Glequin Gradient

I tried something new on my nails last week with some various Glequins, stripe tape blah blah blah.

My favourite nail of this experiment has become my favourite pattern of all time

Glequin Gradient dark to light

These are my sisters lovely fingertips =]

The camera doesn't do the dark pink justice at all or the light pink for that matter.

Stamping + Glitter Disaster

A cautionary tale of over designing

I knew from the beginning I wanted this to be a blog for me, to show my improvement and what not...
So I feel its only right I show off when I have a disaster too.

Thank you Ebay finallllly got my hands on OPI Absolutely Alice!!!! - excellent what on earth can I go with this...

Experiment time!





Barry M Matte White
Barry M Gelly Guava
Barry M Gelly Plum

These should go nicely with this polish, I thought,what could go wrong, I thought

The addition of stamping, that's what...
I painted 2 coats of  White on my middle 3 fingers
and 1 coat of each the Purple and the blue....so far fine and dandy =]

nice ombre nail in the center.... beautiful

So for the first time ever I sat down with a theme in my head (Alice in Wonderland) and got a planning
my early plan had me painting Absolutly Alice over plain nails except my ring finger I would do a swirly partern....wait a second don I have a swirly stamp plate???? (this was my first mistake)
so out came the stamp plates...ooohhh thisone llooks a little like a bottle - I could add drink me to it
oooh I dont have a cake I could use for eat me.... ooof cupcake- perfect agian
mmm a key there was a key in that scene I guess I could free hand a lock hole no RESULT I have a key stamp tooo and so the design was coming along nicely

Gradient Stamping.... never tried this before ring finger went gorgeous but my pointy (index) finger the design I chose was little and fiddly so I thought ahhh ill just layer it
it look fine the glitter will cover the imperfections (next mistake)

NOT ALICE ENOUGH!!!

 

Cup cake with wiggly EAT ME =] yumyum             and the drinks bottle - DRINK ME sure why not

 And here was the downfalll

I added the glitter - well this glitter is SOOOO densly packed it did not just cover the imperfections it basically covered up the design as well =[=[=[

sooooo after trying to fix it and stamping on the top I found this to be a massive fail too- OPI Absolutely Alice does NOT dry fast

ANYWAY

Alice does (as I originally thought) look fabbbb over the Plum - the dark purple background realllly makes the blue glitter POP and overr the Guava it looks lush - njot only does the blue look great the lighter blue blackground blends theblue glitter slightly and the gold stands out amazinggggggg

all in alll this was an experiement that I guess suceeded becuase I found out that Alice looks gre t over solid colours and perhaps over gradient and terrible over anyting else!!!!

Purpley Goodness =]

I Love Purple (if yellow wasn't my favourite colour purple definitely would be. But yellow is definitely NOT an easy colour to wear so purple is definitely my go to in all situations - I have more purple going out dresses than I do anything else)

So obviously my new purple varnishes seen here and here are my go to colours this month 

Discovering my Rimmel Salon Pro is ok for stamping was a GOD SEND!

My Thumb I waited till the next day to stamp and it basically had a fingerprint on it before stamping so it didn't stamp too evenly, but I thought it was quite nice being more distressed.

My index and ring fingers I did an ombre effect and I didn't wait long enough for the polish to dry before gel top coating so it went a little bobbly, to be honest I thought it added to the ombre effect (aren't textured nail varnishes in at the minute???)

My middle finger might be my favourite nail. nice and easy to do and looks great. 5 simple stripes of nail tape and a little purple gem to hide the join =]

CAVIAR NAILS - problem getting it to stick??? I don't think so ... problem with colour leeching???  Learn from me... DON'T APPLY A TOP COAT.

I've got many many many micro beads in varying colours. For this I used black and purple and light purple and pink, in a reverse ombre to the nails. These looked FAB until I painted the dreaded top coat. As you can see the colour ran hilariously. The sad part is a top coat was defiantly not needed.

If you're wondering I am writing this 2 days later and the balls are still ALLLL stuck. How you ask??

GEL!!! I know there are a lot of swarovski crystal YouTube tutorials suggesting they stick better with UV gel, so why shouldnt this work with caviar?? YOU'RE RIGHT it works perfectly.*

*if you don't have a UV lamp please don't go to boots and spend £70+ on a UV lamp kit you can get them on eBay soooooo much cheaper.

last but not least

my iddy biddy finger

After doing my sisters Butterfly nails I liked the butterfly (previously this finger was just plain purple) so stampy stamp stamp

 

Purple & Butterflies

How to Blog when you have nothing to say?

Let the picture do the talking

When I buy new nail varnish it is a wonder I haven't tried it out before getting to the car.
Barry M is easily my favourite Brand of Polish. Any company that can do what the big company's do for half the price is OK in my book =]

Ye Olde Nails

Back before I knew how to take care of my cuticles and how to really clean up my polish and fun stamps where new too me. These where my two favourite manicures. I have since repeated the idea of the white on pale pink with other full nail stamps and it is still one of my favourite looks =]

Simply Matte

So here are some Photos of yesterdays Matte Nails =]

Simplicity

Today's manicure came after having a few days off. Every time I tried something on my sisters or my nails it just went phooey so I decided if blogging isn't fun stop! (Hammertime!! - no I can't help myself).

WARNING: this one is words, I got very carried away explaining myself




My OPI Wizard of OZ I Theodora You was staring at me so I slapped it on with out really knowing where I was going with it. On my accent (ring finger) nail I've got Max Factor Nailfinity in Disco Pink. After it was all dry and pretty I was staring at it and realised I had almost the same manicure last time I went to the salon (the hot pink was a China Glaze not Max Factor but that salon trip pushed me to buy I Theodora You)
So while (I think - not that you can really tell in my rubbish pictures) I did a better job than the girl at the salon, I was both unwilling to sport such boring nails annnnnnnnnnd nails I had had before, I decided these where just no good for blogging and out came the gems.

On my left (usually pictured hand) I placed some little light pink hearts in the center of my moon. I liked the effect of the light on light pink. and on my accent nail I got some cute little flower stickers for christmas I hadnt had a chance to try out so the white and pink flower contrasted the hot pink nail but i also thought it tied in all the coulous. The little flower looked very lonely at the top of my nail so I added 2 little purple gems as a stalk.

Snap Snap Snap 50 photos later, I remember I am going to the pub later and my right hand looks baaaarrrrrrrrrrrreeeee =[. Can not be having that, but not reallllllly wanting to use up allll my little pink hearts in 1 sitting I remember I have got some little heart shaped glitter/glequin bits in a pot, a little dark for what I wanted but hey - better than having boring nails. 

On inspection of my sticker sheet there are plenty of flower stickers so I decide it is ok to waste* one. Some hexagonal glitter/glequins made the stalk on my accent nail and VOILA! I liked the new effect so much I had to contort my hand to get a photo.

*I use the word waste for two reasons: 1, I had no intention at the time of blogging my right hand and 2, I suspect by tomorrow I will want to take it off and do something new or worse - one of the gems will catch and pop off (pleasantly surprised it didn't happen shuffling cards tonight to be honest) or smear the rest of my polish and I would have to take at least one nail off to redo it and in the process of fixing one nail other nails get all acetoned up so I have to take them all off (as happened last week - which reminds me there is a blog sitting in my drafts that needs pictures adding)

Despicable Nails =]

TBH I have put off publishing this because I have been a bit annoyed at everyone saying I'm jumping on the band wagon with it.
A, it is nail art - most of the posts I've seen this week have been about negative space art blogging is all about band wagons
B, I can almost guarantee I was looking forward to Despicable Me 2 before every single person who stated I was jumping on since I saw Despicable Me before 2013

So why should I avoid blogging coz some people are poops.... You're right I shouldn't
Rant over =]

quite simply went to see the film...this happened =]
I loved them

"bottom""hheheheheheheh"

Colour Changing Polish

Clicking about on ebay the other day to find some new gel colours and I came across some colour changing polish... Surely not I thought to myself so I read some reviews and it seemed perfectly legit. So my first port of call is to tell my sister about them, so we can discuss which of the colours we should try, the next thing I know I am at her front door collecting not 1 but 2 bottles from the postman. She has a bigger ebay problem than me (I am almost sure after trying these colours she has ordered some more)

SO Review time.

I painted these on my sisters nails first for 3 reasons
1. she bought the polish I thought it was only fair I manicure her nails first
2. she doesn't have acrylic nails on - I still do
3. even with out fake nails my hands are often in a constant state of icy cold so I was unsure how it would work on me!!

Painting on her hot hot hands was hard because the polish went almost clear when applied 3 coats and cures later I realised that this was just how it would look because her hands where warm from the lamps. To be honest I quite liked the creamy white that the hot pink polish gave.

I then made her run her hands under cold water when we where finished and like magic the colour changed. It was amazing to watch if you're as nerdy as I am. The black was super shiny and the pink super vibrant. although not chosen to go together they two complimented each other perfectly.

After letting them settle a minute or two the beds warmed up and gave the french look ebay promised. These polishes are not only super fun they are as shiny and hard wearing as I have come to expect from gels. The do change colour through out the day (especially if you hold a cup of tea or icy water and press your nails into your cup or glass to watch them change colour as I have been doing.)

Of course I wanted to try it on my nails after the success of my sisters, now there is a joke in my house that I am clinically dead but no one has pronounced it. So applying this polish on my icy cold hands was much easier because it went on coloured. not content I grabbed a black and pink polish and stamped a simple zebra print up my nails. (I was going out that night and I knew my hands would probably get hot hot hot in the club. After about half an hour warming my hands on a cuppa and in the sun they finally warmed up enough to change the polish colour.

I am super happy with this and cant wait to try more

Products:

Stamps: Barry M Black and Rimmel salon Pro Kate (I'll hopefully get round to publlishing the review of that in a few days)

The gel polish was from a brand called Bluesky