Stamping Attempt and New Stuff!

Hi all, just a brief post for now, I have so many photos to crop and show you all, but not tonight as I am too tired! I found a few bargains today that I simply could not resist, so in the near future there will be a post showing you my shiny new nail polishes! And I mean shiny :)

For now though, I will show you the alteration I made to my gradient from last time, mainly just to practice my stamping and see what the results were like, but it turned out quite nice so I kept it for a day anyway. As I said when I first posted this gradient, I did feel like it needed something more, even though it was good by itself. As it was my first attempt at a gradient the colours didn't flow quite as smoothly together as I'd have liked, so I tried to think of something that would fix that.

I decided to stamp an all over nail design in a silver colour - I chose silver as it would give a subtle look over the colours I was wearing. The idea was mainly to complete the design rather than add a new design and I think it worked quite well at this. It was a really difficult look to capture in a photo, but hopefully you can see that the pattern distracts from the slight flaws in my gradient, without taking over the whole look. Here is how it turned out -

Again, sorry about the rubbish photos, I really need to find myself a photographer! All in all I really liked how this turned out, the silver was a very subtle look, but I think it did work to make the design feel more complete :) The silver I used was Constance Carroll Diamond Gloss in 248 Diamond. To see how I achieved the original gradient and the colours I used, the original post is here

Blog you soon, to show you all my exciting new goodies :)

Mwah, S x

First Gradient Nails

I have been meaning to try gradient nails for a while now. I have seen that there are loads of different techniques people use to do gradient nails, but I tend to prefer the sponged look. Here is what I used-

From left to right -
Collection 2000 Frosted Nail Polish in 297
Collection 2000 Frosted Nail Polish in 183
No7 Stay Perfect in Vivid Violet
Constance Carroll Top Coat
Acetone, for cleaning the edges
Normal household sponge.

To achieve my gradient look, I started off by applying 1 coat of the Collection 2000 in 297, and allowing to dry. I then painted stripes of each of the colours of my gradient onto the end of my piece of sponge, like this -

And just dabbed the gradient on :) I used just my darkest colour on the other end of the sponge, just to add a bit more definition to the very tips of my nails. I finished off with a top coat, cleaned up the edges with my acetone, and here is the finished result -

For a first attempt I'm really happy with how these turned out. I found it quite quick and easy to do, I do feel that maybe it needs something more though, some glitter or stamping perhaps. The lighting isn't brilliant for showing the frosted polishes at their best unfortunately, the middle colour is more noticeable than the pictures show :)

Hope you like them, S x

My Valentines Day Mani

I know, I feel terrible that it has been a month since I last posted, but being in the process of moving, it has just not been practical. My nail things were amongst the first  to get moved to Devon, and since I have been spending most of my time in Bristol sorting out the flat, my nails have been naked for a long time! It has probably been good for them, they were starting to get a faint yellow tinge to them (from my cheap base coat I assume) which has since completely disappeared luckily.

Anyway, all of my nail things have been successfully unpacked, tidied and put away in a somewhat organized fashion, so once again, I have pretty nails!  Of course I had to choose a valentines themed manicure today :) sadly, I am not with my valentine today, but at least I have pretty nails :) and here they are -

The base colour is Revlon in Timeless No 310. The hearts are drawn on using dotting tools, and a 17 Fast Finish nail polish in Knockout Red. I finished this manicure with my No7 Stay Perfect top coat.

I am not 100% happy with how these turned out, I should have learned by now the doing nail art with fast drying nail polish is a big challenge! It was just the colour that I thought would go best with the base colour, and I still think that the colour combination is great. The hearts went a little streaky when I added the top coat too, which is also a mistake that can easily be avoided with a little more patience! Overall though, these are cute, and from a distance I don't notice the little mistakes so I'll keep them for a while :)

Hopefully my blog will be a bit more active soon, I am still not quite done moving, and will be going back to Bristol in the next couple of days to clean the flat, but after the 20th I should be back to doing regular posts again :)

Wishing everyone a beautiful valentines day, with lots of love, S x