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)