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: September

I cannot believe it's that time of the month again for my favourites! This month has flown by!

My favourite nails on my blog this month were posted way back on the 1st September, my Kill Bill nails.

I think the simplicity of these makes them so effective, compared to some of my more detailed designs. Although, you liked the detail too! 

These Avatar nails were my most popular on Instagram:

And my Harry Potter nails were a favourite on Facebook.

Looks like everyone is loving the films this month!!

My personal favourite this month is yet another film mani. Alice in Wonderland!

These took such a long time and apart from the dodgy detail on Alice's face turned out exactly how I had planned - this doesn't happen very often! :)

What was your favourite this month?

Alice in Wonderland Nail Art

This week the Llama Nails Challenge prompt is Fantasy books/films.
I had lots of possibilities for this prompt and had difficulty deciding which to do, which makes a change for me!! But I decided to go with Alice in Wonderland... the older animated version.

I absolutely love my left hand! Although I defo need to work on painting faces! Paha, Alice does not look very happy!

My right hand is much simpler but I still really like it.

These nails took me over two hours to paint and used a huge number of polishes and paints! It will take too long to say which polishes were used where, but I will list the polishes below the picture.

Sally Hansen Green Tea Basecoat, Sinful Colours Savage, Barry M Silk Heather, Barry M Matte White, Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream, Jess Calypso, Sally Hansen Grape Race, Essence That's What I Mint!, Rimmel Red, Steady, Go!, MUA Frozen Yoghurt, Rimmel Purple Pulse, Rimmel Sunny Days and Essence Quick Dry Topcoat.

I am really looking forward to the next few weeks of this challenge as the prompts are much more me!

An InLinkz Link-up

Harry Potter Nail Art

This week the theme for the Llama Nails Movie/Book Challenge is Mystery.
Again, this was a difficult one for me to think of a film for, so I turned to IMDB's top 50 Mystery films.

Harry Potter is not a film I would consider a mystery, but at least 4 of the films were in the top 50 mystery films, so I just went with it!! My mani is based around the Deathly Hallows films.

I'm really pleased with how these turned out! Particularly the round gradient!

I started with a base of a Nude Unnamed Revlon polish, over which I sponged a circular gradient of the same nude polish and Sally Hansen Kiwi Bikini. I was trying to recreate that eerie green Voldemort glow!!

 I then used Barry M Black and a thin paintbrush to paint the symbol of the Deathly Hallows and the Dark Mark on my ring and index fingers. On my middle finger I painted Harry's lightening bolt scar using Rimmel Sunny Days and outlined in Barry M Black. I then used a Jess Matte Topcoat on all but the lightning bolt, to make it stand out.

I enjoyed using the box as a photo prop way too much with this mani!! I don't know how I never thought of it before, as I have many of the films I have based my mani's on for this challenge on DVD!

An InLinkz Link-up

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!

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.