Happy 4th July! - USA Themed Nail Art

Just a quick post to say Happy 4th July all you Americans out there! No time for nail art today as I'm packing boxes but here are some nails I did last year with OPI Cajun Shrimp and an Essie Mesmerize and crystal thumb accent.

4th July Nail Art

Have a lovely time celebrating and I'll be back to update soon.

Rainbow Polkadot Nail Art

Rainbow Polkadot Nail Art

I don't know about you but I find if a magazine is giving away free nail polish I can very rarely resist buying it.    That generally means I end up with at least a couple of copies of the same magazine as I try to collect all of the shades. It's as a result of this that the majority of my Nails Inc collection are magazine freebies, given that they cost £10 retail and the magazines only really ever cost £5 max it always seems like a pretty good saving to me....


Anyway, I wanted to do some simple nail art that used some of my freebie stash so I did some quick polkadot nail art using some of my Nails Inc shades and come other brands. I always feel better using these kinds of shades for nail art as it's less likely I'll be wasting any of my more expensive polishes. What about you, do you have a weakness for freebies? Or are you happy to use your most prized polishes for your designs?





Base - Nail Inc Teal


Spots (Red to Blue) - Nails Inc Beach, Nails Inc Candy Orange, Mavala Acid Yellow, Barry M Spring Green, Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream

Chanel April, May and June



Chanel April, May and June



Whilst I was writing my post on the Chanel Fall 2012 couture nails (you can find it here - Link)I was looking at the images wondering if my new camera had slightly washed out the colour of the Chanel nail polish in May that I used for the top layer. It may just be the way my screen was displaying but I'd taken these images for my Tumblr laliqueheart so I thought I do a follow up post here as a comparison.

The April, May and June Le Vernis nail polishes were released as part of Chanel's Harmonie De Printemps collection for Spring 2012. All three are standard creme two coaters, there's no hint of the classic Chanel nail polish shimmer here a la Paradoxal, Mimosa etc. April is a dusty berry red, May a medium bubblegum pink and June a soft apricot. Although this is a Spring collection (I bought these back at the end of January) what these shades really remind me of is beautiful summer garden roses like the picture below, which I guess just about fits with the months they're named after!

Rachel Rose - taken with Instagram

As soon as I had them I did some quick swatches to get an idea of what all three were like. As Chanel nail polishes have a nice small brush I used the same technique for my Confetti Nails tutorial so I could get the best idea of how all three colours came out.



Chanel April, May and June Confetti Nails

They are genuinely lovely colours and the formula is pretty good although my bottle of May has thickened ever so slightly, not really sure why. You can still pick these up in some stores if you've got a real passion for one of them. My favourite is April which was quite unexpected as I thought it would be quite boring but it's lovely on the nail. June is the one I thought I'd love the most and whilst it's really nice it's a little sheerer than April so that pips it for me. May is a good standard bubblegum pink but it is in no way unique so go for it if you want a classic Chanel pink but otherwise it's the most standard colour from the collection I would have said. Now if only I could convince Chanel to release an October nail polish.... 

Crosshatch Nails Tutorial



Crosshatch tape mani with Illamasqua Blow & Essie Mint Candy Apple



I originally posted this on one of my tumblr accounts but I’m reposting it here as part of my mass migration of all of my nail posts.

Tutorial

You paint the base coat first (the yellow in the pic) then make sure you let it dry completely (more than an hour probably).
Once it’s dry, cut strips out of Scotch Tape (the opaque matte one), if you use that you’ll be able to see any air bubbles as you lay the strips across the nail so the lines won’t bleed. Arrange the strips in the pattern you want making sure you press them down to push out the bubbles.

Paint your top colour over the tape in one thickish coat and remove the strips immediately in the reverse of the order you put them on (i.e. take the last one you put on off first). If you try and lift a strip that is underneath another one it will either break and you’ll have to fish around for the end or you’ll make a mess of the line.

That’s it, the only other advice I’d have is if you decide to use a matte polish only use it as a base not a top layer. It dries too fast and you’ll end up pulling the polish off. Good luck!

Confetti Nails Tutorial



Confetti Nails



A simple and very quick tutorial for you that you can do without any tools or brushes. The best thing to do if you want to recreate this is choose a brand of polish that comes with a nice thin brush. I have relatively narrow nails and I wanted to be able to make smallish dots clustered at the tips so I went with predominantly Barry M colours with a little added Essie and Illamasqua to get the mix of colours I wanted.

First I painted one coat of my base colour which is Barry M Grey. Barry M polishes are some of the best value polishes I have in my collection. They come in a wide range of colours and tend to be one coaters that dry to a great high shine finish. I didn't have any topcoat on here so you can get an idea of just how shiny they are straight out of the bottle.

Once the base coat is completely dry you can add your spots. For the spots here I used a mix of Barry M Spring Green & Cyan Blue, Essie Bright Tights (orange)and Illamasqua Jo’Mina (lilac). I started with one colour and went over all of my nails making dots in that colour. I applied them directly from the bottle making sure to wipe off any excess polish so you don't end up with overly large spots. I then repeated this with the other colours in sequence. I didn't wait for the spots to dry completely although I did avoid overlapping any spots until I was sure the spot I was overlapping was dry. Once your spots are dry you're done! The possibilities for colour combinations on this are endless so you can experiment with different looks really easily, I'm planning a future post on this with an ombré twist to look out for that one!

Rainbow Nails



Rainbow Nails with Essie Mesmerize



In celebration of the fact that I have a camera again some quick rainbow nails. Base colour is Essie Mesmerize which is a deep cobalt royal blue. Great coverage on this one, you really only need one coat. Totally worth having the postman wake me up before 8:00am on a Saturday!