Thursday 29 November 2012

Birthday Pretties

Hello!

Just a quick post - I just want to share with you the nail polishes I got for my birthday today :)

Firstly, from my parents and sister, are some of the China Glaze Holiday Joy collection:


My boyfriend's sister and her husband bought me these polishes!


Some really interesting looking ones in there.  Especially that dark one in the middle - it looks like it's silver and blue glitter in a black base, can't wait to try it out!

Anyhoo, hope you've all had a lovely day!  I'm currently sitting here with naked nails because I can't think of any ideas that aren't Christmassy, and it's just too soon!

Tuesday 27 November 2012

Leopard Print Tutorial

This is a tutorial for leopard print nails!  I love this look, and, once you've got the hang of it, it's really quick and easy to do when you need great nails in a hurry.

You can see some examples of manicures I've done using this pattern by clicking the links below:


I've just written the word 'leopard' so many times that it no longer looks like a word...

Here's what you'll need:


  • Base colour (Barry M Gold Foil)
  • Spot colour (OPI Warm and Fozzie)
  • Black nail art pen (you could also use a Sharpie if you like)

Here's the step-by-step picture tutorial.


1.  Start by prepping your nail as usual (I buff and apply a basecoat) then apply your base colour.

2.  Using the brush that comes with the polish, apply a few blobs of your spot colour to each nail.  As a rough guide, I use 4-5 spots per nail, but you can adjust this depending on the size of your nail and the size of your spots!  Try to take some of your spots over the edges of your nails.

3.  Using your nail art pen, draw a rough C shape around each spot.  The wobblier the better here.  Don't make your lines too smooth and don't draw a full circle around the spots (see below).  If you're using a Sharpie instead for this step, you might find you get better results from dabbing with the Sharpie to make lines of joined up dots, rather than just drawing lines (if that makes any sense?)

4.  In any spaces you've got left, add in a few more little C shapes or just some dots.

5.  Apply a layer of your favourite topcoat and you're done!  CAUTION:  Nail art pens apply polish quite thickly, so please make sure you give your design plenty of time to dry before applying your topcoat, otherwise you'll end up with a very streaky leopard!



Here are some examples of how NOT to outline your spots!  Hopefully you can see that using a smooth line, or joining the line right the way up around the circle doesn't give as good a look as what I've done above.


If you have any tips for how to improve my tutorials or any ideas for tutorials you'd like to see, please post your suggestions in the comment area.

Monday 26 November 2012

W7 Salt n Pepper and Christmas Challenge!

Happy Monday!  If Monday's can be happy...  Mine certainly wasn't this morning.  I think the guy at the little coffee place at the train station must have snuck me decaf, because I was in a horrible mood until I had a nice strong coffee at lunchtime.  Probably shouldn't be so dependent on coffee...oh well.  Could be worse :D

Anyhoo, today I have another untried to show you!  I will point out at this point that my attempt to use all my untrieds by the end of November has definitely failed.  I think there might even be more than there were at the beginning...

So here's today's manicure.


This is Barry M Black and W7 Salt n Pepper.  Love these W7 polishes!  Then I added some flower stickers to the black nails.  This was not my original plan...  I found two little white rose water decals that were so perfect for this!  So I put one down on my nail, wet the back of it like the instructions said, took the paper away and...I was left with the plain back of the decal.  Turns out you're supposed to wet it, then slide it off the paper and on to your nail.  Whoops!  Ah well, I'm happy with how these turned out anyway!

Have you tried any of these sprinkle type polishes, in any brand?

Also, just a quick reminder that the Holly Jolly Christmas Challenge will be starting in a week!  There are five challenge manicures, one for each Monday in December, plus an extra one for Christmas Eve.



There's still plenty of time to sign up if you want to join us!  You just need to send me an email at polishedart@hotmail.co.uk or leave me your email address in the comments :)  If you've already let me know you'd like to participate, I'll be sending an email out later this week with (hopefully) all the information you'll need.  If you've got any questions at the moment though, please just ask in the comments!

Typically, I've got ideas for all the manicures apart from the first one!  I need to get my thinking cap on...

Sunday 25 November 2012

Best of British

Good afternoon!  Here's a quick round up of what the lovely British Bloggers have been up to this week.

British Nail Bloggers

Emma practises polka dots in this China Glaze dotticure at Emma's Little Corner.

Nada got her hands on Miss Sporty's new nail polishes Metal Flip Duochromes! Check out the swatches!

Lyndsay from Pie's Eyes has been playing with fire this week Max Factor's Fantasy Fire. It's fast becoming a Top 10 polish!

Jazz at Glitter Infatuation has been continuing the Lazy 15 Challenge, even if that means interpreting it in her own funny way. Glitter is appropriate no matter what the occasion!

Wendy over at Wendy's Delights has a Yellow Mani with Glitter for the 31 day Challenge!

Claire at Nuthin' But A Nail Thing has been fishscale manicuring it up - there is a tutorial too!

Rachel at Phoenix Nails has been getting all childish with a Disney mani for day 9 of the Lazy 15 challenge.

Vic's been experimenting with layering and has come up with a Swishy Junk Yard.

Sally of NailPron has found some new Speciallita polishes, and they look amazing.

Anna from Anna's Polish Addiction has tried Nails Inc Southwark from the most recent QVC Today's Special Value, and posted a rainbow mani and more pics of her stash.

Sam at Polished Art created this pretty half moon manicure using dried flowers!

Kerry at JustTalkNails has a swatch of Essie Smooth Sailing this week.

This week there was some Quilted Nail Art going on over at Enigmatic Rambles.

Hope you enjoyed!  What have you been wearing on your nails this week?

Saturday 24 November 2012

Whimsical Half Moons

Happy Saturday!  Yay for weekends!

Today I have a polish to share with you that I have lusted after FOREVER (or since I started reading nail blogs at least).  It's the lovely Revlon Whimsical that I won in a giveaway hosted by Marisa at Polish Obsession, along with Orly Steel Your Heart, which I used in this jigsaw manicure.  Do check out Marisa's blog - she's got fabulous swatches and some really pretty wintry nail art :)

I'd read on blogs in the past about people being disappointed with Whimsical because it was so sheer, so I decided to layer it over a polish.  I whipped out my Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream, and was all ready to go, when I decided that actually Whimsical is a bit more green than that.  So I got out my OPI Mermaid's Tears, but Whimsical's a bit more blue than that...  It's a very interesting colour, to look at it I'd definitely say it was blue, but it's definitely got a green tinge to it when you compare it with other blues.

Anyway, I decided that since the hint of green was so interesting, I'd go with Mermaid's Tears to bring out the green a little more.  Here's what I ended up with.


So this is OPI Mermaid's Tears with three coats of Revlon Whimsical (look at those pretty glitters!).  Then I decided to bring out the pink glitters a little more with some half moons painted on in Barry M Bright Pink.  This is the first time I've tried painting half moons on on top of my design, rather than using hole reinforcers - how do you think I did?

Thank you again Marisa for this gorgeous polish!

What nail polish have you been lusting after recently?


Friday 23 November 2012

Dried Flower Half Moons

Hello lovely ladies :)  Sorry I've been a little slow on the posts lately.  I don't even know why...I've got loads of manicures there waiting to be posted.  I'm sure my dongle's going to give up on me soon though.  This month I managed to use all of my data in like 5 days or something...  I've (hopefully) finally got broadband sorted though after being messed around for 6 weeks by a company who I shan't name...other than to say it was Virgin Media.

Anyhoo, today I have something a little different for you.  I received some dried flowers from Born Pretty Store to review.  In fact, when they asked me to choose a product, I chose these because they're something I hadn't seen anyone feature on their blog, but between then and now someone else has posted a review of them, typical!

But moving on...  The dried flowers come in a handy little wheel, so they're easy to store along with all my other nail art wheels!  As you can see, there are plenty of colours to choose from, and a nice mixture of bright and dark shades.


What may not be obvious from the picture is that you get three flowers of each colour.  I didn't find this a problem for the look I wanted to create, but obviously it's something to bear in mind when planning your manicures!

If wheels aren't your thing, there's also some dried flowers available in pots here.  I haven't tried these, so I don't know if they're exactly the same flowers.

I thought these would be great for creating little flower half moons, so here are the nails I came up with.


I used a base of OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons.  Then I cut each flower in half (so one flower could do both hands!) and stuck them on to a wet layer of topcoat.  I don't do anything as sensible as use tweezers to apply fiddly things to my nails, so you can see where I managed to smudge and dent my polish a little, but that could be easily avoided by being less of an idiot.


I sealed them off with two coats of top coat and, after that had dried, trimmed around the edges to make sure the flowers fitted nicely to my cuticle.  That was plenty to make them smooth enough for me to not fiddle with them.  I thought I'd have problems with them sticking up and catching on things, but they were actually fine!

I really enjoyed wearing these :)  I think they're really different, and it's so quick and easy to make nail art with them.  I think people may have thought I'd finally lost my mind wearing flowers on my nails though lol, must be all those polish fumes... I've got loads of other ideas of how to use these, so I'm planning to try those out and show you some pictures over the next couple of weeks.

If you like the look of these, then take a look at them here.  They're available for $4.45 (which is about £2.79) and shipping is free to wherever in the world you may be.  If you do decide to make a purchase, don't forget to use the discount code below!


What do you think of these dried flowers?  Would you use them to create a look like I did, or do you have another idea for how to use them?  I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Thursday 22 November 2012

31 Day Challenge

Here's a round up of all the manicures for the 31 Day Challenge!  To see the original blog post, or bigger pictures, of any of the manicures, just click on the picture!


1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Animal Print
Flowers
Delicate Print
Tribal
Glitter
Half Moon
Galaxy
Water Marble
Colour
Song
Film
Book
Fashion
Pattern
Artwork
Flag
Supernatural
Tutorial
Recreate

Summer Challenge

Here's a round up of all my manicures for the Summer Challenge!  To see the original blog post for any of the manicures, just click on the picture.




Sunflowers
Sunset
Island
Island