Nailed It!

I was in the drugstore the other day restocking makeup essentials and I came across a new nail varnish that I'd never seen before, ombre top coat by Catrice! This product claims to give an ombre effect over pale nail varnishes when numerous coats are applied.
There have been so many new developments in nail trends recently; textures, matte, magnetic, and I've never tried any of them. This ombre varnish was pretty cheap though, I think about €2.30, so I decided to put it to the test.

I originally first tried it out a couple of days ago, but then I ended up spending a day doing garden/painting work at Oma's and my purple nails got speckles of green and chips on them.
As well as this little set back, I don't think the colour I chose was light enough for the ombre varnish to really make enough of a difference.

So, onto attempt no.2. I picked out the lightest varnish that I own, a very pale french pink that I've featured before and then began layering on the topcoat. Luckily it is very thin, so it doesn't take long to dry and doesn't end up leaving the nail feeling thick and tacky.

Number of coats L to R: 4, 3, 2, 1 

In the light the varnish is a dark purple

I left the thumb without ombre varnish for comparison. 

This wasn't a bad purchase for something so cheap, it's not a brilliant finish and I've noticed that some little bubbles have appeared on a couple of nails (although I'm not sure if that is the varnish or just because I had my hands in some seriously hot, steamy things when cooking).
I'm interested to see what it would look like over a light green or yellow polish, I wonder if the purple would effect the colour in any way?  
 

Nailed it!

I'm really feeling the spring/summer pastel nails at the moment and the weather has been especially inspiring the past few days, so I decided to go with it and crack out some polish.

I went for a toe/fingers spring combo with a light minty green on the fingers and a peachy soft pink on the toes. I topped it all off with a hint of sparkly gold. You can't see it terribly well, but I did gold on the 'ring' toe of each foot. 

American Apparel Nail Laquer Rose Bowl
Hema Long Lasting Nail Polish 441
NYC Top of the Gold
top coat

p.s. apologies if I scared anyone with my freakishly long feet

Nailed it!

Today I was reading through my regular blogs and I came across this. I have long been amazed at the designs that The Dainty Squid creates on her nails and wished I could do the same, wondering what her secret was! Nail art classes? The steady hand of a sniper? Magic? And now she has revealed it's scotch tape! (Sellotape for all the non-americans)
I was instantly eager to try this technique out! Here's my attempt:

Revlon Super Top Speed Polar Pink

No7 Stay Perfect Betty Blues

w7 Diamon Top Coat

Sellotape 

I never dreamed it was so achievable! I decided to start with something fairly simple as I didn't have an small scissors anywhere, in hindsight I think it maybe wasn't smart to go to the edge of the nail as it was very hard to trim the ends evenly. I have a sneaking suspicion it might peel off in an hour or two if I'm not careful.

Anyway, give it a go and see what happens! And check out more of The Dainty Squid's polish adventures, they are awe-inspiring!

Nailed it!

Those of you who read my knitting post on Monday will know that, having spent hours doing my polkadot nails the night before, the varnish completely peeled off after a hot bath, lasting all of 12 hours.

It's Arjan's birthday tomorrow and we're going out for dinner, then on Friday he's hosting a night at a local venue, so I wanted to do something a little fun and glittery and I figured I might as well make a post out of it seeing as I forgot to take pictures while making dinner.... 

The polishes I used were No7 Stay Perfect in Betty Blues and New York Color in Top Of The Gold, which is a topcoat (although I did use a clear top coat as well).

(the NYC is a lot less orangey looking when applied, as seen on the other pictures)

The No7 is a beautiful, richly-pigmented, deep blue with tiny particles of blue glitter that give a super subtle shimmer. If you were using this as a base coat for an all-over glitter polish I'd suggest using just one layer as it's thick enough and has more of a noticeable blue colour to it (it is very dark), but seeing as I was just doing the tips I went with two. 

The NYC is a 'gold leaf effect' rather than a traditional glitter, so the pieces are very irregular in size and  shape and give more of a flaked looked. 

I would normally use nail stickers for anything with tips or similar, but seeing as the glitter wouldn't give as obvious an edge, I just free-handed which, ok, isn't quite as neat as it could have been *ahem* left hand *ahem* but it's not bad enough that I would do it differently next time around.  

Apologies for being a little repetitive, I'm going to try come up with some sort of schedule for weekly posts and then stick to it! I'll have some cool stuff to write about this weekend and I'll be playing photographer at the night on Friday, so I'll show you some snaps (if they're any good).  

Nailed it!

Today was spent wandering through the sunshine, taking pictures of anything and everything, drinking fake Baileys and visiting my lovely, little, 'adopted' Oma (Arjan's Grandma). So when we got back home at 4pm I had put little thought into what to write about today.
After a few hours of uhm-ing and ah-ing over it I noticed that I hadn't painted my nails in a few days, which is unusual at the moment.
So with that realisation I knew what to do, and thus I present to you my first attempt at polkadot nails!

The polishes I used were No7 Stay Perfect in French Pink and Kate Spade for Nails Inc in New York Noir (which I got free with Glamour Magazine!)

The No7 is a very sheer polish and so I had to use 3 coats before I got decent coverage (although you may notice you can still see the white of the tips) but it seems to have dried fairly well and wasn't streaky at all.

I used a barbecue skewer (no toothpicks at hand) to make the dots and filed it flat a little on the point to increase the size of the dots. Sadly, as a right handed person the left took a good bit of work and after struggling with the first 2 fingers, Arjan offered to help. Needless to say they didn't turn out much better (hence why only the left hand is pictured).

I waited for the dots to dry as much as possible and then used a top coat.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with the way these turned out and I think it's something I would definitely try again and attempt to improve upon.

As an added bonus here's a little shot of me with Oma: