Neon Flower Nails

We have been treated to some beautiful summery weather recently in London so I thought I would match my nails to the bright weather.  I skipped right over the pastels for this one and looked at the brighter polishes in my collection.

In the end I opted for Let's Get Lost from Essence as my base.  You could almost get away with one coat of this polish as it's really pigmented, but I always tend to prefer two coats anyway.  I really like the brushes in these bottles because they are flat with rounded tip, so you get a really good coverage in just a few strokes, but I find I have to be careful not to flood polish at the sides of my nails.

To add the extra bright factor to my design I used neon studs from the Born Pretty Store as petals for flowers.  I added a small dot of yellow polish as a guide for the centre of the flower and then painted a thick coat of top coat over the whole nail.  Whilst it was still wet I carefully pushed the studs onto my nail, sticking them in the wet top coat.  To pick up the studs, I used an orange stick with a small bit of blu-tack on the end shaped into a point.  Once I had finished the placement, some of the studs covered up the yellow for the centre of the flower, but nothing another dot of yellow polish in the centre wouldn't fix.  I couldn't decide if I wanted to add a flower to all of my nails, so I worked from the outside in, and when I had finished the pink flower I really liked the accent feature I had created and thought that any more might spoil the look.  What do you think?

One thing to note is that the ends of these studs do lift away from the nail slightly, as they are flat, and nails are curved.  I added a thick layer of glossy top coat over my finished flowers to seal them in place and prolong the life of my flowers.

If you'd like to get these studs, or anything else from the Born Pretty Store you can get 10% off using code HFG10.  You can see how I used the square ones from this wheel at Christmas here.  I particularly like this shape combination because there are so many different ways you could use them.

Thanks for stopping by
Aimee x

Nautical Nail Art

I've often wondered about painting some nautical nail art, but have always decided against it, until now.  I think my main reservation has been that there seems to be a lot of similar looking designs around and I didn't want to create anything too samey; I wanted to do something a bit different and I hope that I have achieved that.

A while ago I bought some new stamping plates from MoYou including The Sailor 03 plate.  This is where I started planning my design.  I first chose the pattern that I was going to stamp, and worked from there.  Other nautical nails I have seen seem to use white, red, and blue as their main colours, but I decided that I just wanted blue and white.  I started off with a white base on all my nails and then stamped my waves with Barry M Blue Grape, on all fingers other than my ring fingers.  My original plan was to paint anchors on the plain white base to go with the waves, but then I remembered that I had some anchor nail tattoos left from when I reviewed Fake Tattoos Nail Tattoos.

I thought a single anchor on a plain white base might look a bit lost, so I added a large sized tattoo to my thumb nails and then smaller sized ones on the rest of the nails with stamped waves, making sure to put them at different angles and positions on my nails.  I was then left with a conundrum with what to do with my accent nails as I had changed the design I had planned in my head.  I painted over them with two coats of Blue Grape and added three different sized gold studs from the Born Pretty Store.

I am not sure how I feel about this design overall because, once I had finished, I kind of wished that I had started with a blue base on all nails and stamped the waves in white.  Blue Grape is such an amazing colour I am not sure that the stamped design does it justice.  Having said that, I don't think the anchors would have showed up so well if my base had been darker blue, so there's benefits to both.  What do you think?

Thanks for stopping by
Aimee x

Elegant French Manicure with Born Pretty Store Water Decal Review*

Evenings are finally staying a bit brighter, and there are daffodils and crocuses coming out, this can only mean one thing... spring is upon us.  Since the beginning of the year I have mainly stuck with darker colours so I thought it was about time to do a lighter manicure.

I was trying out some different Essie nude shades at the weekend and thought that these colours lent themselves to showing off these pretty Black Flower Water Decals from Born Pretty Store.

*Press sample - Sent to me for review

Christmas Tree Nails with Born Pretty Store Nail Stud Review*

Hello all,

It's nearly here, only three more sleeps!  With that in mind, it seemed like a really good time to do some more Christmas nails.  I decided to go with cute and colourful Christmas trees featuring gold and neon nail studs from Born Pretty Store.

*Press sample - sent to me for review