Lilac Chevrons

Sorry I haven't been around much since completing the 31 Day Challenge. After all that I needed a bit of a break! Plus I seem to have been really busy.
I have still been painting my nails regularly (though not every day!), just not blogging, so now I have a few posts to catch up on.

The first is this simple stamped chevron design.

I used Barry M Matte White as my base colour and stamped the chevrons with MUA Frozen Yoghurt and Born Pretty Store plate QA91.

Remember, you can get 10% of anything from Born Pretty Store using discount code: EHG10.

I was pleased with how clean the lines were from the stamping, as I was uncertain whether vinyls would have been a better purchase. Vinyls would have been much more fiddly so I am glad this plate stamps well!

31DC: Dotting Tools

Can't believe I have made it to day 5 without falling behind yet!
Back to work after the Christmas break today though, so it'll only get harder to keep up.

Dotting tools is the prompt for today. I love my dotting tools, but I didn't want to do a plain old boring dotticure for this, so I went with a design I haven't tried before, swirls!

I'm not sure about these. Last night, when I did them, I wasn't a big fan. The more I look at them the more they are growing on me!

I used three polishes from the Ciaté Dolls House collection: Poppet, Paper Doll and Dollface. I think Dollface is a little too subtle, it is almost invisible against the lilac.

What do you think?

Catch-Up: Swatches

Over the past year there have been many times I have done my nails, photographed them, edited pictures then for whatever reason, not put them up here on this blog.
I want a fresh start in the new year, not to be uploading old pictures! So today I have a series of 3 posts where I am going to show you some of the nail art that never quite made it, for various reasons!

This first post is going to show you four swatches that never quite made it:

I love this picture and the polish (Make up Gallery, Scarlett Sparkle) is one of my favourites. It is a beautiful raspberry coloured gelly with tiny pieces of glitter. I would recommend anybody to go buy this! I love it so much!

This was never posted simply due to lack of time! Such a shame as it is so gorgeous!

This second swatch is H&M Blue Bliss, which is a glitter topcoat in a very pale blue gelly. I swatched this over lilac, blue, grey and black, though I don't remember what the polishes were! This picture was taken back in August, hence the pointed nails and I honestly don't think I have used the polish since, it didn't make a good first impression!

This third picture shows you Ciaté Baby Doll, which is actually a pastel pink, not orange as the poor photography appears, hence why this was never posted. Oh and no, I don't have green fingers either! Also, all my nails are different lengths and shapes. What was I thinking?!

The polish has a lovely matte 'porcelain' finish, however it chipped off within hours.

Finally, another that I love. This is an unnamed PS by Primark polish. It is a beautiful dark pink and gold textured holo polish. It is truly beautiful and the colours change completely in different lights.

This was also not posted due to poor photography, however I managed to find this one awkward looking, but salvageable picture.

Silver Rose

With Christmas in the pipeline I am starting to introduce a bit more sparkle into my mani's, christmassy without being full-on!

For this mani I used Ciaté Boudoir and Ciaté Fit for a Queen as christmassy colours. Then to tone it down I used my MoYou London Mother Nature Collection Plate 01 to stamp the rose. The Ciaté polsih didn't stamp too well so I ended up painting over most of it again to make the colour stand out! I then finished with a matte topcoat by Jess Polish.

I really like how this turned out. I don't wear silver polish very often, but I really like this one. Just a shame the red isn't more opaque so that black stain didn't show through.

This could easily get away with being a Valentines mani, 3 months early!!

Pretty Poppet: Review and Swatch

Last week I picked up the Ciaté Dolls House Collection in TKMaxx for the bargain price of £6.99.

I was super excited about these and wanted to try out these polishes straight away, so I started with a nice, simple mani using Poppet, a pastel lilac shape.

I love the colour of this polish. It is a pale lilac, so pastel it could almost be mistaken for white in certain lights. 

This polish is advertised as a 'porcelain finish'. Basically, it's matte. I love matte polishes, however this dries so fast that is makes application difficult as the polish has dried onto the brush before you manage to cover the whole nail. This means you have to use a really thick coat to ensure the polish doesn't dry too quickly, which then leads to a slightly streaky finish. Kind of a lose, lose situation!

I also found that this polish chipped so easily. On my left hand I wore the mani without topcoat and on my right hand I added my favourite super shiny Essence topcoat.

Considering my right hand generally gets used a lot more, after a day the right hand was still perfect, however the left hand had huge chunks of polish missing. The polish on my index finger literally peeled off in one big sheet, about 3/4 of the way down my nail.

For most polishes this would not be a big deal, as I would usually wear topcoat anyway. But what is the point in having that lovely Porcelain finish, if I then have to cover it in topcoat to make my mani last more than a few hours?!

Overall, I was not impressed with this polish at all. I love how it looks but the poor application and lasting power really let it down. I really hope the others in the collection are a bit better and this was just a bad bottle!

I was however really impressed with the studs I added. This were a bargain from Poundland. I used a blob of a cheap No.17 clear topcoat on the bottoms of them and stuck them in place with tweezers. I wore this mani for two days and managed not to lose a single stud, even on the hand without topcoat! :)

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

Fairytale: The Swan Princess

For the Fairytale theme of this weeks Llama Nails Challenge I already posted my Ella nails. However, I had forgotten that I painted these last weekend for this theme!

The Swan Princess was one of my favourite films as a child. In fact, I still have the VHS but am unable to play it!

I'm afraid this mani is a bit of a nail fail! I contemplated just ignoring the fact that this had ever existed as I don't really like it!

Although I am quite pleased with my sunrise, the swan looks more like a goose due to having too short a neck!

The other two nails I did in a super sparkly silver holo, which is not captured well on these photo's. This was supposed to represent this princess-ness, however I feel it just doesn't go with the other nails.

The holo polish is by Wonderful and Strange Nail Lacquer and is amazing! The background for the other nails was Jess Polish, Calypso. On my middle finger I created a gradient with this and an orange Missguided polish. I then painted the sun with Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Sweetie.

The swan/goose was painted with Barry M Matte White.

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.

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!!

Father's Day Nails

For Father's Day I have painted my nails based on a passion of my Dad's!
His Classic Car, a Morris Minor 1000. This was very tricky!!

I used Barry M Matt White as a base colour. I then used a black Berol to carefully draw on the front half of a Morris Minor. I based this on the picture below, which can also be found here. This was very difficult and I have to admit, this was my second attempt!! The first was not so successful, although I am reasonable happy with these. 

I painted my Index finger with Barry M Black, to represent the oil this car leaks really badly and which my Dad ends up covered in whenever he work's on the car!!

I then used a Barry M Blue Crackle polish on my other fingers and also on the background of my ring finger, to make the car stand out more. His car is white/cream, so I left the car itself as it is.

I finished with a Primark Matt Topcoat on all except the black finger. As this finger represents oil, I thought it should be left shiny!

I did this mani to enter into the Nailpolis Father's Day Contest, which can be found here.

L'Oreal Confetti

Last weekend I had a little haul of 5 new polishes.

One of these was a L'Oreal Confetti called Graffiti D'Amour, which is a matte hexagonal glitter. I absolutely fell in love with this and couldn't wait to try it! I wouldn't normally buy these due to their price, but Superdrug had a 3 for 2 offer on!

I love it! My biggest problem was what colour to wear underneath it!! As it had white, pink and red pieces, it was difficult to find a colour which would go with all three, without hiding one of the colours.

So I used a grey accent nail. This is Sinful Colours Cool Gray and the red is Rimmel Red, Steady, Go (Both also new buys!).
It goes on nicely, with a reasonable spread of glitter pieces, although I did have to place some of them to ensure I had no bare patches.

Overall, I am glad I bought this polish! :) After using it I still love it as much as I do in the bottle!

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.

Fingerfood's Challenge: Something New

Today for my something new nails I have gone all out on the 'new'!
I have used 2 new polishes and 2 new techniques. :)

The first new polish is the 'Jess' Polish, in Madison, which I reviewed here yesterday. This is the base colour in these pictures, and is actually a deep purple. The second new polish I have used is a crackle polish. I have to admit to having never used a crackle polish before. The look just doesn't do anything for me. But I saw one yesterday and thought I'd give it a go so this is Sally Hansen, Star Burst, on my index fingers. The crackle effect actually looks better than I imagined  and it has glitter in, which creates quite a cute look, so maybe it will get a bit of use!

 I also tried out two new techniques today. First, I tried the Saran wrap method on my ring fingers. I love how this looks on other people's pictures, but mine doesn't seem to have had the same effect. I did think this might be because I used an insta-dry polish so it dried before I could get much off, but I'm not sure. The top polish I used was Sally Hansen, Grape Race.

The second technique I tried was making my own decals. These are on my thumb nails and I kept it nice and simple with just a star on each hand. I used the sandwich bag and clear polish method of doing this and was surprised how easy it is and that you can't see or feel any edges at all of the clear polish once on the nail. Although, peeling the polish from the bag was extremely difficult and I ended up breaking one star in half, then having to line it back up on my nail!! I will definitely be doing this again, as it is so much easier than trying to paint designs straight onto the nail.

I then finished the whole mani off with a matte topcoat. :)

 Does anybody else's Blogger keep turning their photo's around? At least 3 of these photo's started off the other way around! It's very frustrating!

My First Tri Polish Tuesday

So a few days ago I was looking around for nail challenges to take part in, without having to do my nails quite every day! I found Crumpets Nail Tarts on Facebook and their challenges: GOT challenge and Tri Polish Tuesdays. Although I have a few old polishes, I only got really into having fancy nails in the past year so I don't have enough to use old ones regularly. But I thought the Tri Polish Tuesday Challenge sounded good, and it allows me to do whatever design I want. I know it's the last Tuesday of the month, but I decided to have a go this week, so here's my entry:

I've never done any sort of Aztec design before, but wanted to have a go. And I thought these colours lent themselves quite nicely to it. I don't like it though. Not sure if its the colours, the design, or just that I need more practice for it to look anything like, but I'm not a fan!

Anyway, the polishes I used were Revlon Stormy, as the brown/nude base colour, Sally Hansen Pinch of Punch for the pink stripes and a Boots 17 polish which is unnamed, but is a dark metallic grey/silver. I also used some black striping tape and finished it with a matte top coat.

I'm really not sure. I like the idea of aztec nails, I just can't do them!! Maybe I need a stamping plate design so the hard bit is done for me!!!