Hello!
I posted this to Instagram and Twitter yesterday but have only just had time to write up the blogpost today. Myself and Rebecca from Lane's Lacquers planned to do a Mani Swap recently, where we both decided to pick a manicure done by each other, and then recreate it. Rebecca does a ton of gorgeous, bright designs and I always find myself thinking; 'I want to try that!' every time I see her new creations.
It took me a while to decide which manicure to recreate, but in the end I chose one with a mint/pink colour-scheme (my favourite!) and a brilliant bold Leopard Print design. I've done leopard print a lot before, but usually I keep the print really tiny, so I wanted to try this bolder design.
I began with a base of Sugar Apple by Barry M, two coats. Once this was fully dry (it needs to be or the nail art pens will pull/dent the polish) I used the pink and black nail art pens by Barry M to doodle on the design. I worked with a copy of Rebecca's nails in front of me and tried to copy the print from each nail to make sure I achieved a 'random' look like she had. I finished with a topcoat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri.
I loved the bold outcome of these nails, and got loads of nice comments about them. Several people even asked if they were transfers or stickers as they loved the pattern so much! Here's a photo of the design on each hand, and a bonus one I took with my new phone case!!
You can view Rebecca's blogpost here where she shows the Cath Kidston-esque rose print mani of mine that she recreated. I think she's done a perfect job!
Hello!
I loooove doing leopard print on my nails, it's so simple, doesn't have to be perfect and looks so effective! I was inspired to do this design by a few different manicures I'd seen on Instagram, where nail artists had used leopard print and zebra print together.
I started off with a gradient using Peach Melba & Strawberry Tart by Models Own from their Fruit Pastel Scented range. To create the gradient, I painted my nails with the pink shade first, and let it dry. I then painted both of the colours onto a makeup sponge side-by-side, and sponged them diagonally onto each nail. I had to sponge a couple of times on each nail (leaving about a minute between each layer) to build up the colours. Still, the effect was quite subtle, but I liked it - it reminded me of sweets!
Once this gradient was dry (helped along with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri) I then got out my trusty black nail art pen by Barry M. I doodled zebra print over the peach, and leopard print over the pink, then topped with more Insta-Dri topcoat to seal in the pen, as it washes off otherwise.
I looooove how these turned out and don't ever want to take them off!!Also, they had a delicious smell of fruity sweets due to the scented polish. Yum!
Hello!
I'm so excited to show you this mani because I love it so much! I only got to wear it for two days sadly, but I was really pleased with it. This is a mix-and-match mani I came up with based around this gorgeous mint green shade which is of course Sugar Apple by Barry M.
For my index and little finger, I created a simple glitter gradient using a gorgeous, dense silver glitter I have by No.7. Sadly after I'd done this manicure I had to throw it away because it'd ran out! I really want to get another bottle though as it's fab for gradients.
On my ring finger, I used some silver triangle studs I got from Born Pretty Store - another item I was sent to review. I had this design in mind and luckily they fit nicely in a row! I stuck them down onto wet polish and topcoated to hold them in place.
On my middle finger I did some simple leopard print by adding blobs of Sugar Apple to a white base. Once they dried I added the silver outlines using a nail art pen.
On my thumb I did a simple gradient using a make-up sponge with the two shades, and topcoated with a holo sparkly Barry M polish to finish it off.
I was so happy with the outcome and wanted to keep these on forever!
Sooo I just can't leave a plain gradient alone! Last night after wearing my 'candy corn' gradient plain for a day (see previous post) I decided to add some leopard print. I can't get enough of leopard print designs lately, and I definitely think a lot of practice is improving my leopardy designs.
To mix it up a bit, I decided to do a kind of crescent of leopard print down the side of each nail rather than cover the full nail. I used Peach Melba and Banana Split (Models Own) for the dots and outlined them with the black nail art pen, and finished with another coat of topcoat.
Slightly work-inappropriate but I loooove these!
Hello!
Ever since I tried doing smaller-than-usual (for me anyway!) leopard print on my nails, when I did my Leopard Print Triangles last month, I wanted to try it again but on a bigger scale! I had a play about and came up with this design.
The base is Peach Melba, by Models Own, which I looooove. Here's a picture of it on it's own! So creamy and yum <3
Once this was fully dry, I added the leopard print using the Barry M pink nail art pen. I just tried to draw tiny circles, either using two or three lines to make each circle. The result was a bit haphazard but it doesn't matter too much with leopard print.
I taped off two sections at the bottom of my two middle nails of each hand to leave as negative space, to make the mani a bit more interesting. I added studs to finish off the look!
I really loved this manicure and was sad to take it off - it kept chipping :-(
Hello!
Some more new nail art today. These nails were inspired by @lookatmynailart on Instagram who posted a beautiful blue version of this manicure. When I saw it I immediately knew it was something I'd like to re-create.
I decided to create a pink version. For the base, I used Strawberry Ice Cream by Barry M. This is one of their older polishes although I only recently purchased it. It's not one of their gelly range, but there isn't a gelly that's this perfect shade of pale pink - I love Rosehip but that's a bit TOO light for what I wanted here. However, this polish is very sheer and jelly-like and even after three coats I could still through it slightly! I stopped at three coats as I didn't want the polish to be too thick.
Once this was fully dry (I used fast-dry topcoat and waited about an hour) I applied straight nail vinyls (stickers) from She Sells Seashells as guides to form the triangles. I could have used striping tape for this but found using the vinyls are much easier - they're pre-cut, and less flimsy. This is what they looked like without the leopard print - I thought they looked quite nice like this!
I filled in the triangles with one coat of Lychee by Barry M (above). This one is a gelly so is a good one-coater! I peeled off the vinyls using tweezers. After some more fast-dry topcoat and some more waiting, I doodled on the leopard print pattern with my Barry M black nail art pen.
I topcoated this, but I was worried about smudging the leopard print, so I decided to 'dab' the topcoat gently over the design, then once dry add a second coat. This worked really well and prevented smearing the design after I'd spent ages filling in each triangle!
I love these nails, it's such a clever design (that I borrowed!) and looks so intricate, but it wasn't too difficult! Here's a quick collage of photos I took mid-design, including the top left which was a doodle I did at work to get it straight in my head how I wanted the design to come out on my nails!
This was my first go at nail art since before my hols, so I decided to re-create a design I'd recently seen and loved!
I picked a design by @iscreamnails that I saw on Instagram. They remind me of WAH nails with really funky and bold designs, and most of their manis being skittle - with a different design on each finger. They're in Australia though so I can't visit!! :-(
I used Pink Veneer by Models Own and Regents Place by Nails Inc. I also made use of my Barry M nail art pens and my She Sells Seashells nail vinyls for the zig zags. I love the outcome, and although the design is not originally mine I loved being able to recreate it! It did take ages though! Here's the outcome:
And here's the original manicure from Instagram:
Hello!
Urgh, it took me a while to settle on a nail design today! I started doing a few different things but each time ended up removing what I'd done as it wasn't working like I wanted! So I decided to return to my go-to nail art when everything else isn't working - a gradient!
I picked white (Snow Me White, Sinful Colors), orange (Mango, Barry M) and pink (Grapefruit, Barry M) and created my gradient in the usual way, using a make-up sponge. I find pastels blend better in a gradient and these were definitely not pastels, and resulted in a bit of a sponge-y finish. I really wasn't keen, so thought about what I wanted to put over the top! I went with leopard print, using the colours from the gradient, and I love the result!
Here's a quick step-by-step guide using pics I took on my phone as I went along, so apologies they're not top quality!
And some more pics to show off the finished design:
Hello,
I decided to try and get my 'nail art' back on last night, because I've not done anything proper for ages since I discovered Indies! I've wanted to try a kind of 'neutral' coloured leopard print for ages. I've done leopard print before, but it's always been really bright colours; pink, yellow, green etc. I wanted to go a bit plainer, as I've seen some fab leopard print manis in plainer colours.
For this look, I used these:
Barry M's matte mocha, Models Own's Utopia and a black Barry M nail art pen, as well as a base coat of Nail Envy and a topcoat of Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri.
I started off with two coats of Utopia on all my nails. I adore this shade, it's my current 'nude' crush! I had a thing for Lychee (Barry M gelly) over summer, but right now it's all about Utopia, yum.
I then added blobs with Mocha, just using the brush from the bottle. They don't need to be neat as they will get outlined with the pen soon.
I then added a topcoat of Insta-Dri, as nails need to be totally dry before using the nail-art pen over the top, otherwise it drags through the polish and ruins it, and I couldn't be bothered to wait for it to dry normally! Once it was dry, I outlined each blob with separated lines with the black, and then another coat of Insta-dri.
Lastly for my accent nail (which is only on one hand!) I painted it with the mocha, then added a freehanded stripe in utopia. Once it was dry I outlined the stripe with the black pen, and finished it off using two little gold studs.
And my left hand without the accent!
Hello!
I've just come back from a really fab weekend (and have to go to work soon, boo!). My lovely friend Bob (Naileymabob) won two tickets to see a catwalk show at London Fashion Week, and invited me to go along! We were both intrigued to see what it was like, and although we didn't know the designer we were seeing, it was a fab experience in general!
We arrived and were taken to a V.I.P lounge (set up by Vodaphone, who ran the competition Bob won) and were given champagne and nibbles. Here's our nails for the occasion, we both used our neon studs from Born Pretty, but in different ways! We both received a goodie bag, and I joked it better have nail varnish inside. AND IT DID! We both got a special edition Nails Inc polish called Vodaphone Red. Myself and Bob will be showing it off on our blogs during the coming week so keep a look-out for that.
Then there was the show, quite short, but there was some really nice dresses. They were very monochrome, which will inspire some future nails! All the models had either black, white or blue nails. Here's a snap from the catwalk, quite a few of my pics blurred but this one didn't. They all had awesome hair too!
Walking round Somerset House (the venue) was great, everyone was dressed really awesomely, and we saw some sights! After the show we headed over to Westfield Stratford for some shopping & food. We excitedly visited the Models Own bottleshop - here's a piccie:
And we treated ourselves using the 6 for £20 offer, getting three each. We spent ages choosing, but in the end we both picked two of the Velvet Goth collection (the blue and green each) and some others. You can see Ibiza Mix in the pic below but in the end I went and swapped it (the lady was very nice and understanding!!) for another Velvet Goth like Bob.
Lastly, here's the nails I had for LFW. I freehanded the leopard print, and the studs (pointy and neon, from Born Pretty) were each applied by hand. None fell off with a good few coats of topcoat (apart from one spike on the train home). Sorry for the pic quality, all of these in this post were taken on my phone!
While at work today I slowly added to my leopard nails, with different colours. Here's the end result! I think it's a bit busy, but also pretty. I especially like the yellow against the pink! I feel a full yellow mani coming on with that beautiful Barry M!
Okay, I admit, I had the idea for my nails before I realised it could tie in with this week's challenge. But pink and leopard print are both girly and fun, right?!
I was actually inspired by a pair of shoes I saw in a magazine. Here they are with my nails! They're beautiful, but I don't think I can justify £55 for some slipper-style shoes when I already have a few pairs that are fab and were only about £20!
I used Barry M's Grapefruit (the pink -again, I can never get over how bright this looks on the nail!) And Color Club's Edie (the green). And of course, Barry M's black nail-art pen for the details. I stuck to just doing an accent nail as I didn't want them to look too OTT!