Five Year Blogiversary! I didn't forget!

Hello! It's that day of the year where I actually put up a blog post on here! "Why?" I don't hear you ask. Well, it has been 5 years since I decided to make this blog, and although I have neglected this blog since um... last year, this date always sticks in my head for some reason so I felt I just couldn't not post today as I've made somewhat of a tradition of it I think.

One of the reasons for my lack of posting is that I've had a lot of other things going on so honestly this wasn't a priority. The other (and main) reason is that I've been learning and dabbling in the world of gel polish which as we know is a very different system to normal nail polish. This has meant that I'm pretty much only doing my nails every 2 weeks as opposed to the 2-3 a week I used to do, and while I could still post them on here, I've just found posting on Instagram more practical for me at the moment. So, if you want to see any more recent posts, please check out my instagram HERE, where this is currently my latest post:

My new favourite nail glitter (over white gel polish)! #indigonails #cinderella #indigopixel #pixeleffect

A post shared by The Nail Noodle (@thenailnoodle) on Jul 18, 2017 at 11:11am PDT

I also managed to make a last minute cake before posting this. As you can see, my skills... have not improved! Haha! At this point I'd like to say "I'll be posting a lot more", but there's no use in kidding myself so I'll see you next year probably!
Bye!

[SPECIAL] Four Year Blogiversary!

Hello! Even though I haven't posted on here in quite a while *cough* 6 months *cough*, I couldn't forget my blogiversary, and I had to follow my tradition of posting a poorly constructed cake and some pictures of nails, which I think is the theme of this blog? ;)

Yes, marvel at the cake you see here. As I'm writing this I was going to reference the upcoming series of Great British Bake Off (excited!) and I felt a sense of déjà vu so I decided to look at last year's post and apparently I was thinking the same thing then, so at least I'm consistent!

In terms of actual nail art, I still have been doing nail art all the time, and trying out new techniques I see online - some with success, some without!
Instead of making themed blogiversary nails, I decided to just post some of the pictures of nail art I've done while not blogging but as I did them quite a while back, I can't remember the polishes I used, only the method. This geometric one to the right was done by painting my nails white, placing striping tape at different angles, filling in the sections with different colours and then removing the tape. Finished with a subtle glitter topcoat.

 This next one was done in admittedly a really awkward way. I painted my nails white and on a silicone nail mat, I used a sponge to create a long strip of glitter gradient of pink-purple-blue-green and then cut it up into triangles. These polishes are more of a gelly type so I had to do quite a lot of layers when making the gradient strip so it ended up quite thick which meant that when I stuck them to my nails, there were ledges along the sides which were fairly annoying. Putting tape on my nails in a v-shape would have been easier, but with the polishes being rather transparent, I would have had to have done a lot of layers anyway to really see a gradient.

This last picture was just me trying out something a bit more simple, but I liked it and thought I'd add it in here. Also, I love the polish on the middle finger - HOLO there! (SimplyNailogical anyone?)

Well, thanks if you're here and still reading. I'm away to watch more of the Olympics - one of the few times I have any interest in sport!

Bye for now!

[SPECIAL] Three Year Blogiversary!

 Yay! Today marks 3 years since I started this blog, and in keeping with the posts I made for the previous two blogiversaries of 2013 and 2014, this post contains nails but also cake!

Ooh cake, let's start with that! Just marvel at my (limited) baking skills! Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry would be incredibly impressed I'm sure - especially when they realize I used cut up revision flashcards as a cake collar!

Yes, really.

In terms of the taste, 'twas lovely and chocolatey - I'm just glad I didn't burn it! Ohh okay, I'm probably being a bit hard on myself, I'm actually not too bad at baking - certainly nothing I bake is burnt because I'm one of those people that keeps opening the oven door to check on it every 5 minutes if I can't see the cake clearly through the oven window (I know I shouldn't, but I'm just too impatient when I smell food baking!).

Anyway, on to the nails! I've kept it somewhat simple this time, going with a nude base and using various sized dotting tools with orange, blue, pink, purple and silver. I'm not sure if it's as clear as in real life but I dotted a 3 onto my ring finger nail too!

I'm going to leave it there and say that I would have loved to have posted more in the past year but I had a lot of things to do for uni, but I am proud of myself for not forgetting this blog. The truth is, I still love to do my nails all the time, and the main purpose of this blog for me is to share just some of those designs when I am able, so if I don't post for a while, it doesn't mean I've lost interest in all things nail art!

Thank you for reading! :)

[SPECIAL] Two Year Blogiversary!

Well, HELLO! Today marks two years since I started this blog! Granted, I don't post very often, but I'm glad that I still do post and still enjoy doing nail art. Here you can see my cake efforts... Buddy Valastro, I am not, but the sentiment is there! Also, it tasted delicious.

Last year, I put together a pretty long post, including my favourite nails from the year and some other fun stuff which you can see here. Looking back, I put an awful lot of effort into that, more so than this year, but I have got quite a bit going on at the moment.

I can't really do a 'Top 5' this year because all I have really done are my Nails Inc Polish Diary posts, and no nail art ones.

However, today I'm uploading two nail designs to make up for it. The first one here is one I did last week.


I used a lovely shade by No7, 'Purple Bouquet', and I wanted to add some gold effects to some of the nails so I painted a single line of Barry M 'Treasure Chest' on the thumb nail, painted my pinky nail with a subtle gold glitter by Sally Hansen called 'Starcrossed', and my favourite - I applied 8 and a half gold coloured metal squares to my ring finger (using about 2-3 coats of Seche Vite which secured them for about a week).

Overall, I was quite happy with how these nails turned out, especially since I thought the gold squares were going to fall off within a day!

And finally, I thought I'd add some form of nail art that commemorates this blogiversary! Well done if you understand the nails within 5 seconds because it's not immediately obvious even to me, and I did them! In my defence, I did this is under 10 minutes because I decided to do this right before had to go out - always the best time to do nail art, said no one ever. I just wanted to be able to take the photo in natural light, really!

Oh, before I forget, the polished used are Barry M's Gold Foil, with two coats of Maybelline Color Show Brocades 'Knitted Gold' on top. The black is Rimmel Space Dust 'Total Eclipse', and I added a couple of blobs of Barry M 'Boots Limited Edition' glitter from Christmas.

Well, this has been fun, and I look forward to doing more nail posts eventually!

[SPECIAL] ONE YEAR BLOGIVERSARY EXTRAVAGANZA!

That's right! This is the one year anniversary of The Nail Noodle's creation, and boy, do I have a bumper post for you today!

I cannot believe I have been doing this blog for a year now! I have been working on this post all week because I had so many ideas for today to celebrate such an occasion (should be a national holiday too, I reckon! *wink*) and one of them is this cake I made from scratch. So time consuming, but worth it! Hope you like my fondant icing skills, hahaha!

Stay tuned to the rest of this post which includes nail art, my top 5 posts of the year and more! But for now, adding to the joy is the one and only, Sir Cliff!


Well, that was just lovely. Now onto the next part of my post! What kind of nail blogiversary would it be without some celebration themed nails?!

I went mad with the nail art gems this time! (It's a bit more obvious when you click on the picture too!)
I have to say, my favourite nail is the ring finger because I used Barry M confetti to look like sprinkles, ooh!

Celebrity Inspired Nails

I decided to do something that I actually hadn't done before; copy a look worn by a celebrity. I still don't think I succeeded based on the fact mine isn't exactly the same (I don't have all the nail art supplies in the world) so I'm going with the idea that it's 'inspired' by celebrity nail art. *wink wink*

Today's celebrity is *drumroll* Rita Ora!
She is known to wear nail art quite a lot and I thought I would go for something somewhat 'easy' (PAH! I wish!)
First, let's have a look at the original:

Retrieved from here.

I liked the half moon look with white and gold so I thought this would be a nice fun one to do!

However, I couldn't quite get the base colour right when I was doing some swatches, bare in mind my nails are real. In the end, I decided to make the base a little more metallic and overall, I was quite happy with it!







And here is my take on it! I wanted to do a light grey colour as the base, but couldn't find any (*gasp!*) so I resorted to layering nail polishes that are rather thin. I started off with No7 Stay Perfect 'Stonewash', a dark grey colour, and then painted No7 Stay Perfect 'Snowflake' on top. I then painted Avon Speed Dry 'Prompt and Pearly' which is a pearl shimmer but as you can see in the second picture, it has a kind of gold undertone to it which I thought would compliment the gold nail stickers.

So, that's how I got the main colour of the nail, in case you were wondering!
For the half moons, I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'White On' (which I love because it's so pigmented) and luckily I had bought some 'chains' nail art stickers from Poundland a while back which were similar to the original, and as I didn't have gold jewels that matched, I just stuck more chains down the nails, and a silver jem on each. That's it!

My Top 5 Posts from the Last 12 Months

Here I have compiled a list of my favourite nail art posts from the last year. I numbered them, but it took me ages to decide which I like more so the order is just a rough one! (So indecisive!) Truthfully, I never think 'Oh, I'm amazing at nail art!', because if I did, I'd be deluded. However, there are those brief moments when I really like how some particular idea in my brain has transfered onto my nails, and that is what I am sharing with you here.

5) Pastel Zebra Nail Stamping

So this one is in my top 5 because it was the first time I did nail stamping and actually liked it. I had just started the whole nail stamping thing and so I was still getting used to it at the time and that's what made me kind of proud of it!

This post can be found here.

4) Blackboard Nails

I like this one because with the matte top coat, it really did resemble a blackboard, I feel. The white 'chalk' writing was a bit messy but in a way, so is chalk, so it worked out okay in the end.

It's also one of my most popular posts, based on view counts, so that's nice!

You can view this post here.

3) Halloween Nails

I'm not really a Halloween fan, but I remember I really enjoyed doing the gradients, and the drawing using inspiration.

It is part of a whole 'Halloween Bumper Pack' I had made at the time, which can be found here.

2) Wimbledon Nails

This is obviously fairly recent, but I was really proud of how this one came out. It took me a long, long, long time to do! I felt my eyes squinting towards the end of it!

I really loved watching Wimbledon this year, especially seeing as Andy Murray won. COME ON, ANDY!!

You can view this post here!

1) Christmas Nails

I think this deserves to be the number 1, even if it is just for the sheer amount of time it took me to actually do this!

This was one of the designs that I actually had to draw out before I did it, just to make sure it would look okay on my nails.

It was so much work, with glittery layers you may not even fully see in the photo, complete with nail jewels, but I was really proud of it in the end!

The worst thing was, as a right handed person, trying to do my right hand, but they turned out well in the end! You can see the result here!


Well, I think that's it! So glad I'm still blogging here after a whole year! Granted, I do not post as often as I would like, but I am happy that I do still enjoy being creative with nail polish enough to keep this blog going for so long. (That's a first for me!)

Thank you to everyone who has visited this blog and made it a worthwhile project for me, and to those who inspired me to create my own blog, especially those at the British Nail Bloggers group (link in Menu) who helped me out a lot when I was new to the nail blogging scene.

THANK YOU ALL! x