Eiffel Tower Tablecloth Patterned Nails

Just before I went away, the new Cheeky European romance plate that I had ordered about 2 months earlier arrived in the nail. Fewf! Just in time- because I was dying to use the Eiffel tower stamp.... so that I could, of course, take a picture of them with the Eiffel tower in the background. (I had planned this for months!)

Now the Eiffel tower print was particularly chunky so I decided to only use it only for a feature nail and do something fancy in the background and other nails (but not too loud as to distract from the Eiffel tower!).

I'm annoyed with myself for not realizing there was about 3 other Paris monument designs on the European Romance plate that I could have also used- but oh well-guess I’ll have to go back ;)

For some reason I thought pastel tablecloth patterned nails might be sort of French (no idea why), so I decided to use a trick I came up with about a year ago to double stamp with lines/stripes to create a tablecloth pattern of two colours (I'm not sure if there is a better name for this sort of pattern?). The lined stamp design was from XL-N. Here is a quick little diagram of what I did:

For the Eiffel tower I first tried stamping directly onto the nail and couldn't get it centered. So I then made a decal with the stamp and used that instead. If you don't know how to do this please visit my tutorial on how to make your own decal here.  

And without further adieu- The nails with bonus Eiffel tower!!!

And because the lighting was awful! Some others without the Eiffel tower.

And a bonus blurry picture with the Mona Lisa! 

Polishes used were:

 OPI my boyfriend scales walls (background grey)

Konad pastel pink

Konad purple

Konad black

For some reason my konads don't have colours written on them... So I have to make up boring names.. 

Engagement nails!!!! Pink and Red Poppies

I have a very exciting post today!!!!

I haven't been able to post anything for the last month as I have been on holiday in France. Anyway, so after about 2 weeks with plain nails I was very very keen to do some nail art! (I managed to have fancy nails on the holiday for about 2 weeks and then gave up)

Anyway from the title you may have deduced that I got engaged while I was on holidays. So of course I felt the need to do special engagement nails.   

You may wonder what poppies have to do with an engagement....

We were staying the night in a hilltop village in Provence called Bonnieux, and went for a walk to the top of the town/hill after dinner. There was nobody else around and the view of the countryside and the neighboring town Lacoste was amazing. Right over the edge of the path there was lots of poppies growing, and there was a plant that had pink poppies instead of red. I hadn't seen this before, and was taking pictures. They weren't working out very well, so I turned around to ask for my Fiancés better camera. He was down on one knee......

I’ve never been so happy in my life.

I used a tutorial for poppies I found on Paulina's Passions nail blog found here: http://paulinaspassions.com/poppy-flower-nail-art-tutorial/

The background colour is OPI "Did you hear about van gogh" - It was the first time I've used this polish. I really really love it. Ill be purchasing a backup.

The red is Konad special red

The pink poppies are a mixture of revlon Tuscan sun and Rimmel Ash Rose

And the black is Konad special black 

(I find the konad polish good for nail art as they are so pigmented)