Day 5 - 33DC: Mexican

Hola lovelies,

It's the fifth day of the challenge and today's prompt is Mexican.  In a fit of unoriginality, I've gone with sugar skulls.  I had a fun if long time doing these and I've used a whole bunch of nail polishes:

Base: BM's Matte White and Black art pen
Colours: BM's Cyan Blue, Bright Purple, Pomegranate, Model's Own Pukka Purple, CG'sTurned Up Turquoise and Sinful Colours Let's Meet.

And here it is:

These babies are not easy to do but I think I just about managed to pull it off.

N

TPC days 3 and 4: Tequila sunrise (and some truly dodgy stripes)

Hello Butterflies!

What a mare! I haven't been able to get onto blogger for two days which meant that I missed the deadline to post my TPC day 3 mani (I still cheekily uploaded it to The Crumpet's FB group).

So you get two for the price of one. This post may be a bit picture heavy because two manis. You know the rules by now - 4 manis, 3 colours, at least 2 colours per mani.

Here's TPC day 3 (which I hate, by the way, but I ran out of time)

So this is just a base of W7's Mojito, stripes of Sinful Colours Unicorn, Barry M's white nail art pen and Model's Own silver nail art pen. It's all freehand (as you can tell). And it's all hideous - which again it down to my choice of polishes, specifically the green.  I'd chosen the green because it worked for two of my four.

Enough of that - let's get onto my TPC day 4 mani that I actually really like.

This one is using CG's Infra-red and Sinful Colours Unicorn. The stamp is from the MoYou Pro09 plate using Konad black (which I <3).

That's me done for today. See you soon!

N

TPC Day 2 - Red, Gold and Green (Karma Chameleon)

Hi cuties,

It's day two of TPC for August (and I'm just a smidgen late - I figure it's still Thursday, somewhere, right?).

You know the drill. Four manis, three colours, last two Tues and Thurs in the month. I've done another technique that I've never tried before - making my own decals. It turned out way better than I thought and the only tricky part is the application of those suckers. I used a lot of top coat and some judicious application of acetone to get those babies to sit OK.

My image is taken from the Tropical Holiday plate of the Cheeky Jumbo plates stamped with Konad Black polish and coloured in with my three colours. And this is what I got.

I've used Barry M's Matte White for my thumb, middle and ring finger with a green rhinestone as detail.

And here's a close-up of the decal that I'm so incredibly proud of!

See you next Tuesday!

N

TCP Day 1 - It's Written in the Stars (in red, yellow and green)

Hello Sweetpeas

Another month and another bash at the TCP challenge run by The Crumpet.  For those that don't know the rules are, four manicures, three colour polishes in the last two Tuesdays and Thursdays of the month. At least one mani has to have all three colours and all of the manis have to have two.  The Crumpet isn't completely horrible and she also allows the use of black, white, gold, silver and glitter. This month's colours are red, yellow and green.

The polishes I've used are CG's Infra-Red holo polish, W7's Mojito and Sinful Colours Unicorn. I also used the nail art pen from Barry M (OMG <3 them!) My base coats were Duri Rejuvacote and then a a coat of Sally Hansen Acrylic Nail Gel to smooth the lumps and bumps whilst my fakies grow out and top coat Seche Vite.

I've loved the galaxy nails that I've seen about recently and decided to have a bash at them myself with the colour palette available. I quite liked the way they turned out but probably could have used something in the blue area to balance them out.  And I added a couple of stars in with the nail art pen, but again they could have done with being blueish.

See you on Thursday!

N

Space Invaders!

Hi lovelies,

This is another one from the archive as I desperately try to get my new camera to take true colour pictures and not the hot mess it's currently displaying my manicure as. A girl could cry.

Now for the manicure below I used a plate that I specifically bought the cheeky set for: CH46.

Base coat: Sally Hansen miracle grow
Base colour: 2 coats of China Glaze's Liquid Leather
Stamping colours (thumb to pinkie): Kiko 625, 620, 623, Barry M Silver Foil, Kiko 618
Top coat: Fast dry top coat by CG

I really liked this manicure and couldn't stop staring at it for the 36 hours I managed to keep it unchipped.  Yeppers, I'm still searching for that elusive non-chipping formula.

Check out what the other glorious British Nail Bloggers have been getting up to in my absence.

See you soon!

 

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A Song of Ice and Fire inspired mani

Hello dears!

Monday, 1st April saw the premiere of the third season of Game of Thrones.  I thought I'd do a manicure inspired by the series as these books are incredibly dear to my heart.

I just went with the simplest theme of ice and fire (I'll leave the sigils to more talented people than I).

All nails have a base coat of GOSH matt top coat and two coats of China Glaze's fast drying top coat.

On my thumb, middle and pinky finger I have:
1st coat: Model's Own Snow White
Ombre: Model's Own Blueberry Muffin, Barry M's Hi Jelly Shine Blueberry and China Glaze Fancy Pants
Stamping: Art Deco White Stamping polish
Highlight: You're a Star by Nicole by O.P.I.

On my forefinger and ring finger I have:
1st coat: Rimmel's 405 Fantasy Minerals range
Flames: Rimmel's 324 Fever, Unnamed orange colour from Front Cover and a Yellow stamping polish from MoYou

The gradient isn't a new technique to me but the flames are.  This hadn't turned out as well as I'd had hoped but I was quite eager to give the flames technique a go and hopefully I'll get better.

Next year hopefully I'll be able to be more arty.

Have you done a manicure inspired by books or a film or telly series.  I'd love to see them.

N

P.S. As requested a closer close-up of the nails.  (I think they probably look better from a little bit further away :p)

China Glaze: Avant Garden

Needed to get a couple from the new Avant Garden collection from China Glaze as they are so very stunning.  I bought Life is Rosy (a deep rose crème) and Fancy Pants (a deep blue with pink and gold shimmery bits). 

First up I tried Life is Rosy.  The coverage is really very good.  It goes on well in one coat and doesn't need a second unless (like me) you feel naked without one. I love the colour, I really do but something just doesn't work with my skin tone, I think.  So I slapped on Disco Gold from Rimmel from their Rock your Colour line. Still not sure about Life is Rosy which is disappointing because it really is a pretty pink.  I'm going to keep persevering with it in nail art, though to see if just being a highlight colour works.

Anyway, the proof of the pudding and all that:

and in slightly better light:

What do you think? Yay or nay?

Thanks for stopping by.

N

Up next: A manicure inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire in honour of the premier of the third season on Sky on 1st April.

China Glaze: Black Diamond + added stamping!

I fancied something simple and elegant so decided to go with a dark background and a pink/silver stamp.

I used China Glaze's Black Diamond over a coat of CG's Liquid Leather.  I had tried to use the Black Diamond on its own but it was much too sheer and even with three coats it didn't look like it had a lot of depth to it.  So I nixed that one and put one coat over one coat of Liquid Leather. 

This is what it looked like without the stamp:

I personally think it's absolutely gorgeous.  A lovely black creme but with miniscule shimmery bits that almost takes it to an ultra dark grey.

I covered that with a top coat of CG's fast dry top coat (which I love but could do with someone chiming in on whether seche vite is worth the extra cost for a better product?).

And because I can't leave a good mani alone I wanted to put some stamps on top. Last week I received the Fairy Set from Gals Cosmetics and used two small images (from GA30 and GA38) overlapping each other on the tip of the nail with a pink foil effect nail polish from Beauty UK. And this is the result:

I really like this.  It's quite subtle until the light hits and then just lovely and shimmery.

N

Up next: Avant Garden with something extra!