Experiment with Texture

I'm not in love with these nails. In my imagination they were amazing, but in real life I'm feeling a bit 'meh' about them.

I used false nails with one coat of Maybelline Color Show in shade Cool Blue followed by three coats of Technic Mermaid (£1, Bodycare), my all time favourite glitter, which is a mix of medium and small turquoise holographic hex glitter. I love how holographic glitter looks with a matte finish, so I added a coat of Limited Collection Matte Top Coat (Marks & Spencer).

I used strips of clear sticky tape to mask a wide stripe down the centre of each nail and used Sally Hansen Sugar Coat in Laughie Laffy, the dark blue, and Sugar Fix, which is white (from Poundland and Poundworld), to create textured stripes down each side of the nail. The stripes came out a bit untidy which was disappointing.

Although I'm not thrilled with these nails, they have inspired me to play with contrasting textures and finishes in future nail art. What do you think?

Glitter! GLITTER! Mwahahahaha!

Sorry I've been terrible at blogging over the last two weeks, I've just been so busy! Today I have some photos of the nails I wore for my in-laws ruby anniversary party last weekend. I think these are my favourite nails so far.

I took inspiration for these nails from these inverse glitter nails by Narmai over at PiggieLuv, and the dress I wore to the party, which was black with blocks of a predominantly blue and red pattern and an asymmetric collar.

I started by painting a coat of L.A.Colors Base Coat onto short square false nails, followed by one coat of N.Y.C. Water Street Blue, one of my favourite blue shades and the only polish I used for these nails that cost more than £1 (it cost £2.49 for 2 bottles at Superdrug). Once that was dry I started with the glitters. First was a coat of Jess Sea Breeze (Poundland exclusive), a mix of small square silver holographic and turquoise glitter with turquoise micro glitter. After that I used a coat of Technic Mermaid (Bodycare or lovethymakeup.com), a mix of medium and small holographic turquoise hex glitter which I adore so much that I've almost used up a whole bottle in six months. I followed with a coat of Pretty Graffiti Effect polish (available in Poundland and Poundworld) in the confusingly named shade 'Blue' which is a mix of medium sized red and turquoise hex glitter and gold and red bar glitter. To finish of the mass of glitter, I used another coat of Technic Mermaid.

Once all the glitter was dry I painted the inverse design using a striping brush and Jess Midnight, my favourite super-opaque budget black polish. I forgot to photograph this polish along with the other bottles. I finished everything with a coat of L.A.Colors Top Coat.

I am loving the L.A.Colors top and base coats at the moment. The base coat really seems to extend wear and the top coat is glossy, chip resistant and applies more smoothly than my usual more expensive top coat. I took the above photo of the nails after they had been worn all night, bashed around a lot (I'm not used to having longer nails!) and then pried off while a little drunk, and the only wear they show is at the base from when I removed them. I hadn't anticipated that the Nailene adhesive nail tabs I used were going to be quite as strong and stubborn as they were! I highly recommend them if you want to wear falsies for a few days but don't want to damage your nails with glue.

I loved wearing these nails. They are so glittery and full of holographic sparkle, yet they are still quite sophisticated looking and the colours matched my dress so well. What do yo think? Have you tried any inverse nail designs?

Party Nails for a Lovely Lady

On Thursday I painted someone else's nails for the first time. My wonderful in-laws celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary on Friday and had party at a local social club. My Mother-In-Law wanted some black and white nails to match her jumpsuit so I turned up at her house armed with a box of nail supplies. I have major envy about her nails. She has the kind of super-strong natural nails that grow really fast and are totally housework proof. Why can't I have nails like that?

I also used this as an opportunity to buy a few new polish bottles. My polish buying ban is still technically in effect, but I didn't have a bright white polish and my top coat was running dry and I couldn't let down my Mother-In-Law... yes I know, these are terrible excuses! I picked up Snow Me White from Sinful Colors in the Boots 3 for 2 sale along with some other makeup and it is brilliant. I've never used a white that is so opaque, just two thin coats and you are done. I also noticed that my local chemist has recently restocked its stand of £1 L.A.Colors polish. I managed to resist the ever-so-tempting new neons and stuck to buying what I needed - a new top coat and base coat.

The base coat seems great, it dries super fast and smooths out nail ridges perfectly. I painted MIL's nails with two coats of Snow Me White, with Jess Midnight (my favourite black polish, Poundland exclusive) on her middle fingers. I topped all the white nails with two thin coats of Technic Black Mirror, a gorgeous glitter containing medium and small matte black hex glitter and lots of tiny holographic transparent glitter. On the middle nail I stamped a white pattern using Konad Special Polish and a Cheeky stamping plate and did a black French tip (which is hard to see against the black table in the photos). Everything got topped with L.A.Colors top coat except the stamped nails which I used Konad Special Top Coat to avoid any smudging.

MIL seemed really happy with these nails and the L.A.Colors top and base coat wear really well without any chipping. Now all my female in-laws want me to do their nails too!

Earthy Earth Day Nails

This is the nail art I created for the Earth Day challenge on Nailpolis. It was supposed to be leaves and vines in a style inspired by Aboriginal Australian art. I quite like the nails but they didn't turn out quite the way I'd planned and I don't think they scream Earth Day. Oh well.

I used Rimmel 60 Seconds in shade Captain Khaki for the base. Poundland have a lot of Rimmel polishes in stock at the moment so I picked this shade up on Friday when I realised I didn't own any earth-tone polishes to use for my Earth Day nails.

I used a dotting tool and NYC High Line Green, Maybelline Pow Green, MUA All Nude and Technic Canary to do the designs. I used Limited Collection Matte Top Coat to finish them off.

I think the most surprising thing about this nail art is that I now own a dark khaki-brown nail polish. Yuck!

What's the ugliest shade of nail polish you own?

Don't Count Your Chickens

I did this nail art for the Easter nail art competition at Nailpolis. I didn't want to go too obvious and paint chicks and bunnies on my nails so I decided to do pastel patterned nails.

To start I used Technic Pretty Pastels polishes in Pool Party (middle finger), Mr Blue Sky (little finger) and Canary (thumb and ring finger). Technic polishes are available for £1 each from Bodycare or for £1.25 from lovethymakeup.com. On my index finger I used Rimmel 60 Seconds shade Sweet Lavender (Poundworld).

On my thumb, middle and little fingers I used two coats of the pastel polish followed by a coat of Technic Black Mirror, a gorgeous glitter polish with medium and small matte black hex glitter and lots of tiny transparent holographic hex glitter that sparkles in a rainbow of colours. I added another coat of the Technic Pretty Pastels, which have a quite sheer crelly-ish formula, then finished with a second coat of Black Mirror. This gives a speckled effect that is a little bit like the Models Own Speckled Egg collection with added sparkle. On my ring and index fingers I used the pastel shades alone without the glitter.

I painted the black and white patterns using acrylic model paints. The triangle pattern was loosely inspired by the idea of broken eggshells and the pattern on my index and ring finger is based on stylised chicken feathers found in Mexican folk art.

I topped everything with Limited Collection Matte Top Coat from Marks & Spencer. I bought this yesterday using some cashback I earned through Topcashback on my Christmas shopping and had forgotten all about until now. You get a little extra money if you request your cashback in M&S vouchers and I'd been wanting to try this top coat for ages. I love the look of matte nails and although the P.S. Matte Top Coat I bought from Primark does the job for less money, it is very thick and gloopy and tends to soften all your previous layers of varnish and takes hours to redry. If the varnish underneath is more than two coats thick, your nails can remain dentable for a whole day!

This Limited Collection Matte Top Coat is not a disappointment. It applies thinly, evenly and smoothly and it dries quickly to a tough, completely matte finish. Now I can wear matte nails without having to spend a whole evening not using my hands while they dry. Even though it usually costs £3.50, I think that is a very reasonable price for the quality. The other widely available matte top coats from Essie and O.P.I. are £8-£12 a bottle, and although the Limited Collection top coat is smaller at only 8ml, it still works out better value per millilitre. The smaller bottle means it is less likely to get gloopy towards the bottom too.

I love the effect that matte top coat over holographic glitter gives, and I think these nails feel cute and Eastery, but grown-up too. Well, as grown-up as glittery pastel Easter-themed nails can be!
Do you have any Easter nail art planned?

Peppermint Paisley

Last year I fell in love with some swatches of Illamasqua's Fragile, a gorgeous polish that is way out of my price range. I realised that I could create a similar look by layering a sheer pastel polish with black glitter, and for a while I wore speckled egg nails in a different shade every week. I decided to use a more subtle version of this look for the base of this manicure.

I started with two coats of Pool Party from the Technic Pretty Pastels collection (Technic polishes are available for £1 a bottle at branches of Bodycare and other discount stores, or for £1.25 from www.lovethymakeup.com). Pool Party, like many Technic polishes, is thin and sheer. It's almost jelly-like, takes four coats to become opaque and it dries really quickly which means it is great for layering with glitter. It's a lovely pepperminty turquoise colour and I wear this polish quite a lot.

I added a coat of Violet by Chit Chat (a Poundland purchase). Chit Chat is another budget brand, apparently made by the same people as Technic. This glitter polish is a bluey purple with small and medium hex glitter. The violet glitter gives a more subtle speckled effect than the black glitter I usually use.

After another two coats of Pool Party the purple glitter shows through as a matte blue colour. These nails are pretty enough to wear as they are.

A month ago I discovered the Born Pretty store, ordered some goodies and last week my order arrived. I bought striping tape, some diamond shaped glequins and two stamping plates.

I've never used striping tape before so I thought I'd start simple. I found some Sally Hansen Sugar Coat textured polishes in Poundland last week and I thought the white Sugar Fix would work well with the peppermint colour and the texture would add some interest to horizontal stripes.

On the rest of my nails I used the paisley pattern from Born Pretty stamping plate QA59. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the plate. It's a really detailed design and it stamped just as well as the Konad and Cheeky plates I own, even with the slightly uneven nail surface due to the glitter. I used white Konad Special Polish for the stamping - it came as part of a Konad stamping set that I picked up cheap on Amazon. I used Konad Topcoat on the stamped nails.

I know it's not the neatest manicure - the stripes are messy and the skin around my nails is horribly dry at the moment - but I rather like these nails. What do you think?