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 

 =]

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 =]

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!!!!

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 =]

Animal Stamps and New Polish

Yesterday I was in the supermarket getting some shopping with my mum and when I wandered past the Rimmel stand a purple polish just screamed at me to buy it(as they so often do!!), so in the trolley it went. Obviously as soon as I got home I had to try it and I have been itching to try some of my tip stamps and see how straight I could get them (so far I have failed miserably at getting them straight)

Not one to be content with a single colour or pattern I thought I would try stamping some of my newer Barry M Gelly Polishes as well (over at Brit Nails, Allie had suggested the Gelly polishes were great for stamping but I hadn't had a chance to try them yet!)

The result :
Well I like them

I stamped each of the colours over the white tips of my Acrylic nails so I apologize about the state of my cuticles , they are in a pretty sorry state

Read more to see what colours I used.

Rimmel London in MarshmallowHeaven
Barry M Gelly in Plum
Barry M Magnetic in Magnetic Blue
Barry M Gelly in Watermelon
Barry M Gelly in Guava

First Acrylic and Ombre nail attempt

Holla!!!
Hope you enjoy my first nail post!
Last night I did an Acrylic nail - that's right singularrrr - and had a go at ombre nails (which I've never tried before. Next time I try the Acrylic nails I'll post some step by step to show you how I got on!

Acrylic

So last night I cracked out the newly purchased Acrylic nails set and had a go on on ring and pinkie fingers of my left hand- I still have uni work to do and didn't want my typing speed to be impeded too much and I'm not supposed to do my nails properly until I finish university, but the pack came in the post and I am a sucker for temptation.

I bought the beginner Acrylic set by Naio because I have been watching a lot of YouTube videos with Gemma Lambert and hers was the beginner video I followed the easiest. I cannot comment really on how good this set is as it is the first time I've used anything like this.

I had a go at both white tips and just a nail extension. The White tip was not as easy as just doing a full clear extension but all in all I didn't think it was too bad considering it was my first attempt

I then decided to see how easy it was to soak off my pinkie to see how easy it was. The result was VERY easy - but that was more likely down to my lack of proper nail prep before applying and not because they come off super easy.

Ombre Nails

I then decided to paint my nails so the single Acrylic I was leaving on wouldn't look too out of place with the rest of my nails(to see how long it would last/ how difficult it would be to have it and how uncomfortable it would be - I have in the past had acrylics done at the salon that were so thick they just felt like they were weighing my finger tips down).


I filed the Acrylic tip down so it wasn't drastically longer than my other fingernails
I painted my left hand all orange and then spotted my yellow so thought I would give gradient a go. So for this hand I painted the top half of the nail with my yellow and then sponged it. The result, I think was pretty good.

For the right hand I did the "google approved method" of painting the pale colour all over and sponging the darker colour over the top - whether it was because it was my dominant hand or my method was a bit better, I didn't like the effect on my left hand as much.
I can see why it would be necessary for paler colours that don't have such good coverage - but my yellow covered over the orange really well.

If you're reading this I hope you enjoyed the beginning of my nail journey

Products:

Naio beginner acrylic nails set
Sinful Colours Polish in Unicorn - available at Boots
Barry M Gelly Hi-Shine Nail Paint in Mango - GNP18 available online, at Boots and Superdrug