Spooky Waterfall

I wasn't getting much inspiration for a Halloween mani, but I used colours that I think look Halloween-ish to create this waterfall mani instead as it is the challenge for this week on the Nail Polish Queens Google+ community. If you love nail art then you should definitely join this community, everyone is really friendly and helpful and people are always posting great designs so you will get lots of inspiration! They now also have a blog too :)

I had this acrylic nail clipper delivered last week (from Amazon for £2.37) and used it to cut my nails, I think this has helped me get a nicer shape. I wanted my nails to be a bit more square but was having difficulty doing so and this has done it very well!

So to start this mani I applied my usual basecoat, I used Barry M Basecoat Topcoat and Nail Hardener. I then applied 2 coats of Barry M black. I have  had this a while and it is running low and is going gloopy, so I have ordered a black from W7 and will let you know what it is like when I get it.

On my thumb and ring finger I applied a coat of Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure (the original version not the new one!). This is amazing over any colour, but over black as I tried to show in the pictures it gives off orange and green in the flakes which is perfect for this mani.

On the thumb and ringer finger I also applied a black diamanté stud near the cuticle. Then for the waterfall effect on the other nails I used a thin nail art brush (this was from one of the cheap sets you can find on eBay and amazon). I put some of each nail polish in a dappen dish and used the brush to create various length lines that thin out at the end. To do this I dragged the brush to make the line and just lifted away near the end.

The colours used are all China Glaze and from left to right they are Sun Worshiper, Def Defying and Spontaneous. I think these colours go quite well for Halloween.

I then applied my topcoat and here is the finished mani :)

I think this all goes together very well and I love this waterfall technique! Was a lot easier to do that I thought it would be too.

As always if you have any questions or anything at all to say please comment below! Thank you for visiting :)

Emerging Swirls

If any of you are regular visitors to my blog you may have noticed me making a few changes over the last couple of weeks. First of all I have changed the layout to be more simple and as of this post my picture watermark is different as I have finally worked out how to curve the text around my nail. I think it looks a lot better like this :)

Another change I have made is that I have made some more social network profiles. These are now accessible around my page and at the end of every post. They link to my Bloglovin', Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+ and Twitter. So don't forget to follow if you also have a profile with any of these sites!


Anyway onto my latest mani...

In my previous post I said I was going to use my pattern scissors for my next mani, I did this mani last night and it took me a while as I was a bit dizzy. I did try cutting the strips I wanted with a zig zag design, but I wasn't getting them as equal as I wanted so in the end I got frustrated and did this instead :)
However I will try my best to use them when I feel well enough to fully concentrate.

Firstly I applied my basecoat, I used Barry M basecoat, topcoat and nail hardener. Then I painted 2 coats of China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint. This is a lovely really light pastel mint colour.

On my middle and ring fingers I created a gradient. For this I again used China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint along with China Glaze For Audrey and Barry M Gelly Guava. These colours are very closely matching they just get gradually darker so a very sublte gradient but I love these colours!

I applied a topcoat on top of the gradient nails as when I sponge the colours onto my nail they sometimes go a bit bumpy. Once this was dry I used Pueen plate Pueen13 and Barry M Gelly Guava to stamp this swirl design.

Then on the rest of my nails I painted a coat of Sally Hansen's Hidden Treasure. In this post I show this polish applied to various colours to show how different it can look, it really is a beautiful polish. I was really lucky to get this as it has been discontinued and is hard to find and generally quite expensive. But just do a lot of researching and hopefully you can find one somewhere!

And this is the finished mani with topcoat applied. My aim with the gradient nails was for the swirl pattern to gradually emerge and I think it looks quite good! I will definitely be using this effect again :)

I hope you all like it too, and as always if you have any questions or anything at all to day please comment below and I will reply!

Pattern Scissors

I completely forgot to post about these. I had these patterned scissors delivered last week. I know they aren't technically nail related, but I am going to use them for doing my nails. 

I have also got some A4 pages of label paper, so my thought is that I can cut out patterns with these scissors to stick on my nails. I haven't tried it yet, but hopefully things will turn out how I expect.

I will probably do my next mani using this method so keep a look out! :)

They also came in this caddy stand so they can look pretty next to all my nail polish :)

I bought these from Yellow Moon and they were £12.99 with £2.99 delivery on top, which I thought wasn't too bad!

As I said I will try and do my next mani using these scissors so keep a look out and let me know what you think.

And as always if you have any questions or anything at all to say then please comment below :)

Duchess Lace

My previous post was the swatches of the Barry M Royal Textured Glitter Collection so of course I had to use one of them for my latest mani :)

First as always I applied my basecoat, I use Barry M Basecoat Topcoat & Nail Hardener. Then on my thumb, index finger and little finger I applied Barry M Duchess, probably my favourite from the collection, love it! On my middle and ring finger I applied China Glaze Fifth Avenue, I am not sure if I have used this colour since I bought it, but I really like it and I think it goes quite well with my skin tone so I will be remembering that :)

On the nails with Fifth Avenue on them I then stamped this beautiful design. This was from Pueen plate Pueen27 and I used Konad Black to stamp it. I bought these plates not long ago and I already had the first set from Pueen. Everytime I stamp with them I love my nails, they are great quality stamps and they have lovely designs. Definitely worth getting if you love stamping!

And the finished mani looks like this! :)

I left Duchess as it was because really you don't need anything else, it is just amazing on it's own! I probably didn't need to do the stamping either but I just love stamping too much.

If you have any questions or anything at all to say please comment below :)

Barry M The Royal Textured Glitter Collection Swatches

So I went shopping the other day and I ended up coming home with all of the Barry M Royal Textured Glitter polishes... OOPS!

I was going to wait until Superdrug or Boots had another offer on, but of course I was just way too impatient!

By looking at this picture though you can see why I just couldn't help myself! These polishes just look amazing. And if you think they look good in the bottles then you will be in love when you see the swatches below :)

These are my new favourite polishes by far! They are so beautiful!

From left to right these are; Lady, Majesty, Duchess, Princess and Countess.

These polishes are very glittery so below I have tried my best to take the best pictures I can of each polish to show how amazing they are :)

This is Lady, a white pearl colour and I would say it has small iridescent flake pieces in it rather than glitter and they give an amazing shimmer. This polish looks like glittering snow that hasn't been touched yet, so this will be a perfect polish for the winter :)

This is Majesty, a gold glitter but more of a champagne gold than yellow which makes it look so much better. This has bits of gold glitter in it.

This is Duchess, a nude glitter. I think this might be my favourite of the collection, it is a beautiful nude colour with a pink tone to it and with bits of silver glitter.

This is Princess, a pink glitter. This is a very pretty pink colour and the glitter pieces in this are gold and silver. It all makes this a very pretty girly colour and definitely lives up to the name Princess.

This is Countess, a purple glitter. In the pictures this looks quite similar to OPI Vesper, however I am not a huge fan of that, but this is just amazing. The picture really just doesn't do it justice. It is a very dark purple, and this also has bits of glitter in it. From looking at this very closely I think I can see bits of purple, gold and copper looking glitter.

I bought these polishes from Superdrug, but they are also available in Boots and of course from Barry M online. They cost £3.99 each, definitely worth it!

Thanks for looking and if you have any questions or anything to say please comment below :)