Cirque Colors No Tools Nail Art - Amethyst & Shibori

Hey everyone! One last blog post before the Christmas nail art begins! Last weekend I decided to have a play around with my Cirque Colors no tools nail art sets for the first time. This is the second time Cirque have released nail art sets consisting of sheer polishes which can be layered to create an overall look. I was tempted the first time but didn't go for it, this time though they had blue and purple options so I had to give it a try! Each set consists of three sheer polishes, I followed Kelli Marissa's tutorials for my first attempt.

Overall I don't think mine came out great, but they're OK and it was my first try! The first three pictures are of the Amethyst set. I layered this up in various ways to try and get the overall effect of Amethyst stones. I think some came out better than others, but I was a little too neat around the edges and probably didn't blend them well enough. I will try it again and try to improve and I also like the idea of using some thin lines of rose gold to the look too.

The next three pictures are of the Shibori set. To be honest I've never heard of Shibori! I think this look came out a little better but could have still been a better! I did miss a few little bits at the sides which made it look a bit like they were chipped, I think I can improve on this one quite easily though. Underneath these looks I tried out a new base coat which I was delighted to win as part of a Halloween nail art competition on the Rainbow Connection Facebook group! I've included my thoughts on it and a picture below the nail art pictures.

On the left here is the Polished For Days Soft Focus base coat I used underneath this look. It's designed to blur the natural colour of the nail so the white tips are less obvious underneath nail polish, so it's particularly good for sheer looks like this. I used two coats before applying the colours, you can see this on the left.

The application was good and it definitely covered up the white part of my nail once the sheer colours were added too. I think it did possibly make the look a little darker but I can't be sure as I haven't tried it with any other base coat!

West of Scotland Holiday Tribute Nails

Hello nail people! Today I'm excited to show you some holiday tribute nail art from our trip to the West Coast of Scotland earlier this year. I love to do nail art themed after lovely holidays after we've got back to continue the magic! Our Scotland trip was in August so it has taken me a while to get round to this one! While I was there some new Picture Polish nail polishes came out and I was very tempted to buy them so when I finally decided on these shades after we got back I thought they'd be super appropriate for this nail art. I decided to do a different colour theme for each hand to represent the land and sea parts of the trip.

On my left hand I wanted to capture the views when we walked from the house we stayed in. There were some pretty stunning views from the windows too! We could see a loch, hills and trees, and walking down the road there was a bit where the loch opened out and there were stunning views with the Isle of Bute in the distance, and a few people out on sailing boats enjoying the gorgeous scenery. On my thumb nail I layered up trees from the Mo You London Noel 06 stamping plate. On my middle two nails I used the advanced stamping technique to add the sailing boat and mountain scenes using their Sailor 18 and 01 plates. The block colour nails are in Evergreen from Picture Polish, I've listed all the colours at the bottom of the whole blog post. Unfortunately whatever I tried I couldn't capture the true green shade of this one, it kept coming out teal, but it's more of a forest green in real life!

On my right hand I captured the more watery elements of our trip! Every beach we went to we saw jellyfish washed up! They varied in size and were certainly not blue and sparkly as I've depicted here! They were brown or reddish brown. We also saw seals! We went to a beach where we knew we could walk to a viewing point, but then one popped up when we were swimming, it was amazing! They are such lovely creatures. On this hand I used Maldives from Picture Polish on my index and little finger nails. On my ring finger I used a water image from Mo You London's Sailor 18 plate. For the other two I used the advanced stamping plate with Animal 04 on my middle finger and Bundle Monsters 504 plate on my thumb nail.Colours used - left hand: Evergreen - Picture Polish, Floral Street - Nails Inc, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Maldives - Picture Polish, Tickled Taupe - Painted Polish, Taupe Temptation - Picture Polish, Key Lime - Barry M, Spring Green - Barry M

Colours used - right hand: Maldives - Picture Polish, Floral Street - Nails Inc, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Indigo - Barry M, Grey - Barry M

Quixotic Polish - Trying Another Lovely Indie Brand

Hello all! Got some plan old swatches today rather than nail art, but I'm excited to share these with you as I rather like them (spoiler alert!). Earlier this year I decided to buy a few polishes from Quixotic Polish for the first time, but didn't try them for ages as they are more the sort of thing I'd wear in the autumn/winter. These two are from their Flakie Bombs collection which is soooo incredibly beautiful! I resisted the other shades but that was tough! They had a picture of them all together which looked so pretty I wanted to frame it! Still tempted to go back for the rest...

ANYway, onto the polishes... first up is Nightshade, a deep green jelly polish with green flakes and specs of glitter. This polish is SO beautiful! It's got so much depth to it. I thought it might just be quite dark and come out a bit more black but I'm so pleased with how green it is. A very strong start! 

Next up is Ambrosia, a beautiful teal-blue-green, I'm not really sure what you'd call this to be honest but it's lovely! It looks different colours in different lights, my favourite is when that purple-y red flare shows up as you can see in the picture of my thumb nail. Looking at the pictures again it's hard to choose a favourite but this one really did wow me when it caught the light!

Stamping Sunday: Hygge Nails

Hello and happy Sunday! Todays nail art is the last from my birthday nail art poll on Instagram (came joint third with the liquid crystal look from my last post). The theme is hygge, which is what I'd wanted to theme my 30th birthday celebrations around if I could have had a party. According to Google Hygge is a Danish and Norwegian word for a mood of comfort and coziness with feelings of wellbeing and contentment. I'm sure you can see the appeal but it helps that I really love visiting Norway too (such a shame we won't be able to go this year!). Mo You London brought out a hygge themed plate as part of the autumn collection this year (Fall In Love 08) so there will definitely be more of this theme from me!

I started with a base of pale blue (colours listed below the pictures) and then created decals using my Uber Mat for the middle finger, index finger and thumbnails, you can see how here. On my middle and little fingers I used white stamping polish to apply the cosy jumper and speckled images (the speckles don't show up that well but they're on my middle finger - looking forward to trying some other colour variations for that one!). I then added some wording over the top, unfortunately I smudged the words on my middle finger a bit with my matte top coat, it's not a great one! 

Overall I quite like these, I like the cosy vibe (see the picture with my dressing gown!) and the theme, I do think I could do better hygge nails though, they need a bit of glitter to bring me true feelings of contentment! :D I also think the mushrooms on my thumb could have been better, the two colours I used look too similar to each other.

Colours used: Borrowed & Blue - Essie, White Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Indigo - Barry M, Soft Focus - ILNP, Oyster - Barry M, Seven Dials - Nails Inc

A Liquid Crystal Galaxy!

 Hey everyone! Got some more first time nail experiences to share with you today! This was another of  the options on my birthday poll and I've been keen to try it out for some time! I'm not used to using gel polish either so it's a bit of an experimental one for me!

I started with a peel off base coat as I don't fancy soaking off the gel - so we'll see how long these last! I then applied 2-3 coats of gel polish to my nails. It is a little lumpy but I'm definitely getting better at it! I rarely work with gel and have often found I've ended up doing it too thick. After my final layer of black gel I used silver foil effect polish from Barry M and an image from my Kelli Marissa and Bundle Monster  (now Maniology) collaboration stamping plate to apply the star image. I was really pleased with how well it came out, I liked it even before the liquid crystal!

The next step was to apply the liquid crystal. Mine is a little bottle from Dance Legend, and I used the brush to gently swipe some of the liquid over my nails in wavy lines. It was quite runny and took a while to dry so took some getting used to, but once it dried I got the lovely multi-coloured effect you can see below. It;s quite hard to capture and doesn't always show up but when it does I love the way the colours change just like the mood rings I used to have as a child! I finished the look with a gel top coat to seal it in and am still enjoying wearing them!

Glitterfest 2020!

Hi everyone, I hope you're feeling sparkly today! This look is the next up from my birthday poll on Instagram, the suggestion was 'glitterfest' and it came second. Absolutely ages ago I bought some glitter pots from Divine by Natasha Lee, after watching some of her videos on how to use them on YoutTube. I honestly can't believe its taken me this long to try them, but here we are! I chose four out of my seven colours as I thought these went well together and the others might look a bit Christmassy. 

I started with a coloured base on each nail as instructed in the video (colours listed below the pictures). In the videos Natasha shows you various ways of doing glitter nails, with gel or regular nail polish. I chose to use regular polish as that's what I prefer to work with, and started off with one look, but then changed it to another by adding a top coat as the texture was bothering me! After two layers of nail polish I added a coat of clear polish, and used a flat brush to spoon glitter onto my nails. I have some little triangular trays I bought with the glitters, to catch the glitter that falls off and tip it back into the pot, this is really useful but glitter does still get everywhere! I then used a fan brush to brush off the excess glitter and ta da! Very Sparkly nails!

In the pictures below you can see some before and some after the top coats. I love the textured look before the top coats and how sparkly it looks, however it did start to annoy me as I'd feel it touch things and feel like it was rubbing the glitter off, so I did decide to add a couple of layers of 'glitter grabber' polish and a top coat. As it turned out I liked that look just as much anyway! Overall I see these as a success, the middle and little fingers are definitely the neatest and I like the colour on my middle finger the best.

Colours used: Casablanca - Jessica, Prima Donna - Jessica, Mermaid Tail - Barry M, Copa Girls (faded) - Cupcake Polish

Glitters used: Iris, Siren, Bora Bora, Northern Lights - all from Divine by Natasha Lee

A 30th birthday gradient

Hello world! I hope you're doing well today. I have one of my various birthday nail looks to share with you today. I made a poll on Instagram before my birthday suggesting four different options for birthday nails. I then ended up deciding to do something different for the actual day (the firework nails from my previous post) which didn't really work all that way - maybe it was a sign I should have stuck to the poll! Anyway, the look that won the poll was this burgundy and rose gold gradient, so I wore it for a birthday meal I had with a few friends. This took place just before the next lock down was announced here in the UK so was quite well timed really!

I saw this exact colour combination years ago, I can't remember where but it's easy to find if you Google these two nail polishes (listed below pictures). Ever since I wanted to give it a go but kept thinking I shouldn't buy two polishes just for this look! Eventually I saw them both for sale again at the same time and decided to go for it. It's not a colour combination I would have thought to use for a gradient if I hadn't seen it before but I really like it, both polishes have a lot of shine to them and a good party vibe. It feels appropriately grown up but also party-ish for a 30th birthday! I simply sponged on two layers of the gradient, could have possibly done a third but this definitely gave full coverage.

So in conclusion this was a success! I couldn't capture the polishes sparklyness the same way as the original pictures I saw but the funny lighting in the pictures below is where I've tried! I'd totally where this look again, and will be working through the other birthday looks in my poll in the order they were picked.

Colours used: Ambrosia - Cirque Colors, Himalayan Pink - Cirque Colors

A birthday nail fail!

So I'm behind with blogging again! Not too far behind to be fair but I haven't been behind for a while and I'm doing a lot of nail art at the moment! Todays nail art is a bit of a nail fail but I wanted to share it anyway as it was still kind of fun, and I enjoyed trying out something I hadn't tried before. It was my 30th birthday on Tuesday and I had the day off and wanted to spend the entire morning doing some nail art, using techniques I hadn't used or had rarely used. On my left hand I wanted to create a firework look as they're something I associate with my birthday for obvious reasons!

I started with a base of Black Rainbow, which is a gorgeous flakie thermal polish which is black in cooler temperatures and cream when warmer. On all but my ring fingernail I stamped firework images from the Mo You London Festive 05 stamping plate, using my 'sticky stamping' nail polish, which is designed to stay sticky so you can apply things like chrome powder for longer before it dries. On my ring finger I added the number 30 with the Mo You London Typography 04 plate in black, so that it would be hidden when cold and appear when warm.

On the firework nails I used a few different chrome powders which I rubbed over the designs, and dusted away the excess as much as possible. Some of these worked better than others, but I found it kind of stuck to the whole nail in some cases. I did use a quick dry top coat underneath with plenty of time to dry, so hoped it wouldn't be too sticky but I guess it was! The thumb came out best I think.

As it didn't come out that well you'll see I haven't even cleaned up in one of my pictures below, but I don't mind too much as I enjoyed doing them, and some recent Halloween nail art Id been planning for ages went well - you can't win them all!

Colours used: Black Rainbow - Fancy Gloss, Sticky Stamping - Dance Legend, Chrome Powders, various - eBay

A leafy look!

Hi everyone and happy weekend! I've had a lovely day today relaxing and going for a leafy walk. We are in lockdown again here in the UK but still allowed to go out for a walk. We did some cleaning and things in the morning so felt good relaxing in the afternoon and feeling justified in doing so! I've also been enjoying some of my birthday chocolates :)

Anyway, onto the nail art! This look was created for the Nail Addicts collab which takes place once a month. The theme was autumnail and involved picking a favourite autumn colour and creating a look around it. I don't have one favourite autumn colour but I've been really drawn to oranges this year, so brought out this lovely bright orange jelly with gold glitter chunks - Sands of Time from Femme Fatale Cosmetics. The bottom two pictures were taken on a very leafy walk I did one morning before work. It was a pretty simple look to create, just used black stamping polish and some leafy images from my go to autumn stamping plate, Lovely Leaves 01 from Uber Chic. That's all for now!

Colours used: Sands of Time - Femme Fatale Cosmetics, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection