Leopard print naily art (meeeeeeeow!)

Howdy!

How are all you folks doing? Mid-week already, I'm sure I've lost a few days somewhere?!

Today I'm sporting some leopard print nails!! Animal print isn't something I usually go for myself, but I'm quite feeling it today. Here's what I did (all photos at the bottom):

Using a matte brown effect polish and a metallic gold polish I did half/half style straight down the middle of each nail, I used the same brown matte effect polish to create a plain accent nail on my ring fingers. Swapping the colours (gold on brown and brown on gold) I painted random blobs on top of each base colour using a medium sized dotting tool, then painted on random black detail lines with a small paint brush. I finished off by adding a line of tiny little gold caviar beads down the centre for a little extra detail and sparkle.

I recommend getting some Embellie Gellie for adding little beady/gemmy/small bits, makes things so much easier! It's a mildly tacky soft type glue that lasts for absolutely ages as you only need a little at a time. You can buy it via amazon and it's not too expensive :)

Also, how cute is my lil snakey ring I picked up for a couple of quid last week! Loving it!

'Til next time!

Stef x

Wonder Woman nails

Howdy!

I always wanna shove a 'partner' on the end whenever I say howdy :/

But I digress, today I have done myself some Wonder Woman nail art!




I used 3 nail paints; 'Femme Fatale' from the L'Oreal Colour Riche collection, 'Baker Street' by Nails Inc, and 'Gold Metallic Foil Effects' by Barry M. I also used a small amount of black acrylic paint.

I started by applying a full nail of red on my pinkies, a full nail of blue on rings, a half red/half blue on middles, a half red/half blue diagonally on indexes, and a full nail of gold on thumbs. Using the same gold, I applied a small shape in the style of WW's little tiara thing on pinky, the WW logo on middle, and a straight diagonal down the middle on index. I created the little detail lines with black acrylic using an extremely fine paint brush.

I added stars to the full blue nails, and to the half diagonal ones too. These stars are a little bit too bulky, but for some reason they are the only stars I seem to have at the moment. So... I am now on the look out for some cute little glitter type stars!
I gave all a good glug of top coat (Sally Hansen Insta-Dry, as is my usual).

I didn't really know what to put on top of the plain gold nails so I just left em that way.


However, I don't like that the Barry M Metallic Foil Gold polish dries to reveal such obvious brush marks. Generally BM products dry quite nicely, but for some reason this one just doesn't =/

Other than that little issue with the gold, I'm rather pleased with how this mani turned out :)

That's all from me for now, I'll likely be back on Friday some time as between now and then I have to come up with a nice mani to go with an outfit I'm wearing on Saturday night ;)

Byes for now!
Stef x

Waterfall

Howdy and happy Saturday!

Today I went with sparkle waterfall nails. I have never done waterfall nails before, they look pretty in general on other people but I don't think I've done 'em very well.

I went with Barry M 'Watermelon' as the base colour, with L'oreal 'Exotic Canaries' yellow on my accent nail. To create the waterfall on top of the 'Watermelon' colour I alternated lines of 'Mango', 'Grapefruit', 'Pomegranate' and 'Fushia', all by Barry M. I created an edge to hide their ends with metallic gold and added some clear gold glitter to the top to add a little sparkle. For the accent nail I used 'Kensington Park Road', 'Haymarket', 'Chelsea Physic Garden' and 'Baker Street', all by Nails Inc. I added metallic silver to hide the edges across the top and some clear glitter silver to add the sparkle on that nail.

The colours all look weird together as I just grabbed whatever I fancied out of the box and whacked it all together. Not particularly happy with them, but not so unhappy that I want to take it off and replace it straight away. I need to come up with some new ideas of stuff to try as the ones I've gone for lately I seem to have ended up doing a really bad job of it :S


Anyhoo... curry time!

Byes for now,

S x

Hallo Sailor!

Howdy!

Today I am rockin' some sailor/nautical themed nails:

 The blue on my thumb is Essie Aruba Blue with an Ombre Sparkle Silver chevron-style tip. My index, middle and pinky finger are all painted with a coat of Barry M White, and using striping tape I laid out the zones for Barry M Blue Grape (kinda wish I'd used the Aruba Blue though, as the Barry M dried to a much paler colour than I wanted). On my ring finger I used a L'oreal red called Femme Fatale and then a small paint brush and Barry M metallic gold to create the anchor. I finished it off with a single little blue gem on my middle finger.

It's a pretty quick and easy design that anyone should be able to do, though I recommend being patient and waiting for your polish to be fully dry before topcoating, otherwise you will get colour bleeding like I have :D



Just a quick one from me today, I'm off to have a Supernatural marathon ;) Happy weekend y'all!

S x

31 Day Challenge - Day 1: Red

Happy hump day folks!

A couple of days ago I was doing my usual float around on other nail blogs checking out the recent posts, I'm quite curious (nosy...) you see, and I like the inspiration and tips that other nail bloggers give out. Anyway, a few people are doing the January nail art challenge that Californails have posted on their Instagram page. I thought about joining in but I'm already late starting that one so figure I'll just join the next one. Anyway, I got thinking about doing another challenge I've seen posted in the past, the 31 day challenge. I'm not too sure how long I'll stick with it as I tend to get distracted easily and I'm quite likely to post other things between themes, but we shall see how I do!

So, anyway... today is my first post for the challenge! The theme for day 1 is 'Red'. Here is what I did:

This is 2 coats of Barry M Raspberry nail paint as the base colour, it's a wonderful deep red colour and I've fallen very much in love with it. I used striping tape to set out a triangular shape on each nail and filled that with the Barry M gold foil effect polish. I added little red gems to each gold section (3 in a line for the middle finger) and topped it off with a coat of Sally Hansen Insta-dry top coat.

I had absolutely no clue what I was planning on doing for this, other than I wanted to use the Raspberry nail paint as a base as it is a recent buy and I hadn't tried it out yet. I just set out all of my stuff and it became a complete make-it-up-as-I-go-along kind of thing. I do quite like the overall effect, it reminds me a bit of Iron Man, perhaps I'll play around with these 2 colours again to create a specific Iron Man set sometime?

Right then, enough waffling from me!

Until next time,

S x

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