty messy compared to others I have seen! The black is Ciaté Unrestricted glam and the glitter pieces are from Born Pretty Store.

I painted these ages ago and at the time loved them. I'm not really sure why they were never posted. I used Barry M Black and Rimmel Space Dust in Aurora,

These I painted on my sisters nails. She saw my nails in the above picture and wanted something similar using the Rimmel Space Dust. This is what we came up with! Sorry, I'm not sure what other polishes were used, these are from July so I don't remember! Again, excuse the poor quality phone picture. 

Catch-Up: Swatches

Over the past year there have been many times I have done my nails, photographed them, edited pictures then for whatever reason, not put them up here on this blog.
I want a fresh start in the new year, not to be uploading old pictures! So today I have a series of 3 posts where I am going to show you some of the nail art that never quite made it, for various reasons!

This first post is going to show you four swatches that never quite made it:

I love this picture and the polish (Make up Gallery, Scarlett Sparkle) is one of my favourites. It is a beautiful raspberry coloured gelly with tiny pieces of glitter. I would recommend anybody to go buy this! I love it so much!

This was never posted simply due to lack of time! Such a shame as it is so gorgeous!

This second swatch is H&M Blue Bliss, which is a glitter topcoat in a very pale blue gelly. I swatched this over lilac, blue, grey and black, though I don't remember what the polishes were! This picture was taken back in August, hence the pointed nails and I honestly don't think I have used the polish since, it didn't make a good first impression!

This third picture shows you Ciaté Baby Doll, which is actually a pastel pink, not orange as the poor photography appears, hence why this was never posted. Oh and no, I don't have green fingers either! Also, all my nails are different lengths and shapes. What was I thinking?!

The polish has a lovely matte 'porcelain' finish, however it chipped off within hours.

Finally, another that I love. This is an unnamed PS by Primark polish. It is a beautiful dark pink and gold textured holo polish. It is truly beautiful and the colours change completely in different lights.

This was also not posted due to poor photography, however I managed to find this one awkward looking, but salvageable picture.

Glow in the Dark by Primark

A few weeks ago I bought two glow in the dark polishes in Primark. One looked yellow in the bottle but was a clear topcoat, the other was blue.
I didn't expect much from these. The blue barely glowed at all, as I expected.
But the clear topcoat was pretty impressive!

Here are my nails in 'normal' light:

I started with a base colour of Rimmel New Romantic. This was followed by a coat of the Glow in the Dark polish. Once all was dry I stamped on top using MoYou London Princess plate 08 and Rimmel Right Royal Red and topcoated with my usual Essence Quick Dry Topcoat.

Now you'll have to excuse the picture quality, photographing glow in the dark nails is so difficult!! I took around 100 pictures and this was the best I got.

But wow, I was amazed when I saw this in the dark! I did not expect it to be so bright! If you want a glow in the dark topcoat on a budget I definitely recommend this! Bargain!

Halloween Nail Art

I have been very busy this week and haven't had much time to post, so all my Halloween nails are going to be under this one post. Yes, I am aware that I am late, Halloween was two days ago!

The first of these mani's was also done for the final instalment of the Llama Nails Movie/Book challenge. This week's prompt was Horror, so I based my mani on the Goosebumps series of books.

The purple is a Jess Polish called Madison and the green is La Femme Beauty Ultra Green.

The next is my favourite of the 3 halloween manis I have done.

I used W7 'Party' as the base for this mani and the spider and webs are decals from the Born Pretty Store. In real life they were much more subtle than the picture. I love them!

But, the best thing about this mani is that the W7 polish a a UV polish, so it glows. It's so amazing!! Although the UV light seems to make every little imperfection show up.

Excuse the poor quality picture from my Instagram. Somehow I don't seem to have taken any pictures of it glowing on my camera, only my phone.

Finally, my last mani. I wanted this to be very imperfect, which it is. Hence the lack of clean up!

I used Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Sweetie and dabbed on Ciaté Boudoir to create the look of blood. I don't love this. But then I don't love Halloween themed mani's in general!

Fairytale: The Swan Princess

For the Fairytale theme of this weeks Llama Nails Challenge I already posted my Ella nails. However, I had forgotten that I painted these last weekend for this theme!

The Swan Princess was one of my favourite films as a child. In fact, I still have the VHS but am unable to play it!

I'm afraid this mani is a bit of a nail fail! I contemplated just ignoring the fact that this had ever existed as I don't really like it!

Although I am quite pleased with my sunrise, the swan looks more like a goose due to having too short a neck!

The other two nails I did in a super sparkly silver holo, which is not captured well on these photo's. This was supposed to represent this princess-ness, however I feel it just doesn't go with the other nails.

The holo polish is by Wonderful and Strange Nail Lacquer and is amazing! The background for the other nails was Jess Polish, Calypso. On my middle finger I created a gradient with this and an orange Missguided polish. I then painted the sun with Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Sweetie.

The swan/goose was painted with Barry M Matte White.

Review: Wonderful and Strange Nail Lacquer

A few weeks ago now a page called Wonderful and Strange Nails liked a photo of mine on Instagram (@nailsmustbepainted). I visited their IG (@wonderfulandstrangenails) and realised they made Indie Polishes.

At the time I had been considering buying some indies for a while. However, there is not a huge number of indie polish brands in the UK and I was struggling to find one selling polishes I loved.

Not anymore! Straight away I knew I was going to love the brand, so I visited their website and soon bought two polishes to try out! Doll Parts and Neon Nude.

This is Doll Parts. A beautiful pale blue base with neon pink, dark blue and white glitter pieces.

I am so in love with this polish! Apparently the name is very relevant too... I showed this to my bf, who didn't know the name of the polish and he said it made him think of children's toys!

I applied four thin coats of polish for opacity, although one coat would look great layered over a white or pastel blue polish. The glitter pieces spread themselves out nicely, without too much persuasion!!

Next up is Neon Nude:

The colours of this polish are pretty amazing too! It is a slightly off white/cream base colour with neon green, yellow and orange glitter pieces. 

 I have to admit, after using Doll Parts first I had high expectations for this polish.

Although I still really like it, I was slightly disappointed in comparison. This polish was much thinner than Doll Parts. The pictures were taken after 4 coats and you can see it is still not fully opaque. This polish was also a little bit more difficult to apply, with a patchy finish.

However, I love the glitter and will definitely still wear this polish, I will just be sure to wear a white/nude base underneath next time!

Overall, I was very impressed with these polishes, especially considering they were only £3 each.

Delivery was speedy and they arrived in a super cute packaging which brightened my day! :)

I have to tell you, I have already bought another polish from this brand as I was so impressed, so keep an eye out for swatches of that soon. I'm waiting for a sunny day as it's a super glittery holo!

Now, everybody go check out my new favourite polish brand here! :D

Liebster Award

Hello!
Today I have been nominated for a Liebster Award by Emily from Nailsxo.

Here are the rules:

1. You must link back to the person who nominated you

2. Answer the 11 questions asked by that person

3. Tell us 11 random facts about yourself

4. Choose 11 bloggers to nominate for a Liebster Award

5. Post 11 questions for those nominated to answer

Here are the questions Emily asked:

1. What’s your favourite animal?

My little hamster, Simba! :)
2. What is your favourite nail polish brand?

This is constantly changing, at the moment probably Sinful Colors.
3. Is there anything you dislike about blogging?

The time it takes! Taking photo's, editing photo's, writing posts!
4. What do you do to make sure you have time for your blog in the busy lives we all lead?

Do lots of mani's over the weekend and try to pre-schedule posts.
5. Which is your favourite social network for posting your work & interacting with other bloggers?

Instagram... so quick and easy. @nailsmustbepainted
6. Do you have any other hobbies outside of your blog?

I'm a teacher so I don't have much time for hobbies! Occasionally running.
7. What’s your favourite food?

Chocolate!
8. What manicure are you currently wearing?

Pink watermarble - excuse the bad quality picture from my phone!

9. Do you plan which manicures you want to do, or sit down and decide at the time?

I sometimes try to plan but usually change my mind when it comes to it, so I just do what I feel like!
10. Do you watch any T.V. series? If so, which is your favourite?

Educating the East End.
11. What’s your favourite film?

Not sure I could choose just one favourite! Frozen and Little Mermaid are both up there!

11 random facts about me...

1. I was born with teeth!

2. I am very short, 5 foot 1.

3. I love anything creative - painting, drawing, sewing, photography.

4. I have a degree in Educational Psychology.

5. I am a major Disney addict.

6. My car is bright yellow.

7. I like to be busy. I get bored so easily!

8. I come from Yorkshire.

9. But currently live in Southampton.

10. Floral is my style!

11. I taught at a school in Kenya earlier this year. There were 72 children in my class!!

Now I have to try to think of 11 people to nominate. I don't know many nailie people so I have tried to pick blogs/instagram accounts I love!
1. Nail Parade! 

2. Pound Store Manicure

3. Elanor's Nails

4. Mama Hearts Polish

5. The Sparkle Queen

6. Life In Lacquer

7. Roz's Nail-scapades

8. Vicky Loves Nails

9. Tipped off Nails

10. Fixin to Faff

11. Light of the Moon Nails

My Questions...

1. What is your all time favourite polish?

2. Where do you get most of your inspiration?

3. What is your favourite indie polish?

4. What is your favourite pattern?

5. What is your favourite song?

6. What is the most interesting place you have travelled to?

7. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?

8. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

9. What is your favourite Disney film?

10. Do you have any pets?

11. What colour do you wear on your nails most often?

Phew... longest post ever!! Hope you will all join in the fun. :)