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 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:

Summer Challenge, Day 1: Bees

Hello everyone! July 1st marks the first day of the Summer Challenge created by Kaki and Theodora. 

This is the first nail art challenge that I have taken part in, so posting every other day is going to be a huge challenge for me. I'll be honest, I was shocked that it was July 1st already. I thought I had at least a few more days! Thankfully, my set of Bundle Monster's new image plates arrived the other day so they helped me to get a design ready in time.

Onto today's design, with the theme: Bees.

The plates I used were BM-301 for the bees, and BM-305 for the zigzag pattern in the background. I already had the black and gold background on my nails, so when I realised I had a challenge to do I thought it would make a good base because it kind-of looks like a bee. So, I stamped little bees all over it. :P

The nail polishes that I used were Barry M's "Black", Barry M's "Gold Foil" and Barry M's "Silver Foil".

Here are the other girls doing the challenge:

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?

China Glaze's "Sunkissed" dupe

I promised this post a couple of weeks ago, and finally it's here! When I showed you the Primark neons, I said that the yellow looks similar to swatches of China Glaze's "Sunkissed" that I had seen. Since I had the polish on order, I wanted to swatch it and compare. This would have been posted last week, but something jubilee related was needed, of course.

In the bottles, both polishes look pretty similar, other than China Glaze having a little more shimmer and being slightly greener.

However, the consistencies of the polishes are loads different to each other when applied to the nails. Primark's yellow is much, much sheerer than Sunkissed and could have had another coat to be more opaque. Also, the difference in shimmer is more obvious. When dry, Sunkissed dries with a semi-matte finish but Primark's yellow dries quite shiny. I added a topcoat to make both polishes shiny.

These pictures are more colour accurate than the original Primark neons swatches because I used a different camera. What do you think, have you noticed a difference in the picture quality or is it the same?

Overall, I don't think that the Primark yellow is a perfect dupe for China Glaze's "Sunkissed", however it could make a nice alternative if you can't China Glaze's polishes. They're just as bright as each other, although I think China Glaze has a better finish. But for the price of Primark's polishes (although the bottles are smaller) you can't go wrong!

Diamond Jubilee Nails!

As you may (or may not) be aware, it's the Queen's diamond jubilee today! The celebrations are going on all through this weekend and not ending until Tuesday, to mark Queen Elizabeth II's 60 years on the throne. So, I thought it would be a great time to wear some truly British nail art. Of course, this had to be the Union Jack.

Being the diamond jubilee, glitter was a must, which inspired me to create the flag using glitter. Sammy at The Nailasaurus has been using glitter a lot in her posts lately, so I've been dying to give it a try.

The blue that I used was Barry M's "Navy".

 

 The glitter that I used was some that I brought from Staples. It came from a pack of 6 different colours (blue, red, silver, purple/pink, green, gold). For all of this glitter, it cost £2.75, which I think is pretty good for the amount that you get in each pot! Each glitter flake is less than 1mm in diameter, so they're really really little (and get everywhere!).

 To do this manicure, I first painted the accent nail with Barry M's "Navy". I found that if I painted all of the nails at the start, glitter would stick to those as well. Because of this, I focused on the accent and then after cleaning the glitter up, finished the rest of my nails. After letting Navy dry, I added a layer of clear polish and sprinkled blue glitter over the whole nail. Excess glitter was knocked into a plastic container and then poured back into the pot. After this, I added another layer of clear polish to keep the glitter in place. Then, I used a toothpick with a small amount of clear polish on it to pick up silver and do the white lines of the flag. I placed the silver glitter on whilst the layer of clear over the blue was wet/tacky. To make sure the glitter stuck, I added more clear where appropriate. I then repeated this for the red glitter.

I think that this worked pretty well, but more silver (or less red) could have been used. What do you think?

Have a fun Jubilee weekend (whether you're celebrating or not) and enjoy the long weekend!

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?

Pink Spice and Indigo zebra print

I find it boring to just have a nail polish colour on my nails. Yes, it's pretty, but other than that there isn't much to look at. But that's just my opinion. SO, I've stamped some zebra print onto the same Pink Spice colour as yesterday. I call it zebra print, but I'm not really too sure what it is. It could be a tiger print I suppose, but I wouldn't know what the difference between them. I think my nails today look more like a tiger because of the orange tones to Pink Spice.

The base coat is Accessorize's "Pink Spice" (obviously) and the stamping colour is Barry M's "Indigo". The stamping plate I used was BM223.

 

I think Indigo has worked quite well as a stamping polish, although I'm not too sure how well it would do over colours other than reds/pinks/purples. I think overall my nails look so cute and sparkly! I love them.

Accessorize's "Pink Spice" swatch

Another post already?! This is madness.

Although, I think it's necessary. Yesterday, I went to a Superdrug other than my local one purely because I was walking past and was pleasently surprised to find that there were other brands that my Superdrug doesn't stock. Namely, Accessorize. I think I'd first heard of this brand from Pretty Punk UK's blog post and fell in love with "Pink Spice", so I just had to buy it.

The swatches are 4 coats and a top coat. I think you could get away with 3 coats, but I felt that the nail line was still too visible, so added another.

I love this polish! To describe it, it's a sort-of copper colour with pink/red tones to it. At some angles, it appears orange and at others it's a pink-red-purple like in the pictures. The index finger in the first picture shows most accurately the orange colour. It's just all so pretty! The only issue I have with it is that with the amount of glitter I can tell it's going to be a pain in the arse to take off. Oh well, I think it's worth it.

Yellow and Blue gradients

A trend that is sweeping the nail-world right now is gradients. I think a part of this style gaining popularity is through Sammy from The Nailasaurus posting her tutorial which makes creating gradients a hell of a lot easier. You can find that here. This is the technique I used to paint my nails.

The yellow is Barry M's "Lemon Ice Cream" and the blue is Max Factor's "Candy Blue".

I've still not decided whether or not this combination is something I like. The colours are very bright and "in-your-face", but at the same time there's something hypnotising and summer-y about them.

Thoughts?

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.

Max Factor "Fantasy Fire" swatches

There’s one colour that EVERYONE is talking about right now. Max Factor’s “Fantasy Fire”. I first heard about it on Nailasaurus’s blog, here, and fell in love with the colour. I’ve ever seen anything like this before, but aparently it’s a lot like Clarins 230 “Unicorn Pee”. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t heard about Clarins until I heard about Fantasy Fire, but they’re both gorgeous colours.
When I brought the colour yesterday, I layered 2 coats of it onto 2 coats of Barry M’s “Vivid Purple” because on it’s own, Fantasy Fire is a very sheer polish. I’ve heard it needs about 7 coats to be opaque on it’s own, but I haven’t tested it.


I’m not a huge fan of darker colours, so I tried it on a lighter colour today. Miss Beauty Nail Polish’s “Amythest” was the colour I chose and used 3 coats of that with 2 coats of Fantasy Fire. I think it worked beautifully.


These photos don’t do the colour justice at all. In real life, the polish is filled with glitter particles, that reflect orange and green as your fingers move, with a sort-of holographic look to it.
Overall, Fantasy Fire is a beautiful polish and it’s completely understandable why it’s becoming harder to find. Where I am, Boots was sold out and Superdrug had 3 left. I think I should get stocked up.