Pastel Humbugs (And my new camera!)

Hello people! Sorry for the absence lately, I've been studying for a test and didn't have time (nor creativity) for nail stuff...which leads me onto how it's now test/exam time for me, so things might be a bit quiet for the next month...which saddens me cos I like doing nail stuff, even if it end up like crap half the time :p But i might fit in a few simple designs (like this one) so hopefully I'll still get to do some things :(

Also, new camera finally! :D I found a Samsung ST550 on ebay, with 3 memory cards, a case and an exra battery on ebay for just £60...bargaiiiiin! :D I didn't actually have money at the time, but Mr Vimto bought it for me as an early Christmas present, so he says...I say that cos I don't like him buying things for me and he's disguising this as a present :p

Anyways, back to the point... I hate winter and was clinging on to summer by staring longingly at my summery shades...and somehow matte pastels with glossy stripes popped into my head :)

Pinky: Models Own, Lilac Dream.

Ring: Revlon, Sunshine Sparkle (over Revlon, White On White)

Middle: Barry M, Blue Moon (over Revlon, White On White)

Index: Barry M, Peach Melba

Thumb (unseen): Models Own, Jade Stone

Matte topcoat: GOSH

White Stripes: Revlon, White On White

This reminds me if colourful humbugs and ice cream....I miss summer... *sigh*

Well, as I head off for exactly 4 weeks of energy drinks, 12 hour library shifts and lots and lots of writing...have a safe month and hopefully see you soon! :)

Twit Ta-Woo!

Apologies for the lighting...hopefully you can still get the gist of the design :( Mr Vimto's bringing his camera from back home in Edinburgh this weekend so hopefully the pics will get better (not sure what the make of the camera is, but anything's better than my current camera, right? hehe)

So, as thrilling as Forensic Bioscience is (I do it as an extra module, not a degree sadly), writing a lab report for it isn't quite as thrilling, so I decided to do my nails for a bit of a break :3

Now, I am obsessed with owls, dunno why, but I think they're rather awesome and I'm slowly building up a collection of owl themed goodies :D I've been planning to do owl nails for a while, but wasn't sure how to go about it...full owls, heads, on branches or whatnot. I was planning on doing a scenic type thing, with owls sitting on a tree branch and a moon in the background, but it didn't work out quite well due to spacing issues on my short nails :(

I decided to settle on using negative spacing (when you can see bare nail) cos I liked the look of seeing the wee owl ears :3 I used some french manicure stickers to get the curve (relatively straight)

I thought it might look a bit boring just having all owls so thought I'd do polka dots on the ring and thumb in the colours of the owls...they're a tad wonky cos I wasn't quite paying attention hehe.

Although, I did forget to add french manicure base before I started the coloured owls, so my bare nail looks TOO bare :(

Green: Models Own, Jade Green.

Lilac: Models Own, Lilac Dream.

Grey: Collection 2000, Angel Wings.

Orange: Ebay unbranded striper.

Yellow: Ebay unbranded.

Black: Ebay unbranded.

Top coat: Nail life, speed demon.

Facets Of Fuchsia and Beetlejuice Collection

I had quite a little polish haul this week :) I've slowed down on my polish buying these days because I'm a jobless student :( However, I had enough Boots points to grab the coveted Facets Of Fuchsia by Revlon (£6.49), and Mr Vimto was lovely enough to buy me the newly launched duo chrome Beetlejuice collection (£20) from Models Own :3

(no topcoat)

£6.49 from Boots

I'd seen Facets of Fuchsia in Boots before I'd seen it around on Blogger, but I was a bit hesitant because I wasn't quite sure as to how it'd be on the nail. But after seeing it swatched on someone's blog (can't remember who, it was a while ago!), I wanted to get it before it sold out or discontinued since it's part of a limited collection.

FOF is a black jelly base with some hex glitters and smaller square glitters. What's interesting about this is that you can see the glitter from the previous coat through the newer coat so it has a sort of...faded but solid look of something stuck in amber. If that makes sense...I just realised how retarded that sounded lol! I went to see Jurassic Park in the cinema when it came out so maybe that's where my analogy came from :o

Anyways, now to Models Own...I have swatched these, and I am looking at them right now, but my sucky camera (and lack of natural daylight) means I can't take a photo of the true lovely duo chrome-ness of the Beetlejuice collction, but here's a photo of the polishes in the bottle!

L-R: Golden Green, Pinky Brown,  Purple Blue, Aqua Violet, Emerald Black

£5 each

I'm not entirely sure if these are limited edition or not, but I have heard from their Facebook page tha even though the pinky brown (2nd from left) has sold out, they'll be getting more stock at the end of November (just in time for Christmas ;) )

As you can see from the photo, these polishes are shimmery duo chromes shifting between 2 colours in natural daylight.  I wanted the majority of these since I heard about the launch on the Models Own Facebook page, (golden green doesn't tickle my fancy too much) but Mr Vimto was nice enough to get me the boxset (all 5 with a 3-in-1 clear polish for £20) as an early Christmas present :) However, I dont like him spending money on me so I'm hoping to pay him back when I can :o

These seem a little thinner than a normal Models Own polish, but not too sure as It's been a while since I bought a fresh polish. But they're opaque in 2 thin-ish coats so they're probably not as thin as I seem to think they are.

So that concludes my ramble on my polishes this week!

Glitter Stripes

I have to say, I love this blue glitter from Barry M. It's so dense so it only takes 3 coats for it to be opaque...

But I didn't want the in yo' face glittery-ness that it has on it's own so I decided to lay some striping tape on the blue, and paint over with black, so there'd be lines of blue glitter left amongst the black :)

Also, this post means I am FINALLY up to date with my designs and I shall be able to give you better posts about each design such as inspiration and colours of the polishes :) but nothing can be said for the quality of the photos...sorry :( I wish I had a proper camera :/

Can You Feel The Boom Boom Bass? (super-fail)

After the somewhat success of the Sweet Like Chocolate song inspired nails, I attempted to do some nails inspired by Nicki Minaj's Super Bass. And how I failed -__-

My right hand has better designs than the left, so maybe if I did the same designs on the other hand, it'd have looked better :/

Thumb: pink and yellow eyliner

Index: half blonde, half pink hair

Middle: pink hair

Ring: pink lipstick

Pinky: green hair

Thumb: green scaley swimsuit with pink goo

Index: glow in the dark nautical stripes

Middle: polka dots in the colours of the dancers' underwear

Ring: pink feather

Pinky: pink giraffe print

I really didn't like how the nails turned out, I took them off after a day...Oh well, back to the sketchbook...

Halloween 2011

I must admit, I'm not a fan of Haloween, y'know dressing up etc. But I do like how much effort people go to for it. So I decided to do a Halloween design :)

Thumb: eyeball

Index: Bat against sunset

Middle: Blood drip

Ring: Pumpkin

Pinky: Mummy

Thumb: Frankenstein

Index: Dracula

Middle: Zombie drip

Ring: Ghost

Pinky: Fangs

It took longer than I expected to do these...maybe cos I wasn't in the mood to do my nails, but my hatred of having bare nails made me do them :P However, I did forget to use my Fantasy Makers glow in the dark polish I bought specifically for them :'(

Sweet Like Chocolate, Boy...

Nothing like a bit of cheesy 90's pop to inspire your nail art ;)

I added a little cherry type rhinestone on an accent finger to make it look more dessert-ish :)

Real Feather Nails

Real feather nails were quite the trend around the time I done this, so I decided to get some off ebay. I wasn't sure whether to get like 500 for cheap, or 50 for a tad more money, as I wasn't sure it'd be a trend I'd like to do more than once, and what the hell was I going to do with 500 feathers?! XD

The steps are easy...base coat, dry. Top coat, place feather on, trim if necessary, wait to dry. Slather on more top caot. The last step is rather important, as it helps hold down any stray feathery bits and make it smoother, you can see the texture of the feather on my thumb.

Brown: Barry M, Mushroom

Pastel Stripeys

I realised that even though I have like 4 proper striping brushes...I hadn't actually done many stripe involved designs :O

These are a lot simpler to do than I thought...the process is also rather theraputic :)

I used Collection 2000, Angel Wings as a base and used peach, blue and green polish for layering.

It's a really nice and simple look, and colourful without being too in your face :)

Angry Birds!

In all honesty, I hate iPhones. And iPads... But I love the games like Plants vs Zombies and...Angry Birds! :D

There's nothing like destroying a green pigs fort ;) So this is my attempt at angry birds nails...a few folk on youtube have done the full nails with their faces, but I thought it'd be better to see the whole shape of the head so I did them...erm...not sure of a short way of saying I only partially painted my nails hehe.

The hardest bird out of them was the big white one, was hard trying to get the angle on his sorrowful eyes :p
I was planning on doing Plants vs Zombies nails on my other hand, but they turned out SO stupid and ridiculous, so I just did co-ordinating colurs with some GOSH flakey glittery polish over the top :)

Danger, Danger, High Voltage!!

Hehe, loved that song... ;)

Anyways...I got some french manicure type sticker things that are in certain shapes (as well as the frech manicure shape) like lightening bolts and squiggly lines etc, so I decided to try them out.

However, I didn't realise until I attempted to peel them off that they're rather overly sticky and pulled off bits of the grey I was using as a base -__-

I tried filling it back in, but did it rather haphazardly, so they're kinda messy :/ 

I used two different shades of blue on either side of the bolt to make it a bit different...

I haven't used the stickers so much after this since they're so sticky...I tried loosening the glue a bit by putting them on my skin a few times, but then it takes too much glue off and they don't stick to my nails -_-

*sighs* I'll figure out how to use them someday!

Floral Gems

I'm not sure how I got round to doing this design. I kept meaning to do this sort of arrangement to make flowers from round and tear dropped gems I have, and I adore this pinkish colour I have (not that the camera shows it well...)

Hmm, no sure what else to say about this...suppose if you have any questions then leave a wee comment :)

Pink: Collection 2000, Fruit Salad

I Moustache You A Question!

Moustaches. They're awesome! I dunno where I got the idea of moustaches from, it kinda popped into my head :)

I knew if I did moustaches on both hands, my left hand would be all screwy (cos I'm awesome and left handed ;) lol!) so I decided to do the pun on the other hand...It took a while for everyone to read it though since I had to write it in text speak more or less.

I decided to use a skin tone type polish so my nails would look like wee faces and to draw differet kinds of taches to mix it up a bit :)

Beige: Revlon, Gray Suede

Black: Ebay unbranded striper/pen polish

Pastel half moons

Sorry about the really crap lighting, as I've said, I only have my Blackberry camera, and I usually do my nails at night, so my photos are usually horrid...I'll invest in a camera one day :P

Anyways, this is my 2nd attempt at half moons with a bit of microbead detailing. Not too sure if I said in my firs post about half moons, but I did this by using hole reinforcement stickers at a guide so I dont have to worry about being careful hehe, And I added a little detail by adding microbeads to the line on one finger. I liked the idea of using a little something or other to hide the join, cos it neatens it up a bit better and hides any squinty bits hehe.

Grey: Collection 2000, Angel Wings

Lilac: Models Own, Lilac Dream

(I'm planning on labelling the polishes used for every post once I get caught up, but I can't remember them all for backdating T_T )