Halloween Nails - It's Pumpkin Time!

Hi everyone and happy Halloween nearly a month early! I usually only do a couple of Halloween looks, and a lot closer to Halloween, but this year I'm doing the Glam Nails Challenge on Instagram, I love the prompts for this month. The first prompt is pumpkins as you may have guessed from the title. I was super excited for my latest order from Rainbow Connection to turn up just before I did these, as I wanted to use this beautiful orange Halloween shade from UberChic - which is wonderfully called If You've Got It Haunt It!

For this look I used one of my new stamping plates from Mo You London, Halloween 13. The bats were stamped onto my nail directly and for the pumpkins I used the advanced stamping technique, you can see how here. I was so pleased with how well the orange showed up over purple. This orange shade was truly delightful, it was so smooth and opaque and has a gorgeous holographic flare in the right light! I love purple and orange as a Halloween combination, it's probably not something I'd do at any other time of year!

Colours used: If You've Got It Haunt It - UberChic, Concord - Cirque Colors, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection

Fruit Salad On My Nails

Hello all and Happy Sunday! It is very rainy today in the South of England, and has been all weekend, but I am OK with it as I'm finally getting those autumn vibes! Having said that it will seem a little strange that I'm now sharing some summery nail art, but this is one I've just taken off and wanted to squeeze in before I get onto the autumn looks. There will be Halloween nail art coming very soon!

So I have the Fruit Deco stamping plate from Maniology and I really love it, but have mostly used the whole nail images of lemons and watermelons so far so wanted to have a go with some more of the individual fruits. I was going to do this on a more neutral background but I had this lovely metallic peach on my untried list and wanted to get that in with the summer looks! It's called Peachy Feels and I bought it as my friend Charlotte brought it to my attention that I don't own a metallic peach nail polish, by mentioning that she would like a metallic peach nail polish!

So the technique for this one was pretty straightforward. All the images on the Fruit Deco plate are layerable, so I just stamped the colours on accordingly and then added the black outline. It is a little fiddly getting them lined up sometimes but for the most part it came out well! I've enjoyed wearing them, they remind me a bit of Ibiza!

Colours used: Peachy Feels - Barry M, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Yellow - Barry M, Key Lime - Barry M, Spring Green - Barry M, Pomegranate - Barry M

Safari Skittle Nails!

 Some wild nails for you today! Recently (well not that recently actually - I can't remember exactly when!) I decided to give Uber Chic's Warm Blooded stamping plate a try, as I liked the Cold Blooded one so much. The Warm Blooded plate has a great variety of animal prints, not all of which I can determine at this point in time - if anyone can help with that do let me know!

So for this look I decided to try out a few different prints and do an animal themed skittle mani. In case you didn't know a skittle mani is where the nails are painted in all different colours or shades, so I've taken it a step further with these and got something rather colourful! They were pretty easy to do and I like the variety I got from using all different colours as well as prints. My favourites are the tiger and giraffe nails. Can you guess the rest?

Colours used: Basil Street - Nails Inc, Floral Street - Nails Inc, Seven Dials - Nails Inc, Little Bo Beep - Rimmel London, Not From Concentrate - Nails Inc, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Cocoa - Barry M, Grey - Barry M

Midnight Leafy Nails

Hi everyone, hope you're having a good start to the week! The nail art I'm sharing today was inspired by Urban Nail Art on Instagram and YouTube. I saw this beautiful design on her Instagram and just had to try it! Didn't come out quite right for me but I think it can with some practise! 

I started with a base of white polish (colours listed below the pictures). Next I used a gradient sponge and using white, pink, purple and blue I made circles on the sponge, with white filling the middle. I dabbed some of this pattern onto each nail to create a gradient. Next up was some stamping. I used the Uber Chic Lovely Leaves 01 plate and some sheer black stamping polish for the leafy pattern. This didn't show up that well on all nails but it worked on some! I then used black stamping polish and the same image over the top but not directly over the other leaf print, to create a sort of shadowy effect. All of this was done using the tutorial on the Urban Nail Art YouTube channel.

I have mixed feelings about how this one came out! I do think it's pretty, but the gradient didn't come out well on all nails, and the sheer black I used was possibly a bit too sheer too! I think the thumb nail and middle finger nail came out best. Still, I do love the colours and the pattern is pretty too so it's not all bad!

Colours used: Floral Street - Nails Inc, Love & Liberty - Painted Polish, Acai Smoothie - Barry M, Lexington Gardens - Nails Inc, Coal - Fancy Gloss, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection

Mermaid Scale Nails

 Hi everyone, just a quick one today as this look didn't involve too much effort! I recently discovered that I had this beautiful blue flakie polish sat in my untried collection, so I had to try it while the weather is still warm! It's super pretty and a very mermaidy nail polish! The flakes are mostly blue with some green, and a few other colours of flakies sprinkled throughout.

I wasn't sure quite what to put over the top but I knew it had to be something mermaid related. I used the Bundle Monster and Twi-Star collaboration stamping plate do do mermaid scales on my index and little finger nails, and the big mermaid images across my middle two nails, with a castle on my thumb. It was all a bit random and I decided each image as I did it. I like it but the gold didn't show up as well as I'd hoped. Lovely colours though!

Colours used: Past the Breakers - Emily de Molly, Foil Effect in Gold - Barry M

Blue Marble Pond Nails

Hello world! Yet more kind of summery nail art to share today, I'm still clinging onto it a little as there are a few more looks I want to try before I move onto the autumn and Halloween looks. Todays look is something I've seen on pictures of professionally done nails, and tried to replicate using regular nail polish. It didn't come out how I had envisioned it so I didn't keep it on for that long. Coming back to the pictures now it's better than I remembered, I think it's OK it's own, it's just not what I was aiming for!

I started with a couple of layers of sheer blue polish (colours listed below pictures) and then added a layer of flakie topcoat, followed by two more layers and some more flakies. Once dry I used an image from Mo You London's Explorer 34 stamping plate and white stamping polish for the marble effect, followed by another layer of sheer blue. I then added some more marble effect pattern over the top in silver. Finally, I used a nail art brush and gold nail polish to frame the look in gold. I don't think I did this very evenly though which is the thing I like least about this look!

Overall I like the colours, and the pattern looks OK but it's just not as fabulous as I hoped it would look! The gold definitely lets it down but the flakies also aren't as visible as I had hoped. Maybe I can find a tutorial somewhere and try it again!

Colours used: Flipper - Urban Outfitters, Aurora Unicorn Skin - Holo Taco, White Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, Gold Digger - Barry M, Foil Effect in Silver - Barry M

Stamping Sunday: Snazzy Cactus Nails!

Hello nail art people and happy Sunday! Got some pretty sparkly nail art to share today, using a nail polish I haven't tried before. Dynamite by Fun Lacquer is a gorgeously sparkly lilacy-pink holographic glitter. I don't always go for pinks but I saw this on Glitterfingersss on Instagram and just had to have it! I used a peel off base coat and then sponged on the glitter for extra sparkly-ness! 

On top of the glitter polish I used my 'glitter grabber' nail polish from Glisten & Glow to smooth it out ready for nail art. There was no advanced stamping involved in this look, as I used only layered images from Mo You London's Botanical 09 plate. The one on my little finger kind of looks like a gherkin but otherwise I'm happy with the look. For the light brown parts of the images I did have to stamp them over twice for the colour to show over the glitter.

I really enjoyed this look and didn't want to take it off! In the end there was a big crack on my thumb nail where it looked like the nail polish was about to peel off so I removed it just in case - on to the next!

Colours used: Dynamite - Fun Lacquer, Key Lime - Barry M, Green Park - Nails Inc, Cappuccino - Barry M, Cocoa - Barry M, Black Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection, White Stamping Polish - Rainbow Connection