NOTD - Nautical LOVE

I heart nautical style. Knots and anchors and stripes and navy - yes please! I've created a few nautical nail looks before, but not for a while, so I thought it was about time I did it again! I also took pictures of each step, tutorial stylee. I hope you like it!

1. Start with a base coat of your favourite primary red. I used 17 Knockout Red and applied two coats.

2. Once it's completely dry, tape off a third of your nail and paint the other 2/3 with navy blue, I used China Glaze Starboard. It doesn't matter if this is messy, you'll tidy it up later.

 3. Use a white striper, or striping brush dipped in white polish to create stripes on the blue part of the nail. You can tidy up the edge between the red and blue here too, although I added striping tape in the next step.

  4. Add a strip of gold striping tape between the red and blue sections before adding topcoat.

Easy peasy nautical nails!

What do you think of my tutorial? Would you like to see more? I've never really thought of doing any before because I don't think my nail art is very tutorial worthy!

Hx

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NOTD – Shattered Neon

Hi!

Today I'm showing you a neon shatter mani. Nope, I'm still not bored of the shatters! For this mani I used two coats of OPI Alpine Snow as my base, and then freehanded diagonal stripes in Color Club Poptastic (pink), Chelsea girl (blue), Twiggie (green), and Almost Famous (yellow). Once it was dry I use MUA Jailbreak over the top. And then dinged it. Oops...

Still liked it. How awesome would it look with OPI Spotted over the top...I can dream...

Hx

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Adventures In Stamping - Red and Black

Two posts for the price of one today, you lucky things!

I haven't taken part in any challenges in such a long time, I couldn't wait to get back on the wagon! This week's adventures in stamping theme was red and black. Since I don't have a red polish that would be opaque enough to stamp over black I used 2 coats of Orly Ma Cherie and stamped over with Konad Special Black and Bundle Monster 310. Ma Cherie has a jelly formula and if I wasn't stamping over it I would have used 3 coats, but I always think 2 is enough with the stamping.

I had a really hard time getting these images to pick up onto the stamper. The thin lines weren't so bad, and where they haven't transferred it makes it look quilted, which I think is cute. But the accent on the ring finger was a bitch, and I had to go back and fill it in with a striper after I'd finally gotten the majority of it to stamp. And I smudged the tips a little bit. LeSigh.

I do like it, I like the quilted feel, but I've come to realise red isn't my colour. I always seem to bypass the reds for some reason, although Ma Cherie is lovely. I just don't feel entirely comfortable with it on my nails. Give me turtles, neons, easter eggs, animal print and glitterbombs and I'm fine, but red? Squirm. I know, I'm odd.

Hx

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NOTD – Teal and Pink Ruffian

Hi!

I don't know if you UKers have noticed, but Accessorise have changed the pricing on their polishes, in Superdrug at least. They all used to be £4, but now the cremes are £2.95 while glitters and other “effect” polishes have different prices ranging between £3-4. I picked up “Teal” a while ago, when Superdrug were doing a 3 for 2, and combined it with a freebie I got from Marie Claire magazine, Ciate Jelly Bean to make a rather scruffy Ruffian. I couldn't be bothered *ahem* didn't have time to fiddle around with stickers, so the lines are far from perfect. I rather think a scruffy ruffian sounds about right though!

I loved the colours together, just a shame the execution wasn't better. I need to get myself some of those ring binder sticker things, because I do love me a Ruffian ;)

Hx

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Go Team GB!

All I can say is wow! Did you watch the Olympics opening Ceremony yesterday? Wasn't it amazing? Mr Bean, live sheep, oiled up exotic men and The Queen jumping out of a helicopter - what more could you want?! I was in a terrible mood last night, but I stayed up way past my bedtime to watch it and went to bed with a smile on my face. A huge cheesy grin infact! Us Brits are mental!

This is what I'm currently wearing on my nails. 2 coats of Revlon Royal with glitter gradient tips of the new Jewel Britannia by Barry M (which some of my lovely Birthday Club friends got me, thank you ladies!). Jewel Britannia is small silver glitter, slightly larger red and blue glitter and then larger still red silver and blue hex glitter. It's quite a gloopy one. I got it almost opaque at 3 coats on a swatch stick, but you might want to layer it over a silver and go for 2 coats if you want full coverage.

From what I'm reading on my Twitter and Facebook timelines, I think you have to be British to "get" it.  I thought the whole ceremony was incredible from start to finish, and the lighting of the torch at the end was breathtakingly beautiful. What a year for Britain! Now let's just hope we get some medals too!

Hx

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Olympic Nail Art!

Hi!

I created this mani to enter into a competition, but because of my (now resolved, hooray!) computer issues I didn't get to enter it :( Never mind, it's pretty awful anyway! But since it is the official opening ceremony tonight, here is my interpretation of the London 2012 Olympics, on my nails.

Pinkie: GB Flag; Ring: Gold medal; Middle: Olympic Torch; Index: Olympics Rings; Thumb: London 2012 Logo

The London 2012 Logo got some stick when the design was originally released, because apparently it cost a lot of money and just looks like Lisa Simpson giving head. So there you go!

I went to see the Olympic torch relay through a local town a few weeks back, and got to meet the lovely lovely Kira from my birthday club :) I had such a nice day and to meet Kira was the icing on the cake. And I also got to see Suess, the polish she was wearing in person too! Incidentally, I was wearing a neon and nude animal print mani - absolutely nothing to do with the olympics whatsoever...

You can just about see the torch in my picture, we waited hours and literally saw it for a few seconds, but I'm glad I did! Did the torch come through a town near you? If you saw it, what did you wear on your nails?! Are you wearing anything special for today's opening ceremony? I've done a glitter gradient with Barry M's Jubilee Jewel, which I'l show you soon!

Hx

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NOTD – Sunburned Zebra...

Hi everyone!

I've gotten into neons a wee bit lately, and was playing around with my new stripers and this manicure was born. Don't call me Snooki, but it was just a little bit Jersey Shore (love that show, but really don't think I can pull it off....) I loved it though, while Mr NN thought it was more sunburned zebra than funky neon animal print...

The base colour is Color Club Poptastic, eyescorching neon pink, and the stripes were done with a black striper polish. It was surprisingly easy to create the stripes, although my topcoat smudged it badly before I realised and used a different one. Has anyone else found the Color Club topcoats that come in the sets to do this? This was the next morning too, so the polish was definitely dry! I switched to Poshe and all was fine. I even tried using the CC topcoat on a magnetic polish the other day, and it wiped the pattern away! Might be helpful in blending a gradient I guess...

Hx

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NOTD – What a difference a Konad Special White Polish makes...

Good morning!

Since I haven't blogged in a while, I have lots and lots of manis to show you that I've worn over the last month or so. I've written about half of them in draft and will schedule them in, with a few new mani's sandwiched inbetween - so you might see my nails go from claws to nubs and back again a few times!

I treated myself to a Konad Special White polish a while ago now, because I was sick of thinking of a great idea for a stamping mani only then having to scrap it because of not having a white polish that stamped properly. I was always a bit reluctant to buy Konad polish, since you can't use it like normal polish, only for stamping, but I can now say it is so worth it. The white especially, and I will be ordering a black soon. The difference, even between this and what I considered a good-for-stamping regular polish is incredible – opacity, dry time, how well it picked up on the stamper. Yep, I'm a convert. I now want a red and blue konad polish too, and that's just for starters...

Anyway, you know I said I wanted it because I was sick of thinking of a great idea for a stamping mani only then having to scrap it because of not having a white polish that stamped properly? Do you think I could come up with an idea for a mani once this arrived? Law. Of. Sod. But I eventually went for this – Finger Paints Grape Gumball (which I won in a giveaway, thank you Ashley!) with a floral design stamped in white. Grape Gumball is super pretty, it has all these teeny flecks of iridescence in it that are just lovely.

The stamping was so good I got asked twice if they were nail wraps. Pretty chuffed :)

So, seriously, if you can never find a white polish that stamps well just splash out on the Konad. I got mine for £5 for 11ml plus a couple of quid postage on ebay, so really it ended up cheaper than all the other white polishes I've bought and tried for stamping...lesson learned.

Hx

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Honey I'm Home!

Hello! Is anybody there? Do I have any followers left?! It's been a while, hasn't it!

I am back, for now at least! I have my decrepit old laptop back, teh interwebz has been reconnected and you have to put up with my gibbering again. I can't believe it's been a month since my last update,  and so much has happened in that time. My baby boy turned two, we've had the wettest summer in the history of the world and I've burned a far few dinners thanks to a certain Mr Grey and his twitchy palm... In between all that I have painted my nails a few times so I have lots and lots of posts lined up, some of which I'm really quite proud of :)

I will be getting a new laptop in the next few days, so you may have to bear with me in terms of getting photos edited and up, but rest assured I haven't forgotten my little corner of the net and I hope I'll soon be back into the swing of blogging.

I've missed you all!

Hx

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