Phone Case Inspired Mani

I recently changed my phone case and thought that the pattern on my old one would make for an interesting nail design.

I think I'm also finding my own style and the type of manicures I like to do most. The last few manicures I did in the last 31 day challenge were around water colour type of effects or abstract art designs. These are what I enjoy most and think look great on my nails.

So here was my next challenge and I managed to dig out quite a few of my untrieds in order to create this look.

I started off with my favorite off-white polish 'My Boyfriend Scales Walls' from OPI as my base. I used an ultra fine long thin nail brush to start the design. I started with black to create the lined diamond shapes you can see above, making them using a variety of long and different shaped lines.

Then I used that same long tipped brush to paint on the other colours around the outside of the black shapes. I started with the orange, then moved on to the pink, purple and finished with the light blue, dark blue and anywhere I thought needed darkening up I went over with the black. Here's the finished result.

Super tricky to get a good pic of this and to capture the colours. Here's a good old close up so you can see the design and get a better idea of how it was created.

Very, very happy with this design and will be looking out for more inspiration from everyday things.

I also had a little splurg a little while ago and here is one of the goodies I horded. Essie's 'Dive Bar' this was a stop gap between my Nail Art attempts.

This was two coats and Top Coat, the first coat was rather patchy but second coat went on like a dream. This polish is a very dark teal with a colour shift to purple, my favorite colours. What are yours?

Cats and more adventures in Nail Art

After my adventures in Nail Art, I have been inspired but however unimpressed with my efforts. I did create a shimmery grey manicure with triangular metal studs, however I wasn't patience and mushed the polish when applying them.

Then my other half picked these puss puss decals up that were on the dining room table and said "When are you going to use these?". No better excuse so I thought I would.

I purchased these gorgeous decals on Etsy from NorthofSalem for the small sum of £3.41. The shop is in the US, but they arrived very quickly and the nice thing about these is that they are all different sizes, so great no matter if you have long or short nubbins.

Here's what I created with them along with an attempt to use some untrieds polishes.

In particular I needed to use this Acid Wash polish from ColorShow and based my theme around this. Personally I think it's too busy, I like the dotty nails and the cat decals, just not keen on the accent nail with the Acid Wash polish. I have all four of the Acid Wash polishes ColorShow came out with. The only one I really like is the one in the clear base. The others are to gloopy and sheer that you need several coats to make the base colour opaque. In the mani I layered it over the olive colour I used on my other nails, I stilled needed two coats.

Unfortunately you have to be VERY careful with Top Coating these decals, the first one I applied I topped with HK Girl quick dry top coat and it basically melted the decal. This one I used a bog standard top coat and then after I took this picture I decided I wanted to pop some H K Girl on too. I thought it would be OK having been top coated already, however it partially melted it's bum!

This manicure didn't stay on long and I'm pleased to say, third time lucky, I was very happy with my next Nail Art attempt. Inspired by the pattern on a top I bought from Primark, I created this design.

It's an abstract flower design, really pleased with the way they came out, and even better I figured out the macro lens I bought for my phone, so here's an EXTREME CLOSE UP!

I just used a nail art brush to dab the polishes on and layered each colour over each other. Very pleased with the results and this will be staying on my nails for as long as possible.

Whilst I was creating this manicure this is what my cat was doing, sitting on my nail art brushes. She doesn't like to sit on my lap when I do my nails, she doesn't like the smell of polish and remover.

Adding to my crazy cat lady theme, when hunting in Hobby Craft for Nail stuff and glitter, I came across these adorable little wooden cats. My friend makes jewellery and so she helped me make them into these lovely earrings!

I've also bought shed loads of glitter and things to stick on to my nails. I also bought quite a few glass pendants and housings so I'm hoping to make some nail polish jewellery, more on that soon!

Instagram Giveaway Prize from Effiena's Hand Made Polish

I've recently been getting into the old Instagram thing, and even sent my first Direct Message on there last week. I did NOT know you could do that. One thing that I'm really enjoying is finding new people to follow, especially UK Indie Nail Polish makers and also winning my first Giveaway!

Many Instagramers (if thats's what you call them) celebrate like Vloggers do on YouTube, when they reach a significant number of followers or subscribers. Often to celebrate they will run a giveaway where all you usually need to do if you follow them, is repost their giveway pic and tag it to interested and participating parties.

I was lucky enough to win one of these giveaways run by a UK Indie Nail Polish maker called Effiena. I found her through the lovely Samantha Rogers over at The Nail and Beauty Files.

Effiena was giving away one of her lovely polishes and some nail art goodies for reaching 500 followers on Instagram and I was the lucky winner. Here's what she sent me!

As if I hadn't acquired enough shinies at the weekend, thanks to Effiena I have more nail stickers, gems and guides to use along with some pretty good nail art brushes too. I really need to get cracking. But before I do I wanted to try Effiena's polish which is from her chameleon collection, The one I chose is called Plum Ultra-Marine.

Look at this! I layered it over a dark purple polish. She describes the colour shift on this polish as Lilac to Blue to Green. You can see the shift in the picture and I guess it may depend what effect you get on what colour you choose as your base. So I'll be trying this over a few different colours I think!

Formula was very good. The above shows one good coat for this effect. I also found this dried surprisingly fast too, considering I had two coats of base colour, I had no issue with dry time and didn't feel the need to top coat.

You can find Effiena over at facebook, Instagram and purchase her polishes on her Etsy shop called EffienaNailPolish. They retail from £2 up to £4.50, so a really good price for an Indie polish. Oh and I just found out she has a blog too. I was right about the dry time, her Chameleon polishes are quick dry!

Thank you so much Effiena for the wonderful giveaway, looking forward to creating some funky nail art with my new found supplies.

Nail Art Course

For my Birthday in December my friend bought me a nail art course and I went down to Hertfordshire last weekend to attend.

The course is run by a Hair and Beauty Supply store in Hemel Hempstead called Bondlink. They sell Beauty supplies and also run a number of beauty courses and once completed you receive a certificate. Both myself and my friend are very much into nail art as a hobby rather than learning for a career and we were hoping to pick up some new skills, in particular water marbling.

There was only myself and my friend on then course so we didn't have to share any of the nail goodies with anyone else. We arrived at 9:45 and the course ran till 2:30.

We were given a nail wheel with most nails already painted in various colours and we went though a handout which detailed different techniques to try. 

You can see above that we covered gem placement and 3D nail art, splatter techniques using a straw and a brush, matt top coat effects, flowers, dotting, striping, alternative french and creating themed nails. 

The best tip I picked up was how to create glitter gradients. Where I've attempted this before I've used a glitter polish and the gradient hasn't really worked. On this course we used loose glitter placed on the end of a nail with top coat and blew it up or down the nail to create the effect. Worked really well!

At the end of the course we got to pick a style we liked and painted each others nails. Here's what my friend did with mine.

Overall the course was lots of fun and it gave me a lot of inspiration, it also got me to try techniques that I hadn't before. I'd have loved to have been shown water marbling and how to do that, but as the tutor said it's so difficult to get right and many people offering nail art don't tend to do this for clients.

Here's a close up of the wheel I worked on and techniques used...

I'd recommend this course as a fun day out, however you can pick up all techniques covered by watching YouTube videos and picture instructions on Pinterest. 

My friend and I spent the rest of the weekend searching HobbyCraft and various other stores to find glitter mixes and things we can stick on to our nails. I'll cover what we found in a future blog post.

Next Nail Polishes

Good Lord, I've not updated my Blog for a while, but that's not stopped plenty of Nail related activity and purchasing going on. First up is Next nail polish, seems they have launched a range of polish in stores (not found any online). I first saw a post on facebook of one of their polishes called 'Teal my Thunder' and it was so gorgeous I had to hunt it down.

It took me a while as I don't have a Next in my town and the stores nearest me didn't stock any nail polish or have this one I was after. I finally tracked it down and here it is in all it's glory!

This polish claimed to be a one coater, and it was! I was slightly worried that as it was a very deep teal colour it would stain my nails, but it came off without an issue and the above picture was taken after five days of wearing so pretty hardy too.

It was buy 2 get 1 free in Next and at £4 each I thought I'd pick up a couple more, although they only had about ten polishes to choose from.

I love the packaging and bottles too. 

The bottom left is called 'Loved Up' and is a pink, red and white matt glitter topper with white hearts. Be great for valentines day. The bottom left is called 'Holy Smoke' and is grey with a pink shimmer running though it. I

'm going to keep an eye out for more polishes in this line from Next. Overall pretty impressed with the one I tried and for the price and deal, it's a steal.