31DC Day 21: Merge or Melt

Greetings all!

This is a rather apt theme for today, as we still have quite a bit of snow here and I for one want it to melt! Sure it looks pretty to start with, but it's quickly turning grey and it's cold and wet and miserable!

Today, again, you have two manicures to look at! Because I'm good like that. The first one I did I call 'Winter melting into Spring'.

This is OPI Alpine Snow, with a fairly rubbish gradient of a england Dragon, and some snowflake and flower stamps to show the transitions of the seasons. I LOVE the concept. The, execution, I'm not too sure. It's kind of cute, but at the same time it didn't really look like anything on the nail..

So this was going to be my manicure for today, but last night sorting the photos, I didn't think it reflected my best work. So I knocked up a little something that I was happier with. I call this one, 'My Nails Are Cold'.

Technically I'm not sure if these nails are melting or freezing. For the purposes of this challenge, they're melting! I like this look. It's very seasonal!

This is 2 coats of Boots No7 So Simple as a base. I then painted on some Models Own Southern \Lights in streaks going up my nail, to try and imitate a bit of frost (holographic frost!). Then I painted on 2True Glitterati in Shade 1 and 3. These gorgeous glitters deserve their own little mention!

Shade 3 is a deep blue jelly with various blue and silver glitters and hexes. Shade 1 is lighter and a bit more soupy, with a lot of silver glitter. Both are beautiful and are reminiscent (to my untrained eye lol) of indie polishes. They are both very unusual. But where does one find such unusual polishes? Which obscure website? Actually, these are from my local Superdrug and are £1.99 or 3 for a fiver! They are limited edition though, so keep an eye out!



Tomorrow - fabric! I wonder which fabric has been inspiring me for the last week? Stay tuned to find out.

OR, go have a little look see at how everyone else is merging and melting!

31DC Day 20: Texture

Greetings all.


Quick post today, as I'm not really feeling it. It's totally freezing and I had to get up at 6am. Now I just want to get under the duvet and wake up in May!


Anyway, the nails. I like texture, but I don't have a whole lot of it. I've done flocking powder already (fail), I don't yet have any OPI Liquid Sand (it's on the list!), the Nails Inc Leather is saved for another day, so my options were a little limited. I guess I could have researched something unusual, but to be honest I couldn't be bothered! My caviar manicures need practice anyway.

This is a set from Accessorize, it's called Stardom and comes with a silver polish (that looks like it might stamp...watch this space!) and these turquoise, black and silver beads in a little tube. It cost me £4 and the beads are very tiny and seem to be good quality (they didn't bleed).

It's not perfect, but I like it. It felt really nice to touch, and to rub my nails together. I had to take it off though, because I am a picker and I would have got tiny little beads everywhere. It also reminds me of looking at something under a high powered microscope, like that is what the surface of your nails looks like with 1000x zoom or something. It's cool. I'll definitely be using it again.

This is my first attempt at caviar back in...November some time, I think. I liked the colours in this one, and the way they are slightly pearlised.

So there you go. Boring and predictable, but textured. Now go see what everyone else has done.

31DC Day 19: Your Favourite Polish

Greetings all!

I should have been more original with this day. I do have a lot of polishes that I really love, and don't wear enough. I have a lot of nude polishes, the colour I wear most often, either plain for work or as a base for nail art. I suppose it depends on what your definition of 'favourite' is. The polish you wear most often? The polish that is the most precious? Your favourite colour?

In the end, I chose my favourite colour polish to wear.

Since about the age of 13 (so for more than half my life!) black has been my favourite polish to wear. I used to splodge it on really badly and leave it until it was nearly all chipped off. At the time, I thought I looked awesome, like a rock star. Looking back, I'm almost ashamed! But I still love wearing it today. I can't bear to leave it plain now though! This is one coat of W7 Black, stamped with my favourite stamping polish (it's from Primark and I recently discovered it is called Mercury) and the chain image is from plate BM12. I think it reflects that really I'm still a metalhead and this is just a slightly more sophisticated version of my old chipped nails. 13 year old me would definitely approve! Oh, and of course, I made it matte, my favourite finish. No glitter though (another great love of mine!).

Tomorrow is texture. I do love texture on my nails, but they never last! I'm a picker.

Make sure to check out what other people covet the most!

31DC Day 18: Your Oldest Untried

Greetings All!

I should start off by saying that I'm not 100% sure that either of the manicures I did for today are actually my oldest untried. Since I got into nail art about 7 months ago I have been hoarding polish like there's a shortage of it or something, and there are loads that are either completely untried, or only swatched. Before nail art, I had about a dozen polishes, all of which I've worn. So while both of these polishes were bought over the summer, it's very possible I have older untrieds lurking in my collection.

Untried polish makes me a little sad. It's as if the polish isn't getting to fulfill it's goal. I'm really determined to do something about this. I might work by brand and sort out all of my untrieds, keep them separate, and only use them for manicures. I could probably do a month of just that! What do you guys think?

Anyway, back to today. The first manicure I did, I loved in my head. Less on my nails. Even less in the pictures. I'll still show you though.

This is the gorgeous in real life Sunrise, Sunset by Sally Hansen. A lovely pinky, orangey, corally shade with a pale green shimmer. Very summery. Like a Caribbean holiday in a bottle. Turns out it really doesn't suit my skin tone . Oh, and my camera refused to acknowledge any green shimmer anywhere *sigh*.

I decided to try and save it with glitter (my default save) and picked five untried glitters. All of these are lovely, but even they could not revive these nails. If you are interested, they are:

Thumb  Barry M Amethyst Glitter

Index: OPI Show It and Glow It

Middle: China Glaze Atlantis

Ring:  China Glaze Optical Illusion

Pinkie: China Glaze Pizzazz

So I decided to do something completely different. I was rummaging through my polishes when I picked up Barry M Cappuccino. I believe this was one I bought because Barry M often has offers where you get a free polish if you spend so much, or 3 for 2 or whatever. So this was just a polish to make up the numbers. It's called Cappuccino, but when I picked it up I thought 'hmm, mushroom'. Bang! Manicure sorted.

This is 2 coats of Cappuccino (which I actually really like! It's a dull, dirty, moley, taupey, mushroomy colour  and gorgeous!). Then I freehanded a few little mushrooms with OPI The Thrill of Brazil, OPI Alpine Snow and Revlon Emerald (another untried!). I used a small nail art brush for all of it, apart from a dotting tool for the dots.

This is much better! This is my favourite kind of nail art to do (although I'm still basically a beginner lol) and I am pretty happy with how this turned out. I love that it was the polish itself that inspired the art, too.

Oh, and apologies for the cut on my finger. I work in a bakery and when you work with bread, sometimes (or quite often) the bread will cut you. True story. But I'm not going to quit the challenge because of it, so let's all just acknowledge it now, then pretend we can't see it. OK?

Tomorrow is my favourite polish. Is this one going to be surprising? No. No it is not.

Remember to check out all the little gems hidden in everyone's polish collections!

31DC Day 17: A New Technique to You

Greetings all!

Picking a technique for this manicure has been super tricky! Firstly, I have used several new techniques already in this challenge. How many techniques can there be?! Obviously, I wanted to do water marbling. That is on my to do list for the year. But I was too scared. It's really intimidating!

Then I thought, I could do any technique really and just say it's new. No one would know! I'm too honest though and I couldn't go through with it. So I trawled through Nail Art 101 (my bible in the early days) and managed to find a technique that I hadn't done before, but could do. And you will be sure that I haven't done this before!

 So, this is meant to be acid washing. I think I chose the wrong colours. I had it in my head, perfectly. Metallics on top and bottom, with bright cremes in between. I just didn't 'translate' it very well.

And yes, for the more observant of you, I totally took all the polish off a patch on my middle finger. Told you I'd never done this before!

The polishes I used were: Sally Hansen Save the Date (dark burgundy on the bottom) ,Collection 2000 Blue Hawaii (er, blue), OPI Koala Bear-y (pink), Miss Sporty unnamed pastel yellow, and W7 Metallic Saturn on the top. Then I used acetone and a cotton bud to remove some of the layers (or in one case, all of the layers lol)

I'll definitely try this again, if only to prove to myself that I can do it! It's all about matching the right colours.



Make sure to check out what other people have done for the first time!

And come back tomorrow to find out what sort of polishes I buy and then never wear!

31DC Day 16: Colour Opposites

Greetings all!

Today is yet another manicure that I couldn't decide on. The one I ended up posting is the third manicure I did, because I didn't like the other two! To be fair, as colour opposites, they aren't really meant to go with each other!

In the end I chose red and green, but to try and avoid it looking Christmassy I used my lightest green, and my darkest red.

The green is Avon Arabian Glow (which I was going to throw away, but I have used twice so far in this challenge lol) and the red is Boots No 7 Temptress (technically burgundy, but that's dark red right?!). The stamp is CH14 for the all over stamp and some small roses I added to pad it out a bit. I also made it matte. I like how the shimmery green looks pearly under the dark creme red.


Tomorrow is (another) untried technique yikes! I've already done splatter, taping, and watercolour for the first time!

Make sure to have a look at what others have done!

31DC Day 15: Watercolour

Greetings all!

Today is another first for me. I've never done watercolour nails before! I wasn't even sure exactly how to do it as there appears to be two ways to create this effect. You can either do it with acetone to water the polish down, or with a plastic bag to smudge the polish around. I chose the acetone method. But even then there is more than one way to do it! With most tutorials I found, you put little drops of polish on your nail, then add acetone to smudge it around. This didn't really work for me! After about an hour of YouTube, blogs, picture tutorials etc I found a video (and forgot to bookmark it. Idiot!) where you mix the acetone and polish together to thin it out, and then paint on the nail. *EDIT* I have since been kindly directed to the video I used, you can watch it HERE (thank you Kellie for sending me the  link!)

I first tried with some pastels, but it was barely visible. It just looked like dirty nails! So I tried again with some darker colours.

I started with 2 coats of OPI Alpine Snow The pink is OPI Koala Berry, the blue is Revlon Royal, and the purple is an unnamed London Girl polish (a deep, royal purple).

After the first was too light, this is slightly too dark I think. It also hasn't really blended the way I wanted it to. However, for my first go, I don't think it's too bad!

Make sure to check out the other watercolour artists!

NAIL MAIL!!

Greetings all.

Just a quick post because I have NAIL MAIL. This could be  a regular thing.I get a lot of Nail Mail, like I'm sure a lot of people who are into nails do. We like variety, and pretty polishes not available on the local high street!

Here is today's haul

GALS 'Fairy' and 'Princess' stamping plate sets. I got these from Amazon. Fairy was £8.99 and Princess was £11.99. Bargain! They are loaded with full nail designs (my favourite type) and I am very much looking froward to using them!

Nails Inc Bling it on! Leather & Skulls Nail Polish in Black and Tan. Extravagant? A little. Necessary? Maybe not. I really hope these are good. Ever since I read about them I've been lusting after 'Leather Nails'. I will be trying these very soon. I won these on eBay (saved a little, plus combined postage!)

Close up of the skulls in the tan set. Aren't they just so cute? They're a little bigger than I usually wear on my nails (how will I put my hand in my pocket?!) but we'll see!

The lovely eBay seller also added a little freebie - Ray by Zoya! This is my first Zoya polish!

I'm sure you'll be seeing more from all of these soon!

31 DC Day 14: Stamping

Greetings All!

Today's manicure was a little tricky for me., I stamp quite a lot (although I'm still learning!) and so 'stamping' is a really broad topic for me. I've also already used stamping in some of my previous challenge manicures (I make it 7 already!) so I wanted to do something a little bit different than just a full nail stamp or some little icons or something. One idea I had was to make a picture using stamps. I have a couple of animal stamps, and I toyed with creating a little scene for them on my nails. However the idea I went with was to use more than one stamp to create one overall image. I really love what happened next. Have a look:

 Oooh la la!

So, those are stockings on my nails. At, least, they are supposed to be. I remember reading somewhere (I'm really sorry, I can't remember where, it was a few months ago!) about how not many people like the french manicure stamps on stamping plates. I don't either. I like the idea, but in practice, ewww. Someone suggested that you can put them on the top of your nails, like a half moon or ruffian manicure. So that is what I did with this! I think these are just so pretty.

I started with Collection 2000 'Dynasty', a lovely soft pastel somewhere between lilac and pink. I then stamped a design from CH23 on the top of my nails. I picked this one because I thought it looked a bit like the lacy top of a stocking. Then I stamped the bottom portion of my nail with BM209. I used Konad special black polish for both.


Aren't they just so cute? I will DEFINITELY be wearing these again. And I love the colour of the polish. It's very 'boudoir' I think.



So here's to a new challenge week! Coming up tomorrow, I pop my watercolour nails cherry!

Remember to check out everyone else's lovely stamped nails!

31DC Day 13: Your Cheer Yourself up Mani

Greetings everyone.

I really needed today's challenge. It's been a tough couple of days out in the real world, so I really need some nails that will cheer me up!

Ever since I got into nails, animal print has been one of my favourite designs. I like animal print anyway, on clothes, bedding etc, and the first nail art I learned was leopard print. However my favourite animal print is tiger. As I type this, I'm warming up under a tiger duvet. I've attempted various freehand tiger designs, but none of them wowed me. Then on Christmas Eve, I was going to the zoo (tradition. Long story.) and I wanted tiger nails to show the tigers. The nails I created made me grin like an idiot every time I saw them and they literally made me happy just by looking at them. 

So here is my 'cheer myself up mani', tiger print:

Is it weird to want to pet your nails?

 Yes, Cazzy. Yes it is weird.

I'm quite proud of these. Look how pretty! These are 2 coats of OPI Swedish Nude (the perfect off-white for animal print). I then sponged on some OPI Brights Power, followed by OPI Bronzed to Perfection to get the orange a bit darker and deeper. I put on top coat while the orange was still a bit tacky and brushed the nails a lot, which blended the colours together and gave the nails that soft, furry look which I really love. Stamping plates BM16 and Cheeky CH2 provided the stripes, and black Konad polish provided the, er, black polish!. I love that I have more than one tiger print. It stops all your nails looking too 'matchy' and uniform and makes it more tiger-y I think. I also had to make them matte. You don't get shiny tigers! Unfortunately I have a couple of white spots, from the dried matte polish falling off the top of the bottle. The good news is that I just started a new bottle, so that shouldn't happen for a while!

Anyway, these nails really do cheer me up and make me smile, and I hope you like them. If not, why not have a look at what others have done?

Innisfree swatches (the fuller version)

Greetings all! This post is PICTURE HEAVY.

2 posts in one day?! Yes. I've been really busy with the 31 day challenge, but I wanted to take a little time out to show you some swatches of a brand of polish I fell in love with late last year. I have already posted a few pictures of the glitters (here) but I wanted to show you the rest of my collection.
Innisfree are a South Korean brand. I first saw them over at Makeup Withdrawal and decided to order a few off eBay. I bought 4 and got one free, and 8 days later they arrived. I loved them so much I ordered another 4 the same day (and got another one free!)

They do a range of styles of polish. Their cremes look very nice, but a little 'meh' (as with a lot of cremes) but they also have duochrome glitters, flakies, and some beautiful glitters (these are what really hooked me). I don't own many indies, but to my untrained eye these glitters are quite similar to something you might see from an indie polish maker.

Apologies for the pictures. I am saving for a new camera that doesn't flash for everything except bright sunlight.


The Flakies

This is Blueberry Jelly. A rich dark blue jelly with green/orange/gold flakie. These swatches are 2 coats. I'm not usually the biggest fan of blue, but this is just lovely and squidgy. The flakes give it a peacock quality and it has such depth. LOVE.

 

This is Cherry Jelly. A very girly bright and juicy pink. 2 coats leaves a hint of VNL. The flakie is gold and orange. Again, this isn't really my favourite shade, but I would wear it as a base for some nail art. Again, it is very squidgy looking. It's very girly, but those flakes give it a bit of edge. I wouldn't say cherry coloured though?





The Duochromes

 


Ah, The Fall of The Leaf. Love the name! A really autumnal colour. A rich deep pink/bronze/copper that changes shade depending on the angle. 2 coats. This is so shimmery and rich and deep without being too dark. Very easy to wear.

Purple Moist Night. Again, great name! A dark 'blurple', shifting from blue to purple. 2 coats. Again, full of shimmer and really rich. I will be wearing this on it's own and for nail art (I'm picturing...galaxy nails). This is one of those polishes I find myself staring at while I tilt my fingers for ages.




The Glitters

 


















This little beauty is Raspberry Yogurt. I've not seen anything quite like this. A translucent. very pale pink jelly/sheer polish with light pink and black or dark silver (hard to tell lol) hexes and dark pink glitter.  This is 2 coats. 3 coats starts to cover the glitter beneath. I thought I would absolutely love this, but it has a hint of grey on the nail (I think from the glitter, Not from it bleeding, it just gives a grey tone overall). The name is perfect though, This is SO what raspberry yogurt would look like on nails! I'm really hoping this will grow on me because it's just so pretty. This was one of my freebies.

This was the other freebie. Village of Snowing. On the nails, from left to right, 1 coat, 3 coats, 2 coats. Nothing truly exciting here, but a very shiny silver glitter with hexes and small glitter. Who doesn't like silver glitter? Worn here over Purple Moist Night.

Midnight Black. Black with holographic glitter and bronze and gold hexes. My favourite nail polish colour is black, so no surprises, I love this. It's like outer space in a bottle. 2 coats. Gorgeous.

 

And now onto the main events. Say hello to Andromeda. Loads going on here. White bars, black and gold squares, and I can make out gold, copper, bronze, turquoise and pink hexes and small glitter. From left to right, 1, 3 and 2 coats. Another autumnal polish, worn over The Fall of The leaf. I really like this. Again, it causes prolonged staring! It would also work over lots of colours. You have to dab it on rather than brush it on, but that is fairly standard for this type of polish I think.

 

Aquarius. Basically the same setup (bars, squares, hexes and small glitter) but this time lilac, pink, purple, green, turquoise, red, silver and gold And I think black. Apologies if I missed any colours! I'm undecided on this one. A lot of the glitter is quite muted, so it's very sparkly, but a little pale. Again, 1, 3 and 2 coats over Raspberry yogurt.

 

I'm saving the best until last. This bottle of magic is Libra (my star sign!) and words can barely describe this. I'll try though. This is squares, bars, hexes and small glitter in turquoise, blue, green, purple, red, gold, silver, bronze and black. 1, 3, 2 coats. 3ish coats on the thumb. My pictures do not do this polish any justice. It's a bit like wearing peacock feathers on your nails, but made out of jewels. So, so stunning. Worn over Midnight Black.

I had no problems with any application, they all dried fairly quickly and they smell strangely pleasant (weirdly citrusy). They cost around $7 each (about £4.25) and I think they are definitely worth it. Each bottle is 10ml. 

If you made it to the end of this, wow. Well done. I barely made it myself! I promise posts this long will be very, very rare!