Summer Swirls

Me again! I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting frequently because I have LOADS of backlogged designs that I need to share with you all. Today, I share my current nails, as advised by some other gloriously awesome polish ladies I had a little trip to Superdrug who have 3 for 2 on all cosmetics. How could you say no??? I bought Barry M Gelly Papaya and Dragon Fruit and the new white nail art pen. Then I bought some cheap MUA polishes because I got some glitter pots for my birthday and I fancied having a play with making some DIY polishes :) I shall post those results next!

In the meantime I introduce you to Barry M Papaya Gelly - two coats and some swirls with my new pen, in white. Pretty simple design but I wanted something bright and summery.

As much as I like the almost-neatness of these, I can't say the same for the left hand. Hahaa.

And below, just the awesomeness of Barry M gellies. I need to get more of these in my life, I now only have three!! 

My purchases;

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Birthday Beauties

So it was my birthday last Sunday, 5th May, make a note for next year! In celebration of this I went out for a meal on the Saturday with Uni friends to Bodean's on Poland Street in Soho followed by drinks in Leicester Square. It was really quite a lovely evening. The following day I met some more friends for a day out at London ZOO! Such an awesome day.

Anyway, back to the nails, so my birthday nails were done to match my outfit for Saturday night. My flatmate Beth wanted to do the same so I did her nails to match her outfit too. So mine were Monochrome and Beth's were Leopard print. Have a look;

Mine's the left hand, obviously, and Beth's the right. For my monochrome I used 2 coats of Ion by Sally Hansen and block acrylic paint for the border which I painted on with a little nail art brush. I then topped it off with my Barry M top coat.

I've taken a picture with my Barry M black because I used it to fill in the tips which I accidentally chipped whilst getting ready. :)

These are Beth's gloriously manicured hands and my first attempt at leopard print nails. We used Barry M Mushroom for the base, then a gold crackle for the big splodges (why not, we didn't mind if it crackled a little bit) and then again using Barry M Black and a dotting tool to do the "brackets" as we called them.

And here we are in out glad rags before heading out. :D

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Shiny and Suede

I was originally not going to post this until I had a bit more time but I have been tempted by the awesome posts of some notably talented people. Please click links at the side to see their awesome works of nailart. :)

So, today I went to an outlet shopping mall with my Mum and there was a Next! We popped in for a browse and I spotted nail varnishes! Dangerous. I didn't realise Next sold w7 but they had a huge range and a load of suede effect ones which I'd been meaning to try out (the effect mainly, not necessarily the w7 ones). Well I decided to treat myself - they were £2.50 each and I decided I liked the pink the best so I plumped for that one, but the brown and black looked gorgeous too, and the purple... ok they were all nice.

They're great after one coat but I went for two to start off with, they're great to the touch, matte but with a sort of metallic quality about them, if that's a suitable description. I wanted to do something else to it too, simple yet quite striking, and this is what I ended up with;

Below is with two coats of the w7 Pink Suede, before I used masking tape to create the top triangles. Unfortunately it's not a very forgiving polish as my nails are quite brittle at the ends at the moment and this is visible under this polish where it isn't normally with others.

The black I used for the top is Barry M, I used to two coats to fully cover the pink underneath before removing the masking tape. I'm yet to be 100% happy with any of my masking tape designs I think I may need to invest in some less dodgy tape because I always end up with sticky nails afterwards!

I like this, I love the colour of the Suede and I haven't had bright nails for a while so I'm going to see what the wear is like on this polish, hoping to get a couple of days at least.

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Stamps and Shiny Pennies

This was my first attempt at stamping. I bought a little stamper set that came with a random plate, which to my delight was flower based and really quite lovely so here are the results;

First one is a close up with flash because you can really see how lovely the basecoat is with this lighting. It's Sally Hensen's Shiny Penny, two coats and it looks great on it's own;

I then used Barry M black to stamp on the flower design and I was really happy with how it showed up. Covered with a top coat and it looked lovely! 

And then here's without flash so you can see the stamp better.

It's a really fun and super quick way to create designs but there's something to be said for spending a bit more time doing it yourself so I don't know how often I'll be using this but it's a great little gadget to have!

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Pretty with Pink Clingfilm

Inspired by a clingfilm tutorial I read a while back. I used Superdrug's cheap light pink MUA Natural Days and a little Marks and Spencers Bright Pink from a set I got a while back. Then topped off with a new Barry M glitter I got called Pink Sapphire Glitter. It's awesome, I'm really into my glitters that have different sized pieces of glitter in them at the moment. They're gorgeous and I have loads to try out! So here's some pics;

First is before I added the glitter;

Serious love for this, it lasted a fair few days with my Barry M top coat on and the glitter wasn't actually that stubborn to get off! I will definitely be doing this again with different colours.

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