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 

Swatched! Models Own: BlooBloo

This is kind of a sucky swatch as I've layered a Barry m confetti topcoat over it but I hope you can get the gist of BlooBloo. It's a lovely pastel colour that could almost pass as a winter pastel

Swatched! Barry M Gelly: Blueberry

Barry M blueberry is a standard pastel blue polish, nothing too special in all honesty. Unlike the lilac version, this was opaque in two coats, however I still did my three coats for y peace of mind XD 

Having got quite a collection of Gellys now, I do recommend them for their range of colours as some aren't duped in the normal Barry m collection (keylime, for example. The normal Barry m lime colour is a sheer jelly) and they are pretty opaque in two coats.  However they aren't as shiny as they are with a coat of Seche Vite on too, but I think very few topcoats/gel polishes can compare to Seche Vite! 

Easter aztec gradient

I'm not good with naming designs... My official title for this is pastel Easter egg ombre Aztec nails which makes no sense at all when you think about it lol.

But yeah, thought I'd do something with the Easter holidays (although mines shall be filled with exam revision. Boo.) and is it just me that thinks Easter egg patterns look like really simple Aztec patterns? I think I have Aztec on the brain, I'm quite a fan of the pattern hehe.

I used the models own scented collection for my various ombres, and then the models own/wah nails nail art pen to do the little patterns. My left hand is very skew whiff bit it adds...something?...

I used Seche Vite as a topcoat which smoothed out all the bumps of the sponging and polish so lovingly I wish I had gallons of the stuff.

P.s sorry for the whacked out placement of the watermark...

Fruit Salad Nails - with Scented polish!

I finally got round to doing some fruit themed nail art after doing the models own scented polish swatches on Friday.

I didn't do anything too taxing, basically jut used various dotting tools as acrylic paints to do fruits that coordinated with the scent of the polish on that finger. Managed to do this in less than half an hour which shows that you don't need to spend many hours doing a design that looks ever so slightly swish ;)

I top coated with Seche Vite as always, so now the scent is a bit hard to detect :(

Swatched! Models Own: Scented Collection

Remember those scented polishes when you were younger?! I distinctly remember having a cherry scented one from Claire's Accessories and I loved sniffing it whenever I could. So yeah I was the creepy kid in school LOL. Models own have released yet another cool collection of 5 scented pastel polishes and j of corse had to get them on pre-order ;)

They're 5 pastels, of which I do not need any more of but I couldn't pass up the scented novelty of them! However the pastels are suitable for the lead up to spring/summer. There is a pink (strawberry), lilac (grape), blue (blueberry muffin), green (apple) and yellow (banana). It took me a good 3 coats to get the colours opaque but some still had a bit of pull and patching on the 4th coat for the yellow and green at which point I have up and just left it lol. So it can be a bit annoying to apply these, but a coat if Seche Vite made it no bother to wait for them to dry/semi dry.

As regards for the scent, they smell like those smelly gel pens from when I was in secondary school which I'm sure are still available in whs smiths nowadays :p I'm planning on doing some fruit inspired nail art (predictable I know lol) but I'm awayb from my nail stuff this weekend so we shall see what the wear is like by Monday :)

one coat

two coats

three coats (opaque on the pink, lilac and blue, but patchy on the green and yellow)

four coats

Before top coat

With Seche Vite

Swatched! Barry M Textured Polishes

Hey guys! I have a swatch post today of the much tualked about textured polishes from Barry M. The photos are a bit off because I got an iphone recently and I've still to get used to how it focuses etc. But you can kind of still see how the texture is like concrete :) I also have instagram too if you fancy a look (gunthercentralperk).

Being a Barry M fan I obviously had to get my hands on these, although it is slightly disappointing that here is only pastel colours as I have a billion of them. But it is suitable for the upcoming spring :) All are 3 coats and no topcoat.

Atlantic Road (Blue) and Ridley Road (Green)

Kingsland Road (pink) and Station Road (yellow)

All but the yellow are pure creme colours, whereas I'm sure the yellow has some kind of shimmer to it, although it doens't show well in contrast with the texture. These wore pretty well, very little chipping despite me being at the computer a lot during the 2 days I wore these. Although I did notice they picked up dirt pretty easily due to the texture, I'm a bit of a face toucher when I'm bored in lectures, and I did notice a slight foundation-type tinge to them...ew lol.

These are a nice step forward into the textured polish trend and a lot less hassle than the caviar or fuzzy nail trend as there you're not physically making th epolihs 3D yourself, so they're good if you're lazy but want to dup your feet into the nail art trend :) They're fairly easy to remover, easier than an actual glitter polish, but a smidge mroe effort than a standard polish due to the gritty bits.

Simple Hime Gyaru nails

Hello people! Long time no post eh? :(

Uni's been a bit of a drag, and it's going to get even more saddening as I have at least 4 hand ins/deadlines/tests in March -_- 

So I haven't really been in the mood to do much nail art, but I have been doing a bit of shopping (Boots hauls coming soon!), so I will hopefully start doing swatch type posts soon too :)

So for this design, I used Essie's Lapiz Of Luxury, which I've been eyeing up for a while. It's a lovely dusty mid-blue, that's opaque in 2 coats (but I used my usual 3 coats), perfect for spring/summer. I know it's not that time of year yet, but I do love a bit of pastel ;)

I then got some 3D gems/pearls and randomly stuck on a few clusters in the corner of each nail, then topcoated with a good slather of Seche Vite. I finally succumbed to the hype and grabbed a bottle last time I was in Boots, and I have to say it's pretty darn good. It was dry by the time I (carefully) put away all my nail things, and everything's stayed on despite me getting my nails caught in my hair a good few times lol.

Sorry aboutt he state of my nails, the cold weather's been drying my cuticles and the complete riot of my room means I can't find my Lemony Flutter D:

Hopefully I'll get them back to good condition soon!

Last Minute Pastel Ombre

After an afternoon/evening studying I felt like relaxing and doing my nails, and since the ombre for my last post worked out well, I thought I'd do another one but with pastels (still not accepting that autumn's here!)

I'm pretty tired after being at the computer for most of the day so this will be a pretty straight forward post methinks :p

Pale Blue: Maybelline - Ceramic Blue
Mint Green: Essie - Mint Candy Apple
Lilac: Barry M - Berry Ice Cream

Since these were sheer colours and I was sponging, (I usually just fade the colours together with a brush), I applied a base coat of white before starting the ombre/gradient. It did take a good few coats to get them this opaque though, however it still seemed quicker than doing a proper design...

Anyways, I better get off to sleep now, hopefully I dont end up with duvet marks. I know you can just topcoat over marks, but I have a 9am lecture so doubt I'll have time :p

Bright Pastel Watercolour Attempt

Hello one and all, how are we today?

This design is a bit of a meh design that I may re-do, either with the same colours or maybe black and white...

Ive gotten a bit sick of pastels lately (I may have over pastelled myself haha) and the use of just black and white in my last post has made me love the simplicity of monochrome on my nails!

This was my attempt at watercolour nails, using a sandwich bag to smoosh together blobs of wet polish to make a kind of watercolour-ish design. I personally don't think my attempt went too well, the colours are kind of still separated and it just doesn't seem too pretty together, maybe i used too many or something...although I do like the middle nail :)

Think black and white might make a good combo, given they might mix to make grey too...

Anyhows, I shall do another post soon if I redo this (i'll give it a day or so...) no doubt :)

The shop is going well in terms of views, but no one's bought anything yet :( Ah well, time will tell :)

Grapefruit Fizzies

Bonjour Lacquerised lovelies,

How are we surviving the summer? Are you somewhere warm and lovely, and are you somewhere a teeny bit temperamental like the UK? :p Right now it's rather humid, but switching between sunshine and rain...and wind...very odd.

Today's design isn't too intricate, it's a dotty ombre-ish kinda of deal, with a peach and yellow contrast which is a rather nice, summery pastely concoction methinks :)

Barry M is renowned for their polishes and peach melba is one of the good ones (I've been fooled by many a sheer/jelly polish!). It's a pink-ish peachy colour, opaque in 2 coats. Buttercup was a essential for me to grab asap, Allison of Amarixe on youtube raved about this on her blog (post here) as being an opaque pastel yellow in just 2 coats, which I've found to be extremely hard to find (Revlon Sunshine is a 5 coater culprit!) It's a such a lovely pastel yellow, almost like vanilla ice cream!

PEACH: Barry M - Peach Melba
YELLOW: Revlon Colourstay - Buttercup

Pastel Flags

I'd like to think that if I ever were to be a ruler of a country, that my flag would be nice pastel colours...I don't know why, but maybe cos pastel's are not as intimidating as loud garish colours :p

To make the lines, I used the gold as the base colour, and used striping tape to make cross shapes after the polish dried. I then filled in the spaces with a mint and a peach colour, and removed the tape (when the peach and mint were still wet to avoid the polish getting "torn" when lifting the tape) which then leaves the gold as an outline for the triangles and voilà, flag/cross shaped triangle type things...as you can tell, I'm  not the most eloquent when thinking of titles for my designs hehe.

Striping tape is a good wee favourite of mine to make crisp and straight lines, however my fumbling stubby fingers don't lend well to placing them in patterns anymore intricate than crosses and straight lines :( I got a 10 pack of different colours from ebay for dirt cheap, but you can buy one roll if you don't fancy having striping tape hanging about your polish box, which is what I have atm >_< 

GOLD: Barry M - Gold Foil
PEACH: Barry M - Peach Melba
MINT: 17 - Mint Choc Chip

You guys must be sick of my constant apologies of either manky cuticles or bad photos...but I will get my camera back at some point I hope!

The 3 polishes I used were lovely and opaque in one coat, which is good for a method like this as waiting for the polish to dry can lead to it lifting along with the tape.

You can also just leave the striping tape on to make straight lines, just apply topcoat on top and specifically at either end of the tape to prevent it lifting off.

Pastel Triangled Dots

Well hello my lovely followers :)

Has Mr Sun popped back out again wherever you may be residing, cos he has in Scotland hehe. Although it will no doubt last only a few days...

I'm unsure as to what to call this design...I just felt like using some gemmy dots as I haven't used them in a while and I didn't really have any ideas for a more drawing type design, so I took the lazy way out hehe.

Again, sorry for the crappy phone photo, but at least it's slightly better lighting than last time! XD

LILAC: Models Own - Lilac Dream
GREEN: Models Own -  Jade Stone
GEMS: Ebay

I have to say, Models Own is one of my favourite mid-range drugstore/high street brands for polish. They're £5 a bottle, however, the majority of MO polishes I've had are opaque in just 2 coats and they come in so many colours, and they also have boxsets of polishes as well! Barry M is also a favourite and are cheaper. but some of their polishes aren't as consistent with opacity I find.

But you should have a look at both brands, cos both are pretty good quality for drugstore/high street brands and they have all colours imaginable :D

Pastel Gradient

Hello special people!

Just a quick phone pic themed post today, I just did a simple gradient which I didn't think qualified for a proper photographing session with my camera.

Gradients are good if you want a simple yet "oooooh lovely!" type design, especially if you go over the top with a glitter topcoat, which also blurs any harsh lines and makes the design a bit more flawless :)

I've been hooked on the pastel trend lately, although my wardrobe doesn't convey my obsession thanks to my other obsession that is lip balms and lipsticks *sighs*. However, hopefully I will remember to NOT buy any lip related products next time I'm in Boots or Superdrug, and remember that they now stock the once America-only brand thats is Essie...Mint Candy Apple, Tart Deco and Fiji are first on my list!

Sayonara! ^_^

Pastel Humbugs (And my new camera!)

Hello people! Sorry for the absence lately, I've been studying for a test and didn't have time (nor creativity) for nail stuff...which leads me onto how it's now test/exam time for me, so things might be a bit quiet for the next month...which saddens me cos I like doing nail stuff, even if it end up like crap half the time :p But i might fit in a few simple designs (like this one) so hopefully I'll still get to do some things :(

Also, new camera finally! :D I found a Samsung ST550 on ebay, with 3 memory cards, a case and an exra battery on ebay for just £60...bargaiiiiin! :D I didn't actually have money at the time, but Mr Vimto bought it for me as an early Christmas present, so he says...I say that cos I don't like him buying things for me and he's disguising this as a present :p

Anyways, back to the point... I hate winter and was clinging on to summer by staring longingly at my summery shades...and somehow matte pastels with glossy stripes popped into my head :)

Pinky: Models Own, Lilac Dream.

Ring: Revlon, Sunshine Sparkle (over Revlon, White On White)

Middle: Barry M, Blue Moon (over Revlon, White On White)

Index: Barry M, Peach Melba

Thumb (unseen): Models Own, Jade Stone

Matte topcoat: GOSH

White Stripes: Revlon, White On White

This reminds me if colourful humbugs and ice cream....I miss summer... *sigh*

Well, as I head off for exactly 4 weeks of energy drinks, 12 hour library shifts and lots and lots of writing...have a safe month and hopefully see you soon! :)

Pastel Stripeys

I realised that even though I have like 4 proper striping brushes...I hadn't actually done many stripe involved designs :O

These are a lot simpler to do than I thought...the process is also rather theraputic :)

I used Collection 2000, Angel Wings as a base and used peach, blue and green polish for layering.

It's a really nice and simple look, and colourful without being too in your face :)