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: Art

For 'Art' I decided to paint Van Gogh's Starry Night.

I very nearly changed my mind after noticing that Tara from Loki's Lacquer also did this painting. I was a little scared about mine being awful in comparison, but I decided to be brave and go for it anyway!

I actually really like how it turned out, although the blue is a little bit brighter than I had intended!

Mine is a little different stylistically to Tara's, which is good as it makes direct comparisons more difficult!

I used an unnamed blue polish from H&M as a base colour, then painted all the details with acrylic paint.

Go check out the other girls' artwork:

31DC: Tranquility

Initially I was a bit stuck for this prompt. I asked my boyfriend and he immediately thought of Buddha, so that's what I went with!

I painted a lotus flower on my middle finger and attempted a Buddha on my ring finger, though he  ended up looking rather like a monkey!!

I used Revlon Trade Winds as my base colour (This is rapidly becoming one of my most used polishes!) and created a Saran Wrap mani with Essence Thats What I Mint!. I thought these were very natural colours which created a calm, tranquil feel. I then painted the details with brown acrylic paint.

Apart from Buddha looking like a monkey, I quite like the overall look of these. 

Check out the other entries:

Mythology Nail Art

This weeks llama nails prompt is Mythology movies/films.

I have to admit, my mani this week is a bit lame. I've been feeling ill all week and haven't been bothered to paint my nails. Usually I paint them three times over the weekend, and I've done them once!

I loosely based this weeks mani on the film Hercules, painting Pegasus on my ring finger.

The nose went a little wrong, but I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out.

The base is Ciaté Poppet, with Pegasus painted in acrylic paint. I bought the Ciaté Dolls House collection earlier today for a bargain £6.99 in TkMaxx and I love it! The porcelain finish is beautiful. Watch out for swatches later in the week, when I'm hopefully feeling a bit better. 

An InLinkz Link-up

Dragonball Nails

This week for the Llama Nails challenge the theme is Anime/Cartoon nails.
I wanted to try anime, although again it is not my sort of film. So I asked my boyfriend to name a good anime film, found out a bit about it from him and googled some images!

This is how it turned out! I actually quite like this. 

The polishes I used were Rimmel Golden Hour on my index finger, an unnamed H&M blue polish on my middle finger, Ciaté Amazing Gracie on my ring finger and Sally Hansen Sugar Coat Cherry Drop on my little finger and thumb. The rest of the details are acrylic paint.

An InLinkz Link-up

Avatar Nail Art

Science Fiction is the prompt for this weeks Llama Nails Book/Movie Challenge.

I decided to go with Avatar:

I really love my index fingernail and kind of wish I had done the other half of her face on my middle finger, rather than the tree of souls.

I mostly used acrylic paint for this mani, because of the detail. However I used Maybelline Dark Denim as the base colour, Sinful Colors Nirvana for the tree and Revlon Aquamarine as a topcoat on my ring finger, as the white was too bright. I finished it all with a Jess Matte Topcoat.

Kung Fu Panda Nail Art

This week's Llama Nails Challenge prompt is Action Movies/Books.
Again, this is a genre which I don't watch very often! I asked my boyfriend to name any action films I might have seen and this was about the only one we could come up with!!

Please tell me you can recognise at least some of those characters!! It's Kung Fu Panda!

The top photo is Po, Master Shifu, Master Oogway and Po's Dad. The bottom photo is the Furious Five (Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Viper and Crane!).

These are two of my favourites which can't  be seen very clearly in the above photo!

I may have been a little bit too ambitious with these nails, some certainly don't look much like the characters they are supposed to be! 

I used a base of Ciaté Ivory Queen, and painted the rest in Acrylic paints. Except Tigress' eyes, for which I used Rimmel Golden Hour, so they have a mettalic hint to them!

An InLinkz Link-up

Rocky Horror Nail Art

It's time for the Llama Nails challenge again! This week the promp is Cult movies/books.

I have based this mani on a film which is amazing, but the show is even better!!

It's The Rocky Horror Picture Show!! I hope you can tell from the nails!

These are defo not as good for real as they were in my head! I just could not get the corner of the lips right, or the teeth, although I am pleased with my use of striping tape.

I used Ciaté Boudoir and Barry M Matte White. The black is acrylic paint, as I am visiting my parents for a few weeks and couldn't bring my entire collection! I also topped two nails with L'Oreal Confetti in Amour and used striping tape to create a fishnet look on the index finger. I finished with a few dabs of Rimmel Space Dust in Aurora on the ring finger.

Check out the other amazing entries in the challenge:

An InLinkz Link-up

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.

Sinful Colors: Savage

Anyone who follows my Facebook or Instagram will know that a few days ago I bought a new polish... Sinful Colors in the colour Savage which is a turquoise greeny colour.

I love the colour of this in the bottle and was excited to put it on my nails!

This is two coats.

But I got a shock when I put it on to find it was a matt polish. Why would they have no indication of this on bottle?! So strange! I don't own any other matt polishes as I always think if I want it matt, I will use a matt topcoat! I do prefer the colour of the polish in matt though. When I put topcoat on it seemed much greener.

As always, I added some nail art on top of this. I really wanted to try a tribal/aztec type design as I thought the colour lent itself to this, but at the same time I really didn't as my only ever previous attempt at this type of art was horrendously bad! If you REALLY want to you can see it here. But I'd really rather you didn't!!

So I decided to have a go but to try and keep it fairly simple and this is how it turned out! I used white acrylic paint for the pattern.

I actually quite like it. My lines are fairly straight and its not too busy! My right hand is not appearing today as I discovered I can't paint straight lines left handed! Although, I still think it's better than the previous attempt!!

I did try to add some glitter  to the stripes on one nail using Pretty Scatter effect polish, which I wish I hadn't done but apart from that I am pleased with it!

A little girl at the school I work at today told me my thumb and little finger looked like they had Christmas tree's on them!! I can see where she was coming from but no, they are not christmas trees!!

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. :)

Frozen Nails

I've had this idea in mind for a little while now as Frozen is currently one of my fave films!

Every week I participate in Fingerfood's Buffet Challenge and this week's theme was 'For Scarlett'. I read on the Facebook page last week that she also likes Frozen, so I've waited until now to do this. I know it's not perfect but I hope she loves it as much as I do!

I used Barry M Matte White and Revlon Blue Lagoon as my base colours, on different nails, then painted the rest in acrylic paints.

Also, below I have included a picture taken without my DIY light box I showed you here, just to show how amazing the difference in picture quality is!