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

Day 4 of 33DC - Tribal

Hello peardrops

I'm a smidgen late with this one but I'm sure you'll forgive me as I was off having a glorious break with my family. So...

I think I may have gone awry with this one.  Most of the challenge responses I have seen have been geometric tribal patterns over a vast array of colours - I went with something that screamed tribal at me: Dreamcatchers.

Dreamcatchers originated with the Ojibwe people a First Nation Native American people from the area of north Mexico they because a worldwide trinket in the 60s and 70s and are now hung up in dorm rooms the world over!  They are supposed to be made from a willow hoop strung to look like a spider's web and then decorated with sacred beads and feathers. The ones on my nails are not sacred, I just think they're pretty to look at.

For this mani I used a base of BM's Turquoise, BM's black art pen and BM's Blood orange and gold foil for the dots and I also used a few small studs from Born Pretty. On my ring and pinkie fingers the glitter topper is Copper Fields by Emily de Molly.  And here it is!

Check out the other responses below.

See you tomorrow!

N

Day 2 of the 33DC - Most used colour

Hello gumdrops

Well it's a Wednesday so it's challenge day.

Today's challenge courtesy of the 33DC that The Crumpet is running is artwork featuring your most used polish.

My most used polish is Utopia from Model's Own - it's a fantastic base for most artwork and doubles as a lovely colour in it's own right for work or anything lowkey.  I was just going to have her on my nails with an accent of glitter (Barry M's Rose Quartz) but I'm now pathologically incapable of just having a plain colour so I chucked some dots on there using BM's Matte White. So now I've got a quirky subtle take on a frenchie.

And here we go:

I'll love and leave you until Friday.

See below for some more pretty pretty art.

N

Day 1 of 33DC - Dotticure

Hello cupcakes!

Oh my, I think I've bitten off more than I can chew. I've decided to try to take part in the 33DC from The Crumpet. There will be three manis a week posted on Monday, Tuesday and Friday from now until 6th December (eek!) So day one is a simple dot manicure.

I used Rimmel's Cranberry Zest and OPI's French Quarter for your Thoughts finished of with the usual Seche Vite. To produce a Dotty skittle mani.

I really, really liked how the flowers turned out. I don't think I've done a flower with dotting tools like this before and the others were just me playing around with the tools that I had to hand.

Have a look see below at how the talented Crumpet's tarts got on with day 1

N

My Enchantmint skittle

Hello Cupcakes,

Whilst my nails were in a horrendous state I still bought nail polishes and one of those was the most gorgeous mint green holo from Lilypadlaquer called My Enchantmint from Sally Magpies (run don't walk she has all manner of indie goodies). Now that I have lush long (fake) nails I busted this out last night to do a skittle that I'd had in mind for a while now.

In addition to my new love I also used Emily de Molly's Copper fields, Rimmel's Sky High and Kiko 381. Top and tailed by Rejuvicote base coat and Seche Vite quick dry top coat.

Lookie what came out:

I used dotting tools, striping tape and scotch tape cut with craft scissors for the thumb, index and pinkie finger.  The middle finger is free handed using a tutorial by the inestimable Crumpet which can be found here. Mine aren't as good as hers (obviously) but I hopefully will get better with practice.

And I just wanted to draw your attention to my ring finger:

This was simply My Enchantmint topped with a coat of Copper Fields from Emily de Molly. Which is my absolute favourite glitter topper of all time - it's the one that got me into glitters in a big way.  Just look at those gorgeous ladies together.  This photo whilst pretty does not do them justice at all - you should see them in the sunlight or even in person.

I also made a decal last night so that might feature in my next post.

See you soon!

N

An InLinkz Link-up

May Tri-Colour Challenge

Hello bonbons!

It's the first day of the tri-colour challenge and I had every intention of seeing this one through but disaster has struck and my camera has given up the ghost with pictures from my last five manicures on them (including a mani I did for the AIS weekly challenge this week). I have one set of pictures for the first day of the The Crumpet's tri-colour challenge so I'll crack on with that for now but it may be radio silence for a bit whilst I sort myself out.

As usual the challenge is to do four manicures using three colours selected on a monthly basis. For May the colours were red, blue and grey.  You must use two of the three in every mani. You can use black, white, gold, silver and glitter in your manicures.

Based on my hideous selection last month I deliberated a bit more this month and decided to make my life easier by selecting colours that were similar in depth and opacity.  I've gone for OPI's French Quarter for your Thoughts, Barry M's Blackberry from the Gelly range and Barry M's Raspberry for my colours.

At the same time as preparing for this manicure I received my dotting tools in the nail mail and went a bit dot happy.  The base coat is French Quarter for your thoughts and then I've dotted randomly in different sizes in Raspberry and Blackberry and Barry M's silver foil.

That's it for today! Hopefully I'm not gone too long otherwise you may eventually be subjected to dodgy pictures from my mobile :D

Please check out what the other Crumpet's Nail Tarts got up to for day one of this challenge (links below)

N

Nail Art: Interlocking dots

Hello my little battenburgs!

As I mentioned in my last post I got some new dotting tools in the post so for the last couple of manis I've gone a bit dot!happy and with the gorgeous shades from Barry M in their Gelly shine range a scheme came to me that I had to do immediately. I used these polishes (only 308 is from the regular range)

and my trusty dotting tools to get this:

As always if you haven't seen a tecnique on this blog before it's because it's my first time doing it and it's very new to me.  Even given that I quite liked this manicure.  It was coloured without being as in-your-face as the neon one and I liked the that I managed to get my dots on the accent nail better than the neon one.

Now I'm just scouring the internet for more inspiration for dotting tool madness!

Have a butchers below at what the other lovely British Bloggers are up to this week.

N

Neon-Geometric-Tastic!

Hello butterflies!

Before I started reading nail blogs and started my own there is quite literally no way I would have worn neon colours especially not the two that I've worn together for this mani.

I have some new dotting tools and that along with the colours gave me a mani that I can't quit staring at and that I've got a few compliments on.  I used two LA Colours: Mint Green and Electra and a trusty white from the Bazmeister.

So with no more ado:

Check out what the other talented British Nail Bloggers have been getting up to this week!

N