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