31DC: Recreate your own mani

I struggled to find something I actually wanted to recreate for this!
A lot of my earlier mani's are horrendous designs, which would look no better for improved skills. They were just bad ideas!

Eventually, I found a lace design, which was my first mani posted on Instagram. I liked them at the time and I still like them now, so why not recreate them!

The first pic is the recreation and the second pic is the original.

I can definitely see huge improvements in my painting, clean-up and photography! Don't get me started on that watermark, so glad I downsized a little!!

I do miss that nail shape in the original photo, but working with kids it is just not practical! I don't want to accidentally stab anyone with my nails!

For the recreation I used Barry M Silk Poppy and white acrylic paint.

An InLinkz Link-up

Nails of the Month: June

OK, so I had an idea that each month I will do a 'Nails of the Month' post.
In these posts I will share my favourite mani from the past month and also the most popular mani's on the blog and my Facebook page.
It always amaze's me how the most popular posts are often the one's I actually really don't like!!

So I'm going to start with the most popular mani on the blog this month.
This was my Lace Saran mani:

Although I was quite proud of the freehand painting on this mani, I personally don't love it!!

The Facebook favourite was really close, so I'm going to show you both!!

First is my Leopard Print Mani:

Very closely followed by my Roses and Dots:

These nails were a huge hit with all my friends and I got so many comments on them! I even had a guy at Uni telling me 'I'm not gay, but I really love your nails!!'. They were also an Instagram favourite, although I don't post all my mani's to Instagram. 

I wasn't completely happy with them. There is some pretty bad smudging, although I do love the design.

My personal favourite of the month is a very simple but effective mani! The Neon Dotticure!

I love this so much, it just all goes together really well! It is very rare I do my nails and can't think of anything I want to change about it!

So that's the round up for this month! I hope people like me doing this! I think it's nice to have all the favourites together for comparison!

Lace Saran

This week's Simples technique was Saran Wrap.

I used Sally Hansen Fuchsia Flare as my base colour, then dabbed on Sinful Colours Cream Pink and Barry M Papaya. These blended much more than I had hoped, creating a very, very subtle saran effect! You can tell if you look very closely but only just!

If you haven't already realised, I can never leave my nails plain, so I had to add some nail art! I used white acrylic paint to paint a lace design onto my nails, varying the pattern between each nail. I then finished with a matte top coat.

I really like these! My middle finger didn't quite turn out as planned but overall I still like them. :)

Bows and Lace - Very late Tri Polish Tuesday!

This design was done earlier this week for the Tri Polish Tuesday Challenge, I'm just a little late posting! This months colours are Blue, Purple and Green, so this week I'm just using Purple and Blue.

After my delivery last week I was desperate to try my new stamping plates. So I did a base of Barry M Silk in Heather and decided to stamp some cute lace designs over it.
I do quite a lot of stamping with my MoYou plates, and usually they work pretty well, I like to think I'm not bad at stamping! But this was so difficult! I tried a few of the different lace designs and the stamper really didn't pick the patterns up very well off the plates. I'm not sure if it was the plates or the polish (Maybelline Dark Denim) I was trying to use but it just wasn't working. :(
So I decided on a bow across my nails instead, which was a much simpler design. This was a little easier and did work to an extent. It just didn't seem up to the same quality, they were a bit hit and miss, some bows came out really well whilst others were patchy and had bits missing.

I know I should have expected this when they were so cheap but I didn't think they would be this bad. I'm going to have another go at some point with a different polish which I know usually works well for stamping but I don't have too high hopes any more. I'm also hoping some of the other stamps are a bit better.
Hopefully the water decals will be more successful too!!