Starbucks Nails!

It's that time of year again when the Starbucks red cups are out, the grass is crunchy in the morning and Primark has cosy tights out...I hate this time of year tbh. I'm just not made for cold climates, and Christmas was never a big deal to me. But I do like christmas patterned clothes and the odd christmas film :p

I've always favoured Starbucks over Costa, think they have a better variety...and I'm not 

 a huge fan of the colour red either :p

So thought I'd give Starbucks nails a go, after having a...craving?...to use Barry M's Spring Green. It's just so vibrant and bright without being too neon, and aaaaalmost the right shade for Starbucks :p

I'd like to apologise for various things. Such as the scary demonic face of the logo, the streakiness and the overall blurriness :(

None of my tools were small enough to do the face, so I resorted to a sharpie, which was also slighty clunky, but I got sick of trying to do the face so I left it. The streakiness is due to me using a new fast dry topcoat (Maybelline) and it just being overall crap - no speed drying, and lots of streaks. BOO. And the blurriness is due to me still sucking at taking photos and not using a stand.tripod type device :P

In all honesty, I have no idea what the friiiiick was going on with this hand. Being left handed, I was aiming to do something easy, but it kind of ended up being a garbled mess :p The middle finger's supposed to be the little brown slips they put round the takeaway cups and the pinky/thumb ended up being a disjointed version of the bottom of the starbucks logo :/

I much prefer my right hand as that had the better designs, so i may have to keep my left hand in hiding for the rest of the week :p

I've been pondering to do an extra theme to my blog. Being an avid fan of Boots, I'm thinking ofpost ng Boots haul posts along with my usual nail art posts. Just because I'll probably not be doing many designs on the run up to exams (ERMYGADZ EXAMS), and I do have quite a spending issue when it comes to Boots :p Anyways, I'll see how the Boots haul posts do, and see if I'll continue it on or not :) I'm not intending for this to become a beauty blog (I'd be the worst beauty blogger ever haha), but just a few comments on anything I bought, plus I usually always buy a nail polish whenever I go to Boots :p

Bloody Fingerprints

Despite not being a fan of Halloween (bunny ears and a tutu galore in glasgow these days), I'm now enthralled by the gory side of Halloween after watching Tanya Burr's and MakeupbyMel's zombie tutorials. I've decided that I'll properly get into Halloween next year (not enough money to do Halloween last minute this year) and dressup as a gory zombie, and get prosthetics like liquid latex and wax etc and scare the living daylights out of the tutt bunnies and cats next year ;)

Anyways, since my last nail design was more cutesy stuff, I decided to change to a more blood themed design (and I needed a break from yet more uni work). I figured blood spatter was a bit too Dexter-ish, so I went for fingerprints. People say I should watch Dexter since i'm into CSI so much...

After using the Models Own white as a base, I took Barry M's Black Red, dabbed a bit on my pinky finger, dabbed off excess and then dabbed onto the white base. It didn't turn out as defined/well as I'd hoped, but I still quite liked the effect it gave, if it is somewhat a design that you really need to stare at for a while to understand :p I made a bit of a boo-boo on my ring finger, so I covered it up with a blood drip...I'm not sure if this helps the design or inhibits it...I don't think inhibit is a suitable word actually...These notes are getting to me...

If Nothing Ever Changed There'd Be No Butterflies....

As you can tell from the new post, I am free from all things examinable and uni related! (at least until resits start...which I hopefully don't have to do...argh...) WARNING: This post becomes rather rambly after the photo, so you can stop reading afterwards if you wish XD

Moving on, I realised it'd been around 2 months since I'd done a design...was quite disheartening...darn exams! I'm not sure why I decided to do butterfly wings, I thought they looked lovely on a tumblr photo I'd seen, (the person used metalic polishes though, so they looked more...sheeny?...Is that even a word?...Obviously vocabulary is my strong point ¬_¬ ), so I thought I'd give it a wee bash. I don't have many metallic polishes since I'm not a huge fan of pearly/metallicy finishes, so I just used creme finishes instead.

To create the base, I used Rimmel Lasting Finish 280 Sunshine but it was so streaky and patchy even with 3 coats, that I ended up sponging over it with a yellow polish anyways. The red/orange gradient was done by sponging too, generally coming in from the corner of the nail rather than just the bottom as I was attempting to make the wings almost diagonal looking? However, my lack of practising drawing the black outlines led to  the majority of the nails looking...well, shit XD

But I managed to get the hang of the method for a few of the nails (middle and pinky) so I definitely know what to do for next time. I then just added a few white dots on the tip of the nail, smeared on a fast dry topcoat (it's become rather gloopy!) and ta-daaaaaaah...monarch butterfly wings!...ish... ¬_¬

All colours from ebay!

So, a few posts ago I said something about selling some false nail sets online (either folksy or etsy) to make a bit of money over summer and to give me something to do. I'm still planning to do that, so hopefully should start things rolling around next month once I get supplies in like false nails, glue, etc. Not sure of which designs to do though, as the seller I found on ebay for false nail sets only does them in batches of 5, and I dont want to buy too many in case this just epicly falls flat on it's arse and I'm left with tonnes of nails just hanging about not bought by anyone... Although after calculating how much everything would be, it shouldn't cost too much for eveything so it wouldn't be too much of a loss if this fails :)

Sounds quite scary that I'm opening a kind-of-but-not-really shop :/ It's been more or less a year since I started messing about with polish designs (the polish obsession has been ingrained for a good few years obviously) and now I''m considering selling some designs...I wasn't even expecting to create a blog, and when I did, I didn't expect to even gain one follower never mind 12...12 followers is nothing compared to the more "famous" polish bloggers, but it's a lot to me and I appreciate that people have spent time reading my mindless rambles haha!

Anyways, I shall keep you posted once my "shop" starts if you'd like to purchase my questionable designs or you can buy them as a gift for someone :)

Farewell and have a nice day! Till next time!

Negative Spacing

Another Valentines themed post today, got bored of doing uni work so I started procrastinating hehe. Anyhoos, I've seen a few posts about negative spacing (when part of the nail is left bare) so thought I'd give it a shot with my somewhat unprofessional hand :p

For my colour scheme I somewhat reluctantly decided to open my OPI minis box of The Muppet Collection. It was my first ever minis collection from OPI and I've been perving on the collection since it came out, wishing I had the money to get all of them D:

Anyhoos, the minis set comes with Wocka Wocka!, Excuse Moi!, Designer...De Better! and Warm & Fozzie. So I decided to use Wocka Wocka! and Excuse Moi! as theyre the more typical Valentines Day colours. 

First off I thought I'd do an XOXO type pattern (hugs and kisses) but thought it'd look like I was playing naughts and crosses on my nails, so thought Id turn the O's into hearts. For my accent nail, I thought I'd put a negative spaced heart in the middle of Excuse Moi!

White: Ultra Pro
Glitter: OPI, Excuse Moi!
Red: OPI, Wocka Wocka

After I finished this design, I thought it looked a tad too busy, and Wocka Wocka! had smeared so it was bugging me, but I really liked the accent nail, and wasn't wanting to waste a single drop of Excuse Moi! So I just changed the other nails to simple negative stripes through some Wocka Wocka!

Glitter: OPI, Excuse Moi!
Red: OPI, Wocka Wocka!

Even though I'm not usually a fan of reds, I quite like this design, as it's more simple and subtle. Although I'm  not looking forward to taking off Wocka Wocka! as I've got a feeling it's gonna stain like a biatch as cleaning up around my cuticles was hard enough :(

I have a few other valentines designs in mind, so I may get round to doing them if I have time :)

Pick 'n' Mix

I often get in moods where I can't choose what design to do, my mind just seems to randomly get filled with all these crazy ideas, but I feel like I don't have enough time (or nail polish remover) to do them all (which reminds me, I need to get a little notebook to jot down my ideas and not use my uni notebook...)

So, I decided to do each and every finger a different design. Why not? there's no rules as to say that you have to do both hands\each finger the same...some rules are meant to be broken ;)

Right Hand

Thumb: cloudy sky with birdies

Forefinger: hexagonal glitter (kiiiiind of tried to make it look like fish scaled. But failed :p Also, the purple ink ran off as soon as I put top coat on D: )

Middle finger: pastel strawberry

Ring finger: iconic smiley face

Pinky: cow print

Left Hand

Thumb: lilac with purple crackle

Forefinger: polka dots with fruit fimos (the nail polish is called Fruit Salad!)

Middle: midnight blue with blue glitter

Ring finger: rhinestone mentalness! :D

Pinky: Minnie Mouse inspired with rhinestone bow

I had quite a bit of fun with this "manicure" (i dont feel right calling it a proper manicure, as I've yet to get into the habit of doing my cuticles and such hehe). It was a bit hectic as I hadn't planned beforehand what to do, so i was to-ing and fro-ing from my bed to my nail polish box.

But I did get a lot of ooohs and aaahs from my friends :3

TITP

You can pretty much guess why I done these nails. They're horrifically messy, but I wasn't too fussed about whether they would've been neat or not since they would've got ruined when I was there :P

TITP was pretty awesome though, saw Beyonce (where I nearly died thanks to over eager fans) and a few other awesome folk I wouldn't have seen otherwise :P

What's black, white and red all over?

Minnie Mouse nails! I didn't do these on myself, I did them for a friend's birthday party :)

And as always one nail has to be different, so the thumb has clear rhinestones for the dots and a black fimo bow.

These are really cute yet simple, I also did them for a friend to wear to T In The Park!

One of your five a day.

Oh  my days, looking back on this fills me with the OCD twitchiness of being neat and cleaning up o_O

Anyways, these are supposed to look like strawberries ¬_¬ I only got the nail striper/pens through at this point, so I didn't have any brushes to do better detailing on the leaves and seeds.

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

So, after the first attempts, I decided to go onto ebay (my best friend, but my bank account's worst enemy) and get nail art tools and decorations. Like dotting tools, nail art brushes, cheap crappy striper/pen nail polishes (got 92 for like £20!) and things like rhinestones, fimo shapes etc.

When I decided to do these nails, I wanted to do something simple cos none of my stuff had been delivered yet, and I looked up a video on youtube, and these were do-able with a toothpick and a kirby grip...apparently...I failed on the toothpick and kirby grip technique and that's why these are so messy :P But they still turned out pretty well considering :)

Ah crap, got the song stuck in my head now :(