Hello! Firstly - aarghh, my nails! :-( They're short! I snapped my middle nail today at work, diagonally down. I tried to keep as much of the length as possible when I sorted it out but it is noticeably shorter. Had to make the other nails match, so meh, shortness.
So, the challenge for this week was Ombre. I learnt from my fellow challenge-taker Naileymabob's blog post for this weeks challenge that Ombre nails are not the same thing as Gradient nails. News to me! I have got ombre hair at the moment, which I could also call gradient hair - one colour fading into another. But apparently, in the nail art world, Ombre nails means using a different colour on each nail, from the same colour-group, getting darker/lighter/from pink to purple etc. So like a gradient, but across the entire hand.
Sooo I picked 5 of my gelly polishes that are all bright orange/pink/red and tried to order them correctly! I used, from left to right:
Grapefruit,
Papaya,
Mango,
Passionfruit &
Pomegranate.
A full fruit-salad of delicious colours! I love all of these shades, but on this mani I especially like the three darker colours. They seem to be more gelly-like so apply more smoothly than the paler colours. The Passionfruit especially looks absolutely yummy. Not sure how "ombre" they look - I don't know if the shades should have been more similar. But I wanted to use polishes all from the same brand so they'd look the same, and these were the samey-est gellys I had!
I might doodle something over this with the black and white pens, but I quite like it simple and shiny for the moment. I'll see how I feel tomorrow!
X
Quick post today. One of my gems fell off my previous mani and the flocking powder had gone a bit sparse and gross after I got it wet a few times, so I wanted it all off!
I decided to use my pretty pale green yogurt polish again, this time over grey. The base the glitter is suspended in is so sheer, you can hardly see the green in it so it could go over any colour. I love this subtle mix of pale pink and pale blue chunky glitter amongst tiny blue glitter.
This is two coats of Sally Hansen's Dorien Grey and one coat of the yogurt polish (bottle shot in previous post) :-)
I've created a mixed mint manicure for tonight! This was basically because I wanted to try out my new flocking powder set, AND my new yogurt polishes from Born Pretty.
The flocking set is a Nail Rock Kit, and I got it for my birthday. It has pale green varnish/flocking powder, and three different types of studs - diamante type ones, pearl teardrops and big pearl bows. I also got a purple set that has little purple flowers instead of studs. So much stuff to use on my nails! Also I've never used flocking powder before, as I wasn't sure what I thought about it! But really wanted to try out my new stuff.
All of my nails have a base coat of Nail Envy, then two coats of w7's Spearmint.Then, from thumb to little finger, I have:
1. flecks using my new striper polishes (see previous post)
2. One coat (so much glitter!!!) of Born Pretty's Yogurt Polish #3.
3. studs from the green flocking powder Nail Rock kit
4. flocking powder!! Feels really weird, but better than I thought. Kind of like felt!
5. One coat (not so much glitter, but lovely subtle mix) of Born Pretty's Yogurt Polish #9.
I like the look of these, they're a subtle colour and all match because of the colour scheme despite the different methods used on each nail. Not sure what reaction I will get at work - I know they're a pale colour but they're very noticeable! Maybe I'll go back to plain (if I possibly can!!) for Monday.
New nails again! I did like my sunset gradient, but the red had got all pressed into my cuticles and I couldn't get it to come out properly without messing up the rest of my nails, so I got annoyed and took it all off! I created these nails with some new goodies bought for me by my fab boyfriend. He kept getting parcels delivered to the house and I joked that I never got any parcels, so he went online and ordered me some random nail stuff! Here's what I got, and there's still another parcel to come apparently - woo!
These are lots of colours that have thin striper brushes. I'm not sure if it's actually polish or paint, because it smells weird! But the colours are fab. I used the brightest ones to create these stripes, and tried to keep it random. The base is Barry M's Lychee, and it's topped with Sally Hansen Insta-dri, as usual.
I love these striper polishes way more than I thought I would, they are really vibrant colours and go on really well. The only annoying thing is that sometimes while you're 'striping', a blob will drop off the other end of the brush. This happened with the yellow - see the base of my middle finger (tried to clean it up as best I could!)
These nails were kind of inspired by Nailasaurus' waterfall manicures, although her stripes start from the base but I thought it's be easier to have them going from the tip! I only really did it to have a play with my new things, but I've already had several people tell me they like them, which is fab!
P.S - look at my sad short thumbnail :-(
Quick post because I've stayed up about two hours later than I should have, "playing nails"! I'm at work early in the morning so I'll just post a quick pic. This is another three-colour gradient, using Barry M gellys again, sponged on over white and top-coated! :-)
Hello!
I've wanted to do this kind of design for a while now, and picked this week to do it because of this week's challenge theme - Ugly Bug Ball! These are supposed to be butterfly-wing nails. Not sure how much they look like wings! This was quite a complicated design to try and replicate and I don't know if I've done it very well :-S
I started off by creating a three-colour gradient. Over a base of white, I sponged on purple (Barry M Prickly Pear) blue (Barry M Blueberry) and green (W7 Spearmint). Here's the gradient on it's own - I like how subtle it looked and nearly didn't add anything to it!
The butterfly-wing design is created by (obviously) using the Barry M black + white pens, and a coat of Claire's holo glitter over the top.
Hello!
Today's nails are inspired by (which means totally copied from) the talented Claire over at Nuthin' But A Nail Thing. I only recently saw this beautiful mani that she did back in April, and immediately wanted to give it a go. I'm rubbish at coming up with tribal designs myself, I much prefer to copy patterns so I know they're going to work out.
Unfortunately I had to rush this a bit so it isn't as neat as I could have done :-( I did it before going to work.
I loooove this yellow! It's Barry M's Summer Limited Edition polish (the one with the funky lid) and it's sooo bright. I used two coats without a white base. I then used the black, white and pink nail-art pens (will I ever get tired of these? NO <3 ) to draw on the design. It's all sealed in with a topcoat.
Weirdly, I noticed at work that the patterned tips are tinged yellow if you look closely. I dunno if this happened when I put on the topcoat, or whether the black/pink/white isn't thick enough and it's showing through? Anyway, it's annoying and making me want to take it off, even though it looks fine!
I had a fab day yesterday seeing some of my friends, we went to see Mamma Mia in London and we all had funky nails for the occasion! Kathie's are the blue/black crackle and are nail wraps! And Bob's are the neon splatter. So colourful! :-)
