31DC: Fishtail Braid

I have only ever painted a fishtail design once before and I wasn't too pleased with the outcome so I wasn't looking forward to this prompt.

However, I was surprisingly pleased with my mani!

I used Maybelline Berry Sweet, Maybelline Vibrant Fuchsia and Ciaté Silhouette.

Here are some of the other amazing mani's for this prompt:

An InLinkz Link-up

31DC: Complement and Contrast

Day 25's prompt was complement and contrast.
I opted to use complementary colours from the colour wheel. Pink and purple paired with yellow and orange in a colour blocked design.

Sorry about the Instagram photo. I painted and photographed these before I killed my laptop, so the 'proper' photos are still on my old laptop, where I cannot access them. :(

I started with a base of Ciaté Amazing Gracie, then used Sinful Colours Cream Pink, Maybelline Fuchsia Fever , Missguided Missmatch and Ciaté Big Yellow Taxi with striping tape to create the squared pattern.

I really love these!

Check out the other ladies work:

An InLinkz Link-up

31DC: Reversed Polarities

As soon as I saw this prompt an idea popped to mind.
I have since found out that this was not what the prompt actually meant, but I did it anyway! :)

I'm not crazy on how it turned out. It's kinda messy, and the colours make me think of mud! (I suppose the polish is called Mudslide Tote for a reason!!). It's probably my least favourite mani of this challenge so far. 

I used Maybelline Mudslide Tote and Revlon Trade Winds to create this reverse gradient.

Have a look at the other, much better entries below!

31DC: Red Base

For today's red base mani, I didn''t really have any ideas. I hadn't pre-prepared anything and I didn't have much time, so it needed to be something simple.

I decided to do a leopard print mani as I have only done leopard print once before.

I don't mind how these turned out. They're certainly nothing special, but they're OK!

To begin with I used two colours for the 'spots'. A nude colour in the centre and a dark brown around the outside, but I didn't like how they looked. So I painted over them again in the red, creating a sort of leopard-print-sandwich! Much better!

The polishes I used were Essence Do You Speak Love?, Maybelline Mudslide Tote and Revlon Tradewinds (For the spots underneath which can't really be seen!

Why  not look at the other entries to the challenge:

Plaid Scarf

I have been struggling to keep up to date with posting my nails on here recently so I will be playing catch-up over the next few weeks. If you follow me on Instagram, sorry you may be seeing some mani's you already saw on there!  If you don't follow me on Instagram, please start now!! @nailsmustbepainted. I update much more regularly than I do here!

Now for the nails...
I painted these a few weeks ago for The Nail Art Guild's Fall Fashion prompt, based on my favourite Tartan/ plaid scarf.

I painted these right before going to bed and didn't take photos until morning. Somehow through the night  my nice straight lines became distorted! I promise they were straight... the picture below is from Instagram and is the only photo I took straight after painting!

For these I used Maybelline Leather Effect in Mudslide Tote as the base colour. I then painted the red stripes using Maybelline Berry Sweet and the white lines using Ciaté Amazing Gracie.

I was really pleased with how these turned out, except for the smudged lines!

Africa Inspired: Waterfall Nails

Whilst in Kenya, I visited and climbed a waterfall called Thompson Falls.

As part of my Africa Inspired posts, I wanted to recreate the beauty of this waterfall, on my nails.

I sort of used the waterfall technique, but wanted to make it quite realistic so blended the colours together more than you usually would in the waterfall technique. I started with a base of Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream, then used stripes of lots of different shades of blue, to try and create the look of the water. I also sponged Barry M Matt White onto the tips of the nails, to create the foam that forms at the bottom of the falls and finished with a layer of glitter, Barry M in Diamond.

All the polishes I used were (From left to right):
Maybelline Dark Denim
H&M unnamed blue polish
Revlon Blue Lagoon
Revlon Chroma Chameleon in Aquamarine
Barry M Matt White
Barry M Glitter Diamond
Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream.

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!!

Dandelions

So today I've got an old mani for you. This one's from the beginning of January, it was very cute but I'm afraid I only have one good picture, so it's going to be a short but sweet post today!
Here it is:

This is the Maybelline Dark Denim polish #630, then I used Barry M Matt White to stamp the dandelions, using the MoYou Pro Plate #04. The colour is much closer to the top picture in real life, but I wanted to include the zoomed version as it shows the stamping so much clearer. :)

My nails are such a perfect length on this picture, I wish they could always be this long and never snap!!

Bargain Haul!

So, for those who don't know, Poundland have had a whole load of branded nail polishes in recently. Get down there, quick! Who can resist Sally Hansen, Revlon, Rimmel and Maybelline for £1 each?!

So I made a trip to see what colours they had out today.
This is what I bought:

• Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Sweetie, which is a textured polish. I've never used textured polishes before so am interested to use this. Not sure I'll like it, I love the feeling of nice smooth nails. Such a cute colour though!

• Sally Hansen Extreme Wear in Kiwi Bikini. I love the colour of this! I've also been looking for a nice shade of green to use as leaves when I paint flowers so this is perfect!

• Sally Hansen Magnetic in Cosmic Blue. Again, I haven't used a magnetic polish before so am excited to see what interesting patterns can be created.

• And last, I got a matte topcoat. I love the look of matte nails but have never tried them before, so when I saw this for £1 in Primark I had to buy it. And it doesn't matter if I hate it as it was only £1!

Such a bargain day! 4 new polishes for a grand total of £4!!

Oh and here are all the polishes I have got from Poundland in the past month!! Such a bargain I can't resist buying them! 5 Sally Hansen, 1 Maybelline and 1 Revlon! :)