Easter Nail Art Tutorial - Cadbury's Mini Eggs!

This design was suggested to me by my best friend Sara - as soon as she said it, I knew it had to be done, if only as an expansion on the Cadbury's Chocolate Manicure! I worked tirelessly on a tutorial for it so you can all do it yourselves at home :D I know it's a bit early for Easter Manicures, but it's that time of year where Mini Eggs hit the shops an I love them! I don't know if you can get them in the US, but FIND THEM. THEY ARE LIKE EASTER-TIME CRACK.

This will also be part review for Boots 17 new nail polishes which I picked up last week. I chose 3 of them - Mellow Yellow, Glisten and Juicy. They're really fresh, bright spring/summer colours so I really couldn't resist. First up is Mellow Yellow, a gorgeous mid-tone yellow with gold micro-shimmer. It's beaaautiful.

The application of Mellow Yellow was lovely, this is two coats and there is no visible nail line (VNL). It's glossy and dries relatively quickly. From experience, 17 polishes go thick and unusable rather quickly so invest in a polish thinner like Seche Restore if you want to keep this bad boy for more than a few months.

The perfect yellow for a mini eggs packet, I hear you say? Yes, it is. Tutorial time!

1. Start with your yellow base and take a chocolate-brown polish like Barry M Mushroom. Draw large ovals in a sporadic pattern across the nail. This is the outline of the eggs!

                        
2. Take a selection of pastel coloured polishes. I chose American Apparel Office (green), Collection 2000 Candyfloss (pink), Natural Collection White and Collection 2000 Angel Wings (purple/grey). Paint over your brown ovals with the pastel shades, but leave a small brown outline.

3. Time to add some brown speckles to the eggs! Take a dotting tool (or a toothpick if you don't have one!) and take a small bead of your brown polish on the end. dab this gently onto your pastel eggs.

4. Take a purple polish or purple Nail Art Pen. This step is much easier to do when you have the control of a Nail Art Pen, but if you have a steady hand then go for it with a small brush. Write the words "Mini Eggs" in the Cadbury's font on your thumb. This is optional, you could always just draw more Mini Eggs!

5. Add a topcoat to protect your design from wear and tear and to make it super glossy. I used Seche Vite.

6. Stand back and admire your Cadbury's Mini Egg Easter Nail Art!

I added Claire's Matte Topcoat over the top to achieve that powdery look and feel that mini eggs have.

There you are! Cadbury's Mini Egg nails, perfect for Easter! If you've given up chocolate for lent then a) I don't know how you live b) You can enjoy chocolate in an alternative way!

As always, if you follow my tutorial I would love to see it so pleeease let me know!

I hope you have fabulous weekends!

Scotch Tape Zebra Print Manicure

Hello everyone! I know, two posts in as many days, almost like the good old days eh?!

When I was on holiday with my family, we had a very restricted weight allowance for the flights, and so we ditched all the heavy beach gear in favour of lighter alternatives. This included picking up some cheap, light beach towels from Asda, and my, ever tasteful, father chose the most trashy-fabulous, attention grabbing, lurid print that was available - zebra print with a bright purple border. They were amazing. And chavvy. But mostly amazing. They inspired this manicure!

I started with a base of 3 coats of Natural Collections White and allowed to dry before stamping the zebra image from Konad M57 with Konad Special Polish in Black. If you're in the UK, and don't want to splash out for the Konad special Polish, I've heard that MUA Shade 2 - available for only £1 in Superdrug - is a fantastically opaque alternative, though I've yet to try it myself. I added a coat of Seche Vite to dry it all quickly, and ten minutes later added strips of scotch tape diagonally across each nail. I then painted the nail in Claire's Matte Purple (I LOVE mixing textures!) and pulled the tape away while still wet. ET VOILAAA! Trashy Towel Nails.

 

I love how the shiny and the matte finishes look together. The cameras playing tricks on your eyes, the purple is, in fact, a lot more violet and red toned in real life, my camera is in perfect, purple denial, turning it blue. The photos were also taken at dusk, so sorry they're a bit dark and blue. (gawd I need to build myself a light box!)

Let me know what you think everyone! :D

Snakeskin...

...'cus I'm classy like that. This is deliciously White Trash, I feel like I should be wearing a matching pair of trousers and Crocodile handbag. Mmmmm.

I reckon I'm probably building up to some sort of crazy safari manicure, with the theme of animal prints emerging! I had wanted to try this image from the new BundleMonster set for a while, I was just trying to figure out the colour combos, which I'm not sure I've got spot on! I started with a coat of Barry M Mushroom (I'm not sure if this is because it's quite old now, but this is now a perfect one-coater, though I'm sure it's not always been!). I then sponged on Claire's Jade Green, down either side of each nail. I used Miss Sporty Electric Beige to stamp with:

I remembered after the pictures, that I had used Electric Beige instead of Catrice Be My Millionaire!

I added Claire's Matte Topcoat over the design, and I really prefer it! What do you think? I love the feel of mattified nails as well, they're all smooth and velvety, I keep rubbing them on my face - weird? Yes.

 

Wooo hoo, snakey fingers, I'm off to explore the Jungle (and by Jungle, I mean Pub).

In keeping with the wildlife theme, I entered the Tiger Nail Art into Swaafie Blog's Inspired competition, and voting is now open! If you love me, you can head over and give me a vote! My design is number 3, and you've got until the 8th! There are so many amazing designs, and you can vote for your favourite three, so GO MENTAL! I would really appreciate you taking a look :D:D

"Check out Swaafie's contest, it's GGRRRRRRREAT!"  (I'm a loser) click here to see the original post

I hope you're all having a wonderful Monday!

Do Not Refreeze Guest Post

Hello Everyone! Happy Mother's Day!
Today's post is being hosted over at Leanne's wonderful blog DoNotRefreeze, where I will be doing a "lightning bolt nails" tutorial! Its was really kind of her to ask me to do it, and a great idea to get everyone involved.

Head over to HERE for these Bad-ass nails!

xxx

Matte Gun-metal and mini-haul

As I promised you yesterday, here is what I picked up on my trip to town :

The offer in Claire's is 4 polishes for £7.50, and I just can't resist EVERY TIME! The challenge isn't staying away, its deciding which four to buy! Claire's polishes also don't have names so I'll describe them for your viewing pleasure.  From top left to bottom right, these are:

• MUA B6
• MUA 43
• Miss Sporty "Taxi!" - bright neon yellow with veeeery subtle shimmer
• Claire's Jade Green
• Claire's shimmery topcoat, very fine silver shimmer
• Claire's, this is a matte Bronze
• Claire's Matte Gun-metal Silver.
• The fabric it's sitting on is my new dress from forever 21! I'm wearing it out tonight, its very colourful :D

Here are some swatches of the Matte Silver. It actually looks gorgeous as it goes on, it's got a lovely shimmer to it, which seems a waste in a matte polish. Because of this its more of a suede finish, but I think I might try and play around with this one, see if I can put that shimmer back in!

I broke the corner of my index fingernail yesterday, and it's really bugging me! It's not that noticeable, but it keeps happening! If I remedy-file them anymore, I'll end up with an oval shape haha!
Stay tuned for more swatches of this haul, what do you think to this matte silver?

Gleek and Gypsy Nights.

 So my housemate is fantastic. As you know, I went home for the weekend and returned this evening to 2 lovely presents from Sophie, one of my favourite people with giant hair. One was a “glee” Easter egg, complete with Mug – which I’m thrilled about, one of our favourite things to do together is drink copious amounts of tea, eat copious amounts of chocolate, and spend a copious amount of time talking about Everything and Nothing. The other present was a “knit your own boyfriend” kit....which I'm not as thrilled about....hahaha!

Rubbish phone pic...but look at the size of that mug! Cheers, Sofa!!!

 On to the Manicure!! I recently acquired an interesting polish from Topshop called “Gypsy Nights” which is quite a sheer black with holographic glitter and flakies! I snapped it up; you don’t see flakies very often over here in the polish middle ages (UK!). I applied two coats of it over two coats of Claire’s Black polish, and then added a silver stripe at the very tip of my tips with Claire’s Silver Nail Art Pen. Topped it off with Barry M topcoat, and here are the results, as best as I could capture the glitter effects! 

Shiny shinnnnyyy

 You can't see the holo glitter tooo much here, but if you look at the pinkie, you can see the iridescence of the flakies in it.

I've seen some exciting effects created with flakies by adding a matte topcoat, so i decided to matte it up with Claire's Matt topcoat (which should be spelled "matte" - really bugs me haahah - I'm a fiendish English student/grammar Nazi!). Here we are:

With Claire's matte topcoat.

I liked the effect of the matte topcoat, it did, however, dull the holographic glitter, but I like that it's a bit different. i decided to keep it like this for a couple of days before I was boooorrreeeddd!!! I went to a 21st birthday party over the weekend for one of my best friends, I've known her since she was a tiny babba, and it was lovely to see in this milestone together - love you Rachie poops. I'll post my party manicure tomorrow!

Another exciting installment - my bundlemonster plates arrived! WOO HOOOOO now I can start this Konading business properly!! Look out!!!

RAAWWRRRRR!

There really is no better way to start the day than a hot cross bun and a good strong cuppa!

From my reading of other blogs I am completely aware that this is unoriginal and overdone, but to start off the Mani element of this blog, I'm opening with.....leopard print nails. This is one of my favourite designs as it's so attention grabbing! I get way more compliments on this Mani than any others, possibly because its quite rare over here in the English Kingdom to see outrageous nails!!

The polishes I used for this look are:

• Barry M all-in-one base coat, topcoat and hardener
• Bloom polish in Goldie
• Barry M Mushroom
• Claire's black nail art pen
• Claire's Matte topcoat

L-R = basecoat, Bloom Goldie, Barry M Mushroom, Claires black pen, Claires matte topcoat.

FIERCE! (please forgive me for the state of my cuticles and shoddy clean up - I'm still learning! :D)

I love this look because it looks impressive, yet its so simple to create. Although the leopard full nail  image on Konad M57 is great, I really don't think it's compulsory in creating this effect!

I painted my nails with one coat of base coat, followed by two coats of Bloom's Goldie (which is one of my favourite brands btw, the formula's great - chip resistant, fast drying, and nearly always opaque in two coats), I then added random "spots" of Mushroom. After it was dry, I outlined my leopard spots using semi circles and "C" shapes, adding dots and flicks here and there to fill in the gaps. I topped it all off with a matte topcoat. As I said, people are always fascinated by this design, and can't believe I do it myself when its so easy and really takes no time at all.

Although Konad is more accurate and neater in it's finish, i like the freehand effect - its not uniform! what leopard has perfectly symmetrical spots eh?!

What do you think, is my freehand attempt a fair compromise for the professional finish of the Konad design?

<3