Twit-Twoo!

Tweet tweet! This nail art is for Sunday's glam nails challenge prompts, but I'm running quite behind as we spent a lot of time working in the garden at the weekend and I was finally able to go for a pub lunch with friends! The theme prompt was birds and I stumbled across the Uber Chic owl stamping plate in my collection and thought it would be perfect!

As a base I used a couple of speckled nail polishes as they fit the bird theme well. For the owls I used the advanced stamping technique, you can see how here. I used a mixture of creme and sparkly shades and I'm quite happy with the effect I ended up with. It was very much a make it up as I go along look!

Colours used: Hatch - Cirque Colors, Robin - Cirque Colors, Black Stamping Polish - Dance Legend, Notting Hill Carnival - Nails Inc, Cream Soda - Barry M, Tickled Taupe - Painted Polish, Taupe Temptation - Painted Polish

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

Isambard Kingdom Brown Owl

A big sleepy hello to anyone reading this... today I am sharing some owl nail art, appropriately as it's dark outside and I'm sleepy! I was inspired by a trip to The Hawk Conservancy Trust to dig out my UberChic owl stamping plate, and do some owl nail art over a colour changing background (recently got some new thermals which I'm enjoying trying out). This one is Hook from Femme Fatale Cosmetics. I think it has a sort of dusk and dawn effect, which is again very appropriate for owls!

For the wording I stamped it in gold before stamping it again in black slightly below the gold. You can't really see it in the pictures but it has a subtle shadowing effect. For the owls I used a couple of polishes from Painted Polish by Lexi's new Taupe collection, which I still haven't got round to trying out in full! I used the advanced stamping technique with my Uber Mat for the owls, you can see how here, and finished off with my favourite glossy top coat (Nails Inc's Kensington Caviar).

I was really pleased with these, they had all the novelty of colour changing thermal polish (it just never gets old!), plus nail art and a little bit of glitter. What more could I want?! Below you can see the nail art on warm hands, a bit colder at the tip of my nails, and underneath are a couple of pictures to show the cold shade.
Colours used: Hook - Femme Fatale Cosmetics, Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish, Tickled Taupe - Painted Polish, Taupe Temptation - Painted Polish, Bright Lights - Barry M
And if you've ready all the way to the bottom... the strange blog post title is a pun my oh so witty boyfriend though of based on the famous engineer from the 1800's, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. You're welcome ;)

Hoot Hoot Hoot - Owl Nails

Hi everyone! Hope you are Owl having a good weekend ;) Today's nail art is sparkly and full of owls/owl puns! Once again I'm still wearing this nail art while blogging it, which is very unusual for me, and a sign of how busy we are with the house move. Picking up the keys on Thursday, I can't wait!

So when I was doing a friends nails, she was looking through my stamping plates and found one I forgot I had bought, the UberChic owl plate. I seem to associate owls with autumn (is that just me?) so thought now is the perfect time to try it out. I also had three new holo's from Painted Polish by Lexi (colours listed below the pictures) so thought I'd give them a try too. I've included an image of just the colours below, and at the bottom of this post will do a little mini review.

I painted alternate colours onto my nails, and then used the advances stamping technique with my Uber Mat for the owls, and just regular stamping with white stamping polish on my middle fingers. I really liked how these images came out. The owls are so cute (there are loads more on the plate too) and the images came out nice and crisp. I think the colours worked well too. You can see how to advanced stamp in pictures here.
Colours used: Jolly My Roger - Painted Polish, Yo-Ho Holo - Painted Polish, Love & Liberty - Painted Polish, Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish, Cream Soda - Barry M, Cappuccino - Barry M, Cocoa - Barry M, White Knight - Mo You London

Painted Polish - Jolly My Roger (copper-ish), Yo-Ho Holo (green) and Love & Liberty (blue)
Just wanted to share my thoughts in the three untried holo's I bought from Rainbow Connection about a month or so. How I managed to go that long without trying them I don't know! All three shades have a lovely consistency, and as you can see from the pictures, are pretty holographic! Love & Liberty is quite opaque, you could probably get away with one coat but I used two here as I could still see a\ bit of nail line in the light. For Jolly My Roger and Yo-Ho Holo two-three coats would be needed.