Tropical Aquarium

Here is the tropical fish nail art I created for the Superdrug competition and I love it! I'm much happier with this than I was with the goldfish nails from my last post.

I started with a coat of Seventeen Fast Finish polish in shade Wave, a lovely rich turquoise that I picked up for 50p in a Boots clearance sale. I topped this with my favourite glitter of the moment, Jess Sea Breeze. This is another of the new Poundland exclusive polishes and it is beautiful. It contains tiny square turquoise and silver holographic glitter and turquoise micro glitter. For some reason this glitter seems to dry quicker than Jess Flash Harry, but that might just be my imagination. Here is a close up of one coat of Sea Breeze over Seventeen Wave but it's a bit messy as it's my right hand.

I stamped over the glitter using a wavy, slightly zebra-print like pattern from Cheeky plate N and NYC Foil Explosion polish in shade Aqua Mystic, a metallic silvery blue. I love how watery the waves of glittery and metallic blue look together. On my ring finger I used three coats of L.A.Colors Tahiti Sunrise which is a shimmery orange.

I painted lots of little tropical fish and seaweed using Vallejo acrylic model paints and a tiny paint brush. On my ring finger I used these diamond glequins again, but this time in red and orange. I topped it all with Konad Special Top Coat to protect it.

I took a few more photos in an improvised light tent to try to show the colour of the glequins better. I really need a better setup for taking photographs!

What do you think of this tropical nail art? I'm really enjoying wearing it!

Fish Fingers!

First things first, I am now on Nailpolis which is a new site for sharing and showcasing nail art, with monthly contests and a "featured" section of curated nail art. Membership is "by invite only" but at the moment you can just request an invite and they will send one. I'm really enjoying being able to see so much nail inspiration in one place! My owl nail art made it to the "featured" section too, so I am rather proud of that.

And now for the fish...

After seeing an aquatic themed nail art competition run by Superdrug, for which the prize is the new Barry M Aquarium collection (and if there is one thing better than cheap polish it's potentially free polish!), I decided to do paint some goldfish on my digits.

This is not the nail art I will be entering into the competition as I have since done some more fishy nail art which I prefer, but I will share these goldfish with you anyway because they are still rather cute.

I used one coat of Jess All That Jazz (bright blue) under a coat of Revlon Chroma Chameleon in Topaz which is a gorgeous blue/green duochrome and is one of my favourite big-brand Poundland finds. I stamped some waves and bubbles from Cheeky plate N over the top using a Seventeen polish in shade Wave (bought for 50p in a Boots clearance sale) and then painted all the goldfish using black and white acrylic paints, a shimmery orange polish by L.A.Colors called Tahiti Sunrise (£1 from my local pharmacy) and a W7 polish in shade Neon Yellow (Poundland). I stamped organic shapes from my Poundland Allura plates using white Konad Special Polish at the tips of some of my nails to represent coral and gave the tips of my nails a dab of Jess Sea Breeze glitter for the sea bed.

On my ring finger I used diamond shaped Born Pretty glequins in blue, green and light green to make a fish-scale pattern. I applied them using a coat of clear polish (L.A.Colors in Voltage) and a toothpick. I finished everything with a coat of Konad Special Top Coat.

I'm not convinced by the colour combination I chose for this nail art. I don't really like the colour orange and there is just too much of it on these nails! The glequin nail doesn't really fit with the rest of the nails either and the duochrome polish didn't show up on camera in a way I was happy with.

There will be new, improved aquatic nail art in my next blog post along with a review of the gorgeous Jess Sea Breeze glitter featured on the tips of these nails.