Doctor Who nails!

Sorry that there wasn't a new post last week, I had the last bits of summer work that needed to be done and it took up my whole weekend. I barely had time to paint my nails, never mind blog about them! Oh well, I'm back now and hopefully will be posting every week again.

Doctor Who is a TV show that I have been watching for AGES now, yet I've never done nail art about it. Honestly, I have no idea how it's taken me so long to get around to doing these nails.

 

If you aren't familiar with the show, these nails are based on the outfit which the main character (The Doctor) wears. From index to ring finger I have done a fez, a sonic screwdriver and his bow tie/suit. I'm REALLY happy with how these came out. It could have been one of those designs which looks perfect in your head but you can't get right on your nails, but thankfully it wasn't!

To start, I did a base of a dark brown by Miss Sporty (no name, but there is a number 31 on the bottom of the bottle), then I used a striping brush to do pinstripes with Barry M's "Mushroom". Then, I added details with Barry M's "Bright Red", "White", "Black", "Gold Foil" and "Silver Foil". I also used China Glaze's "I'm with the Lifeguard" and Maybelline New York's "Cloudy Grey" (mixed with white to make the buttons on the shirt).

What do you think? Do any of you watch Doctor Who? :)

Galaxy Nails!

As you can see, this isn't a Summer Challenge Catchup post. I have decided to stop with those now, because honestly I'm getting bored of them. I'm sorry if they were something you enjoyed, but it became more of a chore for me to get them finished. I'd rather be doing nail art that I wanted to be doing, rather than finishing the challenges. Hope you don't mind! <3 br="br">

 

This is a design that I've been wanting to try for a while now, but somehow I've never gotten around to doing it. It's one of those things that look really complicated when you first see it but once you know how it's done then it's easy. I still have tonnes of school work that needs to be done, but I'm just far too good (bad?) at procrastinating. At this rate, I'll be doing it all on the day before the deadline. Nevertheless, here's the nails.

 

I'm really happy with how these turned out, I wasn't expecting much from them. They're the kind of design which doesn't look amazing until the very end. Honestly, if you want to try galaxy nails just go for it. It's more or less impossible to mess them up in my opinion.

To do this, I used a base of W7's "Black", then sponged on Barry M's "White" for the shape of the nebula.  After that, I sponged Barry M's "Lemon Ice Cream" towards the middle of the white, followed by Barry M's "Peach Melba". Then, I sponged Max Factor's "Candy Blue" around the outside, and went back and sponged more black where I used to much. Finally, I dotted in some stars and added both a glitter top coat and a normal topcoat. The glitter topcoat I used was Rimmel's Rock Your Colour "Disco Gold".

 

Summer Challenge Catchup, Day 10: Tropical Drinks

I'll be honest, I wasn't looking forward to this theme at all. I had absolutely no ideas. After all, I've never had a tropical drink before in my life to take inspiration from. Oh well. I did a quick Google search for tropical drinks and more or less copied the first image.

 

I think these could have turned out loads better than they actually did. But, I had a severe lack of inspiration today. I used a lot of colours for this design, so here we go. I used a base of Rimmel's "Aqua Cool". Then I used a small paintbrush to paint the different sized glasses with Barry M's "White". Then, for the index finger I used Nails Inc's "Atomic", Barry M's "Bright Red" and Sinful Color's "UFO". I did the flower with acrylic paint. For the middle finger used Barry M's "Strawberry Ice Cream" and I think Barry M's "Bright Red" for the flower. On the ring finger, I mixed Barbara Daly's "Kiwi" with Barry M's "Black" and "White" until I got the right shade of green. I used acrylic paint again for the flower. Finally, for the pinky finger I used Max Factor's "Candy Blue" and added more white to it as it faded up the glass. Then, I used Barry M's "Lemon Ice Cream" for the pineapple on the side of the glass.

On Monday, I'm going away for another 5 days. So that means if you don't get a post from me over the weekend, I'll post again either next Saturday or Sunday. I'll get all of the challenge themes done soon. Hopefully before the summer's over!

Summer Challenge Catchup, Day 5: Fruits

For this challenge, I'd considered finding a really obscure fruit to try and make my nail design more original. But then I thought if I did that, then no one would understand the nails. So, I decided to do a common fruit but in a way that was different to usual. Just for the fun of it. My friend suggested bananas so instead of just painting my nails yellow, I did this:

It's the Bananas in Pyjamas! I used to watch that program all the time when I was little, although the only part I remember is the theme tune. I'm pretty happy with how these came out. I started with a base of Barry M's "White", then used Max Factor's "Candy Blue" and a thin paintbrush to paint the stripes on all of my nails except the ring finger. Then, I did the details of the Banana using Barry M's "Yellow", Max Factor's "Candy Blue", Barry M's "Mushroom", and Barry M's "Black". After that, I went back to all of my other nails and added 2 small bananas just to make them look less boring.

I'm especially happy with how the Banana turned out, I can never usually get outline lines to be that thin with the brush I have. Thankfully, I ordered some new brushes from Ebay this morning so in the future small details should be much easier. Yay!

Summer Challenge Catchup, Day 4: Palm Trees

I think for this theme, most people did something along the same lines. That being, a gradient of either a sunset or a sunrise with the black silhouette of palm trees. Which is exactly what I've done. I did have other ideas in mind too, but I couldn't quite figure out how I would put them onto my nails, so I just stuck with the obvious.

 

The colours I used for this design were Barry M's "Strawberry Ice Cream", Rimmel's "Ultra Violet" and Rimmel's "Aqua Cool". Then, I used Barry M's "Black" and a thin paintbrush to add the silhouette details. I think the details could have been done more neatly but my brush is losing it's original shape so isn't as thin as it was originally. Looks like I'll have to get a new one, or maybe try some actual nail art brushes. What do you guys think?

Summer Challenge Catchup, Day 3: Favourite Summer Song

 When I saw this theme, I wasn't sure at all what I wanted to do my nails as. I don't really have a favourite summer song, I just listen to whatever is playing on the radio most of the time. So, I asked one of my best friends who is a huge music fan. A particular favourite is a woman who she describes as being one of the most perfect people alive. That is, Cheryl Cole. So, she suggested I take the design from the trousers Cheryl wears in her Call My Name music video and put it onto my nails. She's a genius. Here are said trousers:

 

And here are my nails.

 Yes, the Cheryl logo on my ring finger is upside down... I was too lazy to redo it and put it the right way round.

The logo was supposed to be like on the album cover, I think it turned out pretty good. Even if it did take about 5 attempts to get it all to fit on my nail! The colours I used for this design were, Barry M's "Bright Red", "Lemon Ice Cream", "Mint Green", "Black" and "White", Nails Inc's "Atomic", Max Factor's "Candy Blue" and Rimmel's "Ultra Violet". I also used some pink acrylic paint to write Cheryl before going over it with white polish. Using acrylic paint meant that I could erase it with water as many times as I liked. For the animal print, I used image plate BM221 and Barry M's "Black".

I'm happy with how these nails turned out overall, I think they're pretty cool. What do you think? :)

Summer Challenge, Day 16: Recreate your favourite manicure!

Today is the last day of the Summer Challenge (except for the challenges that I've missed)! So, to round it all off the last theme was to recreate a design someone else has done during the challenge. When I was scrolling through the pictures from throughout the challenge, one design that stood out to me was this whale design by Creative Nail Design. It's just so adorable and simple! I love it. :)

For the colours, I used 3 coats Barry M's "Blue Moon" for the base on all the nails. Then, I used Rimmel's "Aqua Cool" on the pinky and half of the ring finger. Over that, I put W7's "Cosmic Blue". For the whale, I used Max Factor's "Candy Blue", Barry M's "White" and Barry M's "Black". For the water that the whale is squirting, I used the same colours as the sea on the pinky finger.

I really like this design, it's just so adorable and easy to recreate. Hopefully everyone doing the challenge had fun and got more of the themes done than I did! Also, sorry about not posting the haul yet. I completely forgot! It's coming soon... promise.

Summer Challenge, Day 9: Favourite Summer Memory

I think everyone will agree, this was a hard challenge. Everyone has some memories from the summer that really stand out but it's hard to transfer those into some nail art. Then again, with a theme like this then it more than likely guarantees everyone will do something different.

Outside my house when I was growing up, there was a HUGE tree where I would play and hang out with my friends. It was a good meeting place, and so I have a lot of memories attached to that tree. So, that's what I based my nail art on.

I did a gradient as a background to make a sunset, to show those days where we would play outside all day until it got dark and our parents called us in. Then, on my ring finger painted the tree. In hindsight, perhaps I should have done some stick people on the other nails and under the tree. Oh well, I still like how it turned out. The colours I used for the background were Barry M's "Bright Red", Nails Inc "Atomic", Barry M's "Yellow" over a base of Barry M's "Lemon Ice Cream". Then, I used a small paintbrush and Barry M's "Black" to make the trunk and branches of the tree. After that dried, I used the brush again to stipple leaves over the branches using Barbara Daly's "Kiwi".

Summer Challenge, Day 8: Beach

We are halfway through the Summer Challenge! I say we, but I have missed almost half of the themes so far... Oh well, I'll do them at the end, promise! Today's theme was Beach, so the most obvious thing to do was paint a beach on my nails. So that's what I did. Here it is:

Yaaaaaaay, more freehand! And a lot of different polishes. To start, I used a base of Barbara Daly's "Lustre" for the sand. Then, I used a small paintbrush and Barry M's "Denim" to make the sea. I then swirled in some of Barry M's "Matt White" to make it look more like the sea. Then, I sponged Rimmel's "Aqua Cool" to make the sky and used the small paintbrush and white again to make clouds. I added details in with the paintbrush. From pinky to index finger we have; a beachball, a red parasol, the sun in the sky, and a palm tree. For those I used Barry M's "Bright Red", an unnamed Miss Sporty nail polish in brown, Barry M's "Yellow" and Barbara Daly's "Kiwi".

Summer Challenge, Day 7: Ice Cream

Happy Friday 13th! Or not... depending on if anything bad happens/has already happened. Fingers crossed it doesn't! Today's challenge theme was Ice Cream. Pretty self explanatory. I didn't do anything overly complex for this challenge, but here it is.

For this, I used a base of Barry M's "Mint Green". Then, I used Barry M's "Mushroom" and mixed it with a bit of Barry M white to create the right shade for the ice cream cone. I also used "Mushroom" to hash along the cone to give it more texture. Then, I used the end of a paintbrush to dot Barry M's "Strawberry Ice Cream" above the cone and dripping down the rest of the nails. The cherry on top of the ice cream cone was done with Barry M's "Bright Red" and a toothpick.

I think it's obvious what my favourite brand of nail polish is... IT'S JUST SO CHEAP I CAN'T RESIST.

Summer Challenge, Day 2: Picnic

Today is day two of the Summer Challenge is today, with the theme of Picnic. I had no idea what to do for this challenge to make it more unique, so I stuck to the obvious. Sorry about that! Here come my ants on a picnic blanket.

I know it's not amazing, but the ring finger was supposed to be a wicker picnic basket. LOL. And, the black dots are ants invading the picnic blanket. I'm pretty sure lots of other girls in the challenge have gotten similar things today, so lets hope tomorrow is more creative. :)

The base is Barry M's "Bright Red", and the ants were done with Barry M's "Black" and a toothpick. All of the other details were added with acrylic paint and a small paint brush.

Here are the other girls doing the challenge:

"The Little Mermaid" Nail Art

Hi everyone! How have your weekends been so far? I finally finished all of my exams on Tuesday, so I should (in theory) have more time to do my nails and of course post them. However, I am Queen of Procrastination so I won't make any promises.

When I did some freehand for my birthday nails, a lot of you said I should do some more. So, here it is. The Little Mermaid was (and is) one of my favourite Disney films and I watched it all the time when I was little. So, I decided to try and do some Little Mermaid freehand. Here it is...

I'm REALLY happy with how these turned out. I was expecting blobs of unrecognisable colours!

The blue I used was Barry M's "Blue Moon", sponged with Barry M's "Mint Green" (which you can't see in pictures, but it's there!) and Rimmel's Nail Tip Whitener. The details are painted on with a tiny paintbrush bought from an arts and crafts shop and acrylic paint.

What do you think? And, which is your favourite Disney movie?

Have a good rest of the weekend! :P