Taped Pastel Nails

I quite liked how these nails turned out, and they were pretty simple to achieve. I thought I would use some spring type pastels, to try to encourage the spring to actually happen but alas, no such luck. It even snowed this week, who'd have thought it's nearly April?! Anyway onto the nails.

What I used - 

• Constance Carroll Base Coat and Nail Hardener
• 17 Lasting Fix in Sherbert Lemon
• Constance Carroll Diamond Gloss in 365 Pastel Green (it's blue though really..)
• Collection 2000 Frosted Nail Polish in 183
• 17 Slicker Quicker Colour in Navy Glint
• NYC Top Coat in Grand Central Station
• Masking Tape

To start off I painted my nails with base coat and hardener, and left to dry. I then painted on random blobs of my pastel colours, just using the nail polish brushes, and this is how it looked at this stage -

I quite liked them just like this, I like the yellow more than I expected too :). While I was waiting for this to dry completely, I cut thin strips of masking tape, and lined them all up ready for the next step. For this step, I just placed the masking tape on my nails in various directions/ patterns, and painted over the lot with 17 Navy Glint. I removed the tape while the polish was still wet, and left the design to dry for a while before finishing with my topcoat. Here is the finished look -

I'm not sure if I preferred these nails before or after the final colour was added! I quite like both ways. The lines of the Navy Glint aren't as neat as I'd have liked, but the slightly wavey lines grew on me in a design that doesn't need to be perfect. If I did this again, I would try using striping tape instead perhaps, I don't think I cut the masking tape quite thin enough.

Anyway, I hope you like these nails :) the next post I've got for you is probably my favourite manicure to date.

Until next time, S x

The Owl and the... Butterfly?

A manicure involving owls has been a long time coming, Owls were my favourite animal even as a very small kid, so I have been overjoyed ever since they came into fashion, and it's now so easy to get owls of any kind! I have owly socks, handbag and hat to name but a few. Anyway, I now have owly nails!! I only did owls as accent nails, as they were a tiny bit fiddly and I didn't have much time, but I thought the rest of the manicure needed something more, so sponged on tips on the rest of my nails, and added some fimo cane slices to my thumb nails :)

What I Used - 

• Basecoat and Hardener by Constance Carroll
• 17 Quicker Slicker Colour in Copper
• 17 Quicker Slicker Colour in Peacock
• 17 Lasting Fix in Sherbert Lemon
• NYC Topcoat in Grand Central Station
• Butterfly fimo cane
• A dotting tool and nail art brush.

to achieve this design, I started off by applying my base coat and hardener, and allowed to dry before painting all of my nails in Copper. 1 thick coat was sufficient for good coverage. I then started working on the owls, using a dotting tool with Peacock for his eyes, a nail art brush with Peacock for his wings, and a smaller dotting tool with Sherbert Lemon and Copper for his feathers, eyes, beak and claws. I then sponged on tips in Peacock on all the rest of my nails, and waited for it to dry before applying top coat. I finely sliced 6 butterflies from my fimo cane (this was fiddley, but ; got there in the end) and stuck them onto my thumbnails using more top coat, and sealing in with 2 thick layers of topcoat. Here is the finished look -

 I really like both the Copper and the Peacock, and the fast drying is really impressive, so I'm happy I bought these, and looking forward to using the other colours from the Quicker Slicker range. I also really like the little fimo canes, it wasn't as difficult as I had imagined to get sufficiently thin slices, and the definitely liven up the rest of the manicure a bit! I have a few other owl related designs I am looking forward to trying not that I am getting a little more confident with my free hand skills.

Blog you soon! S x

A Few New Bits!

Just a quick post today to show you the new polishes I couldn't resist in Boots yesterday! Tomorrow there should be a post of a manicure featuring 2 of them, a couple of owls, and 6 butterflies... Exciting!

If this post is poorly structured in any way, I can only apologise, I have just finished of a bottle of wine to myself. Really wanted to share this post today though, so you can see the owls tomorrow :). I only went in Boots to buy some nail glue for attaching my 3D bows, but then made the mistake of looking at the polishes too, and of course had to buy 4.

The 4 I chose are from the seventeen Quicker Slicker Colour range, they just looked really interesting in the bottle and I wanted to try them out! I chose Potion, Peacock, Navy Glint and Copper, and here they are -

Potion

Copper

Navy Glint

Peacock

These are all just one coat, as they say they are "a single coat high shine nail colour, touch dry in less than 50 seconds" and they do live up to that. You do need quite a thick coat, my coat of copper in the above picture could have been thicker, but one coat is enough, and they do indeed dry very quickly.

I like all of these colours, and all of them are probably interesting enough to wear just by itself, even for me! So these will be my go to for when I need a fast manicure! The potion is a particularly interesting one, it has definite hints of green in certain lights, but is otherwise a really pretty gold.

In my next post, I will be showing you Copper and Peacock in action :)

Until then, S x

Matte Experiments!

As the title suggests, this post is going to be about the effect a matte topcoat has on different colours and finishes of nail polish :) I tried glittery, metallic and holographic out this time, and now it's time to share the results with you :)

My first little experiment was just too see how the matte top coat would alter the No7 Star Showers with Vivid Violet tips that I was already wearing, just before I took it off to do a whole new manicure. This is how it looked over my previous manicure, one left glossy for comparison -

As you can see I applied the matte topcoat (Rimmel Lycra Pro in Matte Finish Mattifying Top Coat is the one I have used throughout this post) and it did make quite a big difference, although I definitely prefer the glossy look for the Star Showers, really lets the different coloured glitters shine through :).

Rather than just doing 5 different colours and mattifying them, I decided to start with a black base - for which I used w7 Black - and then use some striping tape to apply my colours over the black, here is what they looked like without top coat -

I made this a little hard for myself, by doing the colours on different nails on each hand! The ring fingers are easy, that is Revlon in Radient - which I adore. 17 Holo in Silver is seen on my thumb in the top picture, and index finger in the bottom picture. On my index finger on top (thumb bottom pic) we have No7 in Milan, another definite favourite of mine. The middle finger of the top pic and pinky of the bottom are Essie's Blue Rhapsody, finally my pinky on top/middle on bottom is Constance Carroll Diamond Gloss in Diamond.

I then applied my Matte top coat, and here are the results -

I didn't like the effect of the matte over the holographic nail polish, it just made it a somewhat boring pale grey colour. I liked the effect of the matte over Milan, and I actually really liked the effect over the glitter, it seems taking away the glossy finish makes the glitter pieces stand out a bit more. I quite liked it over the silver too, but didn't think it made much of an improvement to the Essie metallic blue - but I love that one as it is anyway!

I love the matte topcoat, and it is a surefire way to make even the simplest of manicures a bit more interesting, though it does have its downfalls too - it doesn't dry very fast, and chips a lot quicker than my other topcoats of choice.

A friend asked me to do this post, so I hope that it has been informative for her, and anyone else :)

Thanks for reading, S x

Vivid Star Showered in Glass

This post isn't as exciting as the title sounds I'm afraid! I was having trouble thinking of a title, so combined the names of the polishes I used - the glass part comes from the glass microbeads I used for my accent nails.

What I Used - 

• Base Coat and Hardener by Constance Carroll
• No7 Stay Perfect in Vivid Violet
• No7 Stay Perfect in Star Shower
• NYC In A New York Minute Top Coat in Grand Central Station no 202
• Glass microbeads (originally bought for card making)

I started off by applying my base coat and hardener, and allowing to dry, before applying 3 coats of No7 Star Shower. When my base colour was completely dry, I used masking tape to tape off my tips, and applied 2 thin coats of No7 Miracle Mauve on the tips only. I applied a thick coat of topcoat onto my ring fingernails, before pouring my glass microbeads over the top and patting them down gently. I then sealed in the whole lot with a coat of NYC top coat - which is probably my favourite top coat now. Here is how the finished design looked -

 

I liked how this manicure turned out, and the effect of the microbeads (and even though I was constantly playing with them, they lasted for 3 days no problem) I think I will only be using microbeads for accent nails though, they aren't easy to remove! I love both of these No7 polishes, the Star Shower seems to have super fine glitter of all sorts of colour hiding in there!

Much love, S x

Epic Nail Fail

This is a fine example of a manicure that did not go well at all, I took a couple pictures of it so I could share with you at least some of the failures in this journey as well as my triumphs! Usually when I don't like a manicure I take it off straight away without thinking to photograph it, but this one was so bad I had to share it!

After buying Sally Hansen Diamond Strength in Platinum, I did a bit of reading about it when I got home, and read that it looks really good over black, so my idea was Platinum as my base colour, black french tips, then another coat of platinum over the whole lot. Now you'll have to excuse these photos, my cuticles are very messy, but there was no point getting the acetone out to clean up the edges when I had removed the whole lot before it was even dry. The black I used was w7 black, which was my first error, as it is a very thick polish, and the tips which I freehanded just came our really lumpy, anyway, here is what it looked like before the top coat of platinum -

Which isn't too bad - if I had used a thinner black nail polish and just left it at this with a top coat, it probably would have been quite nice, but here is what it looked like after the 2nd coat of Platinum -

Which was not at all what I was hoping for, and is quite hideous! Won't be trying this look again hehe, and I am still yet to find a way to use the sally hansen polish that might result in a look that I would like to wear!

Anyway, there you have it. The next post will contain some much prettier nails :)

Bye for now, S x

Stripes and Sparkles

The nails I am sharing with you today, are definitely my proudest achievement to date, not least because someone asked me who did my nails! I felt quite pleased with myself that the answer was I did them.

I was super excited to try out some of the new nail art goodies I bought, and decided to have a go with the striping tape. Half way through doing these nails, I also decided to add some of my pretty gems too :).

What I Used -  

• 17 High Gloss in Miami
• NYC Pinstripe White 134
• w7 Black 28
• NYC Top Coat Grand Central Station
• Striping tape
• Nail gems

To achieve this look I started off by painting all of my nails pink - I later made a mistake on my left hand middle finger which had to be removed, so I painted that nail white to mix it up a bit! After the base colour was completely dry, I started applying striping tape to my nails horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, leaving each middle finger with no stripes. I then painted over the striping tape with either black or white nail polish, removing the tape immediately to get nice crisp lines - this worked on all nails except my right hand little finger, where I accidentally touched the tape back down onto the wet white polish. I then added either pink or silver gems to my middle finger and thumb nails, to form a flower shape, and then topcoated the lot. Here is the finished result -

Do you love them as much as I did? I was worried that I would pick the gems off, but they actually stayed put for 3 days, and then only came off on one nail which I re-did. I wore this manicure for about 5 days before it chipped too much, and I got many compliments :) The striping tape was quite fiddly to place, and having to wait for each coat to dry completely meant that this manicure took nearly 3 hours to achieve, so won't be a regular occurrence! However, it was definitely worth it, and I look forward to using both striping tape and the gems a lot in the future :)

My next post will likely be an epic nail fail that occurred, since I called this blog my journey in nails, it seems only right that I show you the bad as well as the good - even if I did take this one off before it was even dried, I assure you, it's not pretty!

Mwah, S x

Nail Art Supplies

A friend of mine posted a picture on facebook of a super cute manicure she created using little 3D bows, so straight away, I decided to order some and try this look out for myself. Whilst looking for the little bows, I got slightly carried away, and also bought 3000 gems, 50 fimo canes and 10 rolls of striping tape to experiment with! Just thought I'd show you my new goodies -

Bows

I think they are slightly bigger than the ones my friend used, but I'm sure I can create something cute with them!

Gems

I love these, and there are so many! Lot's of scope to create lots of different designs with these, how exciting!

Fimo Canes

There are lots of really cute ones in this selection, and the razor was included for free. I am slightly doubtful of my ability to slice the canes thinly enough, I will have to practice on the less cute canes!

Striping Tape

The rolls are somewhat smaller than I expected for some reason, never having bought striping tape before. 10 rolls were included, all in different colours, and all 1mm thickness I believe. The colours are really cute, and a good variety, however I'm not sure how useful that would be to me as I only intend to use them to paint over with nail polish - they would not last long if I left the stripes stuck to my nails that's for sure!

Anyway, that's about all I think! I have a really cute mani to share with you soon, that I created using the striping tape and gems.

Mwah, S x

Glittery Gradient

In today's post I will show you some nails a did for a good friend. We had a little trouble deciding what sort of design to do, so we looked through my photo's on my phone, and my gradient manicure was the one that caught Kim's eye, so I recreated it on her nails, with a little added glitter :)

I'm not going to go into the details too much, as it is just a recreation of this manicure, with a little added glitter for good measure :) I used the same nail polishes as I did for my gradient, and the glitter I used was BarryM's Pink Sapphire Glitter no 352. Here is the finished design -

She was happy with the design so I was too :) I think if anything, they probably came out slightly better than my last attempt, and I really like the glittery accent nails, they don't distract from the design too much, and pull the gradient together a little.

Since seeing these nails, another friend has asked me to do hers, so hopefully there will be more unfamiliar hands making an appearance soon! It's so nice to do other peoples nails, and it's all good practice :)

Bye for now, S x

Stamped Metallic Skittles

Hi all, again sorry for the infrequent posts, my life has suddenly become quite busy since moving back to Devon! That and it's so difficult to motivate myself to trawl through the hundreds of photo's I've got to decide which ones to show you. I do have a couple of hours this evening though, so I have got my music on, and am getting down to the business of sorting my photo's! I have a few mani's that I am particularly excited to show you, so hopefully those will be making an appearance soon.

This manicure was an experimental one really, after I got all those new polishes I shared with you in my previous 2 posts, I was eager to see how the black and the white would stamp. I was also eager to wear ALL of the gorgeous Essie metallics too, so I have a different colour metallic polish on each finger, with some little salamanders stamped on in black and white.

What I used -    

• Essie Blue Rhapsody
• Essie No Place Like Chrome
• Essie Penny Talk
• Essie Good As Gold
• Essie Nothing Else Metals
• w7 Black no 28
• NYC Pinstripe White
• NYC Top Coat Grand Central Station no 202
• Bundle Monster Stamping Plate BM15

And here is how the manicure turned out -

Cute huh? The white salamanders don't show up that great, purely because white isn't best suited to the base colours used, but it was still nice to stamp with :) I need to practice my stamping technique, I found it quite difficult to pick up the whole salamander, his tail was often left behind so I had to place him strategically on a couple of nails! I love all of these polishes, especially since I got them so cheap. I am looking forward to trying out stamping using the metallics too.

Until next time, S x

Shiny New Things! Part Two

As promised, here is the second part showing you the rest of the new additions to my nail polish family (that's right,  family heehee). I have been longing to try out Essie nail polish for sometime now, but at nearly £8 a bottle I just couldn't justify it... Until finding some of last seasons polishes at £3 a bottle in The Original Factory Shop! I bought every single colour they had, even a bright orange that I have no idea how I'm going to use! It was just an opportunity too good to miss.

After getting home with my new polishes, I decided to do a bit of reading about what I had bought (something I usually do beforehand, but it was so spur of the moment). I am so glad I had bought these polishes before I read what other people had to say about them, as it wasn't very positive, so I probably wouldn't have bought them. Which would have been a shame, as I LOVE them! The polishes that were on offer were the Essie Mirror Metallics 2012 collection -

From left to right; No Place Like Chrome, Blue Rhapsody, Nothing Else Metals, Penny Talk and Good As Gold. Here is what they looked like on my nails -

I cannot emphasise enough how much I love these, I don't have many metallic polishes in my collection, and these are just perfect. I have read a lot of comments saying that the formula was poor, and really streaky, but my nails pictured above was just one coat, it went on like a dream, and I am very happy with the finish - this doesn't even have a top coat! Also it dries in seconds, literally, it is perfect. I am super excited to try out stamping with it too, since it gives such an opaque effect with just one coat. Here is a closer look at the colours -

Above is Blue Rhapsody, a brilliant Metallic blue. Next is Nothing Else Metals, which has a girly pink/lilac colour -

The next polish is a metallic silver, called No Place Like Chrome, it is now my favourite silver in my collection -

Next we have a copper toned polish called Penny Talk, it is beautiful with a pinkish bronze colour, and is unlike any colour I have seen before. It is probably my favourite of the collection, although Blue Rhapsody is a very close second! Anyway, here is it -

The final polish is Good As Gold, which is a subtle metallic gold -

Pretty huh? I'm sure you can tell how excited I am about these polishes, they will be making an appearance again very soon!

The last new addition is a bit of a random one, I just found it all by itself, it is another Essie, in Orange, It's Obvious, which is a really rich reddish orange that I can't wait to try out... I just need to find the right occasion or nail art design! Here it is -

Definitely a different one for my collection! I am immediately thinking back to my autumn leaf mani of last year, the orange I used then didn't show up too well, I'm sure this one would, perhaps I will recreate my design this autumn using this Orange - the ideas are forming up already :).

Anyway, I really hope this kind of post is interesting to you, as they actually take ages! I just like to share my excitement :) I will soon be sharing some actual nail art with you though, if you are getting bored of reading about my shopping!

Much love, S x