Nail Art: Ombre Stripes

Long time no see! Again! :p

Today I tried something pretty complicated for me since I haven't done any nail art that's needed so much work...and even then, I still made some mistakes :p

I've been liking Ombres these days, so I did a blue and purple ombre using models own Hypergel polishes and a slight layer of gold glitter polish from the ciate Christmas advent calander. I then laid some striping tape in diagonals and then quickly put on some Barry m black polish. 

I liked using the black as it quietens down the brightness of the ombre but still has an element of interest to it. 

Nail Art: I Been Drankin' Watermelon

With summer kind of being in Scotland, fruit patterns are all over the place - nails, fashion, homeware. Watermelon and pineapples are my personal favourites, and I currently have a watermelon clutch from new look (which a friend very nicely got me as part of a graduation present!) and a pineapple backpack from topshop. 

I was going to do watermelon nails a few weeks ago bit of course my nails broke and I had to but them down to nubs again :(

Nail Polishes used:

Barry M Gelly: Greenberry

Models Own Hypergel: Coral Glaze

Models Own nail art pens: black and white

Nail Art: Pastel Marble Swirl

Marble swirls are another kind of nail art you can do that looks harder than it actually is (and also a lot less messy than water marble). 

All you need to do is blob on your polish and swirl the polishes together (still wet) with a cocktail stick or bobby pin or a dotting tool. Some nails can turn out not as great as other nails (a couple of mines had some bare patches I didn't notice till later) but I think it's nice that not all nails are the same or uniform within themselves!

Polishes used:

Models Own Hypergel: Purple Gleam

Models Own Scented: Peach Melba 

Nail Art: Matching Pastel Aztec

It's graduation season and with that comes fancy dresses! My boyfriend's graduation is before mines and I've decided to wear a pale grey shift dress with a pastel aztec pattern from missguided. I don't often wear such bright colours but thought I'd make the effort for summer. 

I attempted to do matching nails, by picking out specific parts of the pattern. However they didn't come out as neat or as dainty as I'd hoped. But they could be worse haha! 

Colours used:

Models Own Hypergel: Cornflower Gleam

Models Own Scented: Banana Split

Barry M Gelly: Greenberry, Dragon fruit, Papaya 

Revlon: Hazy 

Nail Art: Drybrushed Ombre

Dry brushing is usually a painting technique where you have very little paint on the brush and your paint strokes become very streaky and light. 

I imagined a Drybrushed ombre would look quite cool so I have it a go and this is how it ended up: 

I quite liked how it ended up, I bit different from the standard sponged ombré. How I did this was wipe of the polish brush as much as I could and start doing light streaks from the tip of the nail towards the base, layering more towards the bottoms. Even though I wiped as much as I could off the brush, there was still too much polish to give the Drybrushed look so starting at the tip was a good way to build up the densest part of the ombre whilst also drying off the brush.  

Polishes used:

Models Own Hypergel: White Light

Barry M Gelly: Prickly Pear 

Nail Art: Messy Stripes

Having been out of the nail art game for quite a while, I thought I'd test what skills I have left (if any) and try some vertical stripes. 

Vertical stripes are easier than they look since a striper brush does a lot of the work, but there's still some patience and good polish placement skills needed. 

I think my nails ended up a bit meh, with clashing colours and some in inventive stripe placement but I was a bit stuck for ideas and wasn't sure what else I could do :p

The colours I used were:

Models Own Hypergel: White Light (white)

Models Own Hypergel: Cornflower Gleam (blue)

Barry M Gelly: Dragon Fruit (pink)

Barry M Gelly: Guava (turquoise) 

Barry M Gelly: Prickly Pear (lilac)

Barry M Gelly: Key Lime (green)

Nail Art: Hime Gyaru

Hime Gyaru nails are a trend in japan which consists of lots of 3D nail beads, pearls, bows, cartoon characters etc. I personally only do Gyaru nails with flat back pearls and ball bearings as anything more would just be a hassle to my daily life haha!

Gyaru nails always look more effort than they actually entail, it really does consist of splodging on clear topcoat and then whatever 3D nail bit you have and is a really easy way to impress everyone. 

I used a base of Models Own Hypergel: Lilac Sheen and Barry M Gelly: Dragon Fruit and a good layer of Seche Vite on top to secure everything 

Nail Art: Frosty Snowmen

Another quick post today! (Joys of final year and dissertations...) 

Decided to (mildly) join in with th festive spirit and do some Christmassy nails. Snowmen are super simple to do and can look cute too! I added a coat of glitter over the white but under the facial detail to attempt to make it look like snow but you can't see too well in the photo! 

Nail Art: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Quickie posts tidy as uni work is building up and I have my dissertation presentation soon. Yikes!

I decided to simplify what could've been a difficult nail art attempt by just concentrating on the eye bandana things the guys wear, i wasn't too sure if people would guess what it was so attempted the logo too, especially since splinter seemed a bit too hard to do lol. 

Base was Barry m spring green

Nail Art: Halloween Blood Drip & Pumpkins

This is so late I don't even know if it's worth posting. But I was looking through my blog posts and only notice today that this didn't publish properly when I posted it in the lead up to Halloween -_-

The colourings totally off in both of the photos (was a late night nail art session and I also only have Instagram versions of the photos left on my phone) but I used Barry m Gelly keylime green an maybelline extreme blackcurrant to do some blood drip nails and models own/hed kandi for the pumpkins

Nail Art: Galaxy

Galaxy nail art is a sure fire way to get people to look at your nails and stare in wonderment at your "skills" when really you're doing a lot of careful splodging lol

I can't remember what colours I used, but all you need is a black, dark blue, purple, pink, yellow, white and a glitter. 

Nail Art: Dandelions

Dandelion nail art are something I've been meaning to do for a while, it's just one of those ones I've forgotten to do! It's so simple and easy to do, and super pretty too :) 

It's Been A While...

Hey guys, long time no post! Again...oops. I've been away on holiday and I've had so much mess to tidy up (post holiday wash and pre moving tidy) that blogging has been the back of my mind :/ 

I did prepare some Swatches of the polishes I got in my fragrance direct haul, but I've moved every single photo from my iphone to my computer so I'll need to post them later as I usually post from my iphone. 

Anyways I've done one or two nail art type things since I've been back and I also managed to nab the much coveted new Bourjois polishes. 

Here I did some textured ombre nails with the Barry m textured polishes. I'd never thought you'd be able to ombre textured polishes, especially with sponges, but I saw something similar on Instagram so I thought if give it a shot. 

Here I did some random splotchy block shapes with black outlines. It looks better in the photo than it did in real life so this only lasted a day. 

If you follow any beauty blogs you'll know that the new Bourjois 1 second polishes have been causing astir with their bright turquoise an blue offerings for summer. The forefinger and ring finger are turquoise block and the other fingers are blue no blues. Both colours are delightfully bright and very appropriate for the summer. I also picked up meli melon the same time as Barry m Gelly in Papaya but they turned out to pretty much be the exact same colour when Swatched much to my despair! However it never hurts to have a back up right? 

Nail Art Mish Mash and Fragrance Direct

Sorry for the lack of posts these days. I've been feeling so uninspired lately and pretty much only do things like polka dots and triangles just in different colour combos which can't be too inspiring for you guys tbh :/

I miss doing the WOW designs like the pokemon nails or the butterfly wings, but with my stuff being in two different places, it's a bit hard to get everything together T_T

Anyways, this is just a collage of what I have done, which is just a colour block design using standard sticky tape, gems and some polka dots with a holo polish. Pretty boring really :(

But one semi exciting thing Id like to mention is that if yous would like to buy some cheap OPI or China Glaze or Essie then head over to http://www.fragrancedirect.co.uk/ which sells high end AND drugstore products (hair, nails, make up, perfume etc) with a huge discount, even Revlon polishes were down to 99p :o I did a smaaaal purchase of 9 polishes which totalled to £22, which is really good considering it contains 4 OPI polishes! I think it's old season products they only sell, but definitely have a click on the link to see if theres anything you've been desiring!

Neutral Triangle Half Moons

Hope you guys are enjoying the summer sunshine wherever you are, Scotland's being generous and we've had more than one day of sun, must be all this global warming, right? ;) 

I was craving some nude colours and fancied using Utopia or Lychee, I also found some striping tape so I decided to do a triangle half moon jobbie. All I did was lay two pieces of tape in a cross shape on my nail and filled in one of the triangles with Lychee over the base of Utopia. IT looked a tad empty so I dotted some Lilacism within the lychee triangle. 

Matte Polka Dot

Hello folks! I've still been rather uninspired plus I've managed to misplace my nail art brushes so today's pot is ever simple in all honesty. 

For some reason I'd always done Polk dots in black or white on top of a coloured base, but I'd never thought to do the dots in a darker version of the base. Silly me! Then I thought it'd look nice with a slick of matte topcoat on top. 

For this post I used Essie Lilacism  and Sinful Colours Amethyst. 

I've noticed that the photos I've been posting are ridiculously blurry even though they look decent quality when on my phone. I'm not sure if it's because I used an app to add a watermark and the app messes with the quality or it it's the blogger app I'm using :/ is anyone else having this problem?! It looks normal quality when I'm writing the post though D: 

Indecisive Multicoloured Patterns

Sup guys! Got a simple nail art post here, nothing too drastic/complicated as I'm still enjoying not studying for once and stuffs still kind of messy at home.

Anyways, I was indecisive between drips and stripey blocky things, and also what colour to do them in. The only thing I was decided on was the base colour, Barry M Gelly: Lychee, the colours are all the pens from the Models Own Wah Nails nail art pen collection. 

As you can see they're nothing too thrilling or fancy. I miss doing designs like I used to do such as the first pacman nails I did or the Pokemon ones, the more complicated wow-inducing ounces. Hopefully I'll get to do them again soon, it's a bit hard living I'm between houses as I don't get to have all my polishes in front of me :( 

Watercolour Nails

I've been sucha a bad blogger...again... I've been really busy with uni, as I have a project due and I had a week with like 9 labs (I usually have 1 or 2 at most) and it's all just been a but WAAHDAODHASIIDBISDIHU lately XD I also haven't done any of the swatch posts I'd said I'd do from my last Boots haul >_<

Things are semi-calming down right now, so I might be able to do swatch posts of my latest Boots hauls (got some of those Barry M textured polishes :D ) so hopefully I'll get something typed out, really sorry guys!

Anyways, on a rare night off from uni work/sobbing at labs, I dashed out some watercolour nails. I'd previously attempted it by using the cling film/sammich bag technique but mines ended up very splotchy and looked like a 2 year old tried to paint my nails lolol. So I got the acetone out and did it hte proper way, and LOVED how it turned out :)

I used a white Revon to as a base, then topped with 2 coats of Seche Vite to use as a barrier between the acetone and the white base. I then dabbed on patches of Essie Lilacism, Essie Lapiz Of Luxury and Essie Mint Candy Apple and used a brush dipped in acetone to smudge out the blobs. then another coat of seche vite was used and you're done!

Personally, it took me about 15 mins to do the whole thing (inc base) as I didn't want any harsh lines where the blobs has dried around the edge. I thing using pastels makes it's really pretty, but I might consider using  more bold colours and see how that turns out :)

Halloween Nails 2012

I have to admit I'm not the most avid Halloween person. I don't like kids, so trick or treaters and a no go, and I can never be bothered trying to find a non-slutty Halloween costume :p However I do like the effort some people go to, with full on face make up, fake blood etc :)

One thing that I do get up to on Halloween is do my nails :D Granted I've only done them twice now, but I plan on making it a yearly thing :) They surprisingly didn't take too long, maybe half an hour ish, but they are kind of messy if you look closely, but I guess that adds to the effect a bit...I'm hoping? :p

Blood Drips
Frankenstein
Ghost
Web
Bloody Boo

Googly Eyes
Pumpkin
Gravestone
Slime Drips
Jack Skellington

My fave ones are the slime drips and the bloody boo, I quite like the glittery background for the drip and how I managed to make the background bloody-ish for the boo :)

I've been a bit bogged down with uni work atm, so thats why this post is a bit lack lustre, I had a rather confusing lab report to do, and now I'm behind on lecture notes :( I really wanna keep up with re-writing lecture notes, since my modules are year long ones (so I only get exams in May) and apparently you get examined on 3rd and 4th year lectures in your final year D:

Hope you gys have a safe and fun Halloween whether or not your dressed up :D