Nail Art Ideas

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Introducing The Nailasaurus Emporium (and a Giveaway)

Today I'm very excited to tell you guys about something that's been in the works for a few weeks now... The Nailasaurus Emporium!
The Nailasaurus Emporium is my online store where I'll be stocking my favourite nail art tools and accessories. Basically, it's one place for me to curate all my favourite things for you guys to shop the nail art looks I post here. At the moment I'm on a trial run and I'm stocked up with studs, striping tape and some brushes but if everything goes smoothly and you guys like it enough, I'll soon be stocking mountains of nail goodies!

Round Gold Studs 1.5mm

6mm Detail Brush, Angled Clean-Up Brush, 12mm Striping Brush

Striping Tape

Because I'm so excited about this launch and I want you all to experience my amaaaazing customer service skills, if you spend more than £10 in August you'll get 20% off with the code 'EARLYBIRD'. I'm also giving away a £15 gift card! Jump to the Rafflecopter below to enter...

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Twitter ♥ Bloglovin' ♥ Tumblr

1 Comment

Unknown giveaway, striping tape, studs

Simple Sophistication

I know I mention this ALL. THE. TIME. but although I try to do my nails almost every night, there are a lot of nights that I'm pressed for time or it's quite late...so it's quick and easy to just pick a full size image to use for a mani, do the base prep and coat, topcoat, stamp, topcoat and voila...a mani change in no time flat! I frequently use a holo base but this is one of these times when I was looking for something different; this is what I came up with.

Started with one base coat of FingerPaints Black Expressionism....yes, one coat!.....perfect for mani's when pressed for time......then topped with SV for more time savings so stamping can be done sooner with less dry time!

Stamped using Barry M Foil Effects 320 Gold using an image from FUN 5.

Topped with SV.

When I was doing this mani, I was going to do an accent nail with the opposite base and stamping polish.....I decided to do my right hand this way instead.

While I didn't mind this, I much prefer the black with gold stamping. An accent may have been OK too...maybe another time.

Here's a look at FUN 5.

I was curious how this mani would look with a matte topcoat so the next day, topped with Essie Matte About You.

I didn't mind this look...but it didn't stay like this for long because I did this not too long after I took the above pix.

I didn't have a break or any real need to cut them other than there comes a point when longer nails slow down typing, plus a strong C curve on a couple of nails, particularly the middle finger, annoys me when they are long...so chopped them off! This was just a few weeks ago...three, I believe.....and they are pretty much already at the length before I cut them. Plus I like wearing short nails; I like doing mani's with funky frenches on them when my nails are shorter...plus gives me a chance to use stamps that don't fit when nails are longer.

I am so thankful that there are images like this one ..and polishes and fast top coat products.....that can create such a simple, sophisticated mani in no time flat!

Thanks for looking!

1 Comment

Unknown Barry M, black, Essie, FingerPaints, FUN 5, matte

Brazilian Indie brand #2 - Penelope Luz

I'm tired tonight. On Monday next week I've got a presentation at work to some executives from another division, and today I did a run through with our executive, so the prep for those meetings, mixed with late nights painting nails has me felling a bit flat. But I'm on such a roll with posting every single day, that I just don't want to break the streak on my blog. I think I've had some sort of post done every day now for a just over a year! Holy shit, that's a lot of work.

Anyway, moving on, I've got some more polishes from another Brazilian indie brand for you today. These polishes are from Penelope Luz, a brand I've seen on my favourite Brazilian blog to ~~read~~ look at pictures on, cause I can't read Portuguese - Esmaltes da Kelly.

Ahimsa -a combination of orange bars, hexes and fine glitters, together with matte purple squares and hearts. This is two coats over Kester Black Poppy. In hindsight, I wished I layered this over a lighter colour because Poppy was too good a match to the purple glitters.

Bastet - a chocolate brown base with mainly brown glitters, and a few other multicoloured bright glitters. I love this jelly brown base. In the sun it was glowy and warm, perfect for our freezing winter weather.

Bellatrix - a near black purple jelly base with multi coloured fine glitter. So pretty in real life, and so hard to capture in photos. This is three coats on its own.

Belly Dance - a mix of multicoloured glitters, with a predominance of gold. Two coats layered over black. While this is another multi coloured glitter mix, it has a totally different look and feel to all other ones in my collection. The name of the polish - belly dance - really does conjurer up images of belly dancing costumes with gold bling. I like this one a lot.

I've been enjoying sampling these Brazilian indie polish that I got from Color4Nails, although I do notice the smell of the polishes is different to the other indie brands I have. It's not an unpleasant smell, it's just different.

Penelope Luz polishes are available from Color4Nails, who stock a large range of commercial and indie brands and ship worldwide.

Polishes provided for review.

Add Comment

Unknown Penelope Luz

Belated Summer Stripes

Now this is a mani I had done before the smell of polish got to me. Hence the title. It was summer then you see.

Base is a hot pink miss Claire polish. No shade name.

I had tried to make random sized stripes in random order but somehow the final effect was not something I had wanted. Probably not a good combi or my freehand sucks or both.

Ok now I go try something else. Ta-da

1 Comment

Unknown freehand nail art, miss claire, Nail Art, pink nail polish, Simple Nail Art

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

piCture pOlish Marine glitterized! feat. Sea Jewel & Ariel's Tale

Hi everyone!
How about something a little bit different today for my weekly piCture pOlish review?
I've had Marine for a little while now and it always seemed like the perfect base for a Sea Jewel / Ariel's Tale nail art! So... I present to you my ~~Marine on Glitteroids~~ Glitterized Marine manicure! ^_^

Marine is a greyed out green turquoise creme with the most perfect formula ever, literally applying itself! It was really hard to capture on camera, I think that my swatches are close but still a tad bluer than it looks in real life so please try and imagine it greener (sorry!). Application dreamy, I worked slowly here and one coat was all it took for complete coverage but I promise you it'll be the easiest 2 coater you'll ever use, so GORGEOUS!

As for the glitters, Sea Jewel only required one coat layered over Marine (vs 2 coats on its own) and Ariel's Tale was less dense but offered good glitter pay-off with one good dabbed coat as well.

And now, more pictures!

I hope you liked this manicure, I loved wearing it, it was just SO sparkly and eye-catching despite the almost "monochrome" look, but what really rocked was Ariel's Tale over Sea Jewel accent! Jules from piCture pOlish suggested I should try it and it was brilliant ♥

Thanks for looking girls!

piCture pOlish Marine, Sea Jewel & Ariel's Tale retail for AUD$10 / AUD$12 and can be purchased directly from piCture pOlish.com.au or through their international network. Don't forget to check the "Every Day Deals" page to grab free bottles!

For more information, please refer to piCture pOlish.com.au or piCture pOlish on :

Twitter

Facebook

Pinterest
Instagram
YouTube

Add Comment

Unknown glitter, Nail Art, picture polish, review, turquoise

Cirque Helios with Pastels

Press Sample

I have another Cirque polish to show you today! Here we have Helios... a very fine gold glitter with holographic glitter sprinkled in. I decided to dress it up with some pastel colours. When pairing up gold with another colour, I normally go straight to black but I'm wayyy happier with the pastels this time.

For the glitter fingers, I used one coat of Barry M Gold Foil with 3 thin coats of Cirque Helios. You could wear Helios on its own with 3 coats but you'd have nail poking through the glitter so I chose to put a similar shade base colour underneath.

The pastels I used are Sally Hansen Green Tea and Barry M Prickly Pear.

It's all topped off with a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly and one of Essence Top Sealer. I added some 1.5mm gold studs on top while the Essence polish was still wet.