Azteggs! Alternative Easter Nails

Happy nearly Easter everyone! I've gone for some slightly alternative Easter egg nail art this year, alternative in that it doesn't involve pastels, otherwise not that alternative! I fancied trying one of my new purple shades and thought this speckled one is kind of Easter appropriate. I love the colour combination of this type of purple shade against black and white.

For the black and white nails I didn't have any egg shaped images on stamping plates, but didn't think I could freehand a pattern very well so tried something a bit different when creating nail decals. I've included the process I followed below:

• I started by using a nail art pen to draw egg shapes directly onto my Uber Mat, and gave them some time to dry (tricky to get that timing right as it starts to crack as you can see!)
• Next I carefully painted a clear layer over the egg shapes, making sure to only just go over the black line, if anything went round the edges I cleared it up with a clean up brush and nail polish remover.
• Once the clear layer was dry I used images from the Mo You London Explorer 33 to stamp an Aztec pattern onto the eggs - the images stick to the clear polish but not very well to the mat so it was easy to clean up around the edges with the tape.
• I followed up with a layer of clear top coat over and around the eggs.
• Once dry I peeled the decals off the mat, trimmed them and applied them to my nails before top coat time.

Although the eggs could be neater I think they've come out reasonably well and am enjoying wearing this nail art. This is also my entry for the clairestelle8 challenge prompt for the 20th (Easter eggs), but blogging it slightly early as I'm busy tomorrow!

Colours used: Floral Street - Nails Inc, Lightning Maroon - Femme Fatale, Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish, Nail Art Pen in Black - Barry M

Bunnies and Sprinkles!

Hi everyone! Next up in the clairestelle8 challenge is Bunnies or Chicks. I was tempted to try and do some little fuzzy yellow chick nail art, but I wouldn't even know where to start with that! Strangely of all the many many stamping plates I own I still don't have any Easter ones, so I end up doing freehand stuff for Easter each year.

On my middle, little finger and thumb nails I started with a white base, and used a small nail art brush to paint little lines in a variety of pastel colours. They are a little uneven but I was generally pretty pleased with the result. The bunny ears on my other nails weren't so good. I think I used a grey that's too pale and didn't stand out enough against the pastel blue and green. I'm so out of practise with freehand that although they are simple shapes they are a bit wonky!

So that was my take on the bunnies or chicks theme. This time I am quite enjoying having some Spring pastels on my nails!
Colours used: Floral Street - Nails Inc, Mint Green - Barry M, Laguna - Barry M, White Horse Street - Nails Inc, Notting Hill Carnival - Nails Inc, Strawberry Ice-cream - Barry M

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

Ocean At Night Nails ft. Starwhal

Heyy everyone! Last catch up before I'm onto the nail art I'm currently wearing. I was hoping to get my old laptop up and running so I could get my old watermark back but no such luck this evening so we've still got the yellow logo on my nail pictures! This nail art was one I'd been meaning to do for a while, using the Sailor 18 plate from Mo You London which I absolutely adore! I was also keen to try out this lovely blue metallic, Seventh Seal, having enjoyed another Emily de Molly magnetic polish I bought recently.

I started with a base of white on my index and little fingernails, and Seventh Seal on all other nails. Seventh Seal is a magnetic polish, so I used the circle end of my nail magnet to create a special effect. You can just about see in the pictures that there are darker circles in the middle of those nails. On the middle two nails of each hand I stamped shoals of fish. On the other nails I used my Uber Mat to create some decals. For all decals I have used a holographic silver to fill in the gaps so the little stars would shine through.

You can't see very well as the images wouldn't quite fit but the creatures at the top of my index fingernails are narwhals with stars (hence 'Starwhal'), underneath are humpback whales. I was really pleased with these :) worth the wait! I kept them on for quite a while. Hope you like them too!
Colours used: Seventh Seal - Emily de Molly, Floral Street - Nails Inc, Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish, Foil Effect in Silver - Barry M,  Harp On It - Color Club

Nails In Rothko Red

Hello nail world! Something basic on my nails tonight. To me thermal polishes never get old! Some time ago I got my hands on Patina and Rothko Red from Cirque Colors Maison collection (on separate occasions) and since then have been meaning to try them together.

So for this I started with a base of Rothko Red on most nails and Patina on my ring finger. I used some small images from Mo You London's Minimal 10 plate as I didn't want to draw too much attention away from the colour changing effect but like to have more than just a base colour. Patina didn't stamp quite as well as I'd hoped unfortunately, but still had a nice shimmery effect.

In the pictures below you can see how my nails looked most of the time, red with the very deep red at the top. Please excuse the blurryness in the top right picture. I really liked the colour fade with mostly dark and a little lighter red at the bottom so decided to keep it in! So in conclusion these certainly aren't my most extravagant nails but I love watching the colours change and it was fun having two different thermal polishes on at once!
Colours used: Rothko Red - Cirque Colors, Patina - Cirque Colors

Spaced Out Nail Art

Hey everyone! More nail art catch up tonight, this time in the form of some space themed nails. This is an idea I had in my head for some time, I thought metallic purple would work well with my Mo You London Sci-Fi 10 plate. I used a mixture of techniques, with a little bit of layered stamping and a variety of styles of image.

For all apart from my little finger I used advanced stamping, even if I was just filling in a few small patches of colour. I used my faithful old Uber Mat for this, creating decals which I coloured in with dotting tools. I'm still so glad I discovered advanced stamping, it still requires some skill but allows me to get an effect I just couldn't on my own. Much more detail and intricacy!

Overall pleased with the look, and it reminds me of having family friends over. I always enjoy being able to associate memories with my nail art! Definitely looking forward to doing more nail art with this stamping plate, in particular using the little cats in space helmets.
Colours used: Hi Fi - ILNP, Floral Street - Nails Inc, Midnight Mischief - Painted Polish, Foil Effect in Gold - Barry M, Foil Effect in Silver - Barry M, Copper Mine - Barry M

Baker Street Blue & White Plaid

Hello nail people - I'm back! Only managed one blog post last month due to my laptop breaking. It took me some time of convincing myself it would work again, then some time to choose a new one before I ended up here! Now all set up on my new one and ready to catch up on my nail art backlog! Just need to get my old watermark back...

This is one from nearer the beginning of March, I wanted to give my Holy Shapes 19 stamping plate  from Mo You London a go. I bought this one aaaages ago and was super excited to use it but somehow it got overtaken by other things, probably because I bought it around Christmas time (2017!!). So on my ring finger and thumb nails I used white a white base and Baker Street (a Nails Inc classic) for the lines. For the solid line I used a gold foil effect polish from Barry M. Made a little bit of a mess of it but it mostly worked!

On my index finger I added a gold flakie topper from ILNP over the white polish. I used two layers and was very impressed with it, the flakes lie nice and flat and have a good shine to them and good coverage. More catch up nails to come!
Colours used: Baker Street - Nails Inc, Floral Street - Nails Inc, Foil Effect in Gold - Barry M, Karma - ILNP