Nails Inc Blame It On The Rainbow

Hello world! Just a quick blog post today in the form of a review of one of the Nails Inc duo's. I'd been considering this for a while but I'm not much of a pink person, but then I found it in TK Maxx so it was clearly meant to be! I normally wear nail art and decided to try this during the week between a couple of other designs, and ended up keeping it on longer than expected as it was so lovely.

What's Poppin' is a lovely bright yet warm pink with a hint of lilac. I don't usually go for pink but I was so pleased with how this looked. The shade is flattering and so glossy. I was also really please with the consistency and the brush was a great shape making it easy to use. I used two coats as I could just about see some nail line when I held my nails up to the light with one coat, but this could definitely work as a one coater.

Rainbow Sprinkles is exactly what it says on the tin! A mixture of different coloured glitter particles in a clear base. It's super sparkly and fun! The glitter is fairly densely packed so I built this up with a few coats rather than sponging it on. I did use a sheer pink base as I knew my nail would show a little underneath, however I think the glitter distracted my eyes away from that anyway!

So as you can see - a clear winner! I would definitely recommend this duo.
Colours used: What's Poppin - Nails Inc, Rainbow Sprinkles - Nails Inc, Bashful - Barry M

Glittering Wave Nail Art - Inspired by Rye and Hastings

Hey everyone! Getting a bit behind on my nail blogging again... no surprises there! These ones were inspired by a weekend away we had a few weeks ago for my birthday. To be honest they didn't come out as well as I'd hoped, but there are elements of them I like. I still feel like I need SO much work on my nail photo taking skills too!

So the places we visited on the weekend away were Rye and Hastings. We also went to a steam museum on the way to Rye, which is making me think maybe I should try some steampunk nail art! We stayed in  a lovely little Airbnb cabin on a farm, it was delightful! The anchor and the images on my little fingernails were stamped directly, and for the waves and sailing boat I used the advanced stamping technique to colour them in, or add glitter in the case of the waves. On my index finger I sponged on some glitter, and then used a reverse stamping image from the UberChic Lovely Leaves 01 plate with the blue polish. It didn't show up as well as I'd hoped so I stamped it again, but that didn't work too well, particularly on my right hand.

So all in all I think these are OK. I like the colours and the theme, but it came out a bit messier than I'd anticipated, and didn't really wow me!
Colours used: Laguna - Barry M, Cream Soda - Barry M, Little Bo Peep - Rimmel, Grey - Barry M, Northern Lights (H) - Fun Lacquer, White Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Cosmic Girl - Danglefoot Polish

Foxy Autumn Nails

Hey everyone, I'm back again already with some more autumn nail art! I enjoyed doing these on Sunday afternoon at my grandparents house, I've been wanting to try these fox images from the Uber Chic Woodland Chic stamping plate for quite some time. I used a cream base for most nails, and on the accent nail, black with a gold flakie topper. It's an old Nails Inc one I picked up in TK Maxx a few years ago.

I stamped the images onto the cream nail polish and then added a layer of quick dry top coat to protect them from the nail polish remover in the next step. Once dry I mixed some sharpie ink and nail polish remover on a piece of tin foil, and used a small nail art brush to colour in the images. I had to mix it up quite a few times as it dries pretty fast!

There wasn't much more to this one really! It took a while as there were a few layers of polish to dry but it was a pretty simple process. I used sharpie ink as I don't really have any fox coloured nail polish! They did come out a bit more of a bright orange than I was going for but I suppose they are cartoon foxes so it kind of works!
Colours used: Cream Soda - Barry M, Lady In Black - OPI, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Orange Sharpie, The Donmar - Nails Inc

Purple Magic - Post Halloween Nail Art

Hello world! It feels like I haven't blogged for ages! I've just had two lovely weekends away, the first for my birthday (went to the seaside!) and the second visiting my grandparents. For my birthday I wore a beautiful deep purple with multi coloured flakies which you can see on my Instagram. I followed that up with this magic themed look which I had been planning to wear for Halloween, but I loved my sugar skull ones so much I kept them on instead!

For this look I started with a base of Ava from ILNP, a polish I'd been meaning to try for ages, but somehow kept forgetting! For the images on my nails, excluding the snake, I used the advanced stamping technique to create decals on my Uber Mat. You can see how here. I used a gold outline and filled them in with some of the Barry M Under the Sea polishes. With hindsight I think I should have used a black outline for most of them. I thought that wouldn't stand out well enough against the purple, but the gold doesn't stand out too well against the iridescent polishes.

I used images from the Mo You London Crystal 01, Minimal 07 and Animal 15 plates, and the Uber Chic Woodland Chic and Wild Luxury: Cold Blooded plates. Some of the crystal images have little stars around them which I added to the mushroom images as well. Overall I'm pretty pleased with these though I will tweak them a little if I do them again.
Colours used: Ava - ILNP,  Foil Effects in Gold - Barry M, Peridot - Cirque Colors, Butterflyfish - Barry M, Jellyfish - Barry M, Moonfish - Barry M

Sugar Skulls & Autumn Feels

Hi everyone and Happy Halloween! Predictably I have some Halloween nail art to share with you today. I actually was planning on squeezing in one more design for the actual day of Halloween but am so fond of these that I decided to keep them on a bit longer. They are falling apart a bit now though as I used a peel off base.

On my index and little finger nails I created a gradient with some of the Barry M Molten Metal polishes, and used a reverse stamping image from the Lovely Leaves - 01 plate over the top. I used the same Molten Metal polishes on the sugar skulls on my other nails. The leaf pattern nails were really just a way to spend a bit less time painting freehand, as I'm not very experienced and it takes me a while, but I really like them and the way the images work together as a whole nail art look.

On my other nails I used a base of Sugary Sweet Death from Femme Fatale Cosmetics. This polish is what inspired the look as it reminded me of sugar skulls! I roughly followed a picture tutorial by Hannah Rox It for the skulls, and used some Topshop matte metallic polish as it's consistency for painting is quite good and I can't find my acrylic paint! I used a dotting tool to add the extra colour to the eyes. As I mentioned before I am really pleased with these! More slightly spooky post Halloween nail art to come next week :)
Colours used: Sugary Sweet Death - Femme Fatale Cosmetics, Gold Digger - Barry M, Bronze Bae - Barry M, Copper Mine - Barry M, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Croupier - Topshop

Nail Art for Mole Day!

Hi everyone and a belated Happy Mole Day to you! Mole day took place on Wednesday 23rd October, and commemorates Avogadro's number, which is a basic measuring unit in chemistry (yep, I got that straight from Google). It is celebrated by chemists, chemistry students and chemistry enthusiasts, or so I'm lead to believe, but there does seem to be a bit of a mole animal theme. This year my boyfriend and I celebrated it with pizza, Mole Day themed cupcakes and my mole nails! We have had a bit of an obsession with moles this year after seeing a couple in the wild and subsequently finding some YouTube videos of them, They're so wiggly and cute!!

So this nail art was specifically inspired by a video on Youtube by Matty Molenator, of a mole walking on a glass panel. You can see the mole from underneath as it wiggles along! I started of by painting all of my nails with three layers of Hygge by Cirque Colors. This was the colour in my collection that I think most resembles glass. For the moles I was looking for my black acrylic paint but couldn't find it, so ended up using a Topshop matte metallic black as it has a good consistency for painting.

The moles are pretty much just little blobs with hands, feet and noses! I did do eyes as well but in dark brown so they didn't stand out much, as moles eyes are inconspicuous. The ones on my fingernails represent where the mole appears in different frames in the video, and on my thumb nails are the best bits, when the full mole wiggles into view! If you're into mole nail art you can see some mole themed Valentines Day nails I did a while ago here, and also, you're awesome!
Colours used: Hygge - Cirque Colors, Croupier - Topshop, Charlotte - Nails Inc

Haunted Forest Nails

Good evening and happy Mole Day! Got something Halloweeny to show you today as we're getting close! I was inspired by @themermaidpolish on Instagram, who did some pretty purple nails with a stars, forest and howling wolf. I decided to do something similar with some Halloween stamping plate images I have. For the base I did a shimmering gradient with a couple of shades of purple from A England. Due to the stamping I don't think the gradient was that clear on all of my nails which is a shame.

For the graveyard, haunted house and bat images I used Mo You London's Festive 16 plate, using a dotting tool to remove excess bats from the stamper when placing the bat images above the trees. I used Uber Chic's Woodland Chic plate for the forest and tree images, and there was a small contribution from the Mo You London's Gothic 10 plate (I added some birds to the thumb nails to try and make them a bit less Christmassy... not entirely sure it worked!). The only thing I did additionally to the stamping was to create a full moon using a dotting tool to carefully create a circle, I'm quite pleased I managed it that neatly to be honest! Underneath all the black images I stamped a star/ galaxy pattern from the Maniology & Kelli Marissa stamping plate in white stamping polish. While it adds something extra I do thing it makes the thumb nails a bit more Christmassy - it kind of looks like snow!

So overall I was pleased with these but couldn't keep them on for too long as I have various nail art ideas to squeeze in over the next few weeks! There are a couple of bonus pictures this time too as I wasn't sure which ones to use! Also much as a believe in getting Halloween (and my birthday) out of the way before getting Christmassy, I did kind of like having sneaky little Christmas nails on my thumbs, it was an accident I promise!
Colours used: Je Reviens - A England, The Scent Of Azaleas - A England, White Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection