Experimentation and shades of pink

Howdy folks!

Yesterday, at the end of my failed 'messy mani' post, I mentioned that I was considering trying out using acrylic paints for nail art as it was meant to be easier to handle. As I am an artist and therefore have a ton of acrylic paints in a box, I thought I would give that a try today. I went with a pretty simple design which can be seen below:

This 2 coats of Barry M Fuschia on my mains, and 2 coats of Barry M White on my accent nails.
I used the same white and a large dotting tool to create the dots on my index and pinky fingers, and added a pale pink and a silver gem to the upper centre of my middle finger.

I used a mixture of sap green, titanium white, lamp black and crimson red to freehand the roses with a very fine paint brush, and topped each nail with a liberal layer of topcoat.






I'm super proud by how well the roses came out, and I was quite happy to find that the acrylics were loads easier to use in comparison to nail polish. I will quite likely use acrylics a lot from now on!

That's all from me for now, catch ya again soon!

S x

Rush job...

Happy Friday folks,

Kinda disappointed in myself a little today. Had a view of how I wanted a nail design to be, and considering it's quite a simple design, I knew it was within easy reach. However, I was a bit lazy and in a rush last night so it's come off messier than I had hoped. I will quite likely take it back off today and put something new on instead!

But until then, here is my messy mani for last night/today:

This is Essie Aruba Blue as a base on all but my ring finger, which has Barry M White on it. I used the alternate colours for the stripes on each nail, the Aruba Blue to dot my ring finger and Barry M Foil Effects silver to do the dots on the others, plus a few little nail gems to finish it off. It looks as though I've got silver on the edge of my index nail but it's actually just the reflection from the window. They look quite crap so I have got my thinking cap on for something new to replace them.

In other news, I have ordered a couple of Konad plates and their double sided stamp. I'm going to try out stamping as it's something I've not done before, and may help to alleviate some of the free hand work I do. I'm also considering trying out using acrylics to create designs instead of nail polish as it's meant to be easier? I guess I shall see how I go!

Anyhoo, until later!

S x

Peacock feather

Hai folks!

Yesterday I painted on a peacock feather design onto my nails. It's the second attempt I've had at doing peacock feathers. It still doesn't look how I want it, but it's better than my first attempt so there is at least some improvement going on! I think my paint brushes are all too thick so I'm not getting the thin detail lines I want, something to look into I guess.

Anyway, this is the final result:

It has the basic shape and colour of a peacock feather, but as I said, just doesn't look quite right. I shall attempt it again at some point in the future. 

Here are the colours I used to create this:

Base coat; Nails inc 'Kensington Park Road'; Golddigga 'Shimmer Gold';
Nails Inc 'Chelsea Physic Garden'; Essie 'Aruba Blue'; Barry M 'Black';
Barry M 'Silver Foil'; Nails Inc 'Haymarket'

I started, as ever, with a base coat, I then did 2 coats of 'Kensington Park Road'. Using a large dotting tool I created a long gold section with 'Shimmer Gold', once that was dry I used a medium sized dotting tool to add a circular dot in 'Chelsea Physic Garden' followed by a smaller dot of 'Aruba Blue'. Using a thin nail art brush I painted on small flicking lines in the Chelsea and Aruba blue colours, as well as the 'Silver foil', 'Haymarket' and used the black for detailing strokes. I finished it all off with a coat of fast drying top coat.

Overall I think it looks quite cluttered and messy, but perhaps I'm my own worst critic :D

Not too sure when I will be back on as my daughter goes back to school this week, I have appointments to go to, and at some point I need to transfer all of my files over from my PC to my laptop. I should post something new during the week though.

So, until next time,

S x

(P.S. Yey! Another new Sherlock ep is on tonight :D :D)

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

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