Christmas Penguins

Evening! I have my final Christmas design for you today. I wore this to my work's Christmas lunch last week because it matched my jumper, which is this cute one from ASOS (that is obviously not me wearing it. I only wish I was that slim):

Before painting the design on my nails I did some Googling to see how other people had done penguin manicures. To be honest I wasn't overly impressed with most of them, so in the end I blagged it and just tried to loosely copy my jumper. And here's the result:

The black and white are Barry M polishes, the beak and feet are Topshop Louder, the gold bow tie is China Glaze Angel Wings, and the red bow tie plus red nails are China Glaze Ruby Pumps.

Aren't the penguins super cute?! I absolutely love how this turned out, and I received so many compliments from co-workers at our lunch. Yay for penguins!

This will probably be my last post before Christmas. I'm having a quiet one at home with my family and hamster Claude, what about you? So yeah... Merry Christmas!

Halloween Bats

Happy (almost) Halloween! I've had a busy day today. After work I came home and baked sugar cookies in the shape of bats, pumpkins, ghosts and witches for my friends to decorate tomorrow. I then carved my pumpkin, which was a lot easier than I thought it would be (I've only carved a pumpkin once before, back when I was about sixteen). I went for a vampire face and it looks really cool.

Anyway, for my final Halloween design I decided to attempt stamping again and settled on bat design from one of the Bundle Monster plates. I love bats. We have pipistrelles in our garden and I love watching them swoop around in the evening - which is where my inspiration for this manicure came from. I started with two coats of Barry M Matt White before using LA Colors Shock (yellow), Barry M Block Orange (um...hopefully self-explanatory) and OPI Strawberry Margarita (pink) to create a sunset gradient. It's only the second time I've done a gradient (the first is here) and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Finally, I stamped the bats on using Nails Inc Black Taxi.

The smaller of the two bats didn't transfer very well. The larger one was fine so I think it might be the plate rather than my own ineptitude. I tried to fix it with a brush but ended up making the higher bat on my little finger look really bloated! Oops.

China Glaze Immortal & Glitter Goblin

Oops, I didn't mean to not post for five days but I've been so busy this week that all the days have sort of blurred together. I had a training day yesterday on how to manage pests (insects/rodents) in historic houses, which probably sounds really dull but is actually fascinating. It turns out I knew most of it already so I didn't really learn much, but oh well.

Today I'm showing you the two polishes I bought from China Glaze's Wicked collection for Halloween, Immortal and Glitter Goblin. I actually passed on the blurple colour, can you believe that? It just didn't seem that unique. Immortal, however, is pretty interesting - a medium grey with turquoise and fuchsia shimmer. I'm going through a grey phase at the moment, so I had to have it. Glitter Goblin isn't as cool as I'd thought it would be from promo shots: orange and silver glitter in a clear base. I was expecting awesomeness; I got blah. Anyway, I decided to wear both polishes together, with Glitter Goblin as the accent nail.

You can see that now the weather is dark and rainy and rubbish I am in desperate need of a lightbox. I had to take these photos in the bathroom under the light there, because it's the brightest in the house! Does anyone have any tips for making a DIY lightbox?

Lastly, I decided a while ago that when I got to 30 followers I was going to do a giveaway - I'm only one away now! Come on, let's get me to 30! :)

Burning Bright

Hi guys, this is my last post before I go on holiday on Tuesday. I'm off to Spain, and I have some very exciting nail art posts to keep you entertained while I'm away. :)

I also have a bit of nail art for you today too. I was wearing Orly Emberstone, a gorgeous glowy orange, for a few days when tipwear began to appear. I didn't want to take it off so I used Sctoch tape to make a large triangle with Orly Rock It. As a final touch I used gold striping tape along the lines where the two polishes met.

I like this manicure, but what a nightmare the striping tape was! I've used it as a guide before but not in an actual design - I did this at night, and the next morning it was peeling off the nail despite the top coat! I had to redo it on a couple of nails before taking these photos.

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:

Jubilee Nail Art Series #2: Crown It

Hellooo. Today is the second day of my nail art series inspired by the Jubilee. Did you know that this is only the second time in history that a British monarch has had a Diamond Jubilee? The other is Queen Victoria. And the longest reigning monarch ever was Sobhuza II of Swaziland who reigned for 82 years, 254 days! (Can you tell I've been Googling my little heart out...?)

Anyway, back to nail polish. Today's design is actually my favourite of the three. I'll show you the photos first:

I used OPI Dating a Royal as the base - with a name like that, how could I not?! The design on my index, middle and little fingers is a crown, which I drew on with a small nail art brush using Barry M Gold Foil. I wanted the crowns to be a kind of repeating design, which is why there are some partial ones. My ring finger has an accent nail of a larger crown comprised of individual pieces of glitter that I placed on using a cocktail stick - yes, it was as much of a faff as it sounds! I wanted to use gold but I didn't have any to hand, so it's actually orange glitter. (Shhh, don't tell anyone!) I used a rhinestone as the diamond at the top.

The Jubilee baking went really well at work today. Between the two of us, my coworker and I made bread, jam tarts, fairy cakes, cheese straws, chocolate biscuits, fruit scones and summer pudding. I've never baked for a whole day before, so it was tiring but really enjoyable! I think the public really liked being able to come into our historic kitchens and actually see/taste food being cooked in them. Tomorrow I do it all over again!

Topshop Louder with Models Own Ibiza Mix

I went up to London last Tuesday for a bit of culture and retail therapy. In the morning I visited the Turner Inspired: In the Light of Claude exhibition at the National Gallery, because the historic house I work at loaned one of their Turners for it. It was really interesting. I know quite a bit about the artist Turner, but very little about Claude (although given that he shares a name with my hamster, you think I'd know more!). After the exhibition I endured the Tube and went to Westfield to see the new(ish) Models Own stand.

Isn't it pretty?! The staff were really friendly (one of them complimented my nails, which made me happy!) and they had a great range of colours. And they don't have tills, they have iPads that act as tills! SO COOL. I actually ended up only getting one Models Own polish, but I got six others by various brands. Hmmm. Only seven. That's quite restrained for me.

Today I'm showing you the Models Own polish layered over another one I got in London, Topshop Louder. Louder is a bright tangerine creme. It has a great formula, covering in two easy coats.

In all honestly, I don't know what possessed me to buy this. It's a nice colour, but orange/tangerine does not go with my colouring at all - it needs someone with darker skin than mine to really pull it off. To see if I could save it, I layered my new Models Own polish, Ibiza Mix, over it. Ibiza Mix is multicoloured large and small hexagonal glitter in a clear base:

I went to the Models Own stand with the express intention of getting this polish, but now I have it my feelings on it are mixed. On the one hand, it looks pretty cool and it did make this manicure slightly more bearable for me. On the other hand...the formula was rubbish. The glitter was sparse - this is two coats, so full coverage wasn't an option - and the clear base was very runny. It kind of felt like they'd just dumped a load of random glitter in a bottle of clear nail polish. Maybe I got a dud bottle...?

What do you think of this combination? Are you hopping on this year's tangerine bandwagon?

A Simple Halloween Manicure

I'm pretty rubbish at doing facy nail art, so I was ridiculously excited at the beginning of this year when the crackle trend really took off. It's such an easy way of making your nails look a bit different without actually having to do any tricky designs. The first crackle polish I bought was the black Nails Inc Camden, and yesterday I decided to use it to make a very simple Halloween manicure that anyone can replicate.

I started off with a base coat and then did two coats of Barry M Block Orange. I've been a huge fan of Barry M nail polishes for years - they come in a wide range of colours and are actually very good quality given how inexpensive they are (£2.99 usually). I then did a coat of Nails Inc Camden and waited for it to dry thoroughly. I was going to use a standard top coat but changed my mind and used GOSH Matte Dry top coat instead to make it a bit different.

Usually I'm on the fence when it comes to matte nail polish, but I rather like how this turned out. I was going for just the standard orange/black Halloween colours, but I think it looks a bit like glowing lava oozing from a volcano, with the black crust forming on top as it dries (or is that just my overactive imagination...?). A surprising number of stangers told me they liked it today, so it's a win as far as I'm concerned!