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. :)

Retro Half-Moon Manicure

Good evening! At the beginning of December one of my best friends had a murder mystery party based on a 1920s theme. For the uninitiated, a murder mystery party is just what it sounds like - it's a boxed game where a fictitious person gets murdered, and each party guest plays a particular character who is both a suspect and has to figure out whodunnit. We all dressed up like our characters. Mine was based on Chanel so I wore a little black dress, black heels, and a Chanel-esque cream cardigan that I found in Primark for a tenner (bargain!). Naturally, I had to paint my nails to match the theme!

Yup, I went with a half-moon manicure. I've done it once before for a vintage weekend at work (you can see it here) but I like this one more. I used a brighter red this time, Orly Ruby, and I think it looks kinda sexy. ;)

I wasn't the murderer and didn't even guess correctly who it was...boo. But I had a great night anyway. :)

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.

Studded V-Gap

Nailside is a blogger I admire immensely. Her tape manicures in particular are incredible. So when I saw a tutorial for this look, I knew I had to recreate it. Funnily enough I was already wearing Nails Inc Little Miss Splendid, which matched the base colour of her design pretty well. I used Nails Inc Black Taxi and Barry M Silver Foil for the rest. Here's my go at the studded V-gap:

You can see I was a bit impatient putting my top coat on and smudged the black, but other than that I'm really happy with how this turned out. I've actually done another manicure based on one of Nailside's tutorials as well, so keep your eyes peeled for that soon!