31 Day Challenge 2014: Day 30 - Inspired by a Tutorial (ChristabellNails - Kiwifruit Nail Art Tutorial)

This mani is inspired by this ChristabellNails tutorial for Kiwifruit nail art. I saw this come up on my YouTube feed the other day and loved it, so I knew I had to do it for this challenge!

Firstly I applied my base coat. Then at the base of the nail I painted 1 coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Jade Jump. Then I painted 2 coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri In Record Lime so that it overlapped the previous colour and left a small amount of space from the cuticle.

I then used a thin nail art brush along with the lighter green and painted some lines down the nail making sure not to reach the very tip of the nail. Once this was dry I used a dotting tool along with W7 Black and created some dots. Trying to stay mainly on the dark green area but also putting a few dots just touching on the light green area.

I applied a top coat of Seche Vite and the mani is finished. Love how simple and effective this mani is. Check out ChristabellNails YouTube channel for more lovely nail art tutorials.

As always thank you for visiting and if you have any questions or anything to say then please comment below :)

31 Day Challenge 2014: Day 3 - Yellow

So this is day 3 of the challenge, and I had to do yellow. I am not a fan of this mani, but I found it really difficult to come up with something so I thought I would do this so it sort of looks like an easter mani.

To begin I applied my base coat. Then on my thumb, index and little finger I painted 2 coats of Barry M's Station Road which is a texture polish. And on my thumb and ring finger I painted 2 coats of Barry M's Lemon Ice-cream.

I then did some stamping on my middle and ring finger. I used the Pueen38 stamping plate and the pattern that is shown. I used 3 colours for the stamping, from left to right they are Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri Jade Jump, Presto Pink and Lively Lilac.

I then applied Seche Vite over the stamped nails and not over the texture nails. And that is the finished mani.

As I said I don't really like this mani, but I am determined to do the challenge so I will probably end up with some that I don't like.

As always thank you for visiting and if you have any questions or anything to say then please comment below :)

Peace & Love

Later tonight I am going to a 40th birthday party and the fancy dress theme is 70's. I am going dressed as a hippie so I thought I would do these nails to match :)

I applied my basecoat and then 2 coats of Barry M White. I love this white, it covers completely in 2 coats and of course it isn't too expensive.

On my thumb and ring finger I did a gradient. For this gradient I used all Sally Hansen Insta-Dri polishes in colours Jade Jump, Brisk Blue and Presto Pink. For gradients I use the Konad black sponges.

On the thumb and ring finger that I had done the gradient on I then used Bundle Monster plate BM07 and Konad white polish to stamp a peace symbol.

Then on my index, middle and little finger I used Pueen plate Pueen01 and the same 3 Sally Hansen Insta-Dri colours I used for my gradient to stamp this heart pattern. I applied the colours to the stamping image and scraped as normal, but doing all this as quickly as possible. I then stamped the image so that the colours were going in the opposite direction to the gradient on my thumb and ring finger.

I then applied my topcoat, a bit disappointed because I smudged the peace symbol on my thumb :( but apart from that I think they are pretty good!

I hope you like them too :)

Thank you for looking at my blog and if you have any questions or anything to say then comment below.

Taste of Hawaii and First Attempt at Water Marbling

I thought these looked a bit like a Hawaiian shirt lol hence the title. At first I did attempt to do water marbling, but as you can see below I only managed to do this on 2 nails. I didn't find it too difficult and the two nails came out not too bad, it was just that my water kept getting too dirty and I couldn't clean it properly and in the end I just got annoyed and gave up haha!
The colours I used were China Glaze Grape Pop, Avon Luxe Lavender and Barry M white.

Anyway... Below is each step of the Hawaii manicure :)

First I applied my usual base coat and then I applied Barry M white, I did 2 coats of this on my thumb, index and little finger and just 1 coat on my middle and ring finger, you will see why I only really needed 1 coat in the next picture...

On my middle and ring finger I used a sponge to do these gradients. The colours were all Sally Hansen Insta-Dri polishes, the green is Jade Jump, the blue is Brisk Blue and the pink is Speedy Sunburst. Love these colours they are so bright and vibrant, hence why I used them for this mani.

I then used these same three colours along with Pueen plate Pueen25 on the white nails and I used the same pattern with Konad white on the gradient nails. I have had these Pueen plates for about a month now and I think they are a very good buy and the patterns are so pretty so if you haven't got them already then buy them!!

And here is the finished mani. I think this is one my favourite mani's I have done that are really colourful, I like the mixture of the gradient over white and the white over gradient. It looks like it was a lot harder to do than it was.

If you have anything to say or any questions please post them.

Thank you for looking :)

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Stamping Tests and Swatches

So I have been wanting to order some Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Polishes for a while now, and today I got nail mail with all of them coming at once!! So I have done swatches of them and tested them for stamping and I am very pleased with my purchase :)

So these are all the polishes I bought, a couple of them I bought when out shopping the other day from a little stall, then some of them I bought from www.cosmeticsbycandy.co.uk and the rest I bought from www.directcosmetics.com. They were very cheap from these sites, Cosmetics By Candy sell them for £1.99 each, and Direct Cosmetics sell most of them for £1.50 and a couple for £1.99. Bargain! :)

I will not name them now I will do that below with the swatches...

...First four from left to right are; Lightening, Jade Jump, Brisk Blue and Lively Lilac and as shown in the picture the top is with no flash and bottom is with flash.

Next four from left to right are; Presto Pink, Speedy Sunburst, Rapid Red and Emerald Express. All of these colours are really nice but I am definitely looking forward to using Emerald Express.

 From Emerald Express and onwards these are all shimmer colours. These four from left to right are; Jumpin' Jade (although the label on the bottle of this one has gone so I will have to memorise it lol), Teal-y Fast, Grape Escape and Ruby Rush.

And the last three from left to right are; Quick Brick, Bronze Ablaze and Coco a-go-go.

So now are the stamping swatches, I will name the polishes again from left to right. I apologise in advance for the really bad stamping in the next couple of pictures. I think this happened because I was too quick to pick up the image, waiting a few seconds before doing so stops it from smudging. I think I thought that because it is a quick drying polish that I would need to pick it up quickly.

Anyway from left to right are; Lightening, Jade Jump, Brisk Blue and Lively Lilac. These have all stamped really well on both the white and black, the blue has probably come out the best and I was suprised how well Jade Jump turned out.

From left to right are; Presto Pink, Speedy Sunburst, Rapid Red and Emerald Express. Presto Pink has definitely come out better on the black and white than the rest.

I have done this picture different because with the shimmer polishes I needed to get more of the flash directly on it to show how it looks on the black. With the shimmer polishes they show up better in direct light and in non-direct light not as well, however they all do stamp very well over the black.

From left to right are; Jumpin' Jade, Teal-y Fast, Grape Escape and Ruby Rush. Again these stamp well, I was surprised the shimmer polishes did stamp so well.

And the last three from left to right are; Quick Brick, Bronze Ablaze and Coco a-go-go. These three colours are probably my favourites for the stamping out of the shimmer colours, they show up so well on both the black and the white and are very pretty colours.

So that is all of the Insta-Dri polishes I have. I hope this has been helpful.

Thank you for looking at my blog