Thursday 27 September 2012

Neon charcoal

Hello! I'm breaking my "less chatter, more polish" rule for a minute to mention that I'm enjoying tonight's episode of Four Weddings. The wedding favours at one wedding included masquerade masks so of course I'm a fan ;)

...And now it's back to the polish. Have you overdone it with the neon this summer, yet still want a little colour in your life? If so, you feel exactly as I felt when I did this mani. I've done way too many neon manis, but I'm not ready to switch to the October dark hues yet, so I compromised.



Luckily, my ever so thoughtful fiance surprised me with a box of nail art supplies he'd bought for me! I'll be doing a review of the products in a later post but for now I'll just say the Shany stamping plates and striping polishes are very good so far.

-I started with my usual clear base coat, then Sinful Colours polish in "Secret Admirer." Two coats gave me a mostly opaque finish, albeit a little streaky on one or two nails.


-I used my Konad stamping set with white Konad special nail polish to apply my stamp. The pattern came from Shany's "SH22" image plate.



-I used Shany's striping polishes in 1 (lime green with a pearly finish), 3 (neon yellow), 4 (neon pink), 18 (neon blue) and 23 (neon orange) to colour the triangles in. I left a few triangles white here and there.
-I finished with Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear topcoat in "Invisible."

Natural lighting

With flash

I later decided I wanted some more neon so I stamped my thumbnails as well, but it's up to you whether you want to do one accent nail, multiple accent nails, or...stamp all the nails!!!!!!

Happy polishing!

Tuesday 25 September 2012

Neon splash nails

Hello again! Today I have another past mani to show you. This is a neon splatter/splashy look on a white background. I did this design for a friend and I loved it so much that I decided to try it on myself. I kept it for almost a whole week, which is a pretty big deal for me.


-I used Sinful Colours "Snow Me White" as the white base. Only two coats were required for suitable (enough) opacity. The colours I used for the neon splash were Colour Club's neon polishes in "Pucci-licious," "Warhol," "Chelsea Girl" and "Almost Famous," and Sinful Colours' "Rise and Shine."

L-R: Snow Me White, Pucci-licious, Warhol, Chelsea Girl, Almost Famous, Rise and Shine
(In real life the colours are much brighter than shown in this picture. In fact, "Rise and Shine" looked so dull in the picture that I did a very lame Photoshop and put a better picture of it in there)

-After applying the white base, I placed a drop of my first colour on a piece of plastic and used a dotting tool to pick some polish up. I tend to do this instead of dipping the dotting tool directly in the bottle since it's less wasteful and I avoid having the entire bottle dry up from being opened every few seconds.
-I applied the dot to the corner of my nail and used the dotting tool to drag the colour out towards the base of my nail in streaks. I did this for all my nails, one by one.
-The next colour was applied in the same way, and this continued until all the desired colours had been applied.
-When I had finished, I touched up with more of whichever colours I thought were underrepresented on each nail.
-I used Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear topcoat in "Invisible" to protect my mani.



Don't forget to comment and subscribe! :) Happy polishing!

Monday 24 September 2012

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my very first blog post! I've been meaning to do a nail polish/beauty blog for quite a while so I'm happy to finally be doing it. I hope you all enjoy my posts as much as I know I'll enjoy creating them. I'll be posting pictures of my nail art, as well as reviews of different beauty products I've used. My theme tends to be less chatter, more polish, so here we go!...

This is a tape and plastic wrap mani I did a few weeks ago. Scroll down to read instructions on how you can recreate this look yourself, and remember to let me know how it went!


- I first painted my nails with a clear base coat, followed by two coats of Revlon nail polish in "Dreamer."
- Once that was totally dry, I cut strips of Sellotape of varying thickness and stuck them onto my nails.
- I applied dots of polish in different colours to the exposed strips, then crumpled some plastic wrap and pressed it to my nails to blend the colours together. This step has to be done quickly, before the polish sets, otherwise the plastic wrap will remove the colours in ugly clumps instead of nicely blending them together. The colours I used were Sinful Colours nail polishes in "Rise and Shine," "Oasis" and "Aquamarine."
- I used Sinful Colours "Let's Meet" to fill in the spaces. "Let's Meet" is a lovely shimmery yellow polish which brightened the whole mani up.
- I finished with Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear top coat in "Invisible," using a generous amount of polish and light strokes to avoid smudging the design.

L-R: Dreamer, Rise and Shine, Oasis, Aquamarine, Let's Meet

This fun design was relatively simple but looked as though it took hours to do! Feedback is welcome so please post your comments.

Happy polishing!

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