Halloween Nails 2015

Get into the spooky spirit with my 10 Best Found Halloween Nail Designs

With halloween looming I have been scanning the web looking at some fabulous nail artists who have produced works of art which are way beyond my capabilities - with their permission (where I could find them) I am featuring these fab creative people today. I hope that you love them as much as I do. 

Jacki at Adventures in Acetone 

Oh My Gosh Polish

Narmai at PiggieLuv

Andrea at Chickettes

ArcadiaNailArt

Sarah at Chalkboard Nails

My apologies to those that I haven’t been able to contact, I hope you don’t mind me using your images!

Autumn/Winter 2015 Trend Colours

Blue - Nails Inc Denim

Purple - China Glaze All Aboard

Red - Nails Inc Saville Row

Mustard - Nails Inc Cadogan Square

China Glaze - Nice Caboose! Nails Inc - New Burlington Street

‘Nail Art Gallery’ magazine feature

How exciting! my Halloween nails have been featured on page 64 of ‘Nail Art Gallery’ magazine! Yay!

Breast Cancer Awareness Nails

As some of you may know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Beating breast cancer is close to my heart as my dad suffered from it a number of years ago. Not many people know that men can be effected and in that sense it annoys me a little that pink is used as the awareness colour, but at the end of the day, what matters is getting the message out there. Luckily my dad had it removed and he has been fine since, at almost 80 that is good going.
Love you Dad xx

Autumn Nails

More Autumn inspired nails

Daisy Nails

Daisy Nails using a base of Orly 'Jealous Much?' painting the daisy and then topping off with Essie 'Sparkle On Top'

Little Ondine

I recently discovered an all natural brand called 'Little Ondine' They caught my eye because in the future I'd like to be able to do childrens nails at fetes and school fairs and this brand is composed of natural resin, organic colourants and water and has no nasty chemicals or odour. It is even possible to remove chemical free as it simply peels off, however that is where it fell down for me as it lasted less than 6 hours on my nails.

This is how it looked when I'd painted.

It was a good fluid texture to apply, had a nice wide full brush however this is three coats and it still needed another one in my opinion. It took a little longer to dry than most of my other polishes however I didn't use my fast drying top coat as I normally do as it advises on the website to not mix the brand with other polishes - whether this is just a marketing ploy, who knows. I admit I didn't buy their top coat so I guess that may have extended the way it lasted. To be fair, I was washing my baby in the bath when it started to peel off, but I did wait over the recommend drying time of one hour before washing my hands and six before this happened.

This is how it looked after bathing Thomas:

I ended up just peeling the whole lot off which was quite a satisfying process but obviously disappointing. I remember having a similar polish over twenty years ago, which wasn't a hit for me as it did the same thing, however for young girls it could work as they would love having nails painted even for just a few hours and I'd feel better applying an all natural product and I'm sure parents would be happier too. So, in conclusion, although it didn't work for me, I believe it has it's place in the market, however it is quite expensive for a childrens market with prices starting from £8.40 upwards to £11.00 for glitters. 

To find out more and see their lovely colour range, head on over to their website

Leighton Denny 'My Magenta', stamped using Marianne Plate  No.19

England Rugby Nails

Get behind England and show your support for the team. ‪#‎weartherose‬‪ #‎carrythemhome‬ ‪#‎makethemgiants‬

BarryM 'In a heart beat'

BarryM 'In a Heart Beat' stamped with Models Own 'Chrome Gold'

Misa ‘Be My Lover’

I’ve recently found Misa polish, I bought them from my wholesaler and they have been sitting in my manicure room for months now, but today, for some reason I decided to have a pink day and so put on ‘Be My Lover’ and I love it. It’s funny isn’t it, a few years back most people only wore pink and red nail polish - however I wasn’t one of them, I have been wearing a multiple of colours since my late teens, my mum used to hate me wearing dark colours (in fact she still does!) but it didn’t stop me - I used to do simple nail art dots, stripes, checks etc. over twenty years ago (Ooops, I’m showing my age now!) then stopped when life got busy and I was focussing on my career, but now I love it again. I digress… ‘Be My Lover’ is a beautiful creamy dusty pink with a slight blue hue to it, it painted on well and has an almost jelly finish to it but also covers the nail well (if that makes sense). I hope that you like it as much as I do!

Have a great weekend all. 

Dark Metal Lacquer Pastels

After a whole year Dark Metal Lacquer have restocked their Pastel Holos, I was sucked in and had to buy some…. The colours are as follows: 

Yellow - ‘Years of Silence’

Green - ‘Never Forget’

Blue - ‘The End of August’

Lilac - ‘Never Forgive’

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed by the way this polish applied, it wasn't a smooth application by any means, I used two coat and it looked O.K. (although if you look closely at the yellow it is a little patchy). I sorted the uneven application by a thick layer of topcoat, which really levelled it out. The holo isn't amazing but I do like them. I think my favourite is the yellow as it isn't really yellow as such, more of a pale taupe colour which reminds me of Nails Inc 'Porchester Square' which is one of my all time faves. 

If you'd like to know more you can find them here

St Tropaz Taupe by Binky London

St Tropaz Taupe by Binky London is a fabulous beige toned nude shade with a spectacular subtle shimmer, I find it so easy to wear and it goes with just about anything in your wardrobe. When I first saw it I was disappointed because online it doesn’t look like it has shimmer, but once it was on I couldn’t get enough of it, I just kept looking at my nails all of the time! 

I have yet to try a few other colours in the collection, but so far so good. Maybe slightly streaky for me on the first coat but it looked fine after 3 coats & you can't complain at £2.95 each!. 

Autumn inspired nails

With the yucky cold & wet weather we have been having lately I am feeling that Autumn is not far away, I love summer and as soon as the weather turns I get a bit sad as I know that the cold weather is coming. If I was rich I would live in Australia for 6 months and here for 6 months, but that's never going to happen... 

Here is my autumn inspired mani using Models Own - 'Naked Glow' for the base colour then for the spots: Barry M 'Mustard', Nails Inc 'Northumberland Avenue', 'Pavillion Road', 'Gosfield Street' and 'New Oxford Street' for the spots. 

Have a good week all!  

Born Pretty Plate 003

Hi there!

Today I have a glittery one for you with black stamping which I am still perfecting. I started with 2 coats of the spectacular ’Disco Ball' available from Claires Accessories which is loaded with small specs of silver glitter and looks a lot more sparkly than my picture lets on.

Then I went in with MoYou Londons Black Knight and stamped using Born Pretty plate 003 using the last image on the top row which I think is my fave. The plate has 15 patterns in all which are 1.6 cm x 2.2 cm in size so a reasonable size for most nails on a plate roughly 12.5 x 6.5 cm.

Overall I love the plate and the sparkly polish, if you love it too why don’t you you swing on over to Born Pretty store and order yours - I guarantee you won’t order just the one plate! ;-) 

It's been too long

Hi

I'm so sorry that I haven't been around much lately, I got married on July 4th and so being creative & pretty tight, I wanted to design my own wedding. The theme ending up being along the lines of 'Rustic Bling' with dusty pink and champagne as my colours. Most of my free time when I didn't have my little fella Thomas around has been taken up with all that so not much nail stuff happening. That said I have my wedding nails to show you, however I didn't get round to taking the photo until 3 days after the big day so it isn't a great shot and also a bit blurred, but hey ho, you get the idea.

I used All That Jazz 'Filigree Stickers' in the design 'Daisy' They were a bit fiddly to use but once you got the hang of it it was O.K. I was applying them at about 2.00 a.m. the morning of my wedding!

Here are a few shots of other aspects of our day

This is Thomas and my niece Kaziah

I hope that you get the general idea of the theme from these, we had a lovely day and all came together in the end. 

Freckles polish Anna Beans Spring Greens

Freckles polish 'Anna Beans Spring Greens'

Happy St Georges Day! 

Another attempt at stamping, this time I wanted to try a subtle effect. This is Models Own 'Copper Pot' base with Claires accessories 'Gold Chain' pattern using MoYou plate Pro Collection no 11. Have a lovely weekend all!

MoYou Stamping plates Review

Recently I invested in some MoYou Stamping plates. MoYou is a U.K based company and I have seen them mentioned a lot amongst the nail community and so despite having problems with stamping in the past I thought I'd give them a go. 

The plates come in gorgeous retro style packaging with stylish graphics - each collection has a female stylised character and a gorgeous patterned background, my degree is in 3D Graphic Design so you can understand my appreciation for these beautiful packs. The plate slides in and out of the cardboard sleeve so that you can keep your plates protected on an ongoing basis. Another thing noticeable about these plates is that they are mounted onto a white plastic base with rounded edges, which I presume is to protect users from the sharp edges of the metal plate.  I spent ages browsing through the different options before I ordered and finally decided on these:

When brand new (as with most plates) they come with a thin film over the front of them, it is quite therapeutic to peel that off to reveal a brand new glimmering silver plate. On first glance the images seem to be carved deeper than plates I used many moons ago, which made me hopeful. I also ordered a rectangular squishy stamp and a scraper which is basically a shrunken down credit card and they all seem to work well in conjunction with each other. 

The stamper is much softer than ones I have used before and it seems to flex to the shape of my nails well. The images transferred really well with a lot of detail.  That said, I am still new to this but here are a couple of examples of designs I have stamped. I tend to put on a Gelish manicure and then stamp using normal polish, then if the image doesn't stamp well, I can remove it with non acetone remover and therefore not have to start from scratch as my base colour will still be there. I have to say that I am very impressed so far but I need lots of practice. 

This is my first attempt. So a bit unclear but I was happy after my many failed attempts years ago. 

I then did some research online on how I could improve and this is my second attempt which I love.

They are available from www.moyou.co.uk for £4.99 each

Nails Inc 'Black Taxi' with Barry M 'Catwalk Queen'

Nails Inc 'Black Taxi' with Barry M 'Catwalk Queen'