DIY Chevron Nails

Recently, I've been seeing a lot of chevron patterns in various DIY videos and posts whether its been used to decorate the front of a notebook or a pen pot or a picture frame or anything that may need decorating really. And as this pattern, style, whatever you want to call it, has become quite popular, I thought I'd share with you my take on a chevron nails tutorial. Its super simple and easy and you don't need to be a grade A nail artist or have loads of nail polishing experience to be able to do this look perfectly. Hey, let's face it, if I can do it, you can do it, a snail or some other limbless animal could probably do it if they tried hard enough. What I'm trying to say is, its easy. Okay? Okay.

All you are going to need is:

~ Two different brightly coloured nail polishes ~

~ A clear top coat nail polish ~

~ Some tape ~

~ A knife, preferably a craft knife, but a small kitchen knife will do ~

~ Tweezers (optional) ~

I've chosen to use a blue nail polish and a pink nail polish because they're pretty contrasting which means they compliment each other well and bring out the colours and stuff... I'm not the best at art theory. Anyway I chose these colours. The nail polish itself isn't anything too special: I got them both in a set of three from a friend for my birthday. The other colour is a pretty average purple, if you were wondering. The brand is S&C, which I've never heard of before, but the nail polish, although its quite thin and may take two coats, stays on well and spreads nice and evenly, plus it doesn't make your nails feel like they are wearing like a tone of nail polish. And they come with little charms around them! How cute? Very cute.

So to start off with you're going to want to paint one regular base coat in your first colour. I'm starting off with the blue but it really doesn't make much of a difference which colour you decide to begin with. If the colour is a bit transparent, feel free to go over it again with another coat, but it shouldn't matter too much as half of this base colour will be covered up.

Once the coat is pretty much dry and to the opacity that you are happy with, start cutting out little strips of tape with your knife that are about two or three millimetres wide and at least ten millimetres long. You'll need quite a few of these, but you can make them as you go along and when you need them.

Arrange four of the tape strips into two arrow formations on your desired nail, pointing up to the tip of your finger. Make sure you have a tail to your tape strips so that you can easily remove them later.

Once your four strips are stuck down in the chevron arrow formation thing, take your second colour, in my case the pink, and paint over the nail, including the tape, until you are happy that the whole nail is this colour.

Wait for the second colour to dry. Once it is completely ready, carefully peel off the strips of tape. Your nail should now look something like this:

Repeat these steps for all of your nails or for as many nails as you want, and then go over ever nail with a clear top coat. I'm using the Rimmel London Finishing Touch Ultra Shine Top Coat. I love using this top coat, mainly because the brush is so wide and flat, so it only take the minimal amount of brushes to cover the whole nail. It also does a really good job of protecting the nail art.

And there you have it! DIY chevron nails! I hope you liked this tutorial, and I'd love to see your takes on it.

Lots of love

Lyllie

xoxo

 

 

No7 Mascara VS MaxFactor Mascara

I am currently using two drugstore mascaras (not at the same time obviously... duh) to compliment my everyday makeup look. One is the No7 Lovely Lashes mascara in Brown/Black, and the other is the MaxFactor Clump Defy mascara in Black. I've used the Clump Defy for a while now and I'm contemplating whether or not I should switch to the new Lovely Lashes mascara, so what better way to decide on which to use than to analytically compare them both, whilst maybe benefitting your choice in future mascara purchases?

First of all, the packaging. I like the colours that both brands have used: for the Clump Defy its a shimmery purple with a very subtle red-ish tint, and for the Lovely Lashes its a lighter, shiny lilacy purple ma-doo-hickey. I prefer the shape of the Lovely Lashes packaging, because it stays stood up on my shelf, where as the Clump Defy, though it will stand up, when nudged or hit by a gust of wind it will collapse completely, knocking everything else that's stood up on my shelf over and causing a very frustrating mess, because its all curved and shizz.

This is the effect of each of the mascaras:

~ No7 Lovely Lashes (£12.99) ~

~ Click here to view ~

~ MaxFactor Clump Defy (£10.99) ~

~ Click here to view ~

In my opinion, the Clump Defy mascara makes my eye lashes longer and darker, which are both important qualities in a good mascara, however, the Lovely Lashes mascara adds an effect that can almost match it, but it looks a lot more natural, and personally, I like my makeup look to be natural. Although the name of the MaxFactor mascara is 'Clump Defy' it seems to me that this mascara is a lot more clumpy than the Lovely Lashes mascara, especially on the bottom lashes. The Clump Defy does do a good job of fanning out the lashes though. Since the Clump Defy is a more heavy mascara than the Lovely Lashes and to my collection it is older, it leaves more small flakes and specs underneath the eye, which I absolutely hate, but this could just be due to its age. The Clump Defy is also supposed to be water resistant, however whenever I go swimming whilst wearing it or I simply can't be bothered to remove it before I shower, it comes completely off of my eyelashes and ends up somewhere near my chin. It couldn't be less water resistant, which is really annoying.

The Clump Defy brush is a plastic brush and can be kind of painful, especially when you catch it on your eyelid. I'm not really a fan of plastic brushes in general but this one I'm sure is like created to remove people's eyes entirely instead of to make them look better. I also tend to find the fact that its curved a bit of an inconvenience for applying the mascara, but that's probably something to do with the shape of my eyes. I prefer the Lovely Lashes brush because its a bristle brush and its nice and soft and it doesn't try to gouge your eyes out which is always a bonus in my books. The Lovely Lashes mascara is easier and less painful to apply, although I do tend to find myself putting about a gazillion coats on before I'm happy that the mascara has made a difference. Also, the mascara itself is quite liquid-y, and since I'm quite a rough putter-onner of mascara, I will get it all over my eyelids and under my eyes and sometimes even on the tip of my nose and on my mirror - ugh, its a disaster honestly. But that isn't anything a few cotton buds can't fix! Cotton buds are my best friends.

So what do you guys think? Which mascara do you prefer? I hope this post has been helpful to you in some strange way, and I hope it has somewhat aided you in your future purchases of mascara.

Lots of love

Lyllie

xoxo

Birthday Bits 'n' Bobs

My Birthday wasn't too long ago, so I thought that for my first kind of 'official' post, considering that yesterday's post was just an introductory piece, I could share with you what I got for my birthday. This will also hopefully be nice because you'll get to know me a little better, so, without further ado, here are my birthday presents 2k14.

 

So probably the main present that I received for my birthday this year was a Fujifilm instax mini 8 in the baby pink colour, which if you don't already know is a polaroid camera. I got the little bag slash case slash whatever you want to call it separately with my own money after my birthday. I've been really wanting one of these cameras for a while now, because I really love the little photos that they produce and I find them a lot more personal than photos you take on a digital camera - not quite sure why, but I just do. I think the camera cost around £59.99 from Amazon, and it comes in all sorts of cute pastel colours: baby blue, pastel yellow, black, white and of course the pink that I have. With the camera I also got two boxes of film, and inside these boxes are two films each, and inside each film there is ten... films? I don't know what you call them - photographs-to-be? I don't know. One of these boxes costs £15.99 which is a little bit on the pricey side but trust me, its worth it just because of how cute the photos are in the end.

 

I love scented candles. I love the atmosphere they give to a room or a home, especially in the evening. I love the aromas the give off - I'll go into a shop that sells candles and spend hours just going through and smelling all of the different scents. Usually I'll get the cheep scented candles from Primark because funnily enough that's all I can afford, and I've never really owned a proper Yankee Candle apart from a hand-me-down one from my mum, and I don't even like the scent of it that much. But for my birthday, I was given a set of four mini Yankee Candles with their own little candle holder to sit in, with the scents Black Cherry, Orange Splash, Sweet Apple and Black Plum Blossom. Now although I have yet to actually light one of these candles, their scents are absolutely divine. I really love natural, fruity scents as apposed to your average 'Fresh Linen' and what have you, just because they smell so... I don't know... fruity?

 

I'm also a huge fan of Lush, and if you don't know what Lush is, get off my blog right now and go to your nearest Lush shop or check out the website or something. Anything! You need to be introduced to the world of Lush. I was given two amazing bath bombs, Twilight, an old favourite of mine which my mum actually ended up pinching, and Fizzbanger, which has this amazing zesty scent and I can't wait to use it in my bath. I also got a bubble bar called Creamy Candy Bath, which aside from looking adorable, smells absolutely amazing. I'm not really going to delve to deeply into what these Lush products do, because I want YOU to go out and try them for yourself - trust me, it will be a nice surprise.

 

These were my kind of main-ish presents. I also got loads of little things like nail polishes and bracelets and gift cards and even a giant and extraordinarily delicious cookie from one of my friends. What did you get for your last birthday? I'd love for you to let me know in the comments!

 

Check out the Lush UK website --> https://www.lush.co.uk/

 

Lots of love

Lyllie

xoxo 
 

Oh hey!

 

So, me and my friend decided one eventless evening while we were wrapped up in our duvets and all settled down in our warm beds in the dark that we would create a blog - this blog. The plan was, inspired by many of our favourite people in the whole wide world such as Zoella and Tanya Burr, to blog about beauty and fashion and lifestyle.

 

But thinking about that now, we realise that there is a lot of that stuff out there and it has been done on blogs millions of times over, and it would probably just be the same old shizz bizz as the next fashion, beauty and lifestyle blog. Plus, there were loads of things that came to mind that we may want to blog about in the future that don't fit into these certain categories.

 

So, why not create a general teenage girl blog?

 

And that's what we've done. This blog will cover a range of things that hopefully you'll find interesting, from music reviews to DIY's to life hacks to clothing hauls and everything in between. We basically want to share our ideas and views on every little detail that may crop up in the average teenage girl's life to help you and to inspire you and to entertain you. We hope you stick around with us on this blog and support our little blogging journey. We'll try our best to make it fun for you, as long as you try your best to encourage us and stick by us for as long as you are interested in what we have to offer. Sound fair?

 

My friend and I, we're just two ordinary English teenage girls who thought we might take up a new hobby.

 

Thanks in advance for supporting our blog, and thanks for reading!

Lots of love,

Lyllie

xoxo