Belated Valentine Stripes and Gradient

I didn't really get around to doing much nail art for Valentine's Day this year, although I did try out a few ideas to see how they would look. Two I did in particular looked quite good together, I thought, so I decided to use them as a full set. Plus, I painted these on Valentine's Day, so this technically is a Valentine's mani. I'm sticking with that anyway, lol!

For the gradient nails, my base is 2 coats of Barry M Pomegranate, followed by a sponging of A-England Rose Bower on the tips. I think I went a bit high with the gradient, it's not the best! It still looks ok though!

For the stripe nails, I started with a base of 2 coats of OPI Love.Angel.Music.Baby from the Gwen Stefani collection. This is a gorgeous gold with a satin like matte finish; I've been wanting this ever since swatches started popping up on nail blogs, and I'm really glad I decided to splash out on it! The stripes were done with Pomegranate and Rose Bower.

I took some pics with my flash on as well, because why not? I think Rose Bower stands out much better in the flash photos.

I was really impressed with the amount of stripes I managed to get on my thumb, but I ended up being a bit more heavy-handed with the other nails as I got a bit more complacent!

One last close up with flash to catch a bit of the A-England holoness! <3

I really like the simplicity of this, mani - I like getting the striping practice in, and it took me less than an hour to do both of my hands, which is unusual for me! It's nice getting a good mani done in record time!

Plaid Style with Colour Club Harlem Lights

I recently picked up my first bottles of Colour Club polish when I snuck into TK Maxx while in Dublin last week. I picked up the Harlem Lights collection, and immediately thought a plaid style design would go well with the cremes in this set. 

The base here is 2 coats Poetic Hues, a yellow toned nude, and I used my striper brush to paint on Lady Holiday (grey) and Baldwin Blues (blue). I topped this with two coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri topcoat.

The one thing I don't like about the Colour Club sets in TK Maxx is that the bottles don't come with names (I like when brands give their polishes proper names instead of numbers, so when they have neither, it's really annoying!), it would be nice if they even had a list on the back of the boxes or something. Nothing that’s not solved with a quick trip to Google Search though! :)

In any case, I really liked the three cremes of this set, and I'm looking forward to trying out the rest!

Ciao for now! x

Blue Cross

One particular element of nail art that I feel I need a lot of practice with is striping, and getting used to using my long striping brushes. I also recently separated all of my unused polishes from the rest in my stash, and found that I had an awful lot more than I realised, so in today's mani I’m getting my stripey-stripe on while using up some unused polishes as well. I saw this criss-cross style design online in various different places, and thought it would be a good one to practice.

The base for this mani is Baby Blue from GOSH Cosmetics' Oh My Gosh range, and the crosses and stripes are China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise, painted with a striper brush.

It wasn't a bad effort, although I did mess up my index finger something awful! It was one of those rare manis that actually looked passable when I did the stripes on my right hand too, so it was a relative win-win all round!

Ciao for now! x

Girly Argyle

Howdy peeps! Today I've got a girly take on a jumper design – the Argyle sweater! I've been wanting to try this design out for a while, but just never got around to it until now. Also, I made a light box during my time-out, so this was my first time trying it out!

The base is Essence Free Hugs, and I used some squares of sticky tape and then painted on OPI Kiss Me On My Tulips to create the diamond effect. I used Barry M Silver Foil to finish off the silver stripes. Everything's topped off with a coat of Seche Vite. Nice design for some tape and striping practice!

I remember that I used to have a string top when I was about 17 with this design and colour scheme, and I loved it, and thought I looked the bee's knees when I wore it out! I think I’ll stick with wearing this on my nails from now on!

Ciao for now! x

Zebra Print

Happy Friday people!

I hope everyone has some good plans for the weekend. I’ll be at home spending some time with the family, looking forward to it, it should be fun.

Anywho, to the nails! I was feeling the need to try out some animal prints this week, so I decided to try a zebra print since I hadn't tried one before.

Stripey Stripes

For today’s mani, I decided to go for something simple-ish, and remembered that I hadn’t used my striping tape in a while. So, I broke that out and did a simple double-V shape with some more of my untried polishes.

Details and another picture after the jump!