How not to do gels/chrome!

Hello all! Hope you've had a good weekend. Mine has been good but went too fast as usual! I'm dreading work tomorrow as it's crazy busy at the moment. Today's post is about something I tried quite some time ago! The pictures have been sat in my nail blogging folder for ages. I guess as they didn't turn out how I expected I wasn't particularly excited about sharing them.

So, there are two parts to this, gel polish and chrome powder, both of which I am fairly inexperienced in. I have successfully applied chrome powder over normal nail polish, but have heard it works better over gel so thought I would give that a try. I also wanted to have a go at getting some different colours, as I've been people apply silver chrome powder of a variety of colours to get different effects.

I started off with a couple of layers of gel polish, blue on one hand, turquoise on the other. I haven't quite mastered gel. It probably doesn't help that I'm using a cheap brand from Amazon, but I always seem to end up with it quite think and slightly rounded round the edges. I started by applying silver chrome powder, and soon realised that although it applied well, it completely blocked out the base colour! I therefore made a last minute plan to do the middle two fingers silver, and on the others use my new unicorn chrome powder for a more see through look! This worked better and I think it looks good with these colours. I do wish I could find a chrome powder which would pretty much chrome-ify any colour. That's all for now. I'm sure I'll be back on the chrome again soon!
Usually here I list the colours I used for the above images, however in this case I'm not actually sure of the names, so I can say is that they're from a brand called FairyGlo and I got them on Amazon!

Sparkling succulents

Hey everyone, happy Saturday! Today I'm excited to bring to you some of my favourite nail art for some time. I'm trying to get through a list of untried nail polishes (which is proving to be great fun!) and thought it would be a good opportunity to try sparkly cactus nails, especially as I had an untried succulents plate as well. You can see the full list of colours used below the pictures.

I used the Hipster 16 (untried) and 18 plates from Mo You London to make nail decals on my Uber Mat. You can see how here. As the images on plate 16 are a little short for my long nails I added a bit of colour at the bottom of the pattern on my ring finger. It's a backup solution but I really like the look. I particularly like that pattern as well, I think it's meant to be like the pattern of little glass panes in a terrarium.

I haven't quite managed to capture it in these pictures but in the right lighting the cacti are so lovely and sparkly  with little shimmering flakies, and the pots are super shiny too. This nail art is just so meee!!

Colours used:  Moscow - Picture Polish,  Floral Street - Nails Inc,  Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish by Lexi,  Someday - ILNP, Checkmate - ILNP

Prim & Copper

Hello nail people! Short post today, just showing off one of those rare polishes I wear alone, without any nail art or other adornments. This is Prim & Copper, from the lovely Femme Fatale Cosmetics. It's an exclusive polish for Rainbow Connection (pretty much my favourite shop!). I had my eye on it for a while so I'm glad I managed to get hold of it while it's around, it's still available now if you like the look of it.

The colour as you can see is a burgundy/purple shade, varying depending on the lighting, with flecks of copper glitter scattered throughout. My photography skills still need some work but you can see it below in some different lighting. I need to get some way of capturing really bright lights without making my hands look funny... as this one does sparkle wonderfully under bright lights or sunlight. As always the formula is good, I used two coats for the pictures below. The finish is slightly textured but if this isn't your desired finish it can be smoothed out with a top coat.

Let me know what you think :)

Isambard Kingdom Brown Owl

A big sleepy hello to anyone reading this... today I am sharing some owl nail art, appropriately as it's dark outside and I'm sleepy! I was inspired by a trip to The Hawk Conservancy Trust to dig out my UberChic owl stamping plate, and do some owl nail art over a colour changing background (recently got some new thermals which I'm enjoying trying out). This one is Hook from Femme Fatale Cosmetics. I think it has a sort of dusk and dawn effect, which is again very appropriate for owls!

For the wording I stamped it in gold before stamping it again in black slightly below the gold. You can't really see it in the pictures but it has a subtle shadowing effect. For the owls I used a couple of polishes from Painted Polish by Lexi's new Taupe collection, which I still haven't got round to trying out in full! I used the advanced stamping technique with my Uber Mat for the owls, you can see how here, and finished off with my favourite glossy top coat (Nails Inc's Kensington Caviar).

I was really pleased with these, they had all the novelty of colour changing thermal polish (it just never gets old!), plus nail art and a little bit of glitter. What more could I want?! Below you can see the nail art on warm hands, a bit colder at the tip of my nails, and underneath are a couple of pictures to show the cold shade.
Colours used: Hook - Femme Fatale Cosmetics, Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish, Tickled Taupe - Painted Polish, Taupe Temptation - Painted Polish, Bright Lights - Barry M
And if you've ready all the way to the bottom... the strange blog post title is a pun my oh so witty boyfriend though of based on the famous engineer from the 1800's, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. You're welcome ;)

Easter Monday - Chocolate Egg Nails

More Easter nails! I wasn't 100% sure on the wonky egg nails I blogged about yesterday, so have done some more! I had a lovely chilled Sunday morning doing nail art and creating an enormous spreadsheet of my nail polish (yes, it's got to that stage!). I've logged about 120 so far, it's going to take a lonngg time.

Usually I go for more pastely colours at Easter but loved the foil effect of these new metallic's from ILNP, and I think they make good Easter egg foil. So this design is basically like a close up of yesterdays, with the Easter eggs opened a little, I guess it's a depiction of the Easter weekend!

After applying my base coat I put some wide zig-zag stencils on my nails, and applied the metallic polish, before removing them. Once it had dried a bit I carefully added another layer, and then painted the ends in chocolate brown. Once dry, I added some spots using a dotting tool, and another layer of brown. I was just about done but my boyfriend suggested maybe I should add a little silver to make it look like the foil is peeling back. I'm so pleased he did as I think that makes it! Finally, I applied a top coat, and then  added some matte top coat over the brown part, as I wasn't sure how I felt about shiny chocolate...
Colours used: Cocoa - Barry M, Short Circuit - ILNP, Love Me Not - ILNP,  Checkmate - ILNP, Funhouse - ILNP, Blueprint - ILNP, Hi Fi - ILNP, Dazzle - Orly

Wobbly Easter Eggs!

Happy Easter everyone! Will keep if short and sweet today as I have Easter-y things to be doing! These were my first attempt at Easter egg nails using ILNP's new ultra metallic brights colelction for Spring 2018. To be honest I don't think it turned out all that well as the eggs are quite wonky! Gives them a bit of character I guess...

I started off with a base coat and then one layer of ILNP's Mega. This was to give a sheer effect where you can still see my nails, but with a fair amount of sparkle! In the meantime I painted some clear patches on the Uber Mat, and once dry, painted on the egg outlines in black polish with a small nail art brush. It was a bit challenging to get neat and consistent eggs,  I need to dig out my acrylic paint!Once that was dry I used some of the metallic polishes to paint spots within some eggs, and stripes on others. Once dry I filled in with more metallic polish as a background colour.

After giving them some time to dry I added another layer of clear polish, and once dry, peeled off, trimmed, and applied to my nails. I finished off with a quick dry topcoat to stick the design down and get rid of any cloudy parts. Fortunately the chocolate eggs I've received have been less wonky than this :)
Colours used: Mega - ILNP, Lady In Black - OPI, Hi Fi - ILNP, Funhouse - ILNP, Blueprint - ILNP, Checkmate - ILNP, Short Circuit - ILNP, Sugar Coated - ILNP