Foxy baby!

The unthinkable happened - I broke two of my lovely long nails :(

I don't think I had properly cut them (apart from shaping) for a few months, and was feeling pretty pleased with myself and smugly self congratulatory. So when two broke within as many days I was surprising upset - and very, very annoyed!

Having short nails just feels weird - I can't pick sellotape on the roll, can't drum my nails loudly on my laptop (annoys my husband greatly, one of my pleasures in life ;) ) and I'm able to type without making a multitude of errors - ok well maybe the last one is a bonus.

The biggest annoyance of all though is how much is restricts what designs I can do with my nails - I know plenty of bloggers have short nails by default and they do a fantastic job, but for me I'm used to having that extra canvas to work with. So - it will be simple nail art for a while I think!

And with that it's on to today's post! I saw this design months ago and for the life of me can't find it again (always like to give credit), and as it was fairly simple while being a little different, I felt now was the time to do it.

In sunlight

I started with 3 coats of MUA 'Fever Red' as my base, then used OPI 'You Don't Know Jacques' for the 'fur' of the fox. Ideally you would use a lighter colour of brown or even dark orange for this, but it's not a colour I have  a lot of so had to make do.

partial shade

I then used a nail art brush for the white on the fox using NYC 'Pinstripe White' and finished off with some black dots for the eyes and nose using China Glaze 'Liquid Leather'.

side view

You could do this design on all of your nails, it's really easy to do and not too fiddly, but I decided to stick with an accent nail :)

We get a lot of urban foxes round where I live as we're really near to some woods - I might need to ask them what they think!

What do you think, have you used animals in nail art before? My next attempt is sure to involve bunnies!

fx

Pastel galaxy mani

I've been dying to try out a galaxy mani for aggggeesss and finally decided to attempt one at the weekend. I particularly like pastel versions, and a quick search brought me to a tutorial posted by The Nailasaurus here. I pretty much followed it to a T using the list of polishes below.

artificial light

I used the following polishes for my 'basic' colours;

• OPI 'Thanks a Windmillion' (sea foam green) - used as the base
• Sally Hansen 'Yellow Kitty' (yellow)
• MUA 'Bold Blue' (blue)
• Rimmel 'Marshmallow Heaven' (purple)

artificial light

 I then used the following colours for little splashes of shimmer to make it all look more ethereal;

• OPI 'Not Like The Movies' (shimmery green/silver)
• OPI 'Play The Peonies' (pale pink pearl)
• OPI 'Significant Other Colour' (sheer lavendar/yellow duochrome)

natural light, partial shade

 Once that had all dried I dotted on some NYC 'Pinstripe White' to make the stars, and topped with a coat of Seche Vite for strength. Later I then applied two coats of Rimmel 'Matte Finish' to give a matte effect.

Partial shade

 My favourite nail polish in this line up is 'Not Like The Movies' from the January 2011 Katy Perry collection, which is a silvery green and light purple duocrome with some silver microglitter mixed in. Its one of the first few OPI polishes I bought and I haven't even looked at it for at least a year - I'll definitely be using it again in the near future!

all of the polishes together!

What do you think, do you like galaxy manis? When I try this next time I'll vary the pattern across the nails I think, but I'm very pleased with my first attempt!

Fx

Nice mani, but rubbish topcoat!!

After my first go at a gradient mani (I won't post that, it's not worth the two minutes of your life you'd waste reading it ;) ) I decided to have another go combined with a dot manicure. I was really pleased with how it turned out until I put on topcoat - and subsequently ruined it :(

I decided it was still worth posting though, if for nothing else it warns others not to use that particular topcoat!

in sunlight

I started with three coats of NYC 'Pinstripe White' on all of my nails, then waited for it to dry completely. I then applied the gradient on to my thumb and ringfinger using the following colours;

• China Glaze 'Below Deck' (dark purple)
• NYC 'Downtown' (reddish purple)
• Sally Hansen 'Fairy Teal' (teal)
• MUA 'Ameretto Crush' (peachy pink)

before the gradient

 I then dotted on the same colours in a random pattern on my other fingers with a mixture of large and small dots.

You can see the mess a gradient manicure makes in the pic below, total nightmare to tidy up but worth it :)

Indirect sunlight

 The next step was to add white dots on to the nails with the gradient pattern carrying the theme through all of the nails.

Finally, I added topcoat. Now, normally I use Seche Vite but my bottle has less than half left now, and as anyone who has used it before knows it starts to get a bit thick and gloopy about then, and causes some major shrinkage on your nails. So I decided to give another top coat I have a go - OPI Rapidry.

BIG mistake - as you can probably see in the pic below the dots all bled after I applied the top coat. At first I thought I hadn't let everything dry enough (although I was sure I had), but tried using Seche Vite on my other hand and it was absolutely fine. Therefore I can only blame the topcoat and won't plan to use this again!

Sunlight

 What do you think, have you ever used this topcoat before? Did you like the mani before it all went wrong?

I'm away to take this mani off now and put on some plain polish *sob*

Fx

P.s. if the mani was staying I would clean up my cuticles a bit more as there is some staining, but didn't see the point really :)

Pastel skittle mani with decal

After a few more complicated manis recently (posts to follow soon), I decided to go for a simple mani with a little embellishment. I ordered some moustache decals from amazon a few weeks ago, so decided tonight was the night to give them a whirl :)

in daylight

A skittle mani is basically five different nails often following a theme. So you could have all with the colour blue, all with stripes etc - or you could throw caution to the wind and go wild!

Fot this one I decided to go with pastel colours, and used the following;

• Barry M 'Peach Melba' (orange)
• Sally Hansen ' Yellow Kitty' (yellow)
• MUA 'Pistachio Ice Cream' (mint green)
• Essie 'Cool Cascade' (pink)
• MUA 'Bold Blue' (blue)

indirect sunlight

All of these are 4 coats, with the exception of the yellow one which needed SIX coats - seriously?!

I then applied a coat of Seche Vite and the moustache decal, then glued on black gems on to each nail (and a pink one on to the nail with the decal). And then finished off with another coat of Seche Vite.

Partial sunlight

 What do you think, do you like the colour together? Have you tried something similar?

Fx

Polishes used

f

Mint mani for Talia

Many of you have probably heard of the 13 year old blogger Talia Joy Castellano who become famous for her beauty and fashion vblog on Youtube.

Talia tragically lost her 6 year battle with neuroblastoma on Tuesday this week, and as a tribute to her memory many nail and fashion bloggers are dedicating posts to her. The last mani she posted was a mint design, so many nail bloggers are posting mint manis in her memory.

As you know I haven't been blogging for all that long, but I've known of Talia for a couple of years so felt I wanted to contribute. Loss of life at any age is sad, but it seems especially tragic when someone so young, bright and full of life passes away.

You can see Talia's work on her Youtube channel here.

artifical light

For my mani I decided to go simple and sparkly with 3 coats of MUA 'Pistachio Ice Cream' followed by one coat of OPI 'Rainbow Connection' from the 2011 Muppets collecion.

'Ranbow Connection' is a clear polish with different sizes of hexagonal glitter in silver, pink, yellow, green, blue and orange. It sold out very quickly when it was released and is now another relatively rare polish increasing in value.

artifical light

polishes used

I added some fimo hearts to the design as well - although I confess it was meant to be one in the centre but I had a little mishap! It kind of looks like those love heart sunglasses you get though which I could totally have seen Talia wearing, so hopefully it's ok :)

My thoughts are with Talia's family

Fx

Hot pink waterfall mani

So after I removed the beads from my nail constellations mani and repainted my ring fingers with MUA 'Bright Pink', I decided to give a waterfall mani a go. I've seen a few blog posts on this recently and it seemed relatively easy to do while being pretty and eyecatching - perfect all round really :)

partial sunlight

I had a rummage through my collection and decided to go for a variety of colours. I used;

• MUA'Pistachio Ice Cream' (mint green)
• MUA 'Bold Blue' (light blue)
• OPI 'Anti Bleak' (dark purple)
• Rimmel lasting finish 'Marshmallow Heaven' (light purple)

This seemed like quite a summery combination to me and I really liked the colours against the hot pink. I only wish I had invested in some half decent brushes as I found it quite hard to paint the strokes on - they should really be a bit more delicate than they turned out!

direct sunlight

I went over some of the strokes twice as they needed some opacity to stand up to the pink, then finished off with Seche Vite topcoat.

closer up

polishes used

What do you think, do the colours go together well? Have you tried this design before? If you know of any good nail brush kits please let me know :)

fx

MUA nail constellations

Being a newbie in the world of nail polish blogging inevitably means I have a small polish stash compared to the established bloggers - I think I have around 40 at the moment. So I decided to up my collection with a couple of online orders from discount sites (yet to arrive - can't wait!) and a quick shopping trip to Superdrug to stock up on the MUA £1 nail varnishes.

While eagerly choosing some colours I came across the MUA nail constellations product and was instantly in love! I bought one to take home and try out with a promise to myself to purchase more if it was any good.

So, what did I do with my new purchases?

Firstly I applied 4 coats of MUA 'Bright Pink' - a really pretty hot pink creme with a touch of coral and a very glossy finish. It did need 4 coats for full opacity but I was really pleased with the result when it was finished.

I saved appying the 4th coat on my ring fingers until my other fingers were finished, then applied them and dusted with the constellation beads.

In sunlight

I purchased the 'Scorpio' constellation (my star sign) which in the bottle looked like gold, green and hot pink. However when I applied Seche Vite top coat it seemed to strip the pink beads of their colour as you can see in these pics - what a shame! I also lost quite a few beads over the next few hours, so tonight decided to take them off and try something else, although will definitely be going back to experiment further with different designs.

in sunlight again

sunlight

products used

What do you think, do you like the constellation beads? Have you tried them before?

Fx