Remembrance Day

I haven't posted for a while =[

But I had to make some time to post todays nails

Remembrance day is special to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons, for me it is a day to be especially thankful that a member of my family is still with us.

Speak for themselves really

Barry M Matt White and various colours of Acrylic Paints

x

Born Pretty Store Glow Polish Review and Frankenstein Art

No, I don't have any glowy pictures, you'll just have to take my word that it glowed beautifully, but my camera would NOT capture the glowy goodness =[
I think I have figured out the camera settings to get it to capture the glowy goodness, but by this point I had already taken the polish off.
Boring bit over onto the pictures =]

So first I tried the two polishes but I wanted to see how they went over white and natural.

The Blue was much of a muchness over white but the Green really popped over the white polish so it was basically getting 2 different greens in one box =]

One thing I was a bit worried about when I got the polish was that the green bottle was a bit broken? not broken but I can't think of a better word. the lid looked a bit peeled and the glass looked like the polish had spilled out, but when I opened the bottle up everything looked AOK so I can only assume a different bottle smashed near this one and it just hadn't been cleaned off properly.

So doing this I realised the green would make an AWESOME Frankienstein Green sooo here it goes -

this was super hard to photo graph - the nail tips and his hair is actually an OPI purple but hey if the camera wont get it the camera won't get it 

rawwwhhhhh hallloooowwweeen =]

Halloween Mark One

So I bought a bottle of Barry M Gelly in Mango over the summer and at the time it could not have been a more summery colour to me the perfect summer orange.

Now that halloween has rolled around I keep looking at it and wondering how I ever used it as a summer colour, it doesnt look even remotely summery to me anymore it is simply a halloween colour... If anyone can explain to me how that works Id be greatful =]

So on to the actual nails.

I love Halloween LOVE LOVE LOVE it. Secretly I am a total goff at heart.
After doing a orange and black gradient nails with alternating black and orange and getting half way through realising I had over blended the colours and it looked silly I settled on orange nails and since I have set my self a target to get better at my nail art not just nail design before the end of the year I thought I'd have a go at a cute lil spider

Orange - Barry M Gelly in Mango

Black - W7 

White - Barry M in Matte White

Purple - OPI Liquid Sand Bond Girls in Vesper 

 =]

Sally Hansen Greige Glitter Tips

I found 5 minutes from job hunting and interview preparation to actually blog one of the many manicures I've done =] woop woop

In Wilko's the other week and I spotted Sally Hansen Greige and I fell in love with the colour, but being good I didn't buy it. A few days later my sister wanted a grey black Ombre so since(in my head) I had nothing even close to greyish and knowing I'd never be able to mix a grey for all ten nails we went to the shop and my nail prayers where answered, my sister bought the polish :D

So here's the grey black ombre with glequins I did for her party nails and of COURSE I had to try it myself =]

I have to be honest with Sally Hansen WHAT WHERE YOU THINKING WHEN YOU MADE THIS BOTTLE??

The bottle is square, the hole is round, the applicator brush is SQUARE....

Square Peg and a Round Hole anyone?

This was the most frustrating polish to use, the formula was lush went on smooth and creamy basically self levelled itself and was practically opaque in one coat but getting the excess polish off the wand was a NIGHTMARE. =[ 

So I wzas also going on a nightout so I added some lovely glitter =]

Who doesn't love glitter??

Party Nails - Nails Inc Leather Effect With Skulls

Follow my blog with Bloglovin I have been stashing my newish Nails Inc Leather Effect  for some time now waiting for an opportunity to Bling it up!
What better place for insanely OTT nails than one of my besties housewarming party

Ok so first of all I might as well crack out a bit of a review from a nail newbie (sometimes the seasoned blooggers are all like "blah blah blah so easy to apply blah blah blah" then you try it yourself and I'm all like Wuuut daaahhhh????

so yeahhhhh

Leather Effect... like seriously this was ONE coat when I first applied it I was all awwwh this doesn't look that great (que sad face) buuut I suppose it's opaque in one coat... maybe the next coat will make it leathery
NOPE it just needed time to dry - like seriously this stuff is 'totes amazeballllllz'

buuut yeah enough steam blowing back to the manicure

I used 2 coats of W7 in black on my index finger for the art I had planned for it.
but boy was that hard to get a decent photograph, in the end I relented and just used the flash

So for this nail I got some thin thin thin striping tape and criss crossed it across my nail and painted the leather effect on top. Yall know the drill but juuuuust in case you have been more under a rock than me Sammy does a lovely tutorial for you =]

This nail looked maybe 50% better in real life it was very subtle with the black on black but the matte v shiney and the slight texture of the Leather effect was just lovely

The Rest of the nails where relatively straight forward. I have yet to invest in new pinking shears yet (I am still rather pennyless) so I stuck some tape (Primark) to a piece of backing from stickers I had lying around and chopped some ziggyzaggs in it (this took several attempt to get them small enough buuuut once I did it was a simple process of taping off the end and painting it silver. I then taped off a triangle on my iddy biddy and applied some nail glue and caviar balls (glue was for longevity this manicure had a full night of house part to contend with) - it looked much more trianngley in real life - silly macro shots =[ buttt ahh well
I also Glued on the skulls that came with my Leather effect and bada bing bada boom

Trying out some new photoshopping - read I have too much time on my hands- but what may interest you about these nails is that this was taken the DAY AFTER

baring in mind you cant top coat the leather or it loses its effect this stuff has some longevity

As I said I was at a house party for these and there wasn't a scratch on them the next day. No I am not gentle on my hands I was up and down ladders and crawling on my hands and knees (my friend has a mezzanine thing above the living room and the only way up is to climb up a ladder then hoist yourself up)

the obvious being naughty and using my nails to open cans and general ruckus that occurs at house parties of people trying to forget they aren't students anymore (or at least that what I was doing) 

basically what I am trying to say is Leather Effect absolutely ROCCCCCKKKKKKSSS =] 

Leopard print

I am a little behind on sorting through my images - I need to start taking < 30 pictures when I do new nails... Or get off my back side and make the light box I've been wanting to make for a few months now.

Anyway I tend to shy away from doing the 'over done' manicures especially ones I have wraps for, but last night I was totally out of ideas, motivation, time and energy.

So cheeky stamp plate ch2 and very little effort.

Max factor whispering ivory for the base
Konad special polish in black
And filled in some of the dots
OPI liquid sand Tiffany Case from the Bond Collection

No top Coat because black stamping polish smudges like a biiiatch :-(

I have 4 or 5 manicures at least to blog I just need to sort through the images

Piano Nails

My sisters and I took my Mum to see a stage show of the Sound of music last week so I did some music inspired nails for her =]

Watermelon Nails

So I went a bit crazy with my Acrylics length when I was first learning to do them! Simples

Barry M Gelly Wwatermelon
Barry M Gelly Guava
some red black and yellow?

Twisting Love - Art Inspiration

I've been applying for jobs and what not recently so I've been pretty short on energy and enthusiasm. I just don't feel like I have the time to sit down and properly think of my own nail ideas. That coupled with a few PC related issues has left me hgiufvbgunkcfhguyh (that's right :])

So what's a girl to do when she is out of time to think of and implement her own ideas?
THAT'S RIGHT copy someone else's!!!

So the other day I went a browsing on art.com for some inspiration (an idea I got from another nail blogger who did a yellow flowers design but I can't for the life of me find it again so if anyone knows let me know so I can credit her =]) and came across this lovely picture By Megan Aroon Duncanson

"Lovely" nail pictures after the jump ...

So I use the word lovely because to be honest the macro camera shots capture the brush stokes of the acrylic a little too well, so the trees on the nails look better in real life - more whispy and tree like than they do on the photo.

so first I did the background with various polishes in my collection,

since it was just a background and the tree I wasn't too bothered about making it super neat but I quite liked the look of the manicure before the addition of the trees, so just in case everything went wrong out to the garden I went to photograph them before potential disaster of black acrylic paint set in.

Some of the colours I remember using where
Barry M Gelly in Mango
Barry M Gelly in Guava
Barry M Gelly in Watermelon
Barry M Nail Paint in Black
Barry M Nail Paint in Matte White
Sinful Polish Yellow
and a Red Rimmel varnish I have

but to be honest I was sat surrounded by about 20 different nail polishes I had pulled out to try get the colours I needed.

The green for example is a mix of the sinful yellow a collection 2000 yellow and some random blues till I found a blend i was happy with.
There was also a lot of colour layering to get the mixes right - especially on the sun.

All I did for this stage was get a fine nail art brush I had from a set from ebay some acetone to wash it out and lined dabbed and sploched (technical term) my way to this.

Black acrylic paint my fine art brush and a tiny dotting tool to create the 'wispier' branches and this was the final result =]

The camera is not kind to tree branches it seems and as I said they look much better in real like than they do caught on camera

I also learned that
 taking a photo of a laptop screen and a nail at the same time with out sun glare, flash problems but still getting a nice picture of the nail is near impossible, this picture was the best of a bad bunch but I thought I would add it anyway.


All in all as an experiment I'm pretty chuffed =]

The two most important things I've learned

1. Patience...... Stop, breathe, calm down.
You do NOT need to do every manicure in your head at the same time
You DO need to wait for polish to dry properly or it will ruin your entire manicure and (I'm sorry to say it) your whole day :-(

Add your idea to your list heather, that's what you made it for
Stop starting your nails at 9pm, midnight is an acceptable bed time, 3am is not

And speaking of time this brings me to...

2. Stop browsing BornPretty and every blog you can get your beady little eyes on at 4am when you can't sleep, this will only lead to more trouble with point 1 and you have no money!!!

History of my life suggests I will not take my own advice :-(, but maybe if I post this ill stop and think
"hey a ruined and removed manicure does my biary no good! "

Now if you'll excuse me, I have nail studs to compare and purchase :-P

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