Crabby Nails Ahoy!

Hey everyone - or should I say ahoy... Some cute crab nail art to share with you today which kind of matched my mood when I painted them (crabby rather than cute unfortunately). These are for the next Dimension Nails challenge prompt for August which is, you guessed it, crab. I have a couple of stamping plates with crab images on but chose the newest, Uber Chic's Just Beachy plate. They have these helpful layered images so I didn't have to create decals, and could stamp directly onto the white nails. I was pleased with how vibrantly the colours came out, as sometimes I find stamping colours over white kind of washes them out a little. I did smudge the orange crab a little when stamping the black outline over the colour but I think it's still cute!

Not much else to say on these really but I am pleased with them, and am enjoying the summery shades! It's not something I'd really thought to do before so I'm glad this Dimension Nails challenge prompt made me do them!
Colours used: Flip Flop Fantasy - China Glaze, Greenberry - Barry M, Floral Street - Nails Inc, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection

Tropical Tuesday: Neon Palm Tree Smoosh!

Tropical Tuesday is back! Finally it is that time of year again :) I definitely don't think I can keep this up for every Tuesday like I did last summer. At the time I'd just started blogging, and had a nice hefty backlog of pictres to go through.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed having really vibrant summery colours on my nails again. It's been a while. I started with a white base to really make the colours pop. I then used a stamper to use the 'smoosh' technique. This involves putting blobs of nail polish on the stamper, and then dabbing it around on the nail, to get a random splotchy effect. I love the kind of nail art where you can be as messy as you like and it still turns out pretty!

When I first splotched the colours on I wasn't sure about the combination, but as I did some more and finished the design and grew on me quickly! For the palm trees I used a small nail art brush and black nail polish - colours listed below the pictures.
Colours used: Alpine Snow - OPI, Seven Dials - Nails Inc, Flip Flop Fantasy - China Glaze, Uptown Glamour - Nails Inc, Lady In Black - OPI

Nailbox Review: August

Today I am reviewing Augusts Nailbox, which I've been very excited to get my hands on! I ordered the box as a one off to try it out, but can definitely see myself going back sooner rather than later! The box can be ordered here and there are a number of subscription options, the cheapest being £13.50 per month for a years subscription. There is the option to sign up on a month by month basis for £15 if you just want to try it out first like I did.

So unfortunately I don't have any nice artistic picture of the products neatly arranged on/in the box, as the postman left it in our glass collection box behind the bins in the rain, so after a few hours of floating the box wasn't really fit for photos! No christmas card for you Mr Postman! Still, the polish was all safe so thats all that really matters! Below is the contents of this months box, minus the picture card (it was too soggy!), the sweets did not last long!

I was really impressed with the colours in this box and their quality. Perfect colours to finish off the summer, especially for those of you who are lucky enough to be going away in September. The box also included some handy nail clippers and a yummy mini pack of love hearts. I was impressed by the quality of the brands included, and that they were all reasonably sized bottles (all 14 or 15ml).

Nails Inc's Seven Dials (yellow) is a fun sunshine yellow, but is still a nice soft colour, so not too bright or harsh for those of us with pale skin. The polish has a great consistency, and I really really like the brush. Not only is it wide for easy application, but it is a contoured shape (longer in the middle) which makes it fit the nail better.

I was super excited to receive China Glaze's Flip Flop Fantasy (neon coral) as I've been aware of it for a long time, it seems to be a blogger favourite. Definitely the perfect shade for a beach holiday. The colour goes on well and is super bright.

CND Vinylux's Wisteria Haze (purpley blue) was the dark horse of this box for me. the consistency is amazing! I used two coats for the design I'll show you below, but this is also a pretty good one coater. It's quite liquid but without pooling or feeling like it will drip of the brush, and just glides on perfectly. From my experience this is definitely one of the easiest polishes to use.

I finished of my design with CDN Vinylux's Weekly Top Coat. this dried fairly quickly but I did think it was a little runny. To get enough on your brush you have to work fairly quickly to stop it dripping. Easy to get used to though. I think it could maybe benefit from a slightly wider brush to hold more polish.

Now onto the design! I wanted to do something that would involve all three colours so went for this carnival design. not my neatest to date, I think I need some more practise with my nail art brushes, but pretty happy with is as an end of summer design :) I added OPI's Alpine Snow as a white base for the bunting nails, but for those of you who were lucky enough to receive July's Nailbox the white in there should do the trick!

Colours Used: Wisteria Haze - CND Vinylux, Alpine Snow - OPI, New York Noir - Nails Inc, Seven Dials - Nails Inc,  Flip Flop Fantasy - China Glaze, Weekly Top Coat - CND Vinylux