Guest Post: The Naily Mail - Pastel Mosaic Nail Art

Hello all,

Today I have something exciting - it's a guest post from Lauren at The Naily Mail.  Since joining Twitter I have come across lots of lovely nail blogging ladies and Lauren's designs caught my eye right from the beginning.  We've chatted over Twitter and decided that we would do a guest post on each other's blogs.  So here you go, let me pass you over... 

Hello everyone! I'm Lauren, a nail art blogger from Lancashire. I started my blog, The Naily Mail, in February and since then I have met so many lovely bloggers and think I have made a huge improvement in my nail art, so I'm very excited to now be doing my first ever guest post! I’m glad it is on Pinkglow's Pretty Polish, Aimée was one of the first bloggers I got to know and I love her nail art and reading her blog, so I feel very privileged to be on here!

For our first guest posts we decided on a pastel theme and to see what we both came up with using these colours. So here's what I did:

I've been into half & half manicures lately so thought, why not do another?! I'm also a lover of mosaic designs so I wanted to include that too.

Character Designs

Hello all,

I am doing a guest post later on this week over on The Naily Mail and I will have a post from The Naily Mail here for you later on this week, so keep an eye out for those.

Today I thought I would share some older designs that I had done before I had my blog.  I have to apologise for the quality of the photographs as I took them on my phone.

First I have a cute little monkey that I saw over on I Have A Cupcake.  Her designs are so cute and I had to give this a go.  Hope on over and take a look at her videos.

Second I have Captain America and Iron Man.  I did these based on Google searches for Avengers nail art and painted them especially to go and see the film!

Third I have some cute piggy nails.  I saw these on Real Asian Beauty and seeing as pigs are my favourite animals I just had to do these!

Lastly I have Rudolph nails.  These were inspired by Cutepolish.  I'm sure most of you will have come across Cutepolish at some point.

What do you think of some of my earlier attempts and recreations of other's designs? I'd love to see some of your first attempts - why not leave me a link in the comments below?

See you again later on in the week for the post from my guest blogger x

Miss Sporty: Metal Flip - Aurora Borealis

Hello all,

I had a busy weekend this weekend, but it was busy in a good way!  I reached 200 followers over on Twitter so I had a bit of a mini giveaway to celebrate! The lovely Samantha from @Smugginsx was the winner and I have posted off her prize today, so hopefully she will get it in the next day or two.  And on the same day I won a giveaway from Barry M!!! Eeeek!! So exciting! I won their whole confetti collection and it should be with me soon!! Yay!!  I will post about them when they arrive!

Anyway, onto the main point of my post... This week I went for something simple.  As I mentioned last week I was bought Miss Sporty Metal Flip in Aurora Borealis, and although I used it in my ombré last week it got a little lost, so I said I would do a swatch of it and talk about it in more detail.

The Metal Flip polishes from Miss Sporty are duochrome effect polishes that shift, or flip, between colours depending on the light.  Aurora Borealis is bluey silver polish with hints of purple and gold.  I have taken some other pictures in different lights to give you an idea of how it changes.  Above you can see my normal blog type picture taken in a light cube.  Here you can see that it's more blue showing some hints of purple.

Blue Ombré featuring Miss Sporty Metal Flip - Aurora Borealis

Hello all,

Just a very quick ombré design this week using a pearl and blues.  I was bought Miss Sporty Metal Flip in Aurora Borealis and wanted to use it, but I had already decided on an ombré design, so I didn't just want to do a swatch, so I decided to use it in my design.

As the polish has a metallic finish I picked others that were similar and went for a pearl base and True Blue from Models Own as my darked shade.  I created my ombré by painting the three colours in stripes on a make up sponge and then applying it to my nail, which I had already painted with one coat of the pearl polish.

Here is my finished result -

 I love the blend of the colours, although I think True Blue may have overpowered here a little bit, but the overall metallic finish is lovely.  I added a top coat to blend the three shades together and then topped my ring finger with thee nail gems, in a reverse ombré order to my polish with dark blue on the pearl section and clear on the dark blue.

I will do a proper swatch and review of Miss Sporty Metal Flip in Aurora Borealis soon, as it is so pretty with it's multi faceted shine and different colour oil spill effect.  Look out for it here soon x

Jacava: Raspberry Bavarois with Glitter

Hello all,

Hopefully yesterday you saw my review of Jacava Raspberry Bavarois.  I wanted to present it as just a plain colour for the review and I wanted to leave it on it's own to see how it well it lasted over a normal day (No chipping so hooray!).  But today I felt the need to add some nail art to it.  I haven't gone mad, but since I started doing nail art more and more, it seems very odd when I then don't have any!

I decided to try out a reverse glitter gradient with two Models Own colours, Magenta Divine and Hot Stuff.  I chose these two colours for my glitter gradient as they are the perfect match for Raspberry Bavarois.

I also chose these two colours as I hadn't tried a gradient like this before, so I didn't want it to be too obvious if it went a big wrong.  I started off with Magenta Divine for the base of the gradient, brushing most of the polish off the brush.  I then dabbed the polish that was left on the brush at the base of the nail by the cuticle.  Once all of the polish was on my nail I then dragged the brush from my cuticle down the nail, this spread a little bit of the glitter down the length of my nail.  I repeated this step again until I was happy with the look and then left this to dry.  To add an extra bit of sparkle I then dabbed some larger glitter pieces just by my cuticles using Hot Stuff.

I really love the effect, it almost looks like a waterfall of glitter down my nails! What do you think? Have you ever tried this before - leave a link in the comments to show me your version x 

Jacava: Raspberry Bavarois*

Hello all

Today I have a brand new polish that was sent to me for review by Jacava.  I was very excited to see their email pop up in my inbox asking me if I would like to review one of their colours.  I was able to pick from their range, there are 18 at the moment ranging from pinks, reds, purple, blue and green and there is also a selection of more neutral shades and a clear base coat / top coat.

I chose Raspberry Bavarois

Jacava polishes are '8 free', they say on their website -

'Opulent nail polish, by JACAVA London, is the world's first '8-free' nail varnish. That's free from DBP, Camphor, Formaldehyde, Toluene, Collophane, Parabens, Phthalates and Animal Ingredients. We never test on Animals and our nail polish is Vegan friendly.

All JACAVA nail polish uses premium, high gloss, long-lasting and nourishing formulation helps your nails stay stronger and grow longer. Designed in London and made in the UK, JACAVA is a quintessentially British nail polish brand.'