Valentines Roses

Earlier today I was thinking I wanted to paint my nails for Valentines day. I knew I wanted roses, but haven't been happy with lots of my roses recently. So I went on Youtube and watched millions of different rose painting tutorials before I began painting, not following any particular tutorial, just using the info I learnt.

I absolutely love how these turned out. 

By far my best roses yet. So happy with them!

I used Barry M Rosehip as the base colour, then painted the roses freehand using acrylic paints and detail brushes from Born Pretty Store.

I literally never want to take these off! Haha!

31DC: Recreate a Favourite Blogger

I can honestly say I don't have one single favourite blogger. There are a handful of favourites. So I spent some time looking through them all to find a mani that I felt like recreating!

In the end I decided on this vintage rose mani by Gianna @NailStorming.

I was really pleased with how this turned out. It is the sort of style that I always wore when I first got into nail art just over a year ago, though it's not a look I wear very often anymore! In fact, on 20/1/14 I created a very similar mani using two of the same polishes which later became my first blog post. If you are interested you can find that here, though I'll warn you now, the photography is horrendous!

I used Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream as the base colour. The spots and stripes were painted with a white Nail Art Pen from Migi Nail Art. For the roses I used several pinks: Sally Hansen Pinch of Punch, Sally Hansen Fuschia Flare, Ciaté Strawberry Milkshake and white acrylic paint as well as Models Own Emerald Green for the leaves.

Why not have a look at some of the others amazing recreation's below:

31DC: Inspired by Pinterest

Today I chose this image to recreate from Pinterest, by blogger Alina Pinuccia.

I love the happiness of it! It's summery and pretty without being too much!

I used Essence That's What I Mint!, Ciaté Celestial, George Natural White and Colour Couture Yellow, I'm not sure what the name is!

31DC: Monochrome

Monochrome nails today!
I have had a grey 'spotty' polish with black matte glitter pieces in for a while. It is from Primark and I havn't even tried it since I bought it around 6 months ago, so I was determined I would use that polish. Other than that I had no plan for this mani when I started out. I just started painting and thought, 'I'll see what I come up with!'.

I then stamped the diamond pattern and the roses using MoYou London Gothic plate 03 and Barry M Black Multiglitter.

The 3D rose, which can be found here was sent to me in a set by Born Pretty Store. They are the perfect size for my nails. Big enough to stand out but small enough that they don't take over my whole nail! You can see the size compared to a hair grip in the picture below. They also sit nice and flat on my nail, reducing the chance of them being pulled off each time I run my hand through my hair!

Remember you can get 10% these using the discount code EHG10.

31DC: Pink and Aqua

Today the prompt was a colour prompt; pink and aqua. This left me with lots of options!

I decided on a freehand floral design. To work with the colours I didn't want it to look too 'serious', so I made the flowers kind of cartoonish/child like.

I used Ciaté Paper Doll for the base, then I painted the flowers using acrylic paint for the outlining and filling in with Sinful Colors Cream Pink, an unnamed Glow in the Dark Primark polish and Sinful Colors Savage. I finished with my usual Essence Quick Dry Topcoat.

Visit the other blogs taking part to see what they have done!

Glow in the Dark by Primark

A few weeks ago I bought two glow in the dark polishes in Primark. One looked yellow in the bottle but was a clear topcoat, the other was blue.
I didn't expect much from these. The blue barely glowed at all, as I expected.
But the clear topcoat was pretty impressive!

Here are my nails in 'normal' light:

I started with a base colour of Rimmel New Romantic. This was followed by a coat of the Glow in the Dark polish. Once all was dry I stamped on top using MoYou London Princess plate 08 and Rimmel Right Royal Red and topcoated with my usual Essence Quick Dry Topcoat.

Now you'll have to excuse the picture quality, photographing glow in the dark nails is so difficult!! I took around 100 pictures and this was the best I got.

But wow, I was amazed when I saw this in the dark! I did not expect it to be so bright! If you want a glow in the dark topcoat on a budget I definitely recommend this! Bargain!

Remembrance Poppies

Here in the UK it is Remembrance Day today. We all buy and wear poppies to remember those who have served and those who have fallen for our country, allowing us to be where we are today. This also raises money for the Royal British Legion who support past servicemen and women.

This year I have painted two mani's for Remembrance Day.

The first is a watercolour mani which I love! Particularly my middle finger (macro above), which I am really proud of!

I used a George polish in Natural White as the base colour then created the watercolour using Rimmel Ready, Steady, GO! and Missguided Missmatch before painting the details of the flowers with acrylic paint.

Here is my second mani. It is very different and creates a darker mood. The 'poppies' are dried flowersfrom the Born Pretty Store and the cross is hand painted using acrylic. The base colour is Nails Inc Glamour Hanover Square which is a lovely colour.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.

Fairytale Nails: Ella

This weeks theme is Fairytale. Of course, I could have just continued down the Disney route, however I wanted to do something a little less obvious.

These nails are based on a book I read to my class at school called Ella. Ella is a ladybird, who lives in Paris. She has two evil wasp stepsisters and she attends a ball, where she loses her glasses. The handsome spider who is holding the ball invites bugs to try on the glasses in an attempt to find her.

Yea, basically its a modern version of the classic fairytale Cinderella, with bugs!

I used Barry M Matte White as a base colour on most fingers, with Rimmel Red, Steady, Go! on my index finger. I then used Barry M Black for the dots. The flowers were done using Rimmel Cupcake Pink, Rimmel Space Dust in Luna Love and an old Limited Edition Barry M Pink, which I don't know the name of! The Eiffel Tower was stamped with a Born Pretty Store stamping plate and a dark silver No.17 polish. All finished off with my favourite topcoat, Essence Quick Dry.

An InLinkz Link-up

Regal Roses

Today I have a mani I have been meaning to post for some time!
This is in fact the mani which was my most popular on Instagram last month, however I never got round to posting it on here, oops!

I used two coats of Essence Do You Speak Love? for the base colour. I then used Barry M Matte White and Ciaté Pillow Fight to paint the Roses before finishing off with the Essence Quick Dry Topcoat.

This is such an amazing topcoat. I have quite a few of the budget brand topcoats and this is by far my favourite. Doesn't smell too bad, goes on nice and smooth, dries quickly and it is super dooper shiny! 

Yorkshire Rose's

Happy Yorkshire Day!
Being from Yorkshire (although not currently living there), I wanted to do some nails to celebrate the occasion!

Of course, it had to be the Yorkshire Rose!

I used acrylic paint to create the white roses and dots on top of H&M's Peachy Girl which I swatched yesterday (Review coming up!).

Excuse the mess on my hands, I had a bit of a fight with the white acrylic!!

The Yorkshire rose's are far from perfect, but I am fairly happy with them, as I have included most of the detail.

Capuccino Roses

Yesterday I didn't have much time to do my nails, yet I wanted them to be pretty. I have used some Born Pretty water decals I've had sitting around for a while as a quick and easy solution!

The base colour is Rimmel Coralicious, with an unnamed Nude Revlon colour on my Index fingers, to match with the roses.

I wasn't sure about these decals. I think it's the colour that put me off. But I actually really like this mani!

They were super easy to put on, however as the roses were rounded on the edges I felt very limited as to where I could place them on my nails.

Here they are with slightly different lighting!

Tropical Leaves

Last week I discovered this lovely website, Print and Pattern. I saved it straight away, knowing it would be great for Nail art inspiration. So today, when I needed help thinking of something to paint I headed here for ideas!

 This is what I came up with! I found the pretty pattern below, which is by Holly Maguire Illustration and loved it so this was my inspiration! Simple to paint without much difficulty, but pretty and summery at the same time!

Here is a close up of the flower:

I painted this completely using polish.

 The white base colour is Barry M Matt White. 

The pink and green are both OPI; Kiss Me I'm Brazilian and AmazON, AmazOFF.

The Yellow is a Sally Hansen Sugar Coat polish in Sweetie.

I really like this! And it's not very often I have so much Green on my nails so it's a nice change!

Red Roses and Dots

Here is my latest mani! I love it so much! Had so many lovely comments on these nails over the past few days. I had to use falsies for this though. :(  Two of my nails snapped whilst cleaning, so I had to cut them all short.

I used Barry M Matt White, Rimmel Red, Steady, Go! and Sally Hansen Kiwi Bikini for this.

I was so pleased with this mani that you even get a rare shot of both hands!! I think I may even prefer the Right hand. Although the dots aren't as even, I think the roses turned out better!

I was a little impatient with my topcoat on these so there is a little bit of smudging, especially on my thumb!

The sun is making me lazy with blogging these past few days. I've had my nails like this since Monday, but only just got around to posting them! Woops!

Pretty Poppies

The sun is shining and it has inspired me to paint these nice, summery Poppies. :)

This is probably one of my favourite mani's I have ever done. I love it so much!

I used Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Sweetie, as a base colour.
I then used a combination of Rimmel Right Royal Red, Rimmel Coralicious, Sally Hansen Red Hot and Barry M Papaya, to paint the poppies, using the different colours for shading.
Finally, I finished using Barry M Black and a very thin detail brush to do the outlines and centres before covering in a Barry M topcoat.

Fingerfood's Buffet: Oriental

This week's theme for the Fingerfood buffet challenge was oriental.

My boyfriend is a bit of a China enthusiast, so it had to be related as soon as I saw it! In fact, he helped me by painting the symbol on my right hand, which apparently means Cherry Blossom, hence why this is accompanied by some pink flowers on another finger.

On the other hand I had a slightly more adventurous idea... a dragon!

I'm not sure about this. My brush wasn't thin enough to get the lines as accurate or to get as much detail in as I would have liked. I still like the idea of it, and generally like how it turned out, I just wish I'd had a thinner brush. I feel this might be a mani I recreate sometime once I do have a thinner brush!

I used an unnamed Revlon polish as the base colour. In the bottle this looks like a nude colour, but on the nails it is a sort of soft gold. I used Rimmel Right Royal Red for the dragon and finished with a matte topcoat from Primark.

For the other hand I used the same base, the Chinese was done in acrylic paint and the flowers are stick on ones from Poundland.

ImPRESS Nails

I love nail art on my real nails and don't think I have ever worn false nails before.
But for Christmas last year I was given a set of imPRESS nails, which look like this except mine are a different pattern.

They have been sat around in my nail box for a while as
1. I just don't do false nails and
2. They were 'short' sized and generally my nails have been longer than them!
Also, I just expected them to be bad so I didn't want to wear them!

When I got back from Kenya, I cut all my nails right down, as they were very dirty!
So I've taken the opportunity whilst my nails are short to put them on.

I was really surprised with how good they are! The idea is that they are already sticky, so you don't need glue. This meant they literally took 2 minutes to put on, with no drying time. Although, I had a slight issue pulling the sticky back off once I had the first few nails on, I had to get my bf to do that for me!

You get 24 nails in a pack, so there are plenty to choose from to find the perfect sizes.

I expected them to only last a day or two, as I'm always busy and always using my hands. So far I have had them on for 5 days and there's no signs of them coming off anytime soon or any damage to them, they are still as there were when I put them on!

My biggest issue is that I'm having nail polish withdrawals!!! I feel like I need to paint my nails, but don't want to pull these off when they're still in such good condition! I'm just hoping that when they do come off they cause no harm to my own nails.

Valentines Nails

I'm sure everyone agrees, Valentines day is the perfect time to make your nails so pretty! And there's so many cute patterns and colours you can use for that gorgeous girly look!

Here are my Valentines Nails for this year:

 

To do these I used Barry M, Matt White as the base coat and Rimmel's Urban Purple for the stamping. For the stamps I use MoYou's Mother Nature Landscape Plate 01 and Princess Collection 08.

I think these are really cute! It's not very often I have different patterns on each nail as I tend to think it looks too busy, but I really like this combination of patterns together.