NOTD: Pastel Paws

Hey everyone, hope you've all had a lovely weekend and are enjoying the niceish weather? It's not exactly heatwave temperatures in Manchester where I live but even this teeniest amount of sun has put me in such a better mood! Meanwhile, I've been having a bit of a moment with the old Konad stamping kit which has led to the other half getting quite hacked off at me doing my nails every three days or so, can't see the problem myself...if I could, I would probably do my nails every day!

Honestly, I'm not a big fan of leopard print on the nails but I actually love pastel colours mixed with the leopard print. I think it looks really nice and girly, and not at all Bet Lynch-esque!

What nail art are you loving at the moment? I'm in need of some inspiration, I have hundreds of stamping designs to try but I'm already getting a bit bored at how long winded it can be to stamp my nails.

If you have anything you'd like to share nail art wise, go for it and post me a comment in the box below!

NOTD: Tribalesque Nails

 

My beloved little Stargazer polish really doesn't get enough use considering how amazing it is for stamping but then again, I have fallen a bit out of love with stamping as it can be sooooo time consuming for me, depending on what base colour I'm using. Anyways, down to the nitty gritty....I used one of my fauxnad stamping plates and one of my all time favourite nail polishes, Models Own Beth's Blue as a base and Stargazer Chrome Nail polish in no.232. The stamp I used is the bottom one on the plate and not something I would usually opt for; I prefer girlier stamps such as lace and floral designs but I'm going through a trying new things phase.

I haven't been feeling particularly inspired nail art wise recently but as always, the Pinterest community have been throwing out some gorgeous nail art designs. One can only wish I could create some of the beautiful nails on there so in the meantime I'll just carry on pinning a ridiculous amount of nail photos :-)

NOTD: Nudey's with Gold Accents

My nail routine has been pretty low maintenence as of late so it was nice to change it up and get back that happy little feeling everytime I peer at my freshly polished fingers. My nails have seen better days thanks to my over enthusiasm at peeling numerous shellac manicures off, something I wouldn't recommend you try! 

 

For my "nudey" nails I used Basil Street by Nails Inc, which is seemingly taking over Models Own Nude Beige as my favourite nude polish. Although my inner lazy self despises the three coat application it requires. On my accent nails I used Look Nail Pop in Mink as a base coat and Models Own Champagne for the dotted accents. There isn't really any genius to the dots, I just concentrated on creating detail on the corners of my nail tips and alternated the size of the dots by using both ends of my dotting tool which is pictured below.

Dotting tools are really inexpensive if you purchase them from somewhere like eBay or alternatively you can use the end of a hairpin. I'm pretty much a novice with the old dotting tool but it's so inspiring to see such amazing nail art created by these little bargain beauty tools. If you want to share your dotty nail art feel free to post your link below, I'd love to have a nosey.

NOTD: Peachy Floral

If you read my blog you may have noticed over the past few days, my layout has been going through a bit of an identity crisis but finally I have a new blog design and I'm pretty happy with it...for the time being ;-) So, to commemorate I thought I'd do not one but two NOTD's in honour of my girly new layout!

Photo taken in natural daylight, apologies for the lack of focus!

 First of all, sorry for the mess around my cuticles and pinky finger. I was rushing slightly as I'd just found my camera and sunset was rapidly approaching. Any bloggers reading this will understand how much of a nuisance it is having to make sure you take photos before daylight has started to fade :-\

Taken with flash.

Taken with flash.

 So as you can see, I've kept my first NOTD quite simple. For the flower detail on the ring finger I used a floral nail sticker that I received as a free gift with a China Glaze nail polish I purchased off eBay. For the base colour I've used Barry M nail polish in Peach Melba which I previously swatched here and featured in my favourites for 2011.

Taken in natural daylight.

Taken with flash.

 As you can see, I went a bit crazier with this hand! For this design I used my old but always reliable Collection 2000 nail polish in Ebony to stamp on a design taken from one of the fauxnaud monster bundle plates I posted about a few months back.

Top L-R: Maybelline Salon Manicure Base Coat, Barry M Nail Polish in Peach Melba, Collection 2000 Nail Polish in Ebony and Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat. Bottom L-R: Nail Art Stickers and Monster Bundle Plate (Design used is on the left of the plate).

 Hope you enjoyed this post, if you've any questions at all or just want a chatter please drop me a comment in the box below :-)

NOTD: Avon Sequinned Turquoise

I didn't actually go out for New Years Eve but despite staying in I kinda pretended I was going out and got all done up (sad I know!!) which obviously meant I had to do something with my naked nails. I really wanted to find a use for the Avon nail polish I was bought for Christmas and thought it would be a perfect glittery colour for NYE celebrations. However when I swatched two coats on my nail wheel I didn't think the colour really suited me so I came up with the idea of layering it over a black glitter polish by W7 that I'd kinda impulse purchased when I was doing a bit of Crimbo shopping in B&M's.

And this is how it looked, I'm gonna apologise now for how untidy my nails are, I was literally only having a little experiment and didn't expect to like it so much! I'm not a big fan of blue or green nails as I really don't think either of the two colours do anything to compliment my skin tone however I really like this teal sort of shade. I know that the colour on my nails is almost identical to the colour you see in the bottle but for some reason my camera has made the bottle seem a lot darker than it actually is :S

Products used from left-right: W7 Cosmic Black, Avon Nailwear Pro in Sequinned Turquoise and Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat.

 As you can hopefully see in the above picture, the Avon polish is more of a turquoise colour. I used one coat of the W7 polish, then painted one coat of the turquoise over the top and finished with the Seche Vite Top Coat for a glossy finish.

NOTD: Models Own Beth's Blue

I'm a big fan of Models Own nail polishes so I was obviously quite excited when I finally received my order from the 50% sale they held a few days ago, unfortunately two of the polishes I ordered will be going back...one of the bottles had cracked and broke and this one I'm wearing is basically faulty. So now I'm guess your thinking why is this nail of the day if it's faulty weirdo?! Basically I think I got a dodgy bottle as the formula was really gloopy and applied horrible but on the other hand I absolutely LOVE this colour, I think I've finally found a blue polish that suits me!! I'd say it is more of a purpley blue tone which is probably why its not as unflattering as other blues I've tried.

Was anyone else tempted by the 50% sale and if so let me know what gems you bought! As always I appreciate any comments so feel free to drop me a comment :-)