St Patrick's Day Cling Film Nails

Happy St Patrick's Day! Are you doing anything to celebrate? I've been at work today so I think I'm just going to take it easy, but I did paint my nails last night to reflect my Irish ancestry (I'm a quarter Irish). I decided to do a cling film/saran wrap manicure because I haven't done one since the Olympics last year!

I started with two coats of Revlon Minted and, when this had dried, painted on a coat of Essie Mojito Madness. When this was still wet I dabbed it with scrunched up cling film and followed with a coat of China Glaze Golden Enchantment for a bit of sparkle.

You can see last year's St Patrick's Day nails here.

Pastel Retro Squares

Good evening! Sorry I haven't blogged for a while, life got in the way. :( I'm back with a fun nail art design inspired by spring and the sixties: pastel retro squares. I chose pastel colours because I thought it was very nearly spring. Having said that, I did this design on my nails last night and woke up this morning to a blizzard!

I started with a white base before using striping tape to mark off the squares. I used the bottle brushes to carefully paint each coloured square - you definitely need steady hands for this! The colours I used are OPI Done Out in Deco (lilac), OPI Banana Bandanna (yellow), Revlon Minted (green), and a random Color Club pink that doesn't seem to have a name.

I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out, but if you look closely you can see the white bled a bit on my index and little fingers. Boo. Oh well, you can't tell from a distance. :)

Nails Inc Victoria & Foubert's Place

Good afternoon! I have a couple of Nails Inc swatches for you today.

The first is one of their classics, and a colour I think every nail polish addict should have in their collection: Nails Inc Victoria. It's a dark, vampy red jelly. In terms of colour it's quite similar to Revlon Vixen, maybe a tad darker, but with a much better formula (no bubbling!). I could probably have got away with two coats but I did three just in case.

The other is Nails Inc Foubert's Place. I used this as a base for OPI The Man With the Golden Gun, and it looked pretty great. On the website it's described as a grey khaki shade, which is a pretty bang-on description. It has a smooth, easy formula and was opaque in two coats.

Vintage Half-Moon Manicure

A couple of weeks ago the historic house I intern at had a 1930s/40s-inspired weekend, so I decided to paint my nails to celebrate. I settled on a half-moon manicure, which were very popular in those days because painting the whole of your nail was seen as a bit tarty. Nowadays I think half-moon manicures are considered kind of edgy, so things have definitely changed a bit!

I began by painting my nails with a coat of OPI Don't Touch My Tutu!, a white jelly. The half moon on my nails is visible on some nails and not others (is anyone else the same?), so I thought it would be best to start with a blank slate. Once DTMT was completely dry I used some hole reinforcers to mark off the half moon and then painted on two coats of Revlon Vixen.

Hmmm... Revlon Vixen. Where do I start? It sucks. I don't have many dark reds and I thought it would be appropriate because Revlon was actually around in the 40s, but I didn't realise it was so sheer. It's not a jelly - more of a creme-jelly hybrid. After two coats it was still kind of patchy, but I couldn't be bothered with a third. It also bubbled horrendously (which fortunately you can't really see in my photos).

I only wore this manicure for the vintage weekend, because although I loved how it looked from a distance, the bubbles drove me nuts. :(

Olympic Torch Manicure

I've been feeling pretty apathetic about the impending Olympics, but when the Olympic torch came through the grounds of the historic house I work at today, I was actually quite excited. We had around 4000 people, including 2000 children (!!) and their teachers from the local schools, turn up to watch it. It was a logistical nightmare, but it turned out OK in the end. It tipped it down the whole time though!

I wanted to do some fancy nail art to mark the occasion but didn't have time, so I settled on a cling film/saran wrap manicure. I started by painting my nails with two coats of Revlon Pineapple Fizz, a yellow glass fleck polish. Once this was completely dry I did a coat of the shimmery orange China Glaze Riveting and, while it was still wet, dabbed it with a scrunched up piece of cling film. This removed some of the orange and allowed the yellow to peek through. It's supposed to look kind of flame-y.

In truth it looks more like the surface of the sun than flames, maybe, but oh well. Here are some photos I took of the torch relay today:

Work-Appropriate Half Moon Mani

My hamster Claude had a bit of an adventure the other day. I let him crawl around on the kitchen floor for a bit while I found him some food and he immediately went to his favourite spot behind the door under a (turned off) radiator. I looked away for a second, and when I looked back...he was gone. I'm pretty sure I had a small heart attack at this point. I eventually discovered that he had crawled up behind the radiator and wedged himself between it and the wall! As if that wasn't stupid enough, he wasn't actually stuck - he was climbing up and down and side to side, just not out. I couldn't reach him to get him out, but after about five minutes he got bored and just sort of plopped back to the floor in a cloud of dust. He was in the doghouse for about two seconds, and then I forgave him. XD

Anyway, back to nail polish. I wasn't really interested in the China Glaze/Hunger Games Collection that came out in March, despite my love for the books, but after seeing some beautiful swatches online I caved and got a couple of them. One of these was Fast Track, which has a taupe base with a chunky gold shimmer. I teamed it with Revlon Smoky Canvas, a greige creme, to make a half moon mani with triangles instead of semicircles.

I think this manicure idea looked better in my head than in execution, but oh well. I'm lucky enough that I can wear whatever nail polish/nail art I fancy to work, but for others I think this would make a great work-appropriate manicure. It's a bit different, but not in-your-face.

And for no reason whatsoever, here's a photo of Sleepy Claude:

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! I'm not religious, so for me today is more about celebrating the fact I get to eat a ridiculous amount of chocolate than it is anything else. XD I hope everyone has had/is having a brilliant Easter. I was working this morning (no four-day weekend for me - I'm working every day of it!) but I've spent the afternoon baking Easter-themed cupcakes. Yum.

Anyway, today's nails are a variant on what I've seen on a few other blogs recently and are inspired by Easter eggs - the painted kind, not the kind you eat. Pictures first (featuring the special guest appearance of my thumb!):

Why yes, that is a Cadbury Creme Egg. And yes, I did eat it after taking these photos!

I painted my nails at 11 o'clock last night so I wasn't entirely awake and alert during the whole thing, but I'm still rather pleased with my efforts all the same. For the most part I used the same polishes as in my rainbow cheetah manicure, as you may notice I also did a rainbow with the base colours:

Peach - Barry M Peach Melba
Yellow - OPI Banana Bandanna
Green - Revlon Minted
Blue - Barry M Blue Moon
Lilac - Barry M Berry Ice Cream
White - Models Own Wah Nail Art Pen

And one more bonus photo:

Chain Nails

Here's another manicure that I've worn to my internship recently. I don't have many neutral-tone polishes, but Revlon Smoky Canvas is one of the few. It's a light grey creme with a bit of yellow in it that comes out particularly under artificial light. So it's kind of...greige? It's very work-appropriate, but it's actually a really nice colour. I did three coats and the formula was brilliant - it went on like a dream. Why can't every polish be so easy to apply?!

I was going to wear Smoky Canvas on its own, but inevitably decided that was boring so I used some Andrea Fulerton nail stickers to jazz it up a bit. These ones are a chain design, and I used them almost as a French manicure at the tip of each nail.

In case you're wondering what my internship is, it's as a conservation assistant at an historic house in Surrey (think Downton Abbey and you're along the right lines). I actually have a paid job as a conservation assistant at another property, but I'm trying to pad out my CV so I'm combining the two. It means I get to handle priceless artefacts such as Turner paintings, Sèvres china and Fabergé trinkets, which is pretty special. :)

February Haul

It's a little silly doing a haul post for February halfway through March, but I simply forgot to do this sooner! I bought quite a few polishes in February and I thought you might like to see a few of them. A couple of them I've already shown on here as I am posting this a bit late. (Please excuse the quality of the photos. I know they're a bit rubbish. The lighting was awful when I took them.)

OPI Dutch 'Ya Just Love OPI?, I Have a Herring Problem & I Don't Give a Rotterdam!

I only bought three colours from the new OPI Holland collection. I want more, but I can't justify buying them so I only got the three I was desperate for. I'm actually wearing Dutch 'Ya Just Love OPI? at the moment, so you'll see it on here very soon.

OPI Magic Garden & OPI Peacock Feathers nail apps

Nicole by OPI Kim-pletely in Love & Honey-Dew You Love Me?

Most places seem to be selling OPI nail apps for £13 or more, which is insane, but Lena White has them for £3.50 at the moment so I nabbed these two designs. I haven't actually used nail apps before so it will be interesting to try them out. The two Nicole by OPIs are also from Lena White. It was the blue shimmer in Kim-pletely in Love that made me fall for it...and Honey-Dew You Love ME? has blue glitter hearts, so it was a no-brainer!

China Glaze Awakening & Midtown Magic

Sally's has a promotion on at the moment where, if you buy a China Glaze polish, you get one from the Metro collection free. I have a couple from this collection already but not Midtown Magic, so I'm happy to have filled that void.

W7 The Fab Four

I have no idea if these polishes have individual names as they're not listed on the packaging. I got them from TK Maxx for less than four quid. It's hard to see, but they're all kind of shimmery.

Color Club Back to Boho Autumn 2011: Boho Mojo, Nouveau Vintage, Voodoo You Do, Artsy Crafty, Blue-topia, Rebel Spirit & Top Coat

Color Club Alter Ego Spring 2011: Ulterior Motive, Secret Agent & Alter Ego

The Back to Boho collection was also from TK Maxx. It was reduced to £6 - that's less than £1 per polish!! The others I got on Amazon. I absolutely adore these colours.

Topshop Gypsy Night & AWOL

I've already shown you Gypsy Night here. AWOL is supposedly very similar in colour to Nails Inc Baker Street which you might have heard some buzz about.

Revlon Secented: Pineapple Fizz, Orange Fizz, Grapefruit Fizz & Grape Fizz

I have already done swatches of Grapefruit Fizz and Grape Fizz, and they smell amazing. My mum bought me the other two a couple of weeks ago (thanks Mum!) and I can't wait to try them on.

Pastel Rainbow Cheetah Mani

Whew! The title of this post is a bit of a mouthful, but I'm afraid I used all of my imagination up on the manicure itself so it's stuck with a boring name. I'm really chuffed with today's manicure - it's my first attempt at freehand animal print and it came out so much better than I expected!

My plan was to do a rainbow manicure of some sort but jazz it up a bit. I took inspiration from this design, but as it's spring I decided to use pastel colours instead of neon. Short version? I began with a white base because pastels can be a bit sheer. I then painted on five different pastel colours in diagonal lines on my nails using the brush that came with each polish - I did this twice to build up opacity. Once it was dry, I used a black nail art pen to freehand broken O and C shapes. This was much easier than I expected as they actually look more authentic if they're not perfect, and the cheetah print has the added bonus of hiding any imperfections in the colour gradient background.

Products:
White base - OPI Alpine Snow
Peach - Barry M Peach Melba
Yellow - OPI Banana Bandanna
Green - Revlon Minted
Blue - Barry M Blue Moon
Lilac - Barry M Berry Ice Cream
Cheetah spots - Models Own Wah Nail Art Pen

It just goes to show how easy nail art can be. Even a couple of weeks ago I never dreamed I'd be able to create something as eye-catching as this, but it turned out to be dead easy! Not to worry you or anything, but I may have caught the animal print bug...and I'm pretty sure it's contagious.

Revlon Grape Fizz

Here is the second of the Revlon scented nail polishes I bought, Grape Fizz. It's a vivid purple polish with a glass fleck finish. I'd say it was red-toned, but I swear I could almost see a blue flash at certain angles. As with Grapefruit Fizz it's very sheer but I was silly and didn't layer this one. I used three coats in the photos below; I should've used four. It's not very obvious in real life, but in the photos you can see some VNL.

As the name suggests, when the polish dries it smells like grapes. It genuinely did, and it really made me want some grape juice! Even though I used a top coat the smell persisted for a couple of days, which was a pleasant surprise, and probably would have endured for longer if I hadn't decided to take it off.