Two Turtle Doves

To be honest, I wasn't too jazzed about this prompt in the 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Challenge. The prompt was any line in the 12 Days of Christmas song – they all in include some sort of birds or dancers or just nothing that really got me excited.

But what did get me exited was Painted Polish's Between the Pines, which I got shipped rather quickly to me and as soon as I saw it I just knew I had to put it on!



Between the Pines is a most special holographic microglitter suspended in an evergreen jelly base. It only takes two coats to reach this beautiful opacity. For the accent finger, I decided I would use a stamp which basically covers the "Two Turtle Doves" and thus, follows the prompt, but the true star of this manicure is Between the Pines.

 

For for the accent nail I used two coats of Nicole by OPI On a Guilt Trip and stamped these two birds in a tree using ORLY Candy Cane Lane. On a Guilt Trip was bit thick but dried pretty quickly to a beautiful satin like finish. I used the Bundle Monster BM-H22 plate.



Don't worry, this won't be the last you see of Between the Pines, I may or may not have incorporated it in my red and green mani for the next prompt!

Make sure you see the other ladies in the challenge in the inlinkz below. I'm sure they were much more creative than I was in this prompt!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Icicle nails

Today's challenge was icy blue and white colors, and I guess I took this one pretty literally!



I started with two thin layers of Zoya Blu as the base for my gradient. Then I added Blu, Zoya Edie and OPI I saw... U saw... We saw... Warsaw (the longest and most annoyingly named polish!) to a make up sponge and applied the gradient!



I really do think I am getting better at my gradients! I'm finding the more I do them, the better I'm getting at it! For the icicles, I used a-England Encore Margot and a nail art brush to apply them. They aren't perfect but I do like how they turned out!



This whole manicure was based on my very first nail inspiration I pinned about January of last year. I had just stared to use Pintrest for nail inspiration, and this was my very first pin. So I knew this year, with all of the experience I had gained, I just had to try it! And I think the results were great.

At first I was going to use this manicure, below, I had created before I even started this challenge, but I wanted to try the icicle technique. And so in this post I am sharing two for the price of one!



The glitter base here is KBShimmer Fallen Angle. With my order of Fallen Angle, I got some fun snowman glitter, which I placed in the center nail. I used Bundle Monster BM-407 for the tree stamps. I wasn't in love with this manicure too much though, because I feel like the stamping got lost a bit. Which I guess is why I did this as a two for one post, because I wanted to do something that truly fulfilled the prompt!

So which one of these manicures is your favorite?

And as a fun bonus, I'll leave you with a photo of my husband and I with Santa. We met him last night at a bar. No joke. I told him I want a never ending supply of nail polish for Christmas! ;-) It's a shame I didn't still have on my Santa nails when I met him!



And don't forget to check out all the other ladies who are in this challenge too!

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

ILNP Ultra Chrome Flakies Review

Hey guys! I got my ILNP Ultra Chrome Flakies in the mail today and I don't care how late I had to stay up to post this, it was going to happen!

It is nearing midnight now and I had to cover a school board meeting, but I couldn't resist staying up to play with my new polish and bring you guys swatches right fast!



Now these photos are not the greatest, but I wanted to get you the awesomeness as soon as I could!

The ones I chose, from left to right, are Open Fields, Electric Carnival and Supernova!



A close up of the three. From left to right in this shot - Super Nova, Electric Carnival and Open Fields. I did two thin coats over Zoya Chantal (I finally found a flattering nude creme, so amazing)



These polishes were extremely easy to work with and I can't wait to play with them and pair them with different base coats! I just wanted to get a side by side comparison for all you people who are interested in purchasing them! If your curious about my five nails above, they are EC, SN, EC, OF and SN.

Unfortunately, due to shipping issues with ILNP getting their bottles, the release date is most likely pushed back until late December. But follow them on Facebook to get all the latest updates. Each bottle retails for $12.50. If you want to get them as a gift for Christmas and they aren't in stock on time, try getting them an ILNP gift card, it will be just as good and they can get the polish as soon as ILNP restocks! I hope you all like this post, I just love these polishes. I only chose three from the entire collection – believe it or not there are actually 13 to choose from!

Santa and Elves and Glitter oh my!

Time to unveil my Santa and elves manicure.



It's nothing unique, but bit by bit I'm improving my freehand skills and I'm excited to share it with you all.



I saw these little Santa and elf manis all over Instagram when searching for inspiration, and just knew I had to recreate it!



The amazing glitter polish here is KBShimmer All Decked Out. It is an amazing evergreen jelly polish with gorgeous multicolored and shaped glitter. It is sparkly amazingness and the perfect accompaniment to the Santa and elf accents! This is three thin coats, with a little dabbing.



The other polishes I used were, Zoya Hunter as the base for the elf, ORLY Candy Cane Lane as the Santa red and Zoya Ziv for the belt buckles.

This manicure, while not wholly original for me, was definitely a challenge for me. I really absolutely loved how it turned out and I am completely in love with this challenge as it is allowing me to think outside of the box and really challenge myself!

In case you forgot what is coming up, or want to partake in all this holiday nail art excitement, here is the prompt again!



Coming up we have some ice blue and white manicure and any line from the 12 Days of Christmas song!

Don't forget to check out some of the other ladies who are involved with this challenge, they are really knocking it out of the park!!!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Snowman Nail Art

The third prompt in Challenge Your Nail Art's 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Challenge is Snowmen.

I'm not going to lie, I feel like I went a little lazy on this prompt, but hey I completed it, and that in itself is a feat!



To start this manicure off, I did two thin coats of ILNP Summer Stargazing, which is pretty funny, because it like the antithesis of winter, but I thought it worked well for this manicure.



After waiting a few minutes for the two coats of Summer Stargazing to dry, I added a stamp of a super cute snowman from my Winstonia W120 plate. I thought it would cute than my free hand.



After adding the stamp, I took out my dotting tool and dotted little snowflakes on the other nails and then took out a nail art brush to add white to my tips, looking like snow on the ground.



I'm not going to lie, wasn't super proud of these nails, but they fulfilled the challenge. Going to try for something more involved for the next prompt. It was hard to get a shot of how lovely the holo is in Summer Stargazing too, the sun came out for all of three minutes while wearing these nails, so I managed to get the above shot when that happened.

And I'll leave you with a cute shot of my cat Patty, who steals my light box every stinking time I take it out for nail shots!



And don't forget to check out the other ladies's nails in this challenge, I'm pretty sure you'll be more wowed by them than me for this prompt! ;-)


   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

Christmas Tree Nail Art

Now we are on to the second nail art prompt for the 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Challenge. Today's prompt is Christmas trees.

I decided to take a little less traditional route. Typically when I think about Christmas trees I think about green and red with twinkling lights and all that jazz. For this manicure, I decided to go the route of Christmas trees in their natural habitat before they end up on the tree lot (which incidentally I will be working at all month as a volunteer raising money for scholarships and grants).

 

To start this manicure, I began with two thin coats of OPI Thanks a Windmillion, which is the green color here. Then I sponged on a gradient of OPI Eurso Euro to create a Nordic twilight atmosphere. Then to totally complete it, I added a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust to represent the stars.



After the gradient, I found the perfect stamp to complete the look. I broke out the Bundle Monster BM-H02 plate again and stamped the trees. I used Sally Hansen OMGhost to stamp with, which I find is a great white to stamp with. Perfect for a drugstore brand!



Now I feel like the trees get a little lost in the green, but I sort of like it. It is a really delicate and a not so typical take on the whole Christmas tree nail art.

 

And I had these nails on when I got my Christmas tree, so I just had to take a photo with it. I just love it! Looks great! What do you think about this look? Like it? Or do you prefer the more green and red look?

Don't forget to visit all the other ladies taking part in this challenge below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Snowflake Nail Art

Hi everyone! Happy first day of December! Time for a holiday nail extravaganza here at Newsie Nail Novice!!!

This holiday season, to keep me blogging constantly, I've decided to jump on board the 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Challenge from a Facebook group I'm in called Challenge Your Nail Art! Feel free to join us, the more the merrier! I can't wait to see everyone's manicures!

Now I've never done a nail art challenge that is this involved, especially one that is in one of the busiest months of the year, but I'm all about a challenge and growing in my skills as a nail artist!



So as you can see, Day 1 is snowflakes! Now I've been planning this manicure since the summer. Which seems a little insane, but once I purchased Smitten Polish Nimbus, this vision of it being the background for some beautiful snowflakes just came to me.



Nimbus is the closest I've seen to a white holo polish, and it beautiful and as soon as I saw it, I knew it would perfect for a winter manicure with snowflakes!



Nimbus in on the thicker side, as it is a holo, but definitely not unmanageable and just look at how delicate and beautiful it is!



To stamp, I used my Bundle Monster BM-H02 from a holiday set I received for my birthday in March. I tried to move the stamp around on each nail so it has a more random look to it. I used Zoya Song to stamp the snowflakes, and it worked so beautifully. Song is a beautiful metallic cerulean blue that just screams winter to me!

So what do you think about the challenge? Do any of the challenges intrigue you? Which ones do you want to jump in on?

Come check out all the other lovely manicures of ladies joining in on at the inLinkz below!

An InLinkz Link-up