5 months worth of nails in one post....

Nails from the last few months (5 months to be exact, in which time I've finished with nannying, flown back to New Zealand & am now job hunting. In the mean time I'm still doing my nails and resisting (not always successfully) the temptation to add to my nail polish & plate collection).

Did a mani at a friends house and had to buy this awesome purple.

Reflection of London weather using the Olympic Silver by posh polish (has to be my favourite silver polish ever because it works as normal polish & stamps).

Playing around with layered stamping.

Realised I had 5 purples in my stash so experimented with stamping (lines are stamped in the purple polish I used as a base for the owl mani).

Entered the summer competition run by Konad, didn't win but was stoked with the way the mani came out.

Simple stamping over top of sally hansen stick on nails (also made a decal of the guitar).

On the left attempted a pink gradient but colours where contrasted enough. Tried again on the right and altho I'm pleased with the final design, would have liked the colours to blend more.

Simple quick summer mani with cherries in Olympic Silver again.

My birthday mani (was wondering when to use the birthday Nailways plate haha). Stamped over Nails Inc Holographic silver using Konad special polish in Silver and my favourite purple (think it's a Rimmel lycra pro).

On the right was really enjoying the 25 degree temperatures in London (had an amazing summer for the UK apparently, 6 weeks of hot weather. Nothing like a kiwi summer but at least wasn't have to wear my sheepskin slippers 12 hours a day). On the left playing round with multicoloured stamping over the silver holographic again.

Glow in the dark nails! popped into Topshop for a quick look and had to accidentally brought a set of glow in the dark pink, blue & yellow polishes. Wore them for a shift at the roller disco and they glowed amazingly well :)

Playing round with gradients again - this one is more smooth but pretty hard to see - think it may be the pattern on top of it.

More double stamping (well almost triple case had to stamp light under the blue sea creatures so they would stand out). Using my favourite olympic silver again.

Pink holographic from Topshop on the left and green holographic from Hema (in Netherlands) on the left. The one of the left actually won me 3 free plates in a OMG nails competition - super stoked :)

Playing round with different coloured base-coats and using Klean colour mini metallics to stamp (they are another polish I love because it doubles as base-coat & stamping polish).

Nails for my trip to Scotland.

Got back to New Zealand, a little sad I had to leave some of my polishes behind (I had acquired 60 over the course of the year, oops!) but luckily a trip into Postie revealed they had two sets of the amazing Klean Colour mini Metallics in stock - yus! (my bank balance I'm not so happy about ;) The nails on the left are done using a LA Girl matte in navy stamped with metallic aqua from the Techno High set of minis.

My entry for the Bundle Monster Halloween contest, not expecting to win but did this in an afternoon so happy with the result. No doubt will be doing another set of nails for actual halloween.

On the left using blues as a base and the Olympic silver yet again, was going for a tropical/Hawaiian theme.  On the right, playing round with nail stickers I hadn't seen for a year (and purples I was missing).

My current Mani - done for the AIS Sunday challenge 'Over a Holo Base'. Used my green Hema holo and stamped a few bundle monster images of oranges.  Made a decal on my stampers (realised I now have 5 of them, almost enough to made a whole hand of decals, not that I have the patience) using a whole nail image of nails. Pretty pleased with how it turned out.

That's bout it for the last 5 months - doesn't seem like that many nails but sure there are some I didn't take pictures of (I try to only do them once a week otherwise I feel like I'm taking the mani off before I enjoy it).

Till next time post (which hopefully will be next week as I'm still job hunting).

Nikki

:o)

Nails from the last two weeks..

Hi all

So I've been too busy doing my nails to do a post because I've had nail mail! I ordered the new set from Winstonia - go here http://www.winstonia.com/ and also google other nail blogs, a lot have been sent the plates for review and they also have a 10% off discount code.  I love the images and had trouble deciding which to use first! Here's a quick look at all the plates:

Here's my first mani:

I then decided to show my friend how to do a decal while skyping so ended up replacing my pointer finger with a.....

... pretty rainbow:)

 Turned out great, but took a while with all the different colours (I used nail art pens and painted it on my spare stamper).

I used plate W111 and La Femme Beauty in blue as a base coat & my favourite multi-use posh polish in silver as the stamping colour.

Manicure No. 2.

I used my nail art pens again - this time for dotting as well as two decals. As a base coat I used a sliverly/blue that turned out to look like pearl - S-he stylezone in Wow! Faber (from Hamer) and stamped with Konad special polish in black.

I then stamped a lace/scalloped pattern using an essence plate (also from the Netherlands).

Next I used the lace looking spirals on BM-201 for my thumbs.

Then used nail art pens to dot randomly on my thumbs and on the points on my fingers.

I did a different colour scheme for each hand cause that was the colour I'd made the decals :)

The decals were made using nail art pens and these plates.

I also gave in and ordered the Harry Potter plate from Apipila nails in Brazil (this one took longer in the post and had me checking the mail every day!). http://www.apipila.com.br the site is in Portuguese but google translate works quite well. International orders are done by email (email the plates you want (shipping is the same for up to 4 plates) and make sure you ask for a tracking number (which you can track here).

It's got so many cool designs on it - I of course started with Harry potter (and a few friends).

Manicure No. 3.

Polishes I used for base coats were Cosmiss in Red and Black, my favourite faceshop in green, posh polish (also for stamping), Colour club Miss Sporty in yellow & Konad Special polish in black (for stamping).

Manicure No. 4.

My next mani using this plate was angry birds themed and I attempted to make decals of each character. I managed to lose one up the vaccum cleaner and another got pretty squashed once on my nail (done while I was sleeping, not my fault).

I used La Femme Beauty in Emerald with Barry M 340 in Aqua Glitter for the base coat and Konad Special polish in White & Black for stamping.  I used nail art pens for the decals.

Here's the end result:

Both Thumb & Pinkie nails are the same (thumb is actually watermelons using the Winstonia Plate but looks more like scales to me).

Right hand.

Left hand.

Close up of piglet :)

That's all for now, I'm currently trying to resist ordering the latest Mash plate - it has mermaid scales! haha..

Hope you liked my nails,

Till next manicure

Nikki :o)

Nails from the last month...

Hi all

So another month has gone by with out me doing any nail posts - not because I havn't been doing my nails, it's more finding the time to upload the pictures and write the posts. I've just started a new job in London (woohoo the big city!) so have taken a while to adjust, get settled, etc. Also to buy some new nail goodies and try out some decals!.

Anyway here my nails from the last month. Enjoy.

I went for a simple mani - using Rimmel London in Azure and Konad special polish in baby blue.

I used Nailways Spring Time - Birthday Cake plate (A-NW00008) choosing the full nail cupcake design.

The resulting design came out quite cute.

Next up I went shopping and found some nail art pens. I've also been checking out a lot of others nail decals and decided I wanted to try some of my own, hence the need for nail art pens.

Models Own had a special, 5 pens for £20 which is quite cheap (if I keep it in English £'s not NZ$ haha). I got Yellow, Green, pale blue, white and hot pink.  Sadly the yellow didn't work but they let me swap it when I took it back a week later.

I also got a cheap purple from a pound store (gotta love the cheapy polish!) which was sweet with two coats (I brought it to replace my Klean colour metallic purple mini which is on it's last legs, but sadly the shade is too pink. Ah well another excuse to buy more polish).

I used the purple as a base coat and Konad special polish for stamping the design of my decal.

The decal itself was quite easy, just picked up the image off the plate (BM02) on my spare stamper, let it dry slightly, filled in the spaces with the nail art pens, waited for it to dry a bit then one coat of clear on top. Then waited over night and it peeled off like a charm. Then carefully applied it to my nail.

Here's the final result:

I also used the nail art pens to do some random dots.

And another close up of my thumb with the decal - so stoked it worked first time :)

Then it was Anzac day so did another quick mani for drinks that night. Anzac stands for Australia & New Zealand Army Corps and remembers those who fought in the war, specifically Gallipoli on the Turkish Peninsula.  In New Zealand and Australia it is a public holiday every year and symbolised by the wearing of poppies (I didn't have poppies on my plates so chose flowers that looked close).

I used Cosmiss in Red, Konad special polish in White and my black nail art pen.

And here's the result.

Plate: BM-221.

I started off with plain pink - tried a new painting technique after watching some youtube video's and look - I managed to avoid painting most of my skin around my nails :)

I then used rather a lot of polishes, nail art pens and jewels to decorate the top.  The theme I was going for was birthday for a 4 year old so chose stamps/designs accordingly.

I used Essence Miami Rollergirl 03 Four Wheel Drive in Pink, Konad Special Polishes in Baby blue, Black & White, nail art pens in White, hot pink, Green & pale blue & finally nail jewels in silver, green & blue.

Here's the result.

Thumbs: hello kitty with a hand drawn party hat.

Pointers: Balloons with heart silver jewel details.

Middle fingers: Self made decals.

Ring fingers: Start jewels in green.

Pinkie fingers: Lolly pop stamp with silver jewel detail.

Plate: B87.

     Plate: BM02.

Plate: A-NW00008

       Plate: BM-308

Plate: m14.

I made the decals using the method above and found they worked just as well but possibly put on too much clear coat as it went bubbly on top of the pink basecoat. Still looked cool tho :).

Next up I did another simple mani (the last one took me hours! and was kinda annoying with all the jewels - they kept getting caught and falling off).

I used my favourite green/blue from the Faceshop as my basecoat with posh polish from beauty uk and Klean colour mini in metallic pink for stamping.

Looked kinda cool and super quick to do.

Didn't bother with a top coat because the pink likes to run :(

Plate: BM-316

My current mani is pretty different for me - I used white as my basecoat.  I generally dont' like to do this as I feel it looks like twink (white out). But seems to have turned out okay, even if the decals gave me a hard time! (screwed up 3 and only wanted to make 4... sigh... think it was the hot weather and my impatience).

I used Cosmiss in white as the base, Konad Special polishes in black (for stamping) and baby blue (for filling in the decal) and nail art pens in green, hot pink, pale blue and yellow for filling in the decals and dotting on top of the stamping design.

Left hand.

Right hand.

This decal came out a bit wonky - got stuck to the tool I was taking it off the stamper with.  Also the clear got really bubbly - think it was too thick and too many coats to close together.

Plate: m51.

This was my first one - worked out pretty well but was a bit wonky with keeping within the lines.

Plate: m51.

My last decal - screwed it up twice! think it was cause the flower had so much in filling and I was too impatient to wait for it to dry properly - also managed to smudge it with the top coat too. Choice - not!

Plate: m51.

The only decal I was happy with - didn't smear, bubble or warp. Success!

Plate: m76.

The rest of my nails were stamped with a flower design and I filled in the heads with the nail art pens.  Plate: BM-308.

Over all I like this mani, but still not sold on the white basecoat, esp with the decals bubbling.

Hope you liked them, until the next blog post.

Nikki :o)