Striping Tape Mani with OPI Mod About You, China Glaze For Audrey and Essie Tart Deco

I didn't really have a plan for this mani. I went through my collection of polishes trying to find something I hadn't used before for a base colour. I chose OPI- Mod about you- a cool toned pastel pink.

I actually found the formula a bit thick. I used a Revitanail nail strengthener as my base instead of my usual Orly bonder, so they may be why- it was going on very streaky. 

Anyway after painting them pink I was a little lost as to what other polishes would go with the pink. I decided to play it safe and chose a light turquoise and a coral peach- I find these 2 colours always look nice together (I used China Glaze For Audrey and Essie Tart Deco).

I also used some Essie 'good as gold' to add some metallic interest :)

 

 For the stripy design I used randomly spaced striping tape (available on ebay) diagonally across my nails. I then painted small lines (using a small paintbrush) perpendicular to the striping tape in my chosen polishes. 

 

I am not in love with these nails, but still pretty happy with them- what do you think?

Thanks for reading

Chanfie 

xx

AFL Grand Final Nails! Go Freo!

Clearly my Freo nails last week at the Prelim final were very good luck as they won and are off to the Grand Final. This of course meant that I needed to think of some different Fremantle nails to last week (here). Now I really liked those nails, and considered just doing the away colour jersey (reverse colours- purple on white), but I wanted to be more creative. I chose to incorporate the red and green that they used to have along with the purple and white. Plus I really wanted to create a way to use my new picture polishes (Sea Jewel and Violet Femme).

 I again stamped the anchor from the bundle monster 2010 collection (konad white polish).

I used striping polish to create the different stripes/triangles. 

The polishes were:

Picture polish violet femme (purple), 

Picture polish seafoam (green glitter) 

This was painted over Sally Hansen Xtreme wear The real teal

And Misa Bop Til You Drop (coral)

 

It took ages, but it will be worth it tomorrow!!! 

I'm going to Fremantle to watch the game and I'm ridiculously excited =D

 Here is a picture from 2006 of the old team colours I was trying to channel

Source: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/fremantle-dockers-survivors-chase-redemption-for-2006-preliminary-final/story-fni5f6su-1226719142368

 Thanks for reading :)

Egyptian Hieroglyphics!

This weekend I couldn't decide what I wanted to put on my nails. I wanted to do another black and gold look after seeing this amazing mani from Paulina's Passions. I asked my fiance and he came up with a great idea!- Egyptian themed nails. I decided to go with some Hieroglyphs. 

I first painted my nails with China Glaze Passion from the Romantique collection, and added a coat of Seche Vite and waited for it to dry before applying striping tape horizontally across my nails. I then put 2 coats of OPI Black Onyx over the top and removed the striping tape to reveal the gold below. 

It looked quite nice just like this so I took a picture :) I wish I reversed the polish bottles- you cant see where my nails end and the OPI black onyx bottle begins!

Next I used a short striping brush to paint the hieroglyphs in China Glaze Passion. Originally I was going to have it actually mean something, but I soon realized that there was a limited number of characters that I would be able to recreate in the small space between the gold stripes. So it's probably complete jibberish! 

 

The left hand nails were ok, but I had a lot of trouble painting the right hand nails with my non dominant hand. They are a little clunkier, but I think I nailed the bird on the ring finger! (below)

  

 I did a closeup of this thumb because I was proud of the little Egyptian person. I think he looks like he is doing some sort of kung fu though. 

 

And that's it! It was pretty fun painting these, but took forever! When I finished I literally looked up from my hands and exclaimed "oh my gosh! It's night time".

Here's the hieroglyphs I used for inspiration :) I have actually seen this in real life at the Louvre! 

reference: http://ritournelleblog.com/2010/12/23/ancient-egyptian-treasures-at-the-louvre/

Someone asked about what brushes I used for this mani, so I figured it would be easiest to take a picture (below).  I mostly used the shorter brush, but used the longer one for a few things that had to be extra fine (as you can see it's thinner, but as its long, it's harder to control). These are just the cheapo 'striping brushes' from ebay that are available from many sellers. They do alright, but as you can see the bristles are a bit fanned, and the paint on the handle isn't acetone resistant. I've actually ordered some new La Corneille brushes on recommendation from Lindsay from WondrouslyPolished.com - so I'll write a little review when they arrive and I have tried them out!

Thanks for visiting my blog <3

Tribal Print Nails Inspired by Wondrously Polished

About a week ago Lindsey from Wondrously Polished did an absolutely stunning Navajo tribe inspired manicure (link). If you haven't ever visited her blog I highly recommend having a look. She is very creative and is always coming up with beautiful and unique designs. 

Anyway, after repetitively visiting her blog to see it again and again I decided I wanted to try a similar manicure.

In the past I have shied away from hand painted manicures, fearing that it would look like a blobby mess, but once I found the right brush (a striping brush on the shorter side) it wasn't as hard as I thought to create crisp lines and designs. I put striping tape horizontally across my nails in lines to make sure I kept the designs parallel and this also helped.

I really enjoyed free handing. It was really fun and relaxing just painting whatever came to mind. I think I'll be doing a bit more free hand nail art from now on.

Here is my right hand- I think this hand turned out better which is weird having been painted by my non dominant hand! The thumb nail looks a bit weird and lumpy though as it broke and I had to patch it up with a tea bag and nail glue. 

The polishes are used were:

Background white/grey: OPI my boyfriend scales walls

Bright Orange: OPI atomic orange

Dark turquoise/blue: China Glaze Shower together

Lighter turquoise: OPI Fly

Thanks for visiting :)

Colour Blocking Nails with OPI Fly

I've seen a couple of pictures on Pinterest of colour blocking nail art using a black/almost-black colour, a nude and a bright. I think this kind of colour combo looks great together, especially in big chunky designs and I have really wanted to try it for some time. 

 Being a turquoise addict, I decided to go with OPI 'fly' as my bright. I used OPI 'Lincoln park after dark' as my dark colour- however it probably would have been easier to just use black as the purplyness didn't show up really. For my nude I used Essie Jazz which is very close to my skin colour in real life. 

I started of using scotch tape to create the different colour 'blocks' but the polish was bleeding underneath. I switched to striping tape which seemed to solve the problem. (Striping tape can be purchased from many ebay stores for about $1.50 for 10 rolls)

I'm in love with how they look, very classy. It's almost work appropriate!

Here they are :)

Purple and Gold 'Skittles' Nail Art

A few days ago I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do to my plain old purple nails to jazz them up a bit... and ended up trying a bunch of different things....5 in fact :)

 I think most people are calling this kind of 5 nail mix and match 'skittles nails'.

 I went with a purple and gold theme using gold glitter, striping tape and polish, and two other purple polishes (in addition to the one I was already wearing)

 The background purple is OPI Casino Royal, a favourite of mine. 

 The pinkie was done by first putting a streak of top coat down the middle of the nail and hand-placing (or more accurately tweezer-placing) square glitter down the centre of the nail. I thought it needed something else so painted the tip with a golden glitter polish (home-made).

 The ring finger was kind of a lucky fail of watercolour nails. I tried doing it with polish I had thinned with a polish thinner rather than just using an acetone soaked brush as I have done previously. So instead of being washed out it was just really watery and prone to dribbling into my cuticles....which as it turned out was a good thing!

It's hard explain without pictures...I think I’ll make a tutorial once I get bored of these nails..... Anyway I was very happy with how they turned out. I think it looks a bit like a camouflage pattern.

 The gold is Sally Hansen Xtreme wear 'Golden-I', the dark metallic purple is Revlon 'No Shrinking Violet' and the pastel purple is China Glaze 'Sweet Hook'.

 The middle finger was done by using scotch tape to tape off a triangle at the tip of the nail (starting about half way down the nail) and painting this tip with the Golden-I. I then used tweezers to carefully place gold striping tape. After the gold polish had dried completely I used more striping tape to tape of the small purple tip, and painted it with OPI Casino Royal. (And then removed that striping tape) 

 For the pointer finger I just dabbed on the gold glitter polish (more at the base of the nail, and less at the top to create a gradient) 

 For the thumb I scotch taped off the bottom half of the nail and stamped an image from Xl-D with China Glaze 'Sweet Hook'. I then removed the tape and painted a thin line with Revlon 'No Shrinking Violet', and pressed gold circular glitter into the polish. 

 The only problem with skittles nails is having to write a description of every nail!

The reason I took so long to post these, is that I was determined to make a light box on the weekend.... which I achieved today! Yay!

I made it out of a cardboard box and baking paper. I think my pictures look way better than usual!.... I'm getting there slowly. Unfortunately the awesome light I'm using is only on loan from my Fiancé’s Dad who is an electrician, so I need to find a replacement. It’s an LED and is worth about 100$ apparently so I'll have to find an alternative!

He said he could get me a pretty good one for an affordable price though so I'm still very happy!

So here they are: I think its my best cuticle clean up ever!

Well I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed creating this nail art :)

How to use too small stamping designs!

This mani was from earlier this week and was my first time for 2 things! Firstly I have never done a proper striping tape mani before (Only a basic scotch tape). Secondly, I got to use one of the tiny tiny stamping images from the original (2010) bundle monster set- specifically BM19. I have had the set for over a year and never used any of the full nail images.... becuase they won't even fit my pinkie =(
I originally chose this set over the 2011 set (unknowing of the size differences) because I had to have this leaf design so I was super happy with this mani!
To do this I first painted my nails with China Glaze for Audrey (I seem to use this in every second manicure I do!) and went to bed - I tried to start the mani before I went to bed, but it wasn't dry enough and the polish was ripped up when I removed the scotch tape. Although... I wasn't happy with one nail in the morning and had to repaint it, and it dried enough in about half an hour to redo- this was with seche vite to dry it faster, and I also stuck the scotch tape to the back of my hand before using it on my nails to make it less sticky.
After the base colour was dry, I used scotch tape/sticky tape to cover up the areas I didn't want stamped with the leaves. I then stamped using konad red, and removed the tape to reveal a square/triangle of red stamped leaves. After this I used striping tape to tape around the leaves and to make stripes and painted the divided areas with China Glaze shower together, and OPI fly. I removed the Striping tape with the polishes were still wet, and painted over with Seche Vite.

Matte Attack!

 About a week ago my Essie - Matte about you arrived in the mail- Hoorah! I immediately proceeded to try stamping over the matte polish to create a matte/shiny look. I chose a stamping design that wasn't too intricate with approximately even stamped/unstamped proportions, and stamped with Sally hansen diamond strength treatment base coat. I tried Seche Vite and Sally Hansen Mega shine, but they both seemed to dry to fast and therefore not stick all over the nail leaving flakey bits. I know lots of people have used a black polish to do this look which looks awesome and apparently works great, but I hate hate hate trying to clean up black polish off my cuticles and skin!
The second image was from 5 days later when I was getting bored of the manicure and had a mothers day thing that I was wearing a hot pink dress to (the background of the picture)- so I had to make my nails match. I got the "loveheart flowers" growing up from striping tape idea from a mani I saw on Pshiiit.com. This was a very quick and easy way to either dress up an old mani, or re-jig a mani to match an outfit if short of time!

OPI black onyx coated with Essie Matte about you and stamped with Sally Hansen diamond strength treatment (silver bottle). The image is from XL-N stamping plate from Magno nails.

Heart flowers from konad stamp plate M83. The striping tape and rhinestones are from ebay.