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: Decals

Yay, I'm back!
I spilt a glass of wine on my laptop last week and killed it. But, today I finally have a new laptop and lots of 31DC posts to catch up on! My ancient version of Photoshop won't work on my new laptop, so please excuse any dodgy photos whilst I try to find a decent editing app.

The first of the prompts I missed is decals.
I just want to say, I did keep up with the challenge, I was just unable to blog about it!

On my middle and ring fingers I used full nail decals from the Born Pretty Store. 

Remember, you can get 10% off these and other items using code EHG10.

On my index and pinky fingers I used Barry M Black.

I'm not a huge lover of these full decals but they are quick and easy so ideal if you don't have much time/ struggle with nail art!

An InLinkz Link-up

31DC: Recreate a Favourite Blogger

I can honestly say I don't have one single favourite blogger. There are a handful of favourites. So I spent some time looking through them all to find a mani that I felt like recreating!

In the end I decided on this vintage rose mani by Gianna @NailStorming.

I was really pleased with how this turned out. It is the sort of style that I always wore when I first got into nail art just over a year ago, though it's not a look I wear very often anymore! In fact, on 20/1/14 I created a very similar mani using two of the same polishes which later became my first blog post. If you are interested you can find that here, though I'll warn you now, the photography is horrendous!

I used Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream as the base colour. The spots and stripes were painted with a white Nail Art Pen from Migi Nail Art. For the roses I used several pinks: Sally Hansen Pinch of Punch, Sally Hansen Fuschia Flare, Ciaté Strawberry Milkshake and white acrylic paint as well as Models Own Emerald Green for the leaves.

Why not have a look at some of the others amazing recreation's below:

31DC: Monochrome

Monochrome nails today!
I have had a grey 'spotty' polish with black matte glitter pieces in for a while. It is from Primark and I havn't even tried it since I bought it around 6 months ago, so I was determined I would use that polish. Other than that I had no plan for this mani when I started out. I just started painting and thought, 'I'll see what I come up with!'.

I then stamped the diamond pattern and the roses using MoYou London Gothic plate 03 and Barry M Black Multiglitter.

The 3D rose, which can be found here was sent to me in a set by Born Pretty Store. They are the perfect size for my nails. Big enough to stand out but small enough that they don't take over my whole nail! You can see the size compared to a hair grip in the picture below. They also sit nice and flat on my nail, reducing the chance of them being pulled off each time I run my hand through my hair!

Remember you can get 10% these using the discount code EHG10.

Glow in the Dark by Primark

A few weeks ago I bought two glow in the dark polishes in Primark. One looked yellow in the bottle but was a clear topcoat, the other was blue.
I didn't expect much from these. The blue barely glowed at all, as I expected.
But the clear topcoat was pretty impressive!

Here are my nails in 'normal' light:

I started with a base colour of Rimmel New Romantic. This was followed by a coat of the Glow in the Dark polish. Once all was dry I stamped on top using MoYou London Princess plate 08 and Rimmel Right Royal Red and topcoated with my usual Essence Quick Dry Topcoat.

Now you'll have to excuse the picture quality, photographing glow in the dark nails is so difficult!! I took around 100 pictures and this was the best I got.

But wow, I was amazed when I saw this in the dark! I did not expect it to be so bright! If you want a glow in the dark topcoat on a budget I definitely recommend this! Bargain!

Regal Roses

Today I have a mani I have been meaning to post for some time!
This is in fact the mani which was my most popular on Instagram last month, however I never got round to posting it on here, oops!

I used two coats of Essence Do You Speak Love? for the base colour. I then used Barry M Matte White and Ciaté Pillow Fight to paint the Roses before finishing off with the Essence Quick Dry Topcoat.

This is such an amazing topcoat. I have quite a few of the budget brand topcoats and this is by far my favourite. Doesn't smell too bad, goes on nice and smooth, dries quickly and it is super dooper shiny! 

Kitsch Floral Nail Art

Tonight I have painted my mums nails rather than my own.
She wanted Cath Kidston style roses and dots, so that's what she got!

I very rarely paint anyone else's nails and it felt very strange, but we were both very happy with how they turned out. :)

The polishes I used were Ciate Ferris Wheel as the base colour. Sally Hansen Fuchsia Flare and Sally Hansen Wine Not for the pink roses. Sally Hansen Grape Race and Sally Hansen Plum Luck for the purple roses. I then added dots with Barry M Matte White and we finished with a clear UV gel polish to make it last as long as possible!

This is very similar to one of the first pieces of nail art I did, which you can see here and I have definitely improved!

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.

Nails of the Month: July

I seem to have done loads of mani's this month, although mostly in the first two weeks, as I have been extremely busy the past two weeks with moving and setting up my classroom.

This month's most popular mani was the same across the blog, my facebook page and my Instagram (@nailsmustbepainted).
The Black Swan Nail Art:

I can see why this was a particularly popular post. I love it too!!

Although, I am going to pick another favourite of the month, otherwise it would be a bit boring! 

In fact, there are two which I am struggling to choose between: Cappuccino Roses and the Chinese Lilac Flowers.

I love both of these for different reasons. The Cappuccino Flowers is so simple and easy, yet pretty at the same time, whereas the Chinese Floral is the opposite - a complex freehand painted flower on a gradient. 

I think I have to prefer the Chinese floral, just because of the time and effort that went into it!!

Capuccino Roses

Yesterday I didn't have much time to do my nails, yet I wanted them to be pretty. I have used some Born Pretty water decals I've had sitting around for a while as a quick and easy solution!

The base colour is Rimmel Coralicious, with an unnamed Nude Revlon colour on my Index fingers, to match with the roses.

I wasn't sure about these decals. I think it's the colour that put me off. But I actually really like this mani!

They were super easy to put on, however as the roses were rounded on the edges I felt very limited as to where I could place them on my nails.

Here they are with slightly different lighting!

Red Roses and Dots

Here is my latest mani! I love it so much! Had so many lovely comments on these nails over the past few days. I had to use falsies for this though. :(  Two of my nails snapped whilst cleaning, so I had to cut them all short.

I used Barry M Matt White, Rimmel Red, Steady, Go! and Sally Hansen Kiwi Bikini for this.

I was so pleased with this mani that you even get a rare shot of both hands!! I think I may even prefer the Right hand. Although the dots aren't as even, I think the roses turned out better!

I was a little impatient with my topcoat on these so there is a little bit of smudging, especially on my thumb!

The sun is making me lazy with blogging these past few days. I've had my nails like this since Monday, but only just got around to posting them! Woops!

Roses and dots

These are my nails at the moment...

A bit of freehand nail art.
I think I prefer how they were before I added the dots. More simple and chic. But once those dots were there it was too late! Maybe I'll try these again sometime, without the dots.

 The polishes I used were, Barry M Blueberry for the base colour, Sally Hansen Pinch of Punch (Pink) and Red Hot (Red) for the roses and Barry M Matte White for the details of the roses and the dots.

And here are a few more pictures...
(Excuse the bad light! Some of the pictures were taken when I painted them, when the light was good, others were taken just now. These are not so good 1. because its getting dark out so there is no natural light 2. my nails have been like this 6 days now and are starting to chip and wear at the edges!)

These have got to be one of my all time favourite nail designs! So pretty!