Pick and Mix - Week 4

Week 4 time! I really struggled with inspiration for this one.

The choices were 70's or Grey and Colour. I really wanted to try 70's, but I found it really hard to come up with any ideas.

So here is my mani!

I used OPI French Quarter for Your Thoughts - a warm nude leaning grey, Sinful Colors - Snow Me White and China Glaze - Yellow Polka Dot Bikini for the accents. I had seen something like this somewhere recently, but after an extensive search of Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest I just can't find it. I really wanted to credit my original inspiration aswell. Nevermind.

What do you think?

Rachael xxx

An InLinkz Link-up

Pick and Mix - Week 3 Texture

Hi again! We're on week 3 already!

This week is Matte / Texture or 60's. I'm not really a massive fan of either, but I do like the odd texture so will give it a go!

So I raided Becca's (Kitty's Painted Claws) polishes for this - I (We) chose a base of Sally Hansen - Bewitched and Barry M - Duchess for the texture. I own Duchess myself, but it has sat untried for around a year.. poor polish!

I applied one coat of Barry M - Duchess to my thumb, pointer and pinky, and 1 thick coat of Bewitched to the other nails. 



I then wanted to try the 'quilted' sort of look, so I taped some criss cross diagonals and painted over with some Duchess and then removed the tape. 





I then added a second coat of Duchess to my other nails as it didnt look even. You can see the shift between purple to goldy-brown quite well on the above picture.

What do you think? Are you a texture fan? Have you done quilted nails before? Would love to know your thoughts!

Rachael xxx

An InLinkz Link-up

Pick and Mix - Week 2 - 2nd Prompt

Hiiiii

Well, I was feeling challenged, so I thought I would give a 3 colour gradient a go! I saw some beautiful nails over at Shamelessly Polished. I can't pull off those tones, but they inspired me to try my own version.

I used two coats of L'Oréal - Rose Bagatelle as a base, then sponged over a gradient of that plus Sinful Colors - Timbleberry and Sinful Colors - Soul Mate.

Here's my final gradient - not 100% but hopefully some more practice will make it better. I am certainly happy to have my beautiful points back anyway.

I then thought what can I add to improve this - the answer is always glitter. So I put a layer of China Glaze - Fairy Dust on it. 

What do you think? If you have any tips on gradients I'd love to hear them!

Rachael xxx

An InLinkz Link-up

Pick and Mix - Week 2

Hiiii!

Well I had this fantastic idea, but as per usual it involved something I am no good at - chevrons!

Practice will make perfect I hope! Anyway, this week one of the prompts is pink. I used two coats of Sinful Colors - Timbleberry, and one coat of Sinful Colors - Pinky Glitter for most of my nails.

My accent is 3 coats of China Glaze - Glistening Snow with some fairly wonky chevrons of Nails Inc - New York Noir.  I cut strips of Scotch tape and laid them over my accent nail before adding a layer of polish, but for some reason even though I removed straight away, the tape broke in two places so I had to go all surgery on them with a pair of tweezers to try and salvage it.

What do you think? If anyone has any tips for chevrons then I would love to hear them!

Rachael xxx

An InLinkz Link-up

BNB Colour Me Crazy - Blue

Hey!

Here are my blue nails to bring me up to date. These are inspired by @sr_nails from instagram.

I had decided ages ago that I wanted to use my new OPI Blue Chips for this mani. I just didn't know what exactly I wanted to do with it. OPI Blue Chips is a renamed version of The Flowers are Blue-ming from the Katy Perry collection. Whatever the name, its really pretty and worth the £3.99 price tag I paid for it.

My thumb, pinky and pointer are 3 coats of OPI Blue Chips. My ring and middle fingers are two coats of Models Own Hypergel White Light, striped with Kate Spade for Nails Inc - New York Noir and the flowers are freehanded with the above black, white, blue and an added lighter shade of MoYou holographic blue polish. I didn't realise how hard zebra stripes are!

What do you think?

Rachael xxx

Don't forget to check out everyone's blue nails!

An InLinkz Link-up

BNB Colour Me Crazy - Green

Good afternoon!

I am super late with these, but after seeing the gorgeous nails by Anna Bean, I had an idea to do some of my own. Green is also my fave colour, so I didn't want to miss out doing these nails for the Colour Me Crazy challenge!

The base is 2 coats of Barry M - Key Lime, with one coat of Abuse the Ooze by Femme Fatale Cosmetics. This is one of my favourite brands and is particularly special as my other half specially went out and chose this colour for me.

I then used a design from MoYou London plate Artist 03 to stamp over and a generous coat of Seche Vite to smooth it out.

What do you think? Are you a green / glitter / stamping fan? 

Rachael xxx

Don't forget to check out everyone else's green manis!

Mani Swap with Pocket Money Polishes

Hey all!

I am away all this week in the beautiful Glencoe in Scotland. But even though I am pretty much signal-less and internet-less, I have managed to get on at least this once to share my nails with you.

So we decided to pick one mani that we liked and recreate. Both of us prefer to be a little creative, so we decided to produce a mani that was loosely based on the others original.

I know that the lovely lady at PMP loves OPI, so I decided to create my own version of this mani below, using a new OPI I had just bought.

I didn't have an exact colour match, so I used the opportunity to use OPI Stir-fried Eggplant that I had just bought. This is one of the re-named NOPI colours I believe, but either way, its pretty beautiful especially for purple. It's less eggplanty on the nail to the bottle I think, but it has beautiful flecks that shine gold and pink in the light.

I also couldn't find a gold to match - I'm sure I own a gold glitter polish somewhere?? But my eyes fell on a Revlon Moon Candy Nail Art duo in one of my drawers. The brown it is paired with isnt anything amazing by itself, but the shard/flakie end is lovely, shining blue to green to gold. Its very thick though, so I just dabbed it onto my nails.

What do you think of the end result? I really like it, considering its purple.

Have you ever done any mani swaps before? Would you like to do one? I've really enjoyed this one so if you fancy doing one with me, let me know!

Check out what Charlie chose to recreate here!

Rachael xxx

BNB Colour Me Crazy - Yellow

Good morning!

Today I have my yellow nails to show you! (My red and orange are on route, I promise!) I was really expecting to hate these, but I super love them! I love splatter nails, theyre just really easy, lazy nail art which I love doing!

I used Models Own HyperGel -White Light as a base, and Nails Inc Notting Hill Carnival and New York Noir for this mani.

Hope you like them - what do you think? Do you like splatter nails? Are you a yellow fan?

Rachael xxx

P.S dont forget to check out everyone else's yellow nails this week! 

An InLinkz Link-up

2014 - The Year of the Bucket List!

Hey all!

Just another quick post today - I hope you all had a wonderful new year and are well recovered if necessary by now!

I had a lovely quiet night in with my other half after he managed to bruise the end of his nose. It was like a giant black smudge right on the end, so he didn't want to go out in public bless him!

Anyway, I digress. I have been thinking for some time that I need to get out of this comfortable rut I've been in for awhile. Being careful, sticking to things I've done before and that I'm comfortable with. Things that are easy! I will never get better at doing my nails if I don't try new things, so I've written a small bucket list of things I'd like to do in 2014 for the blog.

1.  Use up more of my untrieds. This is more for me than for the blog - I have so many polishes I have never even tried,  so I want to regularly try and share some of them with you. I will be starting 'Untried Friday' where I share some of these.

2. Trying new nail art techniques. I have gotten into a bit of a rut lately with nail art, so I want to try and do something new at least once or twice a fortnight. I know there are only a set number of different techniques, so this is why I want to try and recreate some of the wonderful manis that I have seen other bloggers do. 

3. Get back into challenges, and finish them. I love challenges, but often fall by the wayside and struggle to finish them. So I have joined a couple of less full on challenges for the weeks ahead, so look out for some of those posts soon!

4. More tutorials / pictorials and possibly videos. The latter will be the last to arrive if ever, as I'm pretty shy and awful at talking in public! But I do want to build on my tutorial skills. Any tutorials you would like to see, please let me know!

5. Get more involved in what the British Nail Bloggers are doing. I often see link ups and find I have missed something, so I will be making sure I share more of what they / we are up to this year!

6. More interactivity - I would love to know what you want to see on the blog. What do you like / dislike, what you want to see more / less of. And please comment! I love reading all your comments even if I do sometimes forget to reply. I am often browsing on my phone and my phone hates comments and makes it really difficult to post them, so I'm sorry about that! 

7. A couple of giveaways. I will have another one soon as I am running late on my 1 year blogiversary, so keep your eyes peeled!

Have you written a bucket list for 2014? Anything you definitely want to achieve in the next 365 days?

Rachael xxx

Pokémon NAC - Week 16 Steel

Good morning all!

I have been working over and over on my Ghost nails for Week 15 and I just am not happy with any of my attempts. I've gotten quite frustrated with myself and so I've taken a break and moved onto Steel week. I chose Scizor because he's just the man! Only seen one episode with him in, but after searching tumblr there are quite a few mentions of him that I obviously havent seen just yet!

Low and behold, first attempt and I'm really happy with them! I used Cadillacquer's We'll Meet Again as my base as it sparkles with tiny flecks of red which are the exact colour of Scizor. What do you think of my freehand? I'm really quite proud of these!

Don't forget to check out everyone else's Steel nails!

Rachael xxx

Pokémon NAC - Week 14 Dragon

Hey all!

Pokémon nails again - I will complete this challenge!

Its dragon week today, and especially in game you've gotta love dragons. Up until recently, they were pretty much the shizz, but now they've introduced Fairy types (aka Annoying. As. ****.) Dragons aren't quite as strong as they used to be. No worries, theres still some amazing Dragon pokémon - just a shame most of them are Gen 3 or later!

So I went for Kingdra. It's the only new addition to the Dragon category this generation and it's a bit of a poor looking dragon - it's defo still pretty cool as a water type though. I've never used it in game, or seen much of it in the animé which is a shame! There is one episode though which proper makes me laugh - Kingdra vs Totodile haha! Totodile ends up chomping him on the nose and when I saw this GIF I just had to include it!

I tried for Nimbus nails again, but my choice of polishes didn't pan out quite as well this time.. but no matter. I'm pleased with my freehand.

What do you think?

Rachael xxx

Pokémon NAC - Week 12 Ice

Smoochum!!

Had to be done. Smoochum has a proper lovely storyline in the anime too - her owner is a famous movie star, who Smoochum supported all his life to become famous (there are heartaching scenes of her washing dishes with him!)  but his managers think he should have a more manly pokémon and so he has to hide Smoochum from all of his fans. In the end, he reveals that he loves Smoochum and if they won't accept that, he will deal with not being famous anymore. And of course, they still love him, and they love Smoochum more! Happy endings!

So here are my Smoochum nails! I followed the Nimbus Nail Tutorial from Nailasaurus for the base, and then I freehanded some kisses using Taras Talons Fallen Leaves on all nails apart from my middle finger.

I then freehanded Smoochum onto that nail. What do you think? I am really pleased with these, I have to say! 

Rachael xxx

Pokémon NAC - Week 11 Rock

Hello everyone!

I've got another installment of the Pokémon Nail Art Challenge for you today! If I was on time, then the challenge actually ends next week.. so I am playing major catch up! Here's the first one - Corsola! 

I know Corsola has been done before but there is a distinct lack of rock pokémon.. Rhyhorn and Rhydon are just not doing it for me! Plus Corsola has a good storyline as becoming Misty's pokémon in the animé.

I started with a single coat of Essie - Butler Please, and then coated with a splash of Sinful Colors - Hottie as my base.

I then freehanded my Corsola from memory - what do you think?

Don't forget to check out everyone else's Rock week nails!

Pokémon NAC - Week 10 Psychic

Good morning!

Another installment of my favourite ever challenge - Pokémon! This week is Psychic!

And here are my nails - inspired by the original opening scene of all Pokémon episodes :)

What do you think? I did them from memory, hence after watching the opening realising that Mew doesn't show up in space in the same colours as I painted him.. or look half as goofy, but overall I'm still pretty pleased with them!

Let me know what you think :)

Rachael xxx

Pokemon NAC Week 9 - Ground Pokémon

Hey all!

I am never on time for these things, but I've been trying to catch up. 

Sometimes I try and overcomplicate things and its really disappointing when things don't work out. So today's mani is super simple.. I just hope you can guess who it's based on - I took inspiration from some cool wallpapers that Becca used to use as her monitor backgrounds.

I did however forget that the Sally Hansen (The Sky's The Limit) that I used is a terrible stainer!

What do you think?? Can you guess who it is? 

Rachael xxx

Halloween Nail Art Challenge - Day 3 Things That Go Bump in the Night

Hey all!

Day 3 - Things that go BUMP in the night!

When Becca and I worked on these themes, we wanted them to be as open as possible - so I'm pleased with today's theme as I went for what scares me most - the thought of things coming back to life! I hate zombies, I can't watch The Walking Dead or any other program / film with zombies in.. and yet I love all other things supernatural. Zombies are obviously just too close to reality for me!

My first Nerd Lacquer's arrived this morning, and the Quantum Bluniverse was just begging to be used! In my excitement I forgot to photo it on its own, so its another excuse to wear it again!

I then freehanded my design over the top, then outlined it all with glow in the dark top coat, but my camera (both my DSLR and my iPhone) refuse to pick it up. I see it though, I will just need to appreciate this element on my own! I think QB was a bit dark, so if you can't see, I have a black cat on my little finger, a tree on my ring finger, gravestones on the middle and a zombie hand coming out of the earth on my index.

Don't forget to check everyone else's out and let me know what you think of mine!

Rachael xxx