HPB Presents: Glitter Jelly Strawberries

Today I am taking part in another Hobby Polish Bloggers link up, this month the theme is fruit. I think it's a great theme, seasonal and plenty of options, and am glad to be taking part again. I haven't had a proper look yet but I've had a brief glance and I have to say there are some gorgeous designs! Mine didn't go quite to plan, so I'm putting it up before I scare myself by looking at everyone elses!

I spent a lot of time deciding what to do for this theme, I was very tempted to do pineapples again, but then it occurred to me that I could use this to do glitter-jelly-sandwich nails for the first time, so I went with strawberries.

I started with a base of Cosmic Girl from Danglefoot polish, I've included a picture below though I found it hard to capture all the lovely sparkles, hence the weird lighting! Next I painted on a layer of Pen & Pink from OPI's color paints collection. It was very bright at this stage! I painted on the strawberry seeds with white, and then thought they looked too bright so out another layer of pink over the top. I do quite like the subtle effect this left. It's just about a pond mani! Finally I painted on the leaves in white, and then dabbed on some green for a mottled leafy effect.

As you can see from the pictures, the glitter didn't show through, which is a shame as I would have liked sparkly strawberries! I think the textured effect did give it something though. You can see my more successful attempts at fruit nails here: Lemons or Five a day, I've also done a few pineapple designs in the past. Please be sure to check out the other mani's for this theme (links below the pictures), there are some really stunning designs!
Colours used: Cosmic Girl - Danglefoot Polish, Pen & Pink - OPI, Alpine Snow - OPI, Turquoise Aesthetic - OPI

An InLinkz Link-up

Snake snake! Ohh it's a snake!

Snake snaaake! Tonight I am very sleepy, so I'm sharing some very lively nails! For these nails I used the OPI color paints to get a really vibrant colour. I thought they'd be good for a stripy snake as they blend well together.

I started with a white base and then used a nail art pen to draw a snake outline onto each hand. I like the shape in the picture on the top left best, though I had originally intended to do a fairly straight shape for both. Next I used a small nail art brush to paint strips in a variety of color paint colours along the snake. One dry I used a thinner brush to outline the snake, and paint on a tongue in red. I used a dotting tool for the eyes.

I like this one a lot I think it's good fun. The straight-ish snake could have been neater I think, but they were good entertainment for a while! Ssssssssss!

Colours used: Alpine Snow - OPI, Nail Art Pen in Black - Barry M, Primarily Yellow - OPI, Chromatic Orange - OPI, Pen & Pink - OPI, Purple Perspective - OPI, Turquoise Aesthetic - OPI, Lady In Black - OPI, Red Hot Rio - OPI

OPI Colour Party (Color Paints 1st Try)

Good evening! It's been over a week since I've blogged so today I have a very colourful and picture heavy blog post. I've been wearing a lot of greys and blacks recently (with a bit of glitter of course) so it's been good to have some contrast. I was off work ill a couple of weeks ago and decided to treat myself to a little mini set of OPI Color Paints as I've seen so much of them on-line. I'm pleased to say they did not disappoint...

I'm usually not one for mini polishes, I'd rather have a full size bottle, but this set is perfect for trying out the colour paints and I wanted to get a good range of colours. They are absolutely adorable! They've not lost anything in the design and are just teeny tiny OPI's. To get some perspective on how diddy they are, here is them spilling out of my hand, and one next to a full sized OPI nail polish,
For my first attempt I had been planning on doing a colourful dotticure, but was drawn in my the images on the box and decided to go for something a little less orderly. The options are endless with the colour paints. I will still be trying a dotticure and love the idea of painting them over glitter, or using them in a stained glass or butterfly stamping design.

The silver canvas was a lovely base as it really made the colours pop. I've heard they go well over white too. It applied well and is a definite one coater but did take a little while to try. The top two pictures below are of my left hand and the bottom are my right. I've ended up with a slightly different effect on each one. My personal favourite is my left hand, I really like how the blue looks completely diferrent depending on what it covers ( a lovely green when overlapping the yellow).


So would I buy the full size bottles? Definitely! But not all of them as there are quite a few. I'll wait and see how quickly I use up these mini's first. The consistency of the colours is lovely and there are just so so many things you can do with them. I have a list already! I'm also impressed at the width of the brushes considering the bottles are so small. A definite winner!