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 ;)