Children in Need nails!

These are technically a day late, because Children in Need was yesterday, but oh well. :P

If you don't know, Children in Need are a charity from the UK who hold a television event once a year to raise money for children and young people who are less fortunate. With this money, they aim to provide every child in the UK with a life which is safe, happy and secure whilst giving them opportunity to reach their goals.

The charity's mascot is Pudsey Bear, a giant yellow bear with a spotty eye patch. He's who my nails are inspired by.

 He's so adorable! To do these, I started with a base of Barry M's "White" then added details in with a small paint brush and Barry M's "Yellow", "Black", "Spring Green" and "Bright Red", Rimmel's "Aqua Blue", and finally Nails Inc's "Atomic".

Rainbow nails!

It's been ages since my last post... again. Sorry! :( I would say that I have reasons, but honestly I'm just kinda lazy. And when I have to choose between doing homework and writing a blog post, I'm not sure my teachers would appreciate if I chose to do the blog post instead. :P

Recently, I've been lacking in inspiration for designs. I think it's mostly because I just want to do Christmas designs but it's still slightly too early for them. Anyway, whenever I'm stuck for ideas I tend to just throw a bunch of colours around and go kinda crazy. And so, these rainbow nails were born!

 

They aren't the neatest lines, but I think that makes it look even more fun. The colours I used were; Barry M's "Bright Red, Nail Inc's "Atomic", Barry M's "Yellow", Barry M's "Spring Green", Max Factor's "Candy Blue", Barry M's "Indigo" and finally Rimmel's "Ultra Violet". All of these were over a base of Barry M's "White".

Hopefully I can get into a habit of blogging more regularly but it all depends on school work... sorry guys. :( Also, on a side note, are there any qualified nail technicians out there? I've been looking into doing some proper nail courses and it would be great to get some advice. :)

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!

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?

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?

Barbie Heels Stamping

Post originally from April 13th 2012, moved from Tumblr:

I think it’s fair to say I really am going to become obsessed with image plates and stamping. Instead of the usual once-a-week nail painting, it’s beginning to be every few days. Maybe it’s the boredom of Easter holidays, but at this rate I won’t be doing any revision for exams this summer… Oh well.

I used image plate BM-213 with the high heels pattern for this design. It reminds me so much of Barbie dolls, and screams “PINK!” so I just had to do it. The base colour is three coats of Barry M “Strawberry Ice Cream” and the shoes are Nails Inc “OMP!”.