Tribal Design, Reverse Stamping and Making Decals

Stumped again for something to so with my names, him indoors suggested a tribal design for some reason, I had no idea where he gets these ideas from, but it was a good one. 

I picked some Spring colours to use as my base that I thought would go together as a gradient or I thought I'd also see if I could reverse stamp the design or failing that make my own decals.

Polishes chosen and a white base painted the the reverse stamping did not go well, it made a smudgy mess. So I then tried making a decal, which came out a little better but still wasn't perfect.

Oooh look at that wonky, smeary mess. Some more practise is needed on these techniques and maybe a better stamper. 

So I resorted to the old fashion method and sponged a gradient and stamped the pattern over the nail when dry using a black stamping polish. Doesn't stand up to a close inspection but from a far it doesn't look too bad.

Lottie London

Whilst searching for a new cuticle balm, the last Badger Balm had to go, it was good whilst it lasted but well past it's Best before date, I stumbled across some other products in Superdrug.

The brand Revolution is one that's only just started to be stocked in my local Superdrug and I've already purchased one of their Iconic Eye Shadow palettes which are apparently a dupe for Urban Decay's Naked Palettes. Seems on further investigation that this brand is made by the same company as Urban Decay. Anyway I couldn't resist this palette called Mermaids Vs Unicorns, it has the most gorgeous blues, purples and greens. These are my favourite colours. Their palettes are only £4 and I created a blue/green eye look with this last week, shadows were very pigmented and they last all day!

The other product that was new was Lottie London. In their display was a selection of nail varnishes and Superdrug were doing one of their 2 for 1 across all beauty products and I was buying foundation and the like already so I picked this polish called 'Voltage'.

The polish itself was a little sheer on first application and first coat, and it took three coats to get to full opacity. However formula was good and as you can see the colour shift in the bottle moving from the pearliest purple to teal is very evident on the nail too. It's a bit more expensive than normal mainstream polishes at £5.99 but if I can pick up a few more in Superdrug's offers I will. 

One more thing to note, the lovely packaging and bottles.

Latest accidental polish purchase

I made a bit of a boob whilst taking a trip to Sally's to pick up some Acetone last week. There were quite a few polishes in the area that is usually reserved for discounted goods, so picked up 5 polishes thinking I was bagging a bargain. I should have realised as the one OPI I picked up was from their recent 50 Shades of Grey collection, which hasn't been out long and it turns out the 3 China Glaze I purchased are from the 'All Aboard' collection.

Anyway to cut a long story short they were full price, so I've treated myself to a mani using three of them.

The dark Grey is the OPI called 'Dark Side of the Mood', this is a colour I don't have already. I have a few light greys but not dark, I think this will look great on it's own for an everyday work manicure. Formula was a little sheer though and it took three coats for full opacity. The metallic red is my first Morgan Taylor polish called 'Vixen in a Mask'. I didn't realise Morgan Taylor were on a par with OPI in terms of price. Finish was nice but I did have tip wear very quickly with this polish.

The accent nail is China Glaze 'Loco-Motive' a lovely glitter topper with small grey/black glitter and larger copper coloured hex glitter. 

On a cheaper note, I picked up some more Revlon ColorStay polishes from PoundWorld. I've a few polishes from this range already and they are really great. Seems revlon are selling these off as they have reformulated this range as a gel style polish.

I used the black called 'Stiletto' and the purple called 'Bold Sangria' for the gradient below. Funny, 'Bold Sangria' looked a burgundy colour in the bottle and pleasantly surprised that it's this lovely purple shade.

The other colours I picked up were a grey/blue called 'Blue Slate' a pastel coral called 'Sea Shell' and a metallic copper/red called 'Cayenne" which I'm really looking forward to trying. As I created a gradient with these, can't vouch 100% for the formula, but they are pretty pigmented as you can see from the picture. All the other polishes I own from this range are spot on in formula and usually 2 and in some instances 3 coats for full coverage. They dry to a lovely shiny finish too. I'm definitely keeping an eye out for other colours in this range that I don't have.

Until the next Nail Art Challenge

So whilst I'm waiting for my next challenge to arrive, I'm concentrating on what's left of my untried polishes as I've made a MASSIVE dent in them. I have a couple of these MIcro-Dot polishes and not sure what to do with them for best effect.

I topped these over Models Own 'Banana Smoothie' and quite liked the effect, reminds me of sprinkles on a cake, and who doesn't like cake?

The Nails Inc polish was in a set of three from Savers and is called KnightsBridge Place. Took a bit of fishing for the glitters but only used one coat.

Next on the untrieds list was this Revlon scented polishes called 'Raspberry Rapture'. It smells great and the colour is a little more on the raspberry side rather than being the right red here in the pic. It did however take three coats for full opacity. 

In order to sneak in an extra untried I used Sally Hansen SugarCoat textured polish in 'Pink Sprinkle' on my accent nails. It's a pink sheer polish with what looks like orange glitter. I have a few more of these SugarCoat polishes in the untried rack, I'm thinking I needs some nail vinyls to use these with...

Deciding what to wear for Spring

I'm never been much of a bright colours person, but of late I've been stretching my colour boundaries and trying not only some new colours in my wardrobe but also on my nails.

This was my first attempt and was inspired by a skirt I bought from Forever21 which as the design shows below is green with black polka dots. I love it. It's a pencil skirt and I paired it with bright purple shoes and a 'black' T-Shirt and denim jacket. I didn't want to over do the colour.

I bought these Models Own HyperGel polishes in a set from Superdrug and they are a slightly smaller bottle size at 10ml. These really are lovely bright shiny polishes and the other great thing about buying this set is that it included bright colours that I might not normally have purchased.

Next was a Spring gradient, as this Colour Show Bleached Neon in Chic Chartreuse has been sitting on my untrieds rack for some time. I thought it would make a nice transition from purple (which you can't see very well here) through to blue and then the green.

Plan was to stamp over this with gold, but didn't have enough time after creating the gradient, so left it as it was!

Recent adventures in nail varnish

I've not had much time to do my nails justice recently and took pleasure in having a break from trying to keep up with January's 31 Day Nail Art Challenge.

There have been some techniques I've wanted to try out however and I STILL have a fair amount if untried polishes in my possession. 

Doing Nail Art is a great way to try out polishes that have not yet graced your fingers and the below manicure is a perfect example of this. 

Occasionally the Nail Polish facebook Group I'm a member of has an anything goes weekend where you can post not only nail varnish you have for sale but anything else from, clothes to makeup and baby and children's toys.

I picked three Barry M polishes for the meagre price of £1.50 and I used them to create this tie dye effect manicure.

I used a sponge to create this pattern and just blobbed on spots of four different colours and sponged them on to my nails over a white base. I repeated this a couple of times until I was happy with the colour and design. This would have worked well as a galaxy too.

The manicure I did before didn't stay on as per usual I didn't have enough time or patience to wait for the polishes to completely dry before taping up and painting the triangle colour. I also wanted to add a few gems or stick something on my nails from my recent hobby craft and Instagram win.

Here's what I came up with, you can see the unstraightness (that's not even a word) of the lines. Colour combo OK, I used the free Nails Inc polish that came free with Marie Claire magazine last month and Essie's 'Fair Game'. Bobbed a gem on the accent nail from a set I bought a Hobby Craft. Next Blog post will be of all the gubbins I've bought recently and where from.

I created a glitter triangle on my thumb nails for this manicure which came out quite well too. I love how this looks on the macro pic below, I used 'Girls on Film' by GOSH!

Last but not least I have to start using the Models Own polishes I purchased in the sale a little while ago, they are sat on the top row of my untried taunting me! 

This one is from the BeetleJuice Collection called 'Purple/Blue'. It's a Duo Chrome of my two favourite colours. Lovely! 

Drawing Pin Inspired Mani

Fancied doing a bit of free hand painting again and this time the inspiration comes from some drawing pins. The design is of these little blue and pink abstract flowers. Here are the pins in question:

They came in a lovely little floral tin and I've used them to pin my necklaces to a cork notice board in order to restore order to my growing jewellery collection.

I painted a dark blue base and used white, pink and several shades of blue to create the flower pattern using a small nail art brush.

Great thing about doing these abstract flower designs is that the right hand looks OK too as you don't do an exact design and every nail is different! Top manicure tip for you there!