The Lacquer Legion Challenge - Garden

I love these nails! They are so happy and summery.

I used false nails again for this nail art, but my natural nails are almost back to full health after a few weeks of using nothing but cuticle oil and Sally Hansen Maximum Growth on them. I'm not sure it makes them grow any faster, but it does seem to improve the condition and prevent dryness and splitting (my main nail issues).

The prompt for this month's Lacquer Legion Challenge was "Garden". I loved this prompt and had no trouble finding inspiration as my own tiny garden is currently a riot of colourful flowers and interesting creepy crawlies.

I used a few polishes for the bases of the nails. The lime green is Constance Carroll in Neon Green, which is not really a true neon and is often available in discount stores for about 50p a bottle. The froggy green is N.Y.C High Line Green, usually available in 2 for £2.49 deals in Superdrug. Unfortunately it is one of those polishes that goes gloopy and difficult to work with after being open for six months. The blue is Cool Blue from the Maybelline Color Show range (£2.99 but often available in 3 for 2 deals at Boots).

I painted grass on some of the nails using the green polishes and a striping brush, plus Jungle Fever, a forest green from the Rimmel 60 seconds range. The clouds were done using a dotting tool and Sinful Colors Snow Me White. The beetles were done using a large dotting tool and a Miss Sporty Metal Flip polish in shade Fiery Blaze, which is a purple to olivey gold duochrome polish that I love and don't wear often enough (£3 for 2 at Superdrug). I drew the details on the beetles with a fine black waterproof indian ink art pen. I don't recommend this though as it turns out it isn't very top coat proof!

I used some matte caviar beads I bought on ebay a few months ago. This is the first time I've used them and they are great. As they don't have a metallic coating there is no way the colour can fade or bleed with top coat and they remind me of sugar sprinkles on cakes. I used L.A.Colors clear polish (shade name Voltage) and placed the caviar beads using a wooden cocktail stick dipped in a little polish. I added a fimo butterfly from my wheel of fimo butterflies from Poundland. Everything was topped with a thick coat of L.A.Colors Top Coat and left to harden overnight (thank goodness for false nails!).

What do you think? Did you do any garden themed art for the Lacquer Legion Challenge this month?

The Lacquer Legion - Lucky Heather

The Lacquer Legion is a monthly nail art challenge and this is the first time I have taken part. The theme for March is "Lucky".

I took my inspiration for this nail art from heather. According to folklore the heather plant brings good luck and white heather is luckiest of all (hence the accent nail), plus Heather is my middle name so it seemed rather appropriate. There was a perfect heather-like design on the P48 plate that came with one of the Allura nail stamping sets I picked up last week at Poundland.

I used three coats of MUA All Nude, a warm creamy white shade (£1 from Superdrug) then sponged on a gradient with Rimmel Sweet Lavender (£1 from Poundworld) on most of my nails. I stamped the heather design three times on each gradient nail using MUA Frozen Yoghurt (which looks nothing like the colour shown on the website). I finished all my gradient nails with a coat of P.S. Matte Top Coat (£1 from Primark). I was really impressed that the matte top coat didn't smudge the stamping at all. For my accent nail I used two coats of a purple Primark P.S. polish (£2 for a set of 4) and stamped once with white Konad Special Polish followed by a coat of Konad Special Top Coat.

I'm really pleased with the way these nails look. They have a romantic, vintage feel to them. They remind me of the windswept purple moorland near my home.

After I'd already been wearing these nails for 24 hours I then spent two hours gardening, weeding, digging in compost and potting up plants with my bare hands. Even after a vigorous scrub with a nail brush the nails still looked perfect - not a chip in sight! I'm so impressed with the quality of all of these polishes and I've found that MUA polishes in particular seem to be almost unchippable.