Owls & Feathers - Come On Spring!

Hey everyone - hope you are about to have a great weekend! Today my nail art has been created for the clairestelle8 nail art challenge on Instagram. There are a number of prompts for April, and for this months challenge there is the chance to win a stamping plate which I'm really keen to get my hands on! I'm not doing every prompt as I don't have enough time sadly, but will try and do a few. For this one the prompt is feathers, so I decided to use my Nails Inc feather polishes, some feather stamping and a great big owl!

On all my nails I used a pale pink base (colours listed below the pictures), and on my ringer finger and thumb nails I created decals using my Uber Mat. The owl is from an Uber Chic stamping plate, it's an image I haven't used before. I enjoyed using my Painted Polish by Lexi taupe polishes for this but you know you have a lot of polish when you happen to have the right sparkly shades for an owl!! I used feathers from a Mo You London Explorer plate for my other decals. I coloured them in with the feather effect polishes I used on my other nails. This didn't work all that well as it made the decals quite chunky, but I quite like the subtle effect.

The remaining three nails on each hand were topped with the Nails Inc feather effect polishes. With hindsight I think I should have layered the feathers up a bit more for a better effect. All in all I quite like these, but they're not my best. Not sure I was ready for pastels quite yet!
Colours used: Pink Lemonade - Barry M, White Stamping Polish - Emily de Molly, Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish, Cream Soda - Barry M, Yellow - Barry M, Tickled Taupe - Painted Polish, Taupe Temptation - Painted Polish, Brighton (Feathers) - Nails Inc, Cornwall (Feathers) - Nails Inc, Henley (Feathers) - Nails Inc

Fun With Feathers!

Today I will be showing you how I got on with BHS' Colour Couture feather set, which was a gift from last Christmas' Secret Santa! I waited a while to try it out as it's such a spring/summery style. The set includes all the things you need, including nail scissors, three polish colours and a top coat for sticking the feathers down. I'm hoping that the feathers can be bought in a craft shop somewhere too, as I'd be keen to try it again with less pink!

First I painted my nails using the colours provided in the set and let them dry. I then added a top coat, and carefully applied the trimmed feather peices while it was still wet.

Once the feathers are on your nails they need to be trimmed down as closely as possible to the nail, and then filed for extra precision. The final step is to add a top coat again to seal the feathers in place. I'm in two minds about whether they actually looked better before the top coat, as I think the colours where a bit more vibrant when dry. I've included final pictures below, and above that what they looked like pre trim and top coat.