Triplet Nails: Sugar Spun Nails

It's been six month since we've teamed up, but today I've got another instalment of triplet nails with Madison from Fundamentally Flawless and Lauren from The Naily Mail.  These lovely girls are my oldest blogging friends and it's always great to come up with ideas with them.  We love trying out techniques that we haven't tried before and this time around we picked the Sugar Spun technique.

I decided to go with a white base and then did an ombré effect using China Glaze Frostbite, OPI Do You Have This Colour In Stock-Holm, and China Glaze Traffic Jam.

Teddy Bear Nail Art

Lately I've been a bit stuck in a rut with nail art designs, and I've been doing some quite similar things.  I thought it was about time that I changed that and did something a bit different.  I took a look back on some older designs that I had done to get some inspiration, and I came up with these cute teddy bear nails.

I really love doing cute character and animal designs and I realised that I haven't done any for a while.  You can see some of the ones that I have done in the past on this accent nail collage I did for a tag on Instagram including, Rudolph, Om-Nom, a monkey, a hedgehog, a bunny, a chick, and Frankenstein.

I decided on teddy bears because who doesn't love a cute cuddly teddy?  I started off with a neural base on my index, middle, and ring finger, and two coats of Caramel Matte Nail Paint from Barry M on my thumb and little finger. Then using Mushroom from Barry M I painted a large circle on the tip of my middle finger nail. Using a dotting tool, I added a two large dots for ears.  Then on the nails either side I added paw print shapes by adding one large circle and four small dots.  Once this had all dried I added in some details on the teddy's ears and paws with Caramel, and used Espresso, also from the Matte Nail Paints from Barry M to add a nose and two eyes.  Finally, I added some polka dots with Mushroom on to my thumb and little finger.

To add a glossy finish to my nails I added a thick coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri, so I didn't smudge my design.  I am so impressed with how glossy they look in the photo.

I already have some other ideas for different characters or animals I could try out next, so I am really pleased that I got out of my rut.  What do you do if/when this happens to you?

Thanks for stopping by
Aimée x

Sweetheart Nail Art

Valentine's is just perfect for nail art as there are so many different things you can do - hearts, flowers, kisses, love letters, the list is endless.  I know I did hearts last week, but I couldn't resist sticking with them this week for this more girly heart print design.

I had a bit of a search through my stash to get together some pinks and reds (you can see them all on Instagram), and came across ones that I hadn't thought about in a while, including Jacava Raspberry Bavarois.  I absolutely love this colour so decided that it was going to be the main choice for this design.  It paints on so smoothly and is perfectly opaque in one coat.  I always use two coats for extra longevity on my nails.

I painted my index, middle, and little finger in pink and my thumb and ring finger in white.  Then using different sized dotting tools I created the hearts in Raspberry Bavarois and Strawberry Ice cream from Barry M.  Hearts are really easy to do, but look really effective.  All you have to do is get a good amount of polish on the end of your dotting tool and then drag diagonally downwards to form the point of the heart, then repeat the same again with another dot adjacent to the first.  There were still a few little gaps, so I added in a few little dots in both pinks.  I think they finished off the accent nails perfectly.

What's your favourite sort of design for Valentine's Day?  Leave me some links so I can see yours.  Also, keep an eye on my Instgram later in the week for another exciting Valentine's related post.

Thanks for stopping by

Aimée x

Valentine's Day Heart Nail Art

With February upon us I thought that I'd make an early start with some simple Valentine's Day nails, plus I was determined to try out one of my new MoYou stamping plates.

As we still have a couple of weeks before the day itself I wanted to stick with a darker wintery colour, but still have a base that has a Valentine's feel to it.  I chose Revlon's Vixen - How fitting is the name apart from anything else?  It's tricky to describe the colour as it depends what light you look at it in.  Sometimes it can look very deep red with brown undertones, but with two coats it leans more to a purple red.  Either way I love it; but it does tend to stain a bit.

So, back to the stamping.  The other week I had to double stamp as my chosen colours weren't as contrasting as I had hoped, and then last week I had a design in mind, but it was just fail after fail so I gave up in the end.  So, not to be defeated I picked a different plate and tried again this week.  Does anyone else go through phases like this with stamping?

I chose my new MoYou Princess Plate 10 which has loads of cute designs on it, but being a Valentine's design I chose the linked hearts and I stamped these with MoYou White Knight stamping polish as an accent nail on my ring finger.  I thought it might be a bit much on every nail in this colour combination, so to finish the design I used the same white polish with a dotting tool to create mini hearts just off centre on the rest of my nails.

Overall I am pleased even though my white got a bit smudgy in places... Seems it's not just black that drags with top coat!

I am thinking of doing my very first full nail wheel of Valentine's designs; anyone fancy joining me for the challenge?  Keep an eye out for it on Instagram and whilst you're there it would be great if you gave me a follow!

Thanks for stopping by
Aimée x