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.

"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

China Glaze's "I'm with the Lifeguard" swatch

Today I have a swatch of the second China Glaze polish that I bought. "I'm with the Lifeguard" is a bright neon green with shimmer. I really like this colour, it's so bright and perfect for the summer. That is, if England ever gets some nice weather...

Of course, being a neon it's impossibly difficult to capture the colour on camera. The second picture is more colour accurate than the first, but it's still brighter in real life. These swatches show 2 coats and a topcoat.

Sorry for the short post today, but I don't have much else to say... :P

What's your favourite colour for the summer? I would definitely wear this one again. :)

Birthday Nails!

Yesterday was my birthday! I turned 16, and of course nail art was necessary. I also have lots of swatching of new nail polishes I should get done soon, so two birds one stone. :)

I chose to use Ciaté's "Bonbon" as my base colour. I got this polish as a free gift from this month's issue of Marie Claire. It's a grey/beige (I think the word's greige?) with what looks like to me some purple/lilac tones to it. The application was okay, although I found it to be a little streaky on the first coat. These swatches show 2 coats.

I really like this colour, it's unlike anything I already own and that's always a good thing. But since it was my birthday I couldn't just leave them plain. I figured I would try some free handing, even though I'm not amazing at it. Free hand nail art is what I started doing (before this blog started), but I haven't done very much of it recently. I think this is mostly because I get stuck for ideas easily, and have to take inspiration from others. The inspiration for these nails came from various images when I did a image search on Google for "birthday nails".

I should have let the cake nail dry a little longer. It smudged with the top coat. Oops. :') Oh well, I still think it looks pretty cute. I like how the pink looks against Bonbon.

I used a lot of colours for this nail art, so here's a list. I like lists.

Barbara Daly's "Kiwi"

Barry M's "Pink Flamingo"

Barry M's "Yellow"

Barry M's "Bright Red"

Max Factor's "Candy Blue" 

Nails Inc's "Atomic"

Rimmel Nail Tip Whitener

What do you think? Should I try and freehand more often, or stick to other forms of nail art?

Primark Neons swatch

If you hadn't noticed, the weather is amazing in the UK right now! With the summer weather finally arriving, it's time to take out the neon colours. Yesterday, I went into Primark and saw these neon polishes (and a few colour collections) at £2 for a box of 4. Mega bargain!

Unfortunately, my camera struggled to get the colours right. The pink and orange are accurate, but the green and yellow are tons brighter in real life. The yellow is more of a highlighter yellow, with shimmer, and the green is super bright, and kinda yellow-ish.

For the swatches, I painted each of my nails except the ring finger in a solid colour. For the ring finger, I put some of each colour on the nail then swirled them together at the edges. This created a colourful tie-dye effect. The inspiration for this was from Nail Stories.

The swatches are two coats of each colour. This got them to be the same colour as they appear in the bottle. The application was a bit difficult as the brushes didn't flatten out too well for me, but clean up isn't a huge issue. Also, I'm not a huge fan of "fat lids", I prefer the skinny ones as in Barry M polishes. But that's just down to personal preference. The formula was to be expected of cheap polishes. It was streaky in the first coat, and kinda uneven, but with a second coat and a top coat it was fine. Also, the smell was odd... it's as if they used something to cover up the usual chemical smells, but I can't put my finger on what it is.

Overall, I think they're well worth the price and I look forward to trying more of Primark's collections!
On a side note, the yellow looks like it could be a dupe of China Glaze's "Sun Kissed" from their 2012 Summer Neons collection. I have that coming in the post, so as soon as it arrives I'll do a comparison!

Pink and Green circle stamping

Before I start today's post, I want to apologise for  the terrible stamping on my nails. Hayfever has been killing me all weekend, and it doesn't help that I live right across the road from a field of rapeseed. Lining up the stamp with the nail isn't easy when you have streaming eyes and a running nose, y'know!

Anyway, I'll stop with the whining. The base colour I used was Barabra Daly Make Up's "Kiwi" and the stamping colour was Nails Inc's "OMP!". The stamping plate was BM206.

The pink didn't come out quite as bright as I'd have hoped, but I think the manicure still looks good. Lining up the stamp is definitely something I need to improve on... Does anyone have any tips?

Green-on-green stamping

Today, I have more stamping on my nails. To me, it looks as though it could be dragon skin if it were a bit darker.

The colours used were a base coat of Barry M's "Mint Green" and a stamping colour of a dark green from La Femme Beauty which doesn't have a name (picture further down). The image plate used was BM223.

The stamping colour I used didn't come out as dark as I'd hoped, it kinda blends in with the base colour. However, I think it still works and looks just as pretty. Just goes to show, even if a mani doesn't turn out how you'd wanted it to, it can still be gorgeous.

Green and silver flower stamping

I haven't posted anything in a few days! I can't say I have an excuse, other than being amazing at procrastinating, so sorry about that... Anyway, on with the design.

Today, I have a green and silver flower pattern. This was done using the Bundle Monster image plate BM221, a base coat (3 coats) of Miss Beauty UK's "Ocean" and a stamping colour of Barry M's "Silver Foil".

I'm really loving these stamping plates, it makes putting cute designs on my nails so much easier and less time-consuming. Definitely a buy I'd recommend to anyone wanting to start stamping without buying overly expensive plates and polishes.