A Snowflake Nail Fail!

Hey space turtles! I'm feeling a bit ill today and I have a nail fail to share - so not my brightest day! After my success with the chrome powder stamping I decided I wanted to try the same with glitter. I started with two coats of black polish and then a matte top coat. Once fully dry I used sticking stamping polish to add some snowflakes from Mo You London's Noel 08 stamping plate, and then dipped each nail in glitter before brushing off the excess and rubbing in those particles that stuck to the polish.

As you can see there are some sort of snowflake-ish shapes but some stuck a lot better than others (it stuck a little too well on my little fingernail!). Unfortunately I couldn't get any more to stick. I wonder if I should have done them one at a time rather than stamping all of them and then adding the glitter, but I expected it to stick to the sticky polish. I also wonder if the glitter particles were too big and I need thinner glitter. Will just have to try again sometime I guess!

Colours used: Lady In Black - OPI, Matte Taco - Holo Taco, Black Sticky Stamping - Dance Legend, Silver Glitter (Holocopter) - Twinkled T

A Smoosh of Blue

Hey everyone! Slightly messy nail art to share today and I'm noticing now that the pictures are a bit blurry but I don't really have the energy to do anything about that! I'm feeling quite run down and it's been a busy few days.

I decided to try two of my Spot It polishes together with some Unicorn Skin nail polish to create some fluid nail art. I started by applying some blobs of blue nail polish and flakie polish on my Uber Mat, followed by the two Spot It polishes. I then used a stamper, and in some cases a smaller mat to 'smoosh' the polish together. This involved tapping it reasonably fast and then watching the polishes swirl together. I let it dry and then added a layer of clear polish. Once that was dry I peeled them off the mat, stuck them to my nails and trimmed them with a metal tool & scissors. Finished off the look with a quick dry topcoat.

In conclusion, I like these, though I'm not sure the Spot It effect comes across as well as it could. I love having the flakie effect included though - really makes it glow!

Colours used: Spot It Blue - Dance Legend, Spot It White - Dance Legend, Blueberry - Barry M, Cosmic Unicorn Skin - Holo Taco

Fluid Neons - I've finally cracked it!

Happy Sunday everyone! I'm actually up to date with my nail blogging for the second post in a row - it's a miracle! The pictures I'm sharing today are of what's still on my nails, and will be till at least tomorrow evening. As you will have gathered from the title I'm sharing fluid nail art today, and I think I've finally cracked it! This is actually the second time I've cracked it, I did a cool grey, black and sparkly one with bright red triangles a couple of months ago, but unfortunately I dropped my phone and lost the pictures. I'm hoping that I can get them back still though so will share if I do. I've learnt that the trick is to press the stamper down quite quickly on the polish for the best effect, though it's a bit hit and miss so I create more decals than I need and pick the best ones.

To create this effect I made decals on my mini Uber Mat, by blobbing two or three nail polish colours in a nail outline, adding one Spot It polish and then quickly pressing it with a stamper. I love watching the bubbles appear and move around a bit after I've moved the stamper! I created 12 decals and chose the best ones from the selection, this meant less of the red polish in the end.

I've gone for quite a wacky range of colours, the whole Cirque Colors Vice 2019 collection and a couple of Dance Legend Spot It polishes for the fluid effect. I decided to go for something different on most nails colour wise, and am pleased I did but could also see the merit in keeping them the same, or sticking to the more pastely ones for a consistent look, as the fluid effect gives some variation anyway.

My favourites were the pastely ring and little finger nails on the top pictures and the index finger one with red on the bottom pictures. I know I've got lots of possible combinations here I could try again which is good as I love the fluid nail art look, I think it works particularly well with neons, it often reminds me of those marbling things we used to so at infant school with plastic trays. Must try that again some time!
Colours used: Vitamin D - Cirque Colors, Electric Daisy - Cirque Colors, Game Over - Cirque Colors, High Roller - Cirque Colors, Miami Dade - Cirque Colors, Rehab - Cirque Colors, Spot It Blue - Dance Legend, Spot It White - Dance Legend

Bubble Smoosh! (Take One)

Hi again! Today we have something super bright and smooshy on my nail blog! I have been inspired by Hanninator on Instagram, she has been doing a lot of these bubbly colourful nails in a variety of colours and they look awesome! I ended up searching the internet and as soon as my nail polish buying ban was up I ordered the full set of four Spot It polishes by Dance Legend which she uses for these designs.

So this was my first attempt. Some nails have come out better than others which I guess is to be expected. I've tried to get the best ones in these pictures but please excuse the blurring! I used my Uber Mat and a clear stamper to make decals. For each nail I started with a base (varying the colour) then swiped some generous quantities of the other colours over the top. I then pressed the stamper lightly over the top to merge the colours together. I tried varying the pressure and speed of this but couldn't quite work out what worked best. It's easier to see once on the nails!

I've seen this effect described as fluid nail art, which makes sense but I think I will call mine a bubble smoosh! It's a little like the 'smoosh' nail art which people do directly on their nails, but with the addition of bubbles from the Spot It polishes.
Colours used: Spot It Blue - Dance Legend, Beach Hut (Orange) - Models Own, Yellow - Barry M, Claridge Gardens (Neon Pink) - Nails Inc, White - Emily de Molly

Dance Legend Wazowski Leaves

Hello nail world - it's been too long!  These are my nails from the early May bank holiday (that's how behind I am!). I'm working through a list of untried polishes, and have banned myself from buying any more till I've tried them each at least once. I'm enjoying it more than I thought as I love trying new polishes and thinking of what to do with them nail art wise.

I did these nails in our little country cottage at Symonds Yat while away for the bank holiday, so they bring back fond memories! That's also the reason for the different picture background, which I think does happen to fit with the nail art quite well. I used Dance Legends Wazowski on all nails except my ring finger, and stamped a leaf image in black from Uber Chic's Lovely Leaves 01 plate. On my ring finger I used a pale shimmering taupe, and made advanced stamping decals (see how here) using Wazowski again.

Overall I like these as Wazowski is such a lovely polish, but I do think my nails were getting a bit too long  here.
Colours used: Wazowski - Dance Legend, Tickled Taupe - Painted Polish, Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish

Monthly Indie Review: Emily de Molly

This months indie polish review is a little smaller than usual (I ordered it as part of a bulk buy, and just couldn't justify one more polish!). I'll go ahead and say straight away though that this nail polish totally deserves a whole blog post to itself!

Today I am reviewing Turbulence from Emily de Molly. I saw it on Etsy a while back, but didn't fancy the postage which was about as much as the nail polish itself! So when I saw it on Rainbow Connection I jumped at the chance!

It's a blue jelly polish, filled with an assortment of different glitter shapes. There is a fine blue glitter in there, with some larger blue glitters and diamonds, and a few multi coloured medium sized glitters.
Here you can see it in different lighting, it really seemed to maintain it's extreme shine and sparkle in all light. even in the office! The pictures don't quite to it justice. I ended up having this on for a week as I just couldn't bring myself to take it off, and I've lost count of the number of compliments I got! I was even told my a beautician at a spa I went to that it looked like professional gels. It is a truly beautiful nail polish.

It's probably worth mentioning why Dance Legends peel of glitter base is in the picture at the top. I thought it would be worth using as it can be so hard to remove chunky glitter from nails. It held amazingly well for a week, but was pretty hard to get rid of and seemed to damage the top layer of my nails. Might just stick to soaking it off next time!

Dance Legend - Peel Off Glitter Base

Today I'm going to talk through my first experience with a peel of base coat. It's not the sort of thing I would normally I use (I'm quite happy with the foil technique for most glitters), but I thought it might come in handy for those super stubborn glitters with large glitter particles. The peel off base I chose is by Dance Legend and was purchased on Rainbow Connection. I'd seen it well reviewed and also like the bottle! It's available in a few shades, white, black, nude and pale pink. So you can choose one that best fits with the glitters you use. I went for nude to look as similar to my nail as possible.


For my first try I didn't want to use a particularly glitter, so I went for A England's Heathcliff. The glitter particles are quite small so I knew I could revert to the foil technique if needed! On the top right is the glitter base alone, it was a very thick consistency so only needed one coat. I think it looks like gels it's so shiny!

Below you can see the process in action. On the left is Heathcliff with no top coat. It's got teeny glitter particles in a variety of colours. To remove the polish I used a wooden orange stick, and found a corner that I could wedge it under. I then slowly worked it underneath the polish to pull it up. It's quite satisfying but freaked me out a little as it looked like I was peeling off my nail!

As you can see below I had some trouble when it came to getting it off the tips of my nails (which are looking frightfully yellow due to all the glitter abuse!). I think this is because I didn't seal the ends of my nails with the peel off base, but did seal the ends with the glitter (doh!). Another mistake I made was using a normal base coat under the peel off base. If you look closely you can see there is a slight peeling on my nails, this is because the peel off base will have also pulled up the base coat underneath. Using it straight onto the nail is less risky as it acts as a base coat already,


So after all that picking (I did get it all off with the orange stick in the end!) my nails looked a little sorry for themselves. I gently buffed them and then painted them with my Charlotte Street perfect nude polish from Nails Inc, as a sort of remedy/cover up. All in all I like the peel off base, it worked surprisingly well and I think it will be more of a time saver when I'm using chunkier glitters. I'll just remember not to use a base coat next time!