Nigerian Watermelon…

So I attended a World Cup Party at the weekend where you had to dress up as a competing country. I decided to go with Nigeria as I think their traditional dress is beautiful and the patterns and colours they use are inspiring. I personally love watermelons so it matched perfectly with Nigeria’s reputation for watermelon farming. I sewed the whole thing myself (with a sewing machine) and even made my hat, it didn’t take too long and I really enjoyed doing it. I’m pretty proud of how it turned out as it’s only my second sewing machine project and I didn’t use any patterns just pins and a pen – it certainly was a learning curve!

Naturally I had to paint my nails to match!

 

Advertisement

BornPrettyStore: Fish BP-151

So I’ve not written a review in ages! Today I’m showing you a fish themed stamping plate from BornPrettyStore. Have a little look at the following pictures and let’s play ‘One of these things is not like the others’.

Did you get it right? Why on earth has a unicorn been included, bizarre. There is actually a fish called a Unicorn Tang but it certainly doesn’t look like that. (I suppose you could argue that jellyfish aren’t fish but at least it’s related in the name and live in the sea.)

Anyway, the fish images are pretty usable and picked up crisply. They lend themselves well to reverse stamping if that’s your bag but if it’s not don’t worry as they can also be used just as effectively for as stamp-and-go images.

However, if you have quite long nails I think you’d struggle to cover them with just one image. I think you’d have to pick up the image twice and try to do some sort of over-lap. I have naturally long nails without have long growth (if that makes sense) and the images were close to being too small to cover mine. Also, as beautiful as the central goldfish is I didn’t have much practical use for it as it’s massive!

Enough nit-picking, who’s ready for some nail art example;

So which was your favourite? If you fancy trying out some fish-related designs the plate is currently on sale for only $1.59 and free shipping! Should you happen to add anything else to your basket, use my code AZYW10 at the checkout to receive 10% off all your full priced items.

New Year New Neon…

So I received a set of Nails Inc ‘Stay Bright Neons’ for my Christmas and decided to use one of the polishes (‘Claridge gardens’) as the base for my new year nails. The set includes a ‘neon activator’ which you have to apply as a base for the neon colour – it looked a lot like normal white nail varnish to me but it sure did make the neon pop!

I then threw on a sprinkling of holo glitter, which has disappointingly photographed as just silver, and some green round glitter to give me that ‘lets have a party’ feeling.

All the best for 2018 everyone!

Spooky Sequins…

So there’s actually nothing spooky about these sequins, but this design is the start of my Halloween nails. I think they look quite grimy and gritty without having to shout Halloween. The sequins are really nice in reality – kind of iridescent and give off a  nice shine. If you’re following me on Instagram my ‘story’ today has a few good shots of them shining.

BornPrettyStore: Peacock Powder…

So today I’m going to show you some ‘Peacock Holo Powder‘ in option LG-04 (sent to me by BornPrettyStore). But if you follow me on Instagram this’ll be no surprise as you’ve already had a sneak peak at it!

The powder comes in a screw-cap tub within a little bag, and at first I was shocked by how little there was – I genuinely thought it hadn’t been filled properly. But! Upon looking again at the description it does state 0.2g so actually that’s about right.

You will need a no-wipe gel top coat to be able to use this powder as it won’t ‘stick’ to normal polish. I gave mine top coat 25 seconds curing time leaving it just very slightly tacky but safe enough to touch without leaving marks. It is also suggested that the powder be applied on top of black polish so that’s what I did.

It’s beautifully smooth and a little goes a long way, I can see why 0.2g is a perfectly acceptable amount now. I can also understand why it’s full description is ‘Peacock Holographic Chameleon Mirror Chrome Powder‘, what a mouthful right BUT LOOK AT THOSE COLOURS! It displays all of those qualities;

I decided to test it on a lighter colour and it still works perfectly well! It gives it a slightly different under tone. (To reiterate just make sure you’re applying the powder to a no-wipe gel polish or regular polish that’s been gel top coated.) Unlike other chrome powders I’ve tried, this one is very easy to control. It’s not as messy in it’s application meaning it doesn’t end up sticking to your skin or cuticles – no clean up, no latex barrier bonus!

I chose to top coat the powder with my usual, Seche Vite, which has a terrible habit of melting metalics, foils and chromes but it did an amazing job at staying strong. If anything top coating the powder made it sparkle and holo even more, you can’t deny that that shine ^ is awesome.

For one last test I chose to use a blue base. I think you could have a lot of fun trailing this powder on loads of different colours, and I don’t think any of them would come out dissapointing. Has anyone else used this powder, what were your results?

I really could have sat and looked at my nails all day. The ‘Peacock Powder‘ is amazing and it looks exactly as it’s described. At first the 0.2g may seem disappointing but a little goes a long way, it applies well and it’s at a very reasonable price.

LOOK AT THOSE COLOURS! (But ignore the fluff, whoops…)

If you’d like to try this product or anything else from BornPrettyStore, use my code AZYW10 to receive 10% off any full priced items in your order.

Folded Fox…

So I thought this mani turned out super cute, but unfortunately it got chipped after only like 2.5 seconds of arriving in to work. Why do the pretty manis never survive yet ugly ones seem indestructible – it’s not fair!

The fox is from an amazing BornPrettyStore plate. Why is it amazing? Because it has so many usable images and I’ve previously reviewed it here, it’s definitely worth purchasing.

Supernova…

So I’ve finally broken my ‘no buy January/February’ by purchasing 3 polishes from Primark. They were so cheap at £1.50 each, really only equating to the price 1 ‘good’ polish and we are now in to May almost June so I think I’ve done pretty darn well. I’ve enjoyed not buying, I feel like I’ve broken the habit (or addiction, whatever you’d like to call it) and it feels good! However, I am feeling a slight relapse coming on as I’m getting a little bit bored of my current supplies – my fingers are twitching at the keyboard, eager to start scrolling through BPS again. Maybe that’s why I ended up buying some new polishes actually!

Anyway, the first polish I tried was ‘Supernova’ which is a metallic pink pink according to the bottle, however on the nail it comes out a sort of lilac pink. It applied wonderfully smooth, it didn’t steak quite as badly as Models Own metallics can, and it didn’t smell horrible either. (Please excuse the two sort of scuff marks, I managed to bump my nails whilst they were still drying)

That was way to boring to leave the house with so I added a quick splash of glitter! In reality, I think the pink glitter helps to lift the polish a bit more in to the pink side and out of the purple side of the spectrum.

Mermaid Water Globe…

So I’m afraid this is going to be a design that you’re going to love or hate – water globes are certainly not for everyone.

I used my trio of homemade polishes called ‘A mermaids life‘ for the base and then added lots of sealife bling, pearls and beads which were all from BornPrettyStore.

To make the orb part, I rolled some ‘picker gel‘ in to a ball and covered it in two layers of gel polish, curing it between each of course. I then carefully picked out the gel and was left with a little hard orb shaped shell.

I then filled it with my glitter, put some gel nail polish round the rim and stuck it to my nail. I cured that first, and then painted around the sphere more thoroughly to ensure it was leak proof. It was then time to fill the orb with oil, and to do so I drilled a little hole in the top (with a nail drill used to attach dangle charms) and pipette some in! I sealed the hole with some more gel polish, cured it, and that’s all there was to it to be honest. I’d watched some tutorials on Youtube and they had like needles and proper UV sculpting gel or whatever, so even though mines was a little more  fiddly I think it still turned out well.

What do you think, do you dig the water globe look? It’s not particularly practical but it’s well stuck down so I doubt it would fall off. I would worry about it popping though as it doesn’t feel incredibly hard.

Pokemon Theme: Ditto…

So I had a few ideas for ditto, such as having him transformed mimicking other pokemon the only tell tale sign being the beady eyes. But then I thought it might be quite fun to make him in to a repeating pattern, and I think it turned out quite well! It’s a totally wearable design, right?

Falling Leaf…

So I’ve been really embracing Autumn this week. I feel summer delivered good weather and good times, and therefore I’m happy to get on with the seasons to come. Sometimes, especially in Scotland, we’re a little cheated by the summer weather due to it’s unpredictability but not this year.

I find Autumn very beautiful. Most of my flowers are dying off, but I’ve looked at them for months so now it’s nice to see the Cyclamen peeping out with their wonderful shades of pinks and purples. Even though the leaves on the trees are actually dying, their death attire is gorgeous. And I’m lucky enough to have a wonderful view of the edge of a forest from my room window so I can’t help but appreciate the beauty of it.

Anyway, can we put that ramble down to a ‘the weekend is here’ drink, here’s some nail art.