And now for something completely different

Ahhh, it's been so long since I made a post. Since I started college I haven't been painting my nails nearly as much as I used too but that's no excuse. I recently trained with CND to use Shellac so when I do get the chance to do my own nails that's what I'm using and as its a "professional" use only product I didn't think it worth posting but I don't like my blog sitting idle. So I have decided to keep track of my course progress by posting pictures here, it'll be mainly mani/pedi's, shellac or liquid & powder (extensions). Hopefully this will encourage me to post more regularly :-) If not...I give up.

This was just practising a dark polish on one of the girls in my class, I couldn't resist adding fantasy fire (max factor) on top of the plain purple polish.

This was on my "client" (and best friend) I used 2 of my favourite polishes, Barry M Indigo and Barry M Prickly Pear. Prickly Pear is one of their Gelly range and is super shiny.

These are 5 of my nails for a calender shoot, I used mostly Bettina polishes as they are easy to work with.

I will put together a post with a few of my shellac manicures as I'm really loving doing them, especially with holographic glitter. 

Summer Fun Challenge - Day 4

Day 4: We like it Hot, Hot, Hot! Design your nails to match the summers scorching temperatures. Don't burn yourself though :)

This made picking colours easy. I went with something nice and easy to do today as I didn't have much time.
I used 2 coats of yellow Bettina as a base coat and then used "starfish" and red for the drips.

I like how this looks from far away but I think I could have done with a slightly darker red so it showed up more.

Summer Fun Challenge - Day 3

Pool Party is the theme for today's challenge "Make a splash with a pool party inspired mani, Swimsuits, floaties and sunscreen...oh my!"
So my first thought was to do something water related, until I noticed Day 6 calls for water/ocean nails, silly me.
Luckily I spied my swimsuit out the corner of my eye and realised that would be fun to replicate. Although the colours aren't very summery (black/white/grey) the swimsuit always works with whatever colour my hair is at the time, so its a favourite and I figured the nails would work too.

I used 2 coats of Bettina Marshmallow and then used my Bundle Monster leopard print stamp as I was too lazy to freehand :) and then dotted on some grey. Although my camera had issues focusing these came out looking really clean and look like stickers so I was happy with them.

Summer Fun Challenge - Day 1

I'm 2 days late with this but as my college tutors always said to me - better late than never :)
This is another challenge set by Lindsey from Neverland Nail Blog. I really enjoyed doing the girly-girl one so I wanted to give this a try.

So today as I'm catching up I will be doing 2 mani's but I'll do 2 separate posts.

The first challenge is Grill Master. I was going to do flames with a black background but then I decided I wanted to do something a little less literal.

I used a base of Illamasqua Raindrops to represent smoke and rain, as to be honest whenever we plan a BBQ it ends up raining, lol. And then did "flaming" dots on top. I used yellow, starfish and red Bettina's and a hair pin as a dotting tool. I really am happy with how this turned out.

Here's a close up of raindrops, its such a pretty polish.

And in the bottle.

Next up is Summer lovin'...I love Grease :)

Black and white

I decided I wanted to do a bit of nail art yesterday but was in a bit of a hurry so had to go with some thing simple. I decided to use the technique I tried in the girly-girl challenge in march. I went with a black and white colour scheme.

This is really easy to do, you just paint half your nail with one colour, using a lot of polish and then paint the other half with the other colour, again using a lot of polish. Then use a pin or small dotting tool to mix the two shades together. I used A-England Camelot and Bettina Marshmallow, both really nice opaque polishes.

A very late St Paddy's Day Mani

I completely forgot to put these pictures up. This is what I wore for St.Patrick's Day.

My dad changed the lens on the camera and I didn't want to ruin my nails changing it back to my usual one so the pictures are a little strange :)

It was a fun mani to do and pretty quick, other than having to let the varnish dry between coats :)

I used two coats of Illamasqua radium as a base and made these shapes in the corner with Bettina Mojito and an old unnamed yellow polish I had lying around. I used Bettina Disco on my ring finger to glitz it up and popped some dots on there for good measure.

Rainbow Dotting Mani

I just noticed that there is a nail art (specifically dotting) competition on one of the blogs I follow http://www.chalkboardnails.com and it ends today. I'm trying to step out of my comfort zone manicure wise and do things I'm not very good at, lol, so I figured why not give dotting another go. I actually don't own a dotting too so I had to make do with the end of a hair clip :)

This is what I started with:

Then I played about with the hair clip:

It is by no means perfect but I'm happy with it and I think will purchase some actual dotting tools so I can get different sized dots more easily :)

Green Layering Experiment

So the idea was simple, I wanted a mani to match my hair, which was green...sort of :) my hair never goes one shade when I dye it, its now a greeny blue. I went with Bettina Mojito as a base, I love this green, it takes 2 coats for decent coverage but its easy to work with. I then popped on a layer of Max Factor max effects Graffiti to give it a slightly blue tone. I couldn't resist putting on some flakies to liven it up a little, I used Nfu Oh 39, its not a subtle flakie its pretty densely packed but goes on smoothly. And then to top it off I used my newly acquired Nostalgic Underground..

It was so shiny and complex looking, I was happy but I think it was a little too shiny for me so I got out my trusty matte top coat and I loved it even more.

Here it is in the sun:

And in the shade:

And more importantly it matches my hair :) I added some scales to my ring finger.