Animal Print Nails

I have wanted to try this design for a while now. It looked quite easy to do so I thought I would give it a try.

I love the effect of this and it really wasn't hard at all. All I did was paint my first coat and let that dry, then I blobbed little dots of pink randomly over the nail. Once those had dried I used my nail art pen to outline the edges of each dot.  Easy peasy!

Supplies;

• Seche Clear
• Barry M 
• Barry M
• Models own Black Nail art Pen
• Seche Vite

Laura xXx

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Aztec Nails

You may have noticed I have been going a bit mad with Aztec recently. First Aztec Rings, then Aztec Buttons, and I have another one coming later this week, so watch this space! I just really like the pattern and the chance to use lots of colours. It is actually quite therapeutic to draw and the design doesn't have to be perfect to look good. So, now I introduce Aztec nails!

I was really worried that my right hand would turn out to be a total mess, my left hand is not the best when it comes to drawing! However, I think it actually turned out almost as good as my left hand, thats it below.

 Not bad huh!?

The supplies I used were;

• Seche Clear
• Barry M - Mint
• Barry M - Peach Melba
• Rimmel Pro - Aqua Cool
• Rimmel Pro Beige Babe
• Models own black nail art pen
• Seche Vite

Laura xXx

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Mint Choc Chip Nails

In honour of my favourite cinema treat, I have decided to take inspiration from the delicious ice cream that is 'Mint Choc Chip' for my nails this week. What do you think? I think they turned out pretty well, except for the fact that I am now craving ice cream...

 The supplies I used were:

• Seche Clear
• Barry M - Mint
• Rimmel London Pro - Beige Babe
• Seche Vite
• Nail stickers  (Number 7)

Laura xXx

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Nail Design - My Little Pony

Hoorah! My nail stickers finally arrived! Now I have a full supply of 9 designs! So I thought I would combine two of my current favourite colours and try out the triangle design. So there isn't really much relevance to My Little Pony as the post title suggests, except that the colours I chose really remind me of that classic 80's children's TV show.

 The supplies I used were:

• Seche Clear
• Barry M - 318 Peach Melba
• Rimmel London Pro - 500 Peppermint
• Seche Vite
• Nail stickers

It was my first time using the Seche Clear as a base coat and it seemed to work well, but the proof will really be when I take it off. Seche Vite is now my new favourite top coat. I bought it to try out as everyone seemed to be talking about it, and I have to say, the hype is well deserved. It dries super quickly! I'm really looking forward to trying out all the other sticker styles :)

Laura x X x

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Holiday Nails

While on the road in Pip I decided to brighten my nails up, as they have been bare for a while now. I used the same pattern/stickers that I used in this post, but tried out 3 new colours which I thought would go great together.

They weren't far off perfect, but I think I still need some practice. Next time I will take some tips from Leslie and Janet!

I used Rimmel London Lycra Pro nail varnishes. I quite like the quality of these and they seem to be quite hard wearing too. Although the brush is a little big to do small nail designs which I found quite tricky.

Supplies

Rimmel London Lycra Pro in 500 Peppermint

Rimmel London Lycra Pro in 420 Aqua Cool

Rimmel London Lycra Pro in 312 Ultra Violet

Models Own clear base coat/top coat

Have you used these polishes? What do you find works best?

Laura xXx

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Konad Nail Art

I don't know if you have noticed yet but I am gradually getting more and more obsessed with nail art. 

The other day I stumbled upon The Nailasaurus blog. You must check out how perfect this girls nails are, plus she has done a Wolverine design which is beyond awesome in my books!

Anyway, I was watching one of her vlogs and she mentioned nail stamping and Konad plates. I couldn't quite figure out how this worked so I Youtubed it to find out. I was immediately sold and hopped over to ebay to buy the necessary equipment.  

You can see what I bought above.  You can get this all from Amazon - follow the links below to see the cheapest I found.

Stamper and Scraper - £5.00

Konad Nail Stamping Special Polish in Black - £5.00

Konad Image plate M60- £4.20 + £1.40 postage

I also spotted this Konad set which looks A-MAZING! If I could afford that I would be a happy girl!

And here are the results:

Pretty good hey?  This was really my second go at it, although the first time was just messing about really.  I love the design and once I got the hang of it they came out great. I did find that the designs were quite small, so it didn't quite cover my thumb nail, and you have to be quite precise on the others too.  Also, I'm not sure if you are meant to clean the plate after every single application, because I found the design gradually deteriorated as I went along. I had to get Chris to clean it so that it was sharp again! 

But all in all it was a thumbs up for Konad!

 Laura xXx

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Awesome Nails

I just wanted to share with you all a fantastic nail design which I tried out a few weeks ago. I saw it at The Dainty Squid (if you haven't already noticed, I love this blog).  I thought I would purchase some of the nail stickers and give it a go. They look pretty awesome, I think you will agree! But, they were by no means perfect, and I did learn some important lessons for next time.

1.  I need some better quality nail varnish! - Because you can only really use one layer of varnish on the top two parts of the pattern, they really need to be good quality to get good coverage. Mine weren't which left a few imperfections.

2. It's safest to start with the lightest colour on the bottom and graduate to the darkest on the top. Luckily I got this right without thinking about it. But I'm sure if I had tried the pattern the other way around it would have looked just awful as the yellow would not have covered the pink properly, and the pink wouldn't have covered the grey. (I'm sure when you have good quality varnish this isn't such a problem)

3. With as many layers as this, you will need a hefty wad of cotton pads and copious amounts of nail varnish remover. I nearly ran out and almost had to try and rock the 'shabby chic' look.

I will definitely try this again. Although when I first put it on it was a little shocking, in the end i grew to love it.  In fact, it brightened my day just to look at them (is that sad?). I also nearly crashed my car a few times whilst in a daze admiring them - they should come with a health and safety warning!

I tried the design again a few days ago. This time I just used different shades of red/pink.  My technique has definitely improved! The lines came out much neater this time. If I get brave maybe I will do a vlog on how to get them just right.

As always, I'd love to know what you think.

Laura xXx

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Experimenting with Nail Art - DIY Leopard Print

I've never really experimented with nail art. Don't get me wrong, I love painting my nails pretty colours! But with nail art I have always thought that whilst I may be able to make my left hand look pretty cool, my right hand was going to look a total mess, no matter how much time I spent on it.

Recently, however, I've been seeing more and more nail art on instagram, twitter, pinterest and on some of my favourite blogs. Well, if they can do it why can't I!?  I spotted a models own nail art pen in Boots and thought it was the perfect way to get started!

First I thought I would just try a different pattern on each nail and see what I liked best. Unfortunately I probably couldn't get away with wearing this to work, so I picked a day when my nail varnish was due to come off so I could go as crazy as I liked, then whip it off quickly before work the next day.

So... As you can see I decided to go for vertical stripes on my little nail, then spots (which gradually turned into leopard print), then swirls, then diagonal stripes, and finally spots across the top of my nail on my thumb.  Well, I quickly realised that the stripes and swirls were not going to be easy to replicate on my right hand, but that was ok, I liked the spots/leopard print best anyway!

Now to see if I could do it without any smudges or mistakes!

Success! I think these look pretty darn good.  And because of the rugged nature of leopard print, it was pretty easy to do to!

After I finished these I put a quick coat of clear nail varnish on them. Perhaps I should have waited a little longer as they did smudge a little, although not too noticeably. Ideally I think next time I would let it dry over night before painting the clear coat, just to be sure it would be extra perfect.

I'm sure I'll try this again soon, although maybe I'll wait for a weekend so I can actually show them off!

Below are the varnishes I used to make this design.  Models Own 3 in 1 Base coat/Top coat and Gloss, Models own Nail Art Pen in black and Rimmel London  60 Seconds Instyle Coral.

Let me know if you try this design out and if it works for you!

Laura xXx

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