Happy New Year!!

Hi there folks!

As we heading towards the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014, I thought I would do some firework nail art. I've kept these pretty simple and gone with 2 coats of plain black as a base, with blue and silver stripes painted on top in the fashion of fireworks. I added a gold glitter tail to each one and silver glitter around the 'explosion' for a bit of added sparkle. Some of them have a blue, silver or gold gem in the middle. I topped this all with a single coat of fast drying top coat.

For my thumb I did 2 coats of black again and added small and large gold glitter on top to give the effect of a cascade of sparks. I topped this again with a fast drying top coat.

I apologise for the shocking quality of the photo to the left. Every time I uploaded it, this website did something to it that reduced the black and made it look terribly noisy. You can still see the effect of the glitter well enough though.

That's all from me for today. I wish you all a "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" for when the bell tolls midnight, wherever you are.

S x

Dr Seuss

Hai folks!

Bit of silence from me over the weekend - it was my daughters birthday weekend so I was busy, busy, busy, and I took last weeks Christmas themed nail design off on Saturday and let my nails have a bit of a breather for a couple of days so haven't really had anything new to blog!

Today I had a lot of fun creating some Dr Seuss nails. It's something I've wanted to do for a while but hadn't been on the top of my list until today. I'm so pleased with them, I think they are the best I've ever done!
I won't bore anyone with the list of colours or the method used as you can recreate this quite easily just by eye. Mostly it was just a lot of patience and steady hand :)

"A person's a person, no matter how small." - Dr Seuss

Until next time! 

S x

Christmas Themed

Hai folks!

I decided I couldn't put up with my weird striped failure from yesterday so took it all off and put some christmas themed nails on. I've done some christmas themed nails before, with a mix of santas face, rudolf, christmas tree, lights, candy canes, snowflakes and snowmen. I didn't want to do the same thing for a third time in a month so had a look through some designs and came across one that The Lacquerologist did last year. I did a different thing on my thumb, but the fingers were all more or less the same.

For the 4 fingers I used:

Barry M basecoat, followed by a single coat of 'Navy'. I love this navy colour as its got a slight iridescent sparkle to it. I wasn't too concerned with getting the coverage perfect as I was planning on going over it later. I applied 'Bright Red' to my thumb, but will go over that further down.

Once the blue was fully dried I applied w7 'Bare' in a round shape across my index and middle fingers using a thin, flat, slanted edge nail brush. When the Bare was almost dry, but still slightly tacky I went over it with the same brush in Barry M 'Matt White'. When the white was almost dry I dabbed a few areas with 'Blueberry'. I then took a makeup sponge, using some of the 'Matt White' varnish, dabbed it across the blue on my middle, ring and pinky fingers:

Using Ombre 'Pure Black' and a very fine brush I started to apply the chosen design, starting with my index and working across.

For my thumb:

I used 'Bright Red' as the base colour, 'Spring Green' for the tree and Seventeen 'Moon Dust' for the tree trunk. I used a couple of strips of striping tape to mark out the shape of the tree. Dotted the tree with Barry M 'Mango' and 'Plum' and used the foil effects silver to fill in the stripes as tinsel and to dot the top of the tree. Using the Mango and Plum again I created little gifts for under the tree and dotted some tiny silver dots in the left over red back ground.

And this is the finished result :) Covered all with a quick coat of my usual Sally Hansen Mega Shine top coat to finish it off and protect them. It could have been a bit neater but I'm quite pleased with how well it came out.

Quite likely going to keep these on until the weekend, so happy rest of the week to you all!

S x

Sugar Spun Nails

Hai there!

I chipped my lovely purple water marbled nails at work so took it all off and decided to have a go at another technique I hadn't tried yet: Sugar Spun

For this I used my usual Barry M basecoat with w7 Neon Blue, Barry M Gelly Grapefruit and Sally Hansen quick drying Mega Shine top coat. I also needed a piece of foiled card and a toothpick.

I started with a coat of the basecoat, followed by 2 thin coats of the Neon Blue (oops, made a slight mess :p ):

After the blue was fully dried I set up the pot of Grapefruit, the foiled card and the toothpick. I blobbed some of the Grapefruit colour onto the card and let it air dry for a few minutes until it was tacky and I was able to pull strings from the polish using a toothpick. Still using the toothpick, I pulled the tacky, stringy varnish across over the blue until the nail was covered enough, thus creating the 'sugar spun' look. This was the final result on my left hand:

It's not a technique I particularly enjoyed to be honest, I probably won't be in a hurry to do it again soon but I love the vibrant mix of the blue and grapefruit, and it will do me just fine until Thursday :)

Later on I finished this off with a coat of the mega shine top coat but I kinda wish I hadn't. Even though the 'sugar spun' strandy bits were bone dry, they still sort of dissolved into the top coat so its been left as more of a tiger stripe than anything. I think they'd probably look better if they were left as above, without the top coat over it.

Friday at work is 'wear your christmas jumper' day in aid of the Save the Children charity so on Thursday I will likely be doing Christmas themed nails!

Laters all! 

S x

First official post: Marblised Nail Art!

Hai there!

Today I went out for a spot of light shopping to the local town and picked up some new nail polish. I got the Barry M 343 Plum Gelly, Barry M 341 Mocha Matte, and the Barry M Base coat/Top coat/Nail Hardener 3 in 1 (Can you tell I quite like the Barry M range??). 

I loooove trying out new designs and techniques so I decided to try a technique I liked the look of and had seen on some of the nail art blogs I browse through, but hadn't yet tried myself: water marbling. I chose 2 main colours, the Plum I bought today with Barry M 319 Prickly Pear.

First off I prepped my nails with a coat of the new base coat I had also bought today. Once that was dry I applied one coat of the Plum and again waited for that to completely dry (thank the Lord I recently bought a UV nail dryer!). 

Once it was all dried I taped up around my fingers to avoid too much excess waste ending up on my skin (a tip I picked up from Colette at the mysimplelittlepleasures nail art blog).

Next up was the fun bit! You use a cup or bowl (preferably one you no longer need as it's pretty much going to end up ruined) full of room temperature water, I used a plastic cup. I took each of my colours in turn and dripped a drop of it into the centre of the water and let it spread, dropping from about half an inch from the surface seemed to work the best for me. 

Once I was happy with the droppage I took a long hoof stick and used the pointy end to create lines and patterns into the surface - marbling the polish. Once I was happy with the marbling I readied my taped up finger above the surface and dipped really fast through the area I wanted to be applied to my nail.

I held my finger in the water while I used the hoof stick to clear up the excess polish from the surface of the water, then once that was all gone I pulled my finger back out from the water and was left with the pretty marbled effect on my nail.

I repeated the process for my other fingers (and thumbs!), removed the tape and had a little wipe up. After I'd had a go on a couple of fingers I managed to move on to dipping a couple of fingers at a time. This was the final product:

It looks quite blue in the picture because of the lighting, but its more purple. I topped it all with a coat of the quick-drying Sally Hansen Mega Shine Top Coat and that was that! (though I did take the above photo before I added the top coat and had cleared off the mess around the edges - oops :D ). 

Something I must remember to do on future attempts at this is to remove any air bubbles that are trapped on the surface of the water/polish mix before I use it, but I'm pretty pleased with how well they came out considering it was only my first attempt at the technique, it is definitely something I will try again! Passed my Sunday afternoon quite happily playing around with this effect and now have pretty nails for work tomorrow :D

Happy Sunday folks! 

S x