Testing...

It's been such a long time since I've posted. When people Google my business name a lot of pictures from this blog appear so I'm just seeing if I can get some of my newer work to show up...no one needs to see 5 year old polish photos 🤣

I started doing nails full time from June last year and made the decision to have my own home salon from April this year, so far all is going well and I appreciate all my amazing clients, friends and fellow nail technicians who've helped me along the way.

I'm currently a CND master painter with a level 2 & 3 NVQ In Nails, using NSI liquid and powder, CND shellac and Lecenté glitter/pigments based in Birkenhead, Merseyside, UK

For bookings click here

Competition!

I've entered my first proper nail art competition on Nail World (Facebook) which runs till the 10th of October, if any of you lovely readers get the chance, could you go and go vote

Nail World

If you click on the link above, my image should pop up and you can just click "like"

Thank you all so much.

CND Vinylux and MoYou London Plates

I took the neon gel off my nails so I needed to do my nails again, luckily my other plates from MoYou London arrived. I got 8 different plates, including one full of moustaches :-)

I chose to do a mani with the 80's and 90's plates, from the Time Traveller set, as there are so many great images on them. Everything I stamped worked really well. I used 2 coats of  CND Vinylux Cream Puff as a base and used A-England Camelot as my stamping polish, with a layer of Vinylux topcoat at the end.

So far I've found the plates/images to be really clear and easy to use, so long as you are light with the scraper (I use a plastic one so as not to damage the metal). No problems with any of my orders either, they were shipped out quickly, once the new plates were in stock.

MoYou London Suki Collection Plate 01

I think I may have forgotten how to blog, forgive me, it's been so long.

I recently joined a group on Facebook specifically for stamping, it's a great place for inspiration but not at all good for my bank account. I came across a company called MoYou London, who are a UK based on-line shop selling accessories for hair, nails and body. The uniqueness of the plates and imagery on the site instantly drew me to them. I initially only ordered one plate as I was cautious about the quality but I needn't have worried. I have ordered 6 more and with more releases coming next week I'm sure there will be plenty more on the way. The plates are not all produced yet so there is up to a 5 week wait on the newer ones but any queries can be directed to their fab customer services.

I had a little play to see if the tiger could be made into a long image and it worked great, I'd already finished my nails so I just did it on paper (excuse the crude nail shape drawings)

The base is CND brisa lite gel mixed with glitter and pigments.

CND Shellac

I thought I would post a few of my shellac manicures as I really love the product. As I don't have the time to change my polish that much any more, I tend to use the shellac on myself a lot, as well as doing my friends and family. I only trained fairly recently so I feel like my application could improve.

I should probably add that I only use CND's Shellac as they created Shellac I feel the others on the market are cheap imitations and as I don't know how safe/hypo-allergenic they are I would not use them.

This was super pretty. 2 coats of Tutti Frutti with holographic pink glitter on the ring finger

I did something similar on my own fingers but added a coat of moonlight and roses over the Tutti Frutti to soften it a little.

This I did on my sisters nails, It was 2 coats of Hotski to Tchotchke (I have to keep checking the spelling on that one, lol) with a mix of green and blue glitter over all the nails. It was ridiculously shiny, the pictures don't do it justice.

And last but not least my New Years Eve nails. I used 1 coat of Hotski to Tchotchke and then brushed in as much green holographic glitter as I could and stamped on some leopard print. The looked amazing, I did not want to take it off but had to for college :-(

Models Own Wonderland Collection Part 2 (with a real camera)

So I managed to borrow a camera :) Here's a few pictures of Jack Frost over Color Club Revvvolution (as I've run out out of plain black :-S) with a foil accent nail.

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.

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.

Girly-Girl Challenge Day 4 Inspired by the Runway

So it's day 4 of the girl girl challenge, today's was inspired by the runway, which game me an excuse to ogle dresses I can never afford and to be honest would probably look ridiculous in :)
I looked at a few trends and "orange" called out to me, I haven't worn orange since Halloween, I actually like how it clashes with everything and really stands out. I found this dress in Erin Fetherston's spring line and thought it was awesome.

I used two coats of Zoya Jancyn. I then added dots of glue to my accent fingers, let the glue turn clear and become tacky and then put foil on them. I use craft foil as its cheap and comes in so many colours.

I'll be honest and say I wanted to do lines of metallic orange but couldn't get the foil to stick uniformly. So I had to make do with an irregular pattern but I really liked the way it came out. I put on a thin layer of topcoat to protect the foil.

The challenge is hosted by Lindsey of Neverland Nail Blog and here is a list of the other girls doing it.

Ashley of Follow The Yellow Polish Road

Stephanie of A Little Polish

Kelly of Devilish Polish

Jodi of Captivating Claws

Danielle of Polish. Glitter. Rock & Roll!

Olivia of Unprofessional Nails

Kate of This Charming Kate

Bethany of  A Plethora of Nails

Lizzy of The Do It Yourself Lady

Eugenia of Talon-ted

Johanna of Neues vom Kellerkind

Amanda of Nox Nails

Ashley of Smashley Sparkles

Sarah of See Sarah Swatch

Emily of The Lacquerologist

Jess of LuvMyLacquer

Tressa of O' Natur Nail 

ChiChi of I'm just me...ChiChi 

CR of Color Me Silly

Amanda of Berry Polished 

Robin, Erin, and Anna of Polished Cousins

Girly-Girl Challenge Day 1 - Think Pink :)

This is the first mani for my first challenge (see previous post for details)
The idea for today is Think Pink - wear your favourite pink polish and nail art. I only own 2 pink polishes so that was an easy choice, I had to go with Illamasqua Obsess. Its a gorgeous shade of pink all on its own but I decided to glitz it up a little and added Nostalgic Nail Lacquer Magic Dance on top (I think she is restocking today, weird coincidence)

I then used Barry M Lilac Foil to stamp my ring finger

But I liked it so much I decided to do them all :)

Girly-Girl Nail Art Challenge

I'm going to be participating in my first nail art challenge :) starting tomorrow. Every Tuesday and Thursday I shall be doing the mani from this list.

The challenge is hosted by Lindsey of Neverland Nail Blog and here is a list of the other girls doing it.

Ashley of Follow The Yellow Polish Road

Stephanie of A Little Polish

Kelly of Devilish Polish

Jodi of Captivating Claws

Danielle of Polish. Glitter. Rock & Roll!

Olivia of Unprofessional Nails

Kate of This Charming Kate

Bethany of  A Plethora of Nails

Lizzy of The Do It Yourself Lady

Eugenia of Talon-ted

Johanna of Neues vom Kellerkind

Amanda of Nox Nails

Ashley of Smashley Sparkles

Sarah of See Sarah Swatch

Emily of The Lacquerologist

Jess of LuvMyLacquer

Tressa of O' Natur Nail 

ChiChi of I'm just me...ChiChi 

CR of Color Me Silly

Amanda of Berry Polished 

Robin, Erin, and Anna of Polished Cousins

I'm looking forward to having a reason to stick to a schedule for blogging and also coming up with ideas to match the days :)

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 :)

Valentine Mani!

Well it had to be done, didn't it? :)

I used Barry M Matt white and China Glaze Velvet Bow. The Glitter on the ring finger is China Glaze Ring in the Red.

Playing with St George

This is a really quick post, mainly pictures really. I was bored today and got out my lovely A-England to do some stamping with. I used St George which happens to be the gem of the month on Adina's website and Princess Tears. I then added some flakies over the top, Nfu Oh 39 on St George and Nubar 2010 on Princess Tears

Which looked very pretty but I decided to add a matte topcoat to make it a little different. Which looked amazing on the Princess Tears I think.

 And then I stamped (using St George) a little design to finish the mani off :)

So that was fun :)

First Blog Post...Eek

Well this is my first blog and first blog post, I'm not really sure where to begin so I'll just jump straight in there;

This is 2 of my favourite Illamasqua nail varnishes, the one that appears purple is actually a really pretty pink called Obsess, I'm not sure why I cant get this to be true to colour, camera issues maybe but it is more fuchsia in real life with a purple undertone, and the green is Radium which has a glowing yellow shimmer to it.

I added a little pink skull to my ring finger to help tie in the two. One final thing to mention about Illamasqua varnish, I have 5 or 6 of them and they are great, colour wise, formula wise, almost one coaters and they last for ages so if you have the chance to buy some go for it :)


And... that's my first post, I'm going to go "franken" my first polish to celebrate, I have an OPI called I Juggle Men that I think will be a great base.