Monday 29 October 2012

NOTD: Halloween Theme!



Aaaaah Halloween week! 

We love a theme and what better than scary spooky Halloween?!

We went a little nail crazy with ideas and decided to put them all on one post so you can see for yourself and hopefully get some different ideas!

First up is a galaxy nail style design:



I used the following polishes:

Halloween Nails

Nails Inc Black Taxi was the base coat, with the Max Factor Silver and Nails Inc orange from in Style sponged on top in galaxy style. I then added some stickers from the picture below (Andrea Fullerton at Superdrug) and then the Saffron glitter on top.

Halloween Nails

Barry M Halloween

It was a nice relatively easy style to do and a little different!

Next up I attempted to do my own spin on the Sugar Skull nails which was SO MUCH fun:

Skull Candy Nails

I started off with a white base coat which looked a bit flat so added on a shimmery white polish on top.
Then I used Models Own black nail pen to draw on triangles for the nose so I could keep the whole face as central as possible:

Skull Candy Nails

After this I used my dotting tools using the largest dot and applied the eyes and mouth using this.
I used 5 different bright colours on each hand, using 4 big dots to create the eyes followed by a line (of sorts!) for the mouth, as shown below:

Skull Candy Nails

Then I used the pen again to outline the eyes and putting a dot in the middle, and also lining the mouths and creating some teeth.
To make my own little spin on this I then added in a few dots, lines, squiggles etc so mine ended up looking a bit tribal!
I loved this design and it was definitely my favourite.
I had so many compliments, even from men serving me on tills in Superdrug and Tesco!
How random.

Skull Candy Nails

Skull Candy Nails

The last of my designs features a somewhat gimmicky polish from Barry M.
I've been using black and white a lot lately so picked up these colours from Barry M in Superdrug, and currently their promo is when you buy 2 products you get their limited edition orange 'web effect' polish for free.
I would never have bought this but as its a freebie the blogger in me wanted to give it a go:

Barry M Halloween

Barry M Halloween

As you can see it is different to a crackle effect, but not really producing a web effect!

The white does look pretty effective but the polish isn't opaque enough to cover the black polish sufficiently enough for you to see it, so this was a bit of a let down in my view and i was glad it was free!

Hope you like my designs!
Which one do you prefer?

L xxx

Today's post is a little late going up! I'm currently mourning the loss of the Ciate Advent Calender that was never meant to be I guess. No nail varnish everyday of December for me!

Anyway onto my Halloween nails. L's sugar skulls are my favourite. I was so impressed when she sent me photos of hers! I decided to have a go at a spooky castle type of nail art. Please ignore my grown out acrylics. They have been removed tonight!

I started off with two coats of Max Factor Max colour effect in shade cloudy blue (which isn't a cloudy blue shade at all) to creat a dark night sky. It reminds me of OPI Russian Navy. I really like the formulation of this polish and one coat was opaque but I did two for good measure.

On top of that I applied my new Sally Hansen polish I picked up in American in the shade glass slipper. I love the colour of this and the way it looks on the nail. It gave it a really starry night effect and you get so much glitter in one coat.


Partially as I wanted to try another new colour (OPI Altar Ego) and because I wanted it to look a little more foggy and spooky I applied a thin coat of Altar Ego which is a pearly white shade. I'll be interested to see what this looks like on a bare nail.


I really liked the effect and colour the combination of these three gave on the nail and I can't wait to use Altar Ego and Glass Slipper over different shades to see what they look like.

Once my nails were dry I used my Models Own nail art pen in black to drew the castle outlines.


I filled them in using the nail art pen too. I really need to invest in a good black nail varnish. I'm regretting not picking up OPI Black Onyx. What's your best black polish?


I then used OPI You Don't Know Jacques to draw a thumb on my nail and OPI My Pointe Exactly to create windows and my white Models Own Nail Art pen to Add a moon. 


Then using my Models Own Nail art pens I added details to the door, a cat and a ghost in the windows and some birds in the sky and on the moon. I like to think of them as Ravens.


and a close up of the thumb.


I wish they'd turned out a bit neater. I need to steady my hand more but overall I quite like them.

Have you tried Halloween Nail art?

Love M

xxx



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Saturday 4 August 2012

NOTD: Galaxy Nails

Galaxy nails have featured heavily on blog posts around the world for the past year or so.

I've never actually tried it as I thought it would be far to complicated but after trying out a few other designs I've decided to up my game!

Having already started out our 21 Days of Nails and then also seeing that Fee at Make Up Savvy has started a 15 Day Nail Challenge I thought it would be a great idea to combine the two and test out a Galaxy nail design today.

Hopefully she will link us in her post, but her blog can be found here for any other posts she puts up :)

Onto my designs....I decided to do two as I really got into the swing of things after trying out the dark galaxy nail design:


I started by painting my nails with a very thin coat of No7 Beautifully Black which is a silver glittery black, and then using Max Factor's Fantasy Fire and Odyssey Blue to create a dark glittery base representative of a mystical night sky.


After this I used my latest purchases of the China Glaze Neon colours, Pool Party and Turned Up Turquoise to create swirls and patterns along with Nails Inc's Cambridge Terrace to give a starry effect.


I then finished this with a top coat of China Glaze's Hunger Games edition of Luxe and Lush which will feature in an upcoming post also.

After I managed to cope with my attempt at galaxy nails for the first time, I removed my first attempt and thought I'd go for a more summery edition.....even though the weather isn't really reflecting the expected season! Sigh!


I started by using a pale blue base (Rimmel's Sweet as Sugar) and also the same Max Factor Fantasy Fire and Odyssey Blue, and Nails Inc's Cambridge Terrace to create a similar effect as before but in a lighter colour palette.


After this I used a coat each of the Saffron glitter nail polish in both silver and gold to give the best starry effect you could ever want with different shaped and sized glitter particles. 

I actually found this polish by reading Fee's blog in the first place so I owe her this big time, you can find it on ebay here for £2.20 delivered and here are also some fabulous dupes of other polishes...bargain!


What do you think of my attempts? Are you a fan of galaxy nails?

I'm so impressed with myself, gone are the days when I stick to my simple manicure. The world is my oyster now ;)

Take a look at Make Up Savvy's blog, it's amazing!

L xxx

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