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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Lavender Glitter Clouds

This one is from a months ago and I've just got round to uploading the pictures so this is the one I'm posting next. It's three coats of Sally Hansen's Lavender Cloud and a "Chit Chat" from Poundland glitter gradient on top. I really like it, I love the glitter, it's made up of different coloured and sized pieces of glitter which stand out more on the lighter base coat.

It lasted quite a while too, was very chip resistant which I was pleased about because the glitter was only a cheap one. Would recommend definitely!

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Dots, spots and slodges.

I haven't tried out dotting before and I thought I'd use the biggest of my dotting tools for this one. New polishes, Sally Hansen Himalayan Blue and Rimmel Misty Jade. I like the colours together so I thought I'd see what this looked like.

 

Three coats of each colour then dotted each colour on top. Quick drying and seem to be holding fast so far. :) I like them.

Also, whilst I'm here, I did my Mum's nails earlier, they could have gone better but this is what she wanted. I did a simple french manicure followed by stamping the little flower design with Sally Hansen Gray by Gray and then adding three little dots to finish it off. I wanted to try silver but Mum wanted this one. Ho hum, she's happy so I am :)

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Gray, Gilded Lilies

So I've had a super busy week and thus I haven't had chance to do any nail related things unfortunately. It was good to have a break though, I've let my nails breathe for a few days and they're feeling much better, if not a little battered after my hands-on week camera assisting. 

I did have a lovely delivery of nail varnishes earlier in the week though so to celebrate my last day and getting to work on Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway I painted my nails on Friday night and here are the results.

This is Sally Hansen Gray by Gray with SH Gilded Lily on top. I love this. The gilded lily looks gorgeous in all kinds of light. It really shimmers but as you can see from above picture you can still really see the colour underneath when you move your hand. This would look brilliant as a gradient I think.

It's not quite glitter pieces it's lots of tiny differently shaped gold flakes, really pretty. 

And here's Gray by Gray on its own. Really nice, this is after two coats but I was impressed even after just one. Apologies for state of nails and hand, like I said a week of manual labour has caused some damage but I'm all over the hand cream now so they should be good again soon. :) I'll be back soon with some more updates!!

And a little after thought - although it did last quite well considering I worked a 14 hour hands-on day the day after applying (without a top coat may I add) it held quite well. And it's so much easier to remove than normal glitter. Perfect!

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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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I should introduce myself...

Hi!

I have very lovely and talented nail arty friends who have encouraged me to get a blog so here I am! I'm looking forward to having somewhere to show off all of my (successful) nail art adventures.

I may have lots of posts in the beginning because I have quite a large backlog of photos from previous attempts. (I may even get a bit Christmassy, who knows!)

In the meantime I shall introduce myself with a blog post about my most recent arty attempt.

I recently purchased some Hexagon Nail Art Glitter Dust Powder from Born Pretty, link here. After some strong words about rubbish delivery my glitters finally arrived, numbers 5, 9 & 14. I love them;

I used my new nail art brushes (£1.84 from ebay - go buy they're awesome. here.) And my new dotting tools to pick up the glitter, again, super cheap and brill delivery (here).

More pics,

So that was last night and the last pic from the bus stop this morning. After this I met up with my equally addicted to nail art friend Saz. Here is a picture of both of our hands together;

And my belated Christmas present and loads of lovely nail art things for my to play with in the future! Very excited to try these... and a photo-framed picture of us in Maltaaaaa.

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