Hi lovelies,

I'm sorry I haven't been around recently, but as I mentioned briefly in my last post, I've just started uni and these past couple of weeks have been a bit of a blur of organisation, finding my way around, buying books and getting lost on campus. Also, my workload is way more than I was expecting so I don't know how well I'm going to be able to manage uni, my job and running this blog. But never fear, there is no way I'm going to be leaving this blog. Although, I think I may have to revisit my New Years resolution about publishing at least 8 posts a month because obviously, I didn't manage that last month!

But, enough blathering on my part! On to today's nails!

I have obviously been on a massive mermaid appreciation phase lately, as both my my last mani's here have been mermaid themed ones! But what can I say? My mermaid style has exponentially increased since I dyed my hair blue and my new blue and iridescent purple lipsticks have arrived and I'm loving it all.

Although, the only problem is that while I got lots of great pictures of my gorgeous gradient base, I only got one usable picture of my finished look, which kind of sucks. But, never mind, I loved this look way too much to let that deter me from posting this design!

Panda Nail Art

Hi lovelies,

Today's nails are old ones, but I quite like them. In my mind, they were a lot better than they eventually turned out, but most of that was not actually my fault.

My little pandas ears and eyes are a little dodgy, but the black I was using was very old and very thick and kept leaving little strings of polish and was altogether very unsatisfactory to use. Thankfully, I have long since gotten a new bottle. Also, my green background tinted my top coat and turned all lovely white pandas a bit green.....

I generally try to do my nails mid-morning so that I can use natural light to photograph them with or I do them in the evening and then wait till the next morning to photograph them. These I ended up doing mid to late afternoon, I think, and then for some reason decided to photograph them then, judging by the light quality and background (that I have cropped out). Why I did that I don't know, because it meant I ended up with only three usable photos and all of them look practically identical!

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: Avengers Assemble - Captain America

Hi lovelies,

So, I disappeared again.... The reason this time is even sillier than normal (and it's a little sad that I have a 'usual' reason for my occasional and completely unexplained absences but let's move on). Basically, I got stuck writing one post and so just hid from it. Which also included hiding from every other potential post I could have written in the meantime, while I struggled with this particular post.

Anyway, today I thought I'd post one of my favourite nail designs that I've done in a long time. This is my second contribution to my Avengers Assemble collection and yes, I am going to do all of them and no, I have no clue what I'm going to do for some of them (Hulk? Hawkeye?).

Luckily, the Captain was actually fairly easy to translate into nail art, thanks to the simple design of his shield and uniform and I am really proud of them.

Then and Now: Galaxy Nails

Today's nails are galaxy nails because they are beautiful! And look stunning and way harder than they actually are. And it's pretty easy to get both hands looking the same because it's just sponging bits of polish on in random places. :)

Indie Go Leopard Nails

Hi lovelies,

As I mentioned in my July Monthly Favourites, I have gotten a lot of ILNP polishes recently and I love them sooo much. I also been trying to incorperate them into my nail art as well, which is surprisingly hard! All of the ones I got are really holographic or amazing multichromes, which, while they are absolutely amazing, are really hard to incorporate into nail art without it looking silly or totally over powering the rest of the design. The fact that I've been quite sick recently hasn't actually helped much either...

But, I've finally think I'm making a breakthrough here. I'm actually really happy with this design and it's sooo nice to have some proper nail art on my nails again! (as much as I love my nail art, when I'm very sick and feeling gross it's not really on my high priority list)

Without flash

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

Nail Art Inspired By: Cath Kidston

Hi lovelies,

Well, this post was meant to be up a lot earlier, but then I forgot that I was going away for a week and so, it didn't get posted.

But, these nails... I really love them. Like, a lot. These are definitely one of my favourite designs this year, if not my absolute favourite.

They were also inspired very heavily by the works of Cath Kidston. It took me a long time to come around to liking her designs, mostly because they are very floral and am not generally a very floral person. However, I can't deny that some of her stuff is just lovely.

Notebook Nails

Hi there everyone,

So, here's another nail post for you all, because I've just been really excited about nails recently. I actually mostly blame this on Pinterest, which gives me unlimited access to sooooo many nails and now I can have a lovely collection of nailspiration at my finger tips. If you are interested, check out my Pinterest page here.

Anyway, on to the nails of todays post. These took way longer than they should have done but I'm still really pleased with them.

The reason they took as long as they did was mostly because I didn't have a pale enough blue and red/pink to use for the lines and margins so I had to mix the colours I did have with white to create new colours and then when I'd done that it still wasn't pale enough so I had to do a coat of sheer white over the top to make it even paler. So, pretty much, if I had more polish, this all would have been averted... :)

Inspired By: Avenger Assemble - Black Widow

Hi lovelies,

So, I went on a bit of a nail painting spree over the last couple of days and did my nails a lot as well as plan out many other designs. These were probably my favourite ones, mostly for the reason that I've been planning to do some Avengers themed nails for ages.

These, in case you hadn't got it from the pictures or the post title, these were inspired by the Black Widow. In hindsight I probably should've started with an easier Avenger to translate into a nail design, but oh well. Actually, I did think about that before I started, but disregarded that nugget of my own advice. Pretty much because I just really love the Black Widow and Scarlett Johansson.

Pink and White and Leopard Print

Hi lovelies,

I'm going to lay it all down on the line right now and say that I really like leopard print. Just in case anybody is still wondering about my feelings on this particular animal print. So, when I got inspired to use pink and white, I thought that it could definitely be jazzed up and improved by adding some leopard print to it. This was the result.

Egads! A Pastel Manicure! Or, just a regular Easter one.

Hi lovelies,

So, with Easter around the corner, I thought it was high time to break the Easter themed manicures. Although, be warned, this is about the only time in the whole year in which you will witness a pastel colours on my nails. I just really am not into pastels. Like, at all. They don't do anything for me. But, I feel that Easter is a very pastel themed time, especially because of all the new life and lambies and duckies and springtime stuff that does not happen at all in Australia because we are meant to be in Autumn, even though the weather is being really weird and swinging being really hot (we had highs of 35 this week) and weirdly cold with lows of like, 9. Which is weird. And I'm sick of not being able to tell whether it's going to be a jeans or shorts day when I get up at 6:15 for work.... But anyway, moving onto my adorable Easter nail art...

Inspired By: Minnie Mouse

Hi lovelies,

So, today we have another 'Inspired By' manicure. To be honest, I hesitated about making this one of my series, just because I didn't feel it was 'inspired' by Minnie, it was more a literal interpretation of her. But after thinking about it and looking at the design a bit more, a came to the conclusion that it did belong in this series. (Also, my youngest sister thought I had gone insane and starting painting Christmas designs again....). And that definitely cinched it. If she thought that my interpretation of Minnie Mouse looked like a Christmas design, it definitely was 'inspired by'! Oh, and if you, like me, are wondering how she managed to get Christmas out of this look, check out her response to this design. :)

Over all, I was really pleased with my design. I'm feeling much more confident in my small dotting skills and I just really liked my overall layout. I actually thought while I was doing it that all the dots were going to be too much, but when I'd finished all the nails, I found that they didn't over power the design.

For this design, I used Sizzling Red by ulta3 (red), Snow Me White by Sinful Colours (white), Black Satin by ulta3 (black) and the black jewels were from a Sportsgirl nail art wheel. And, isn't it just great when all your nail polish names actually have the colour that they are in the name! Or, maybe that's just me and I get weirdly excited about small things....

Check out my other posts in my 'Inspired By' series here.

Matte Geometric Nails

Hey lovelies,

So, I have a slightly different nail design to show you today. It's been cooling down in Perth recently (I even had to use my duvet all night last night!) and I got really excited to use some of my cooler colours, instead of the super bright ones I've been using recently (well, except for my storm nails).

I also really wanted to use my matte top coat more since I almost never use it. I'm not really sure why, since I really like a matte look. Anyway, based on those constraints, this is my final design

In the shade

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.

Lightning Nails

Hi lovelies,

I have just a short post for you today.

I thought that it is high time for me to get back into painting my nails excessively with crazy designs now that my nail course is nearly over. I have to say, that is one thing that I am veeery glad about, the fact that my poor little nails no longer have product on and off and on and off of them. In the last 8 weeks, they have have 2 and a half sets of acrylics, one set of gels and two manicures - one including a paraffin soak that my nails did not like at all! Not that I really begrudge it - the knowledge I have gained from this course far outweighs the cost of some broken, short and very much weakened nails.

Summer Strawberries, On my Nails

Hi lovelies,

Why is it that no matter how many posts I write, titling them never gets any easier?? It's really hard to think of something that tells people what the post is actually about, but without sounding ridiculous or boring. I suppose out of the two, I'd go for ridiculous over boring though...

Anyway, onto the actual post. As you may have guessed, it's just another nail post. Today's theme is strawberries, which you've probably also figured out. (I'm not very good at being eloquent today either).

Vines and Flowers in Albany

Hello lovelies,

Man, nearly another week has passed and I have not posted at all... My weeks seem to go so fast! Between my nail course (two days a week), a lot of practice and homework for said course and lots of work, I never seem to have any time. Isn't that ridiculous? I used to blog more regularly when I was at school five days a week, with days starting at 7:30, sometimes 6:45 and not ending till 7-8 at night (after homework and study), plus all saturday morning band... I need to start getting organised. :)