Rainbow Nails for Porto

Hi Space Turtles! I'm back after a week away in the beautiful city of Porto in Portugal. These where my holiday nails (along with the Aperol Spritz ones I shared before). I took inspiration from me.time.manis on Instagram who created a gorgeous rainbow look with the Bubbly Collection from Cirque Colors. I decided to attempt a recreation as a fun holiday look and I love it! It's a great collection and the colours are so fun together.

I started by unscrewing the gaps on the ones I wanted to use on the nail I was working on, then applied a line of colour of each polish gently, trying to blend or overlap them slightly without the brushes getting contaminated with other colours. I then held a magnet over the top for 30 seconds. Once all nails were dry I repeated the process with a second coat. I probably didn't need to magnetise the first coat in the end but thought it might help.

I wish I'd managed to blend the colours a little better and perhaps managed to get a better magnetic effect but I did know that would be tricky with the multiple colours as they dry so fast. Despite this I do love these. They are such a fun and bright colour combination and perfect for holiday nails!

Colours used: Aperol Spritz, Sparkling Yuzu, Soda Shoppe, La Dolce Vita, Helter Seltzer, Fizzing Lifting Drink - All Cirque Colors

West of Scotland Holiday Tribute Nails

Hello nail people! Today I'm excited to show you some holiday tribute nail art from our trip to the West Coast of Scotland earlier this year. I love to do nail art themed after lovely holidays after we've got back to continue the magic! Our Scotland trip was in August so it has taken me a while to get round to this one! While I was there some new Picture Polish nail polishes came out and I was very tempted to buy them so when I finally decided on these shades after we got back I thought they'd be super appropriate for this nail art. I decided to do a different colour theme for each hand to represent the land and sea parts of the trip.

On my left hand I wanted to capture the views when we walked from the house we stayed in. There were some pretty stunning views from the windows too! We could see a loch, hills and trees, and walking down the road there was a bit where the loch opened out and there were stunning views with the Isle of Bute in the distance, and a few people out on sailing boats enjoying the gorgeous scenery. On my thumb nail I layered up trees from the Mo You London Noel 06 stamping plate. On my middle two nails I used the advanced stamping technique to add the sailing boat and mountain scenes using their Sailor 18 and 01 plates. The block colour nails are in Evergreen from Picture Polish, I've listed all the colours at the bottom of the whole blog post. Unfortunately whatever I tried I couldn't capture the true green shade of this one, it kept coming out teal, but it's more of a forest green in real life!

On my right hand I captured the more watery elements of our trip! Every beach we went to we saw jellyfish washed up! They varied in size and were certainly not blue and sparkly as I've depicted here! They were brown or reddish brown. We also saw seals! We went to a beach where we knew we could walk to a viewing point, but then one popped up when we were swimming, it was amazing! They are such lovely creatures. On this hand I used Maldives from Picture Polish on my index and little finger nails. On my ring finger I used a water image from Mo You London's Sailor 18 plate. For the other two I used the advanced stamping plate with Animal 04 on my middle finger and Bundle Monsters 504 plate on my thumb nail.Colours used - left hand: Evergreen - Picture Polish, Floral Street - Nails Inc, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Maldives - Picture Polish, Tickled Taupe - Painted Polish, Taupe Temptation - Picture Polish, Key Lime - Barry M, Spring Green - Barry M

Colours used - right hand: Maldives - Picture Polish, Floral Street - Nails Inc, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Indigo - Barry M, Grey - Barry M

Montreal Botanical Garden Inspired Nails

Hello all! Today I am sharing you some nail art which is actually not for an Instagram challenge, so a change from the last month. I must admit I think I might take part in another this month though as I have rather enjoyed it! So I did this nail art at the weekend and it's something I've had on my nail art to do list for ages! In September last year my boyfriend and I went on holiday to Canada and the US (visiting a few different places in each) and our trip to the botanical gardens in Montreal inspired some nail art. We spent all afternoon, lunch time and evening at the gardens and could have been there longer! In the evening they lit everything up and that in particular is what this nail art is based on. I could really capture all the lovely lit up things on the water but I did include the lanterns (there were loads in the woods it was lovely!).

To create this look I started with a plain black base, and then stamped some images from the Suki 09 plate from Mo You London onto my nails in white. Once dry I used sharpies to colour in the images, directly onto my nails to give a strong colour. I gave that a little time to dry as well and then added a shimmery top coat. So it was actually a pretty simple look to create. I like it, particularly the lanterns, but I wish I hadn't done the flowers in pink. I think they'd have been better in yellow or something, as the pink clashes with the red lanterns and the lanterns had to be red!

I highly recommend a trip to Montreal Botanical Gardens if you get the chance, there is so so much to see, you could easily spend the day there! We couldn't believe how big the greenhouse was too! I've included a couple of bonus pictures at the bottom of this post of the thumb nail in front of my desk, as it did look good without the glitter too!
Colours used: Lady In Black - OPI, White Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Sharpies In Various Colours, Crsytal Shimmer - Accessorize 

A Cactus Glitter Explosion!

Finally getting round to sharing my holiday nails! A week ago yesterday we got back from our two week trip to Canada and the US. We travelled flew to Toronto and travelled from there to New York, stopping at many places on the way. We squeezed a lot in so though amazing, it was also quite tiring! I feel like I've fully recovered from the jet lag now, though I wouldn't say no to a three day weekend just to be sure!

So this is the nail art I had on for that full two weeks. I wanted something that would last well, and as chunky glitter is so hard to get off I thought that would do the trick - and indeed it is! I was intending to go for a bit of a negative space look, with sheer pale pink under the glitter, as any chips would then be less obvious, but I did go a tad overboard with the glitter so it was reasonably solid.

For the cacti I used the Uber Chic Succulents and Mo You London Hipster 18 plates and created decals using the advanced stamping technique (you can see how here). It took a while as I created a lot of decals (most of the cactus images have been separated as decals so I could place them side by side on my nails, showing in different positions than they were on the stamping plate). I was inspired by someone on Instagram for this nail art but I can't remember who! They definitely went more subtle with the glitter! I was fairly pleased with these and enjoyed being super sparkly, I was pleasantly surprised by how long they lasted too, only one chip in two weeks!

Colours used: Bashful - Barry M, Yellow Topaz - Barry M, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Green Park - Nails Inc, Can't Find My Czechbook - OPI, Pomegranate - Barry M