Hi everyone,

So, you'll be glad to know that I'm back to slightly erratic posts again after a brief stint at actual consistent posting. However, I'm quite proud that at least while things have been a little erratic, at least there have been no extended, unexplained absences.

I've just been feeling a bit stressed out and anxious recently due to the fact that I'm starting uni next week and I've been really tired all this week so all has compounded to me not really having much motivation. Although, it hasn't yet got to the the 'hiding out in my room doing nothing but reading Avengers fanfiction' stage so I'm by my standards, I'm managing all right.

Basically it was only because I really loved this design that I ever managed to photograph it and get it up.

If you're following me on instagram, you'll know I recently suffered a really bad nail break and had to chop off my baby claws, which was a sad time all around and explains the suddenly shorter and rounder nails.

As much as I loved my longer nails, I do feel (after an acceptable grieving period, of course), that it probably was time for me to have a change and cut them shorter again. They are feeling a lot healthier and I was able to cut off all the stained and peeling bits so they look super duper healthy. Yay!

Australia Day Nail Art

H lovelies,

So, it's the 26th, and that means it is Australia Day down here! It also means that I'm away for the long weekend and so if you're reading this, it also means I actually figured out how to schedule posts! So, I thought that I'd better do some appropriately patriotic nails for you (and we'll ignore the fact that I actually did these three days in advance) and instead we'll concentrate on how obnoxiously Australian these are...

Actually, in all honesty, they are not as obnoxious as I first thought they were going to be. Although, they are quite bad. I think it's all the yellow. Yellow is just not my colour, in any shape, shade or form and there is a reason why I only own one yellow nail polish out of my collection of about 120. And I only own this one because I need it for nail art.

That yellow is also much brighter in real life and the green is also more rich. It's slightly less yellow than it appears in these pictures.

Coming up with a design for Australian nails that was not only obviously Australian but also straight forward, easy and quick and did not involve the flag was a lot harder than I expected. I did the flags last year, so I wanted to do something different this time (please excuse the super horrific set of acrylics I'm sporting in that post as I'd just started my nail course and they were the second or third set I'd done). 

For these, I used,

Bright Lights by BYS (yellow)

Snow Me White by Sinful Colors (white)

Black Out by Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear (black)

Shade 17 by BC Company (green)

It was all topped off with a coat of Poshe's Super Fast Drying Top Coat.

To be honest, I don't actually celebrate Australia Day much. I normally go down to the beach with my family and have brunch, but that's the extent of my patriotism. I'm proud to be Australian, but not enough to take all the Aussie paraphernalia seriously (although I take part in some ironically, such as the nails) but I have fun anyway.

Hope all you Aussie's out there have a great day!

Inspired By: Avengers Assemble - Thor

Hi lovelies,

So I've been making a good head start on my New Year's resolutions and done another member of the Avengers as part of my Avengers Assemble series. Today, we have Thor, Norse God of Thunder...

While I was pretty happy with them overall, and very happy with some elements, I do think it could have been done a lot better. I was really quite proud of my lightning bolts and I reckon I've improved since I last tried them. It was just a pity that the pink bled through into the white when I applied my top coat...

Because these aren't the most straightforward 'Inspired By' nails I've done, here's a little run down on what each nail is meant to be.

Then and Now: Biology DNA Nail Art

Hello there everyone!

Today's post is going to be super photo heavy, so be prepared! :) Back in July of 2013, when I first started getting into nail art, I did a set of DNA/biology/cell inspired nails and by the time I got around to photographing them they were kind of chipped and so I never ended up posting them. But I found these pictures the other day and thought that I'd redo them to see how my skills had improved, especially since they were the first set of nails that really relied on my painting/freehand skills. I had done galaxy nails, tape mani's and gradients before, but nothing like this. I remember being so proud of them when I finished! :) But lets have a look at them, shall we?

My first attempt

To be honest, as a first attempt for something like this, they aren't too bad. They are definitely not great, but they could be a lot worse. Also, the original pictures hadn't even been edited, so all the editing I've done just now, which is why they have my current watermark on.

Okay, now you've seen the originals, lets have a look at the ones I've just done.

As you can hopefully see, I have improved quite a bit in a year and a bit. My clean up is better (although to be honest, that is something I still have to work on because I can never really be bothered doing clean-up), my lines are much crisper and I was able to get so more detail onto my thumb nail! My photography has also improved and my overall nail shape is better as well. In the before photo my index fingernail is really short and round and it took me ages to get it into a more squoval shape so that it matched the rest of my nails. 

Red and Matte Leopard Print Nail Art

Sometimes I swear my post titles are just getting longer and longer and less and less interesting...

Oh well...

Today's nail art is another one that I did ages ago and that I just discovered in my un-posted file. I guess I need to check that folder more often.

Also, in case anybody hadn't already noticed the trend, a lot of my posts this month are old designs and posts that I hadn't quite gotten around to finishing. When I got back into blogging regularly at the beginning of last month, I actually got super organised and got myself a proper schedule and went though and finished or deleted all my old half-done posts, so this month is a lot of backlog of older stuff!

Anyway, I was really happy with the way this turned out. I love that red and the overall crisp look of the design. It's such a pity that looks like these aren't wearable for more than a day or two because the rhinestones keep chipping off.

I was heavily inspired by this manicure by lemmingspolish on Instagram and while it's not completely true to the original, I'm pretty happy with it. I feel it would have been much improved had it had flatter studs, like the original, as opposed to the rhinestones that I ended up using. But oh well, I didn't have any studs like that, so I guess I'll just have to buy some. :)

Nail Art Inspired By: Jeans

Hi lovelies,

So, I've got another Inspired By post for you today, one that I've been meaning to do for aaaaages and have been sitting around in my un-posted file for almost as long! These nails were inspired by a pair of jeans that I own and ever since I bought them I've been meaning to do a nail design based on these.

I did buy these jeans about a year ago, so it did take me a while to get round to it, but hey, I did it eventually! To be honest, mostly I was putting these off because I didn't feel my skills were up to doing it justice, but then I figured that I could do them now and then even if they were a bit crap, at least I had tried and done some practise and I could always revisit them later. :)

Bows and Flowers Nail Art

Hi everyone!

These nails, along with my Captain America ones, are probably my favourite designs I've done in the last couple of months. Halfway through the creation of these I did feel that they were going to look too much like my Cath Kidston ones, but in the end they didn't, which was nice.

The flowers were created using brushes and I followed a tutorial by @sloteazzy on instagram. You should definitely check out her account - she does heaps of tutorials that are so easy to follow and look fabulous! And, while you're at it, come and follow me (@daniwilliams__) for nails, food, selfies and other excerpts from my life.

Also, the flowers are a lot less complicated than they look. :)

Nail Art Inspired By: Fifa World Cup

Hi everyone!

So, who’s excited for the world cup final??

Actually, if I am completely honest, I’m not that excited. I’ll watch the soccer while it’s on, but I’m not a massive fan. However, my sister and dad are quite into it and so I keep up with the scores and the goss and as a result, have been quite sucked into the world cup this time round. :)

But, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do some appropriately themed world cup nails, could I? However, because I had done my nails only a day before, I was not taking them off, so it's a good thing my mum was happy to have some soccer themed nails. :)

I was actually really proud of them! Especially the Argentinian flag. I honestly thought that was going to be a flop, but it turned out much better than I expected. I don't actually think it's recognisable as the Argentinian flag by itself, but with the soccer balls and German flag, I'm hoping/assuming people will get the gist. :)

Nail Art Inspired By: Marceline The Vampire Queen

Hi lovelies,

As you would know if you've been reading my Monthly Favourites, I really quite like Adventure Time. It'ss just so soothing and lovely and wonderful. For a children's program it's surprisingly well-thought out and the characters are really quite three-dimensional.

Anyway, I won't go into the rest of the reasons I love Adventure time right now, but if you are interested, I did write a little more in this Monthly Favourites.

While my favourite character has to be Finn, Marceline comes a very, very close second. She is just a pretty cool girl and I love her songs. So when I decided to do Adventure Time nails, she was definitely my first choice. I just think she has more scope to incorporate in a nail design.

Or at least, that's what I thought when I started out. I had a great plan to do a little Marceline face on each thumb, bats on a couple of fingers, one nail of her guitar and one of a full body, or at least a torso, to make sure I could include her fabulous hair! So I started off and did the thumbs and they turned out great! I was so confident I was going to nail this design.

I mean, look at that - it's so true to life! It looks very much like her.

But then, I started doing the other nails. The bats turned out okay but the guitar nail and torso nail just flopped. The guitar was completely unrecognisable as a guitar and I went a little overboard with her hair and she ended up looking a little bit like one of the trees from The Lorax. Well, if the tree bit was bigger and black and the trunk was shorter and was split in two and was red (for her boots).

For defs what she looked like. Only, in black and red and shades of grey. Source here

Lily Allen Inspired Nails

Hello lovelies,

So, for the last week or so I've been obsessed with Lily Allen's latest song Hard Out Here. I've liked some of her earlier stuff, but found some to hard to handle (my poor 12 year old brain couldn't handle all that swearing!). But, this song, I just love!

The lyrics are just so clever and her voice is just amazing. She also looks just fabulous in the music video (although I'm just not sure what I think of the video on the whole - it was veeeery different to what I expected!). After seeing the cover for Hard Out Here, I just knew I was going to have to do her nails. And this is what they looked like.

Fake Tattoos Nail Tattoos Review + Birthday Nautical Nails!

Hi lovelies,

A couple of weeks ago, I received my order from Fake Tattoos, which is a Scandinavian based company that sells, obviously, fake tattoos. I hadn't even known you could get nail tattoos until I saw this post over at More Nail Polish. I immediately went, 'that is so cool I want some!'. Luckily, I was able to get some on sale and guess what?? They do free shipping worldwide. :)

I bought the Ocean Design and Bird design, both of which I am very happy with.

Some Supernatural Nails

Hi lovelies,

These are Supernatural inspired nails I did quite a while ago, but I came across just today and thought that it would be a good time to post them, as season nine is coming out.

Inspired by a Dress

Hi my lovelies,

Today I got inspired to try a nail design based on something – in this case, it was the dress I was wearing. Isn’t it pretty?

Christmas Nail Art Challenge - Day 10

Hello lovelies,

I hope you all had an excellent Christmas and if you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a lovely day anyway. :) I had a really, really nice Christmas. We visited friends in Bunbury a couple of days beforehand, which was really nice, and then Christmas Day itself was very relaxing and low key. We went to the beach and had a brunch and generally kicked back and relaxed.

Anyway, because I was away and then I was feeling very relaxed, I am totally late with Day 10 of the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge. It was meant to be on the 24th.... Oh well.

The prompt was 'Santa and Friends' and I think that this one is potentially my favourite out of all of the challenges. Here it is...

Christmas Nail Art Challenge - Day 5

Hello lovelies,

Today, it's time for day 5 of the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge. Today's prompt was 'Christmas Song/Carol'. My nails for today were inspired by a very non-traditional Christmas song by Owl City called The Christmas Song. You can hear it here, if you haven't heard it (I recommend it, it's a lovely song). These nails were particularly inspired by the line

'It's Christmas, and we are in love, with the way that the soft snowflakes kiss us'

Laura Nails

Hi lovelies,

Here's a little bit of background into my life. :) Music is quite a big part of my life. I did it as a subject in school from year 2 to year 11 and I have been in 6 different choirs in my lifetime. I have had 12 different conductors and each of them have taught me something new about words and about singing.