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. :)

Owl Always Love You

Happy Valentine's Day! I'm single (again) this year, but instead of moping I like to think of it as a 'me' day. So I'll be spending the day with my hamster Claude, plus Molly Ringwald and the rest of the Brat Pack - yup, I will be watching cheesy eighties films this evening. :) Are you doing anything for Valentine's Day this year?

My Valentine's manicure this year is based on a design by Chalkboard Nails. She freehanded an adorable pair of owls and I knew I had to give it a go. I love owls - according to my parents I've been obsessed with them since I was little - and recently I've been going owl mad. I've bought an owl necklace, jumper, snood and ring. Owl nails seemed an obvious progression!

The base colour for this design was OPI My Very First Knockwurst, a pinky nude. The two pinks I used for the owls themselves are Essie Tour de Finance and Essie Sure Shot (which I also used for the hearts on my thumb). The heart-shaped rhinestones are from a set I got on eBay.

Right, I'm off to watch Sixteen Candles and eat too much chocolate. Have a great day!

Sonnetarium After the Rain & If We Could Meet By the Sea

Good evening! Sorry for not posting for a bit, I've been on a course in Wales. To make it up to you I'm showing you two swatches from the indie brand Sonnetarium. I've had these for a while - I bought them at the same time as Samurai Princess - and I've worn them both before, but kept forgetting to photograph them. Anyway, here they are.

After the Rain has a blue shimmer base with multi-coloured glitter - I could see white, red, green, yellow and purple glitter. The base is pretty opaque so it doesn't need undies; this is two coats on its own. It has a great balance of glitter to base and was a breeze to apply.

If We Could Meet By the Sea has small teal and white hex glitter, smaller white glitter and teal bar glitter in a clear base. It's a really pretty combination and it does remind me a bit of the ocean. I've shown a single coat over Essie Turquoise & Caicos - again, it application was very easy. I think this is my favourite of the two!

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.

Yellow & Green Leopard Print

Yup... I have another leopard print manicure to show you today. I can't help it, I just think they're so cute! This one features China Glaze Sun-Kissed and China Glaze I'm With the Lifeguard, the yellow and green from this summer's neon collection. The white is China Glaze White on White.

P.S. This is a scheduled post as I'm currently on a pub crawl on London. Fun times!

Medieval Nails

I may have mentioned (once or twice!) that I am a bit of a history geek; in fact, I work at an historic house and intern at another! My favourite period is the Regency, but I also have a huge soft spot for the medieval era. A couple of weeks ago I decided to go to a medieval fair that was happening nearby, and knew I had to paint my nails especially for it.

I ummed and ahhed about it, and eventually decided use medieval banner designs as inspiration. Every noble family had their own individual design as a means of identification (particularly in battle). Their range of pigments and dyes was much smaller then, so I used bold, primary colours for the designs.

I used so many colours that it seems silly to list them all, so if you want to know any, please ask. I stamped using a two Bundle Monster plates on my thumb and ring finger; my index was done with a striping brush; the middle finger used a striping brush and a dotting tool; and finally my pinkie used scotch tape. I made the designs up except for the one on my middle finger, which actually comes off a fireback at work!

What do you think of my medieval-inspired nails? Are you a history geek too?!

China Glaze Neon Leopard Mani

I went a little mad a few weeks ago and bought eight polishes from the China Glaze Summer Neons Collection - yes, eight! Well, originally I bought six, but then I decided that I had to have a couple of the others too. XD This is the most polishes I have ever bought from one collection, but I'm going through a neon phase at the moment and the CG ones are just all so gorgeous. Today I'm showing you a leopard print manicure that uses five of them. This is great if you're indecisive like me and can't decide which one to wear!

I began with two coats of China Glaze White On White before doing random blobs of Surfin' For Boys (coral red), Sun-Kissed (yellow), I'm With the Lifeguard (green), Splish Splash (blue) and Beach Cruise-r (purple). Once they'd dried I used my trusty black nail art pen to do the outlines, and covered with a top coat. I was really chuffed with how it turned out.

All five of the neons have a beautiful shimmer running through them that shows best in the sunlight photo below:

This is not a manicure for the faint-of-heart! My nails practically stood out from a mile away. I wore this for much longer than I usually wear my manicures because I couldn't bear to remove it!

Olympics Manicure

A couple of weeks ago I showed you this manicure inspired by the Olympic torch, and today I have one inspired by the Olympics itself - just in time for the opening ceremony tonight!

Products:
White - OPI Alpine Snow
Blue - OPI Dating a Royal
Yellow - LA Colors Shock
Black - Nails Inc Black Taxi
Green - China Glaze Holly-Day
Red - 17 Risky Red

It's all freehanded (as you can probably tell!) using a striper brush and a little brush. It's kind of wobbly and wonky, but still better than I thought it would turn out. I added a Union Jack as an accent nail just in case there was any doubt as to who I would be supporting! XD

Will you be watching the Olympics opening ceremony tonight? I'll be watching with curiosity and some trepidation to see how on earth sheep and whatnot are going to feature in it!

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:

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:

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.

OPI Banana Bandanna

Now that the weather is warming up a bit, I have a cheerful spring-inspired manicure for you today. OPI Banana Bandanna (what a mouthful!) is a buttery yellow that's not quite lemon and not quite pastel. I believe it was part of a summer collection OPI released in 2009, but I got mine free when I subscribed to Grazia magazine a couple of years ago (along with Done Out in Deco, Moon Over Mumbai, Oh So Glam! and OPI Por Favor). In the bottle it has a subtle shimmer, but this didn't really translate onto the nail at all. It's very sheer - I did a coat of OPI Alpine Snow first, and Banana Bandanna still needed three coats before it was opaque! Gah.

My mum's comment when she saw my nails was that it looked like I'd dipped them in custard. (My grandmother was less poetic and just said it looked awful.) Charming. As you can see, I added a little bow to my ring finger. This is a water decal I bought in a set on eBay here. They're really cute and very easy to apply.

So there you have it! A quick and easy spring manicure that's bound to turn a few heads - if only because they think you've dunked your hands in custard...