Just Dots…

So here’s some really simple autumnal nail art. Again, I was in the mood for having painted nails but didn’t have the time or motivation for anything excessive.

Advertisement

Welcome to Autumn…

So I’ve been sitting on this nail art since September, it’s just that I couldn’t get my butt in to gear to edit the pictures and write a post.  I used my Pusheen calendar as the source image and just sort of copied it like for like.

As I’m so out of practice, my painting isn’t the neatest but I still think it turned out cute!

Kiko Denim…

So I have a bit of an ongoing love affair with the cosmetics brand ‘Kiko’, does anyone else use their stuff? They don’t test on animals and their make-up is really great. I only wear, (therefore only buy) eye make up so that’s all I’ve used but it’s highly pigmented, comes in a great range of colours and is actually really affordable for such quality.

Anyway I thought I would try some of their nail products, firstly these nail wraps. As much as I love to paint my nails there’s sometimes just no time to actually do so, so wraps are a great convenience.

The applied really smoothly, they were reasonably sized and I was able to file off the excess easily. Over all I was impressed! If you wanted to they could have been customized quite easily with say gems or studs or even mixed and matched with nail polishes.

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!

 

French (bulldog) manicure..

So with the weather being amazing lately I felt like I wanted something bright and fun to adorn my nails. I delved in to my nail art supplies and came out with gemstones, glitter and some adorable French Bulldog water decals. Perfect! I then resorted to picking two of my favourite Barry M polishes so favoured that the names have worn off…

So which do you prefer? Pink or green?

Poké-polish 2…

So way back in November, not long after returning from my Japan trip, I tried one of the two Pokemon x Its demo polishes that I brought back. It’s only taken me till now to try out the other one, not bad huh!

The first polish was clearly related to Pikachu, I mean it had lightening bolts in it – check out the post here. It was a bit harder to tell which Pokemon this one was based on but out of Pikachu and the three starters featured on the matching hand-cream I’d go for Squirtle because of the silver squares and blueish flakies.

Anyway, I decided the Charmander of nightmares (look at that haunting smile and dead eyes…) was the one I wanted to paint today. Even though I deemed the polish as being squirtle based, he’s my least favourite started so I didn’t want to paint him.

For being a cheap polish around £3 it is actually quite good quality – not smelly, plenty of glitter and dries quickly when applied with a sponge. I just wish I’d brought more back now! I’ll just have to start saving for another J-trip…

 

Princess Mononoke…

So I painted these a couple of weeks ago now and just never got round to posting them. One of our ‘local’ independent cinemas (The Cameo, in Edinburgh) shows vintage films on a Sunday and it just so happens that it’s Studio Ghibli month. So when I found out Princess Mononoke was showing I had to go. It’s probably my favourite Ghibli film, I mean I even dressed up as San for Halloween once and it was subbed not dubbed – bonus. Don’t get me wrong, I’m some sort of elitist about subbed vs dubbed it’s just that after hearing it in Japanese so many times that’s their voices now and anything else would just sound weird.

P.S. Here’s me dressed up as San, and my partner as Ashitaka of course. (Way back in 2012 might I add!)

Rainbow Copy Cat…

So I’ve not posted any nail art in ages *insert the usual excuses*. Anyway, I’ve taken inspiration from JeeA Lee ; her nail art is cute and fun and the little rainbows just called for me to paint them.

Abstract Art…

So I’ve seen a lot of random/abstract nail art lately on Instagram (e.g among others, ‘Ninanailedit‘ does the style quite often) and thought I’d give it a go. It was simultaneously freeing but a bit stressful , let me explain.

It was great to just do a blob here, a few spots there, add a line and then voilà. It was quick, in my opinion it looks quite cool and it wasn’t messy. There was no pressure to be ‘perfect’. Done.

But! It was knowing when to stop and also not getting too OCD about it. Is that enough spots? Do the lines have to all point in the same direction? Was that the right colour combination? And so on.

I’d definitely do it again as it was quite fun and I’d recommend for everyone to give it a go!

Born Pretty Store: Chameleon Gel…

So I have a UV lamp but haven’t used many UV Gel products so I was interested to try out the ‘Chameleon Sequins Gel BP-08‘ that BornPrettyStore sent to me to review. There’s only 3g of gel in the little tub which doesn’t look much at first but actually there’s plenty.

I started off with a black base then applied two coats of the gel, curing in between. For application I used a small flat brush as I felt it would pick up the Chameleon sequins better than a pointed brush. Even though it’s described as ‘sequins’, I’d probably call it a chameleon flakie.

Those colours though, right?!
❤

It really is beautiful and it was worth doing two coats of gel as I think it helps add a bit of depth. I sealed in all in with a no wipe UV gel top coat.

As pretty as it is alone, I thought it made a fitting base for some basic galaxy decoration. What do yous think?

If you would like to order this Gel or anything else from BornPrettyStore feel free to use my code AZYW10 at the check out to receive 10% off all your full priced items.