Purple Explorer Nails (what to call these?!)

Hey everyone! I'm excited as today I'm off to Cambridge for a long weekend with my boyfriend to celebrate 5 years together. I've been up in good time to finish off my nails (they're looking tropical!) so thought it was a good opportunity to do a bit more catching up on my blog. This design features two purples from Avon which were given to me for Christmas by my friend Emma. They're pretty colours, I particularly like the paler muted one, and I liked the consistency too.

I started with a base of puprle alternating the base colour as I went along. On the darker purple I stamped images from the Mo You London Explorer 14 plate in gold directly onto my nails. I like the size of the images as a lot of my stamping plates have images that are a bit on the small size as I've been keeping my nails long. On the paler purple nails I used the advanced stamping technique using my Uber Mat, to get a bit of the darker purple into the patterns as well. To see how I have a little picture tutorial here.

I'm pleased with how these turned out and was glad to use the Explorer plate again as I've had  it for ages. Let me know what you think :)
Colours used: So Jelly  - Mark (Avon), P819 - Mark (Avon), Foil Effect in Gold - Barry M

Sharpie Flutterby Nails!

Hello everyone - hope you're enjoying some sunshine! I still so behind with nail things, this one feels like it was ages ago! Still working through my untried polishes and this is my first use of Kitty, a sparkly blue polish from Picture Polish. I saw a design on Instagram with some butterflies alongside blue nails and thought I'd give it a go myself.

On my middle fingers I used butterfly wing images from Mo You London's Kitty 12 plate which I covered over with a clear top coat and then coloured in with sharpies. Initially I tried the usual approach of mixing with some nail polish remover on foil, and then painting it on with a brush, but I found that some of the colours I chose were a bit pale for that. Turns out colouring directly onto the nails with sharpie works well too! There were some lines visible but taking a tiny bit of polish remover on a brush I could gently smooth those out.

Once all dry I covered the butterfly designs again with a clear top coat to seal the image in and stop the sharpie parts rubbing away. Overall I like this design, especially the colours, though I possible wish the images were a little bigger/longer.
Colours used: Kitty - Picture Polish, Floral Street - Nails Inc, Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish, Assorted Sharpies

Buzz Buzz

Buzzzzzzz.... Hi everyone! Today I'm sharing my holiday nail art from our holiday in Scotland in May. Still soo behind! I'm very sleepy at the moment so nail art is happening a little less, and blogging even less! Need to get some good naps in I think! That or I need another holiday...

This charming yellowy gold glitter is Princess Lolly from Cupcake Polish and has been on my untried list for some time. I kept it simple with a bee image from  Mo You London's Animal 04 plate, using the advanced stamping technique and my Uber Mat. You can see how here. On my thumb and little fingers nails I used a honeycomb image from Pro 01 plate. I'm glad I kept my middle finger nails as just glitter as it really is gorgeously sparkly polish so it needed to be the centre piece!

It look me a little while to get used to these as they are very yellow and I'm quite pale, but they soon grew on me and I loved the glitter and the little bees. It was a perfect theme for a sunny week in Scotland. I've included a couple of pictures at the bottom from a stunning bluebell walk in the woods towards the end of the holiday. I thought it was the perfect backdrop!
Colours used: Princess Lolly, Cupcake Polish, Floral Street - Nails Inc, Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish by Lexi

Hygge - Gentle Nail Art

Hello everyone! Just a short one tonight as it's been a long day and work and I'm pretty tired! The pale blue I've used here is Cirque Colors Hygge, one from my untried list. It has a delicate shimmer too it, and I think it works well as a forsty winter colour, or a pastel shade for spring. I also love the word Hygge, mostly for how it's pronounced - or how I think it's pronounced!

For the accent nail on this manicure I painted it white, and then used black stamping polish to place the leaf image over the top. The image is from the Uber Chic Lovely Leaves 01 plate. Though these are simple I think they were cute, I got a few compliments on them and think they would make a good subtle nail design for work.
Colours used: Hygge - Cirque Colors, Floral Street - Nails Inc,  Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish

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

Spring/Summer Garden Nails

I am sooo behind with this! We're over half way through May and this is my first blog post! Here is some nail art I did a few weeks ago now. I haven't been painting my nails as much in general as I'm busy at work and have been doing some things around the house plus some time away. This nail art was done with the purposes of trying out some little stick on bird cages, and reminds me of seeing family friends for the Fleet Half Marathon. The thermal nail polish definitely stayed on it's cold colour while we were out watching the runners!

I started with a layer of blue thermal polish, and then used my Uber Mat to create some floral decals. You can see how here. I used the Flower Power 03 plate from Mo You London. One I had placed the decals, I stuck down some bird cage decorations and then applied a little more top coat over them to stick them down. I found the bird cages didn't work great with my nails, especially as I chose my most curved finger nails to stick them on! They were sticking out a lot at the edges. It worked a little better on my thumb nails as they're wider and flatter.

I loved using another thermal nail polish, and I think this blue one is particularly good!  Overall pretty pleased with this design, but probably won't place the bird cages there again.
Colours used: Blue Beard - Femme Fatale, Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish by Lexi, Alpine Snow - OPI, Pink Lemonade - Barry M, Surfboard - Barry M, Notting Hill Carnival - Nails Inc, Key Lime - Barry M, Berry Ice Cream - Barry M

How not to do gels/chrome!

Hello all! Hope you've had a good weekend. Mine has been good but went too fast as usual! I'm dreading work tomorrow as it's crazy busy at the moment. Today's post is about something I tried quite some time ago! The pictures have been sat in my nail blogging folder for ages. I guess as they didn't turn out how I expected I wasn't particularly excited about sharing them.

So, there are two parts to this, gel polish and chrome powder, both of which I am fairly inexperienced in. I have successfully applied chrome powder over normal nail polish, but have heard it works better over gel so thought I would give that a try. I also wanted to have a go at getting some different colours, as I've been people apply silver chrome powder of a variety of colours to get different effects.

I started off with a couple of layers of gel polish, blue on one hand, turquoise on the other. I haven't quite mastered gel. It probably doesn't help that I'm using a cheap brand from Amazon, but I always seem to end up with it quite think and slightly rounded round the edges. I started by applying silver chrome powder, and soon realised that although it applied well, it completely blocked out the base colour! I therefore made a last minute plan to do the middle two fingers silver, and on the others use my new unicorn chrome powder for a more see through look! This worked better and I think it looks good with these colours. I do wish I could find a chrome powder which would pretty much chrome-ify any colour. That's all for now. I'm sure I'll be back on the chrome again soon!
Usually here I list the colours I used for the above images, however in this case I'm not actually sure of the names, so I can say is that they're from a brand called FairyGlo and I got them on Amazon!