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 :-)

Bundle Monster Nail Art Stamping Plates

Hey everyone, hope your all having a good week so far?

When I came back from my baby honeymoon a few weeks ago, I think I may of mentioned that I was going to do a post on the Bundle Monster Nail Art Stamping Plates aka Fauxnads (Budget version of the Konad plates for those not in the know) so here it is! In a nutshell you get 25 stamping plates for £16.99 in comparison to one Konad plate costing around £5 so the attraction is pretty obvious if your a bit of a nail art junkie like me :-)

This image taken from Amazon illustrates the huuuumungous variety of plates that you get.

The images above were taken after one of my first little experiments with one of the Monster plates designs and if I do say so myself, I think there half decent....not bad but not Uhh-mazing. As you can see there are little parts where the stamp hasn't transferred onto my nail i.e. part of the stamp has stuck to the stamper although that may have been because I wasn't quick enough. I also noticed that the actual designs don't transfer onto the nail as sharp and crisp as Konad designs, if that makes sense. You see how the edges of the leaves look a tad fuzzy like I had a shaky hand when I was doing my nails?

If you have used Konad plates before you may of also noticed that these fauxnads have more designs crammed onto the plate which originally I thought was great because I'd have more designs to play with but in hindsight became a bit of a nuisance because you haven't got much space when scraping away excess polish and picking up the stamp with your stamper.

L-R: Stargazer Chrome Silver and Models Own Grey Day

I had read in a few places that it's not exactly essential that you own special Konad stamping nail polish to do nail art stamping and whilst I agree with this to some extent, I think it's a bit hit & miss with certain nail polishes. I found a great link here that details all suitable nail polishes for stamping, I would definitely recommend testing out your own as well though....it can be fun just to experiment sometimes and if it works that's great and if not, you've only wasted a minuuute amount of nail polish!


Although I think there are a few cons with these plates, all in all I think they are a worthwhile spend if you enjoy trying out new nail designs and having a little play around with nail art.

Where to buy: Amazon.co.uk

What do you think of fauxnads in comparison to the real deal?

Konad Nail Art Stamping

Over the past few months I'd noticed more and more nail art designs using something called Konad...Intrigued, I decided to do some Googling and Youtubing and found out that in a nutshell it was almost like a cheats way of creating amazing nail art designs. Upon this discovery I decided to purchase a small Konad starter kit and a few image plates. 

And this is what I came up with on my first attempt and if I do say so myself, I was fairly impressed! Admitedly, it took a bit of trial and error to get the consistency of the polish on the stamp right but once I'd got the hang of that it was really quite easy.

This is the image plate I used and the design I used is framed with the pink dots.

I think these are actually quite Christmassy looking although that wasn't really my intentions I just loved the design and wanted to use a dark base colour that would make the white stamping polish stand out.



Sorry about the quality of the pictures, in hindsight I should of just waited till it was daylight to take photos :-\

What I Used and Where I Bought From:

Base Coat Colour: OPI You Don't Know Jacques about £9.99 from Sally Hair & Beauty (Pretty sure you could get this off somewhere like eBay or Amazon for cheaper though)

Konad Starter Kit and Image Plate M71 from http://ocnailart.com/
If your just starting up with Konad, I'd highly recommend purchasing from this website. The delivery is super fast considering it's from the US and the prices are relatively low in comparison to other Konad sellers and...they also add a little smiley face & note to your billing invoice which I liked, you may think I'm a bit sad for being excited over this I know but I think it just adds a nice little personal touch :-)

I can't wait to really go mad with my little kit and show you what I come up with! Have you tried Konad stamping and what are your fave image plates? I can't wait to sneak a few onto my Christmas wish list!!

NOTD: Muted Polka Dots

Just thought I'd share another little quick and easy nail art design I'm currently rockin...so easy that I was able to do the right hand fairly quickly with my unloved left hand and no mistakes!

I know the dots aren't exactly uniform but I didn't want them to be if I'm honest, I'm more of a go with the flow kinda girl. I used a really old but surprisingly good, Collection 2000 nail polish in black and one of my fave nail polishes ever, Models Own Nude Beige.

This is pretty much all I used minus clear base and top coats, the dotting tool came in a pack of 5 from an eBay seller in China and they cost me about £2.50...you could just use the end of a hair pin but for that price I thought I may as well buy specific nail tools and you can obviously create many more designs other than simple polka dots (plus I tend to lose hair pins all the time so I don't fancy wasting them on my nails!).

 Hope you've enjoyed this post anyways, have a great week :-)

Easy Peasy Fruity Frenchies

I'm not a big nail art person but with so much time on my hands at the moment I've quickly become obsessed with googling all sorts of nail art designs, anyways I thought I'd have a dabble myself and share my first attempt with you :-) 

 I've seen tons of gorgeous designs using these fimo fruit pieces but as I've literally never experimented with nail art I decided to take rather small babysteps and start off with something quite basic and easy to acheive. It's not exactly a work of art what I created but I was relatively pleased considering my inexperience! If you want to know how I did this, read on :-)

Step-by-Step

1. Make sure nails are clean and filed to your desired shape, you could use nail tips if your nails are quite short or you wanted something more dramatic.

2. Paint your nails with a clear base coat.

3.Once the base coat has dried, paint the tips (white bits) of your nails with a bright, fruity colour e.g. oranges, corals and yellows would work well.

4. Once the tips have dried, put a few blobs of nail glue on the corner tip of the nail and a few blobs down the side to create almost triangular section of glue (you only want this to take up a small section of the nail..say less than a ¼ of the entire nail).

5.Using a pair of tweezers, stick on the fruit slices and hold in place for a few seconds until they feel secure.

That's it :-) You should now have a fabulously fruity french manicure! 

Here's what I used:

1. Maybelline Salon Manicure Calcium Strengthener 

Available from most drugstores but I purchased two for 99p + 80p Postage from this eBay seller - Lippy Lounge

2. ELF Nail Polish in Mango Madness 

Available from: ELF Cosmetics 

3. Elegant Touch Brush On Nail Glue 

Available from: http://www.boots.com

4. Old Pair of Eyebrow Tweezers

5. Fimo Fruit Slices 

Available from various eBay sellers for under £2.00

In hindsight, I think I would either paint the whole nail one colour or use false tips as the effect is a teeny bit lost on the length of my nails...suppose that's the nature of
learning though! 

Hope you've enjoyed this anyways :-)