Matte vs Glossy Stripes

I've tried to cut down on my striping as it was slowly taking over my life but I couldn't stay away from the thought of using a matte top coat over the tape instead of a completely different colour. I'm glad I gave in to the temptation though because this looks amazing! I think I'd like to try it with some different colours to give it a bit more dimension, I think it would look good with a glittery base colour.

The base colour is A-England Ophelia and I used a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly to speed things along. Click here to see a tutorial to see how I created the crisp lines using a coat of Rimmel Matte Top Coat.

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The Lady is a Vamp

I don't really know what came over me but today I attempted, once again, to water marble... voluntarily! Once again I was reminded how much I hate it so this will probably be it for a while.

I picked up this pretty black glitter for £1 is Store Twenty One today, it's Thunderstorm from BYS. I was expecting it to be a pretty glitter that I could layer over black polish but it turns out you don't even need a base colour so I was pretty happy about that. It's even prettier than it looks in the bottle too, I think it's going to see a lot of love from me.

I used Sally Hansen Blackout, Rimmel Heart on Fire and BYS Thunderstorm as my base colours. The water marble was created using Heart on Fire and Blackout. Finally I finished it all off with a coat of Essence Better Than Gel Nails.

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Half/Stud/Half

I know it's been quiet around here this week. I've been more than a little bit poorly but I'm on the mend now and slowly getting back in to the swing of things. I'll start with something sweet... pastels!

The colours here are Sally Hansen Green Tea, Sally Hansen Dorian Gray, NYC Raindrop, NYC Lavender Cupcake with Sonnetarium Lenten Rose on the ring finger.

I painted them all on as skittles then added a top coat to make them dry nice and quickly. Once the base colours were dry, I used scotch tape to mark a clean line halfway down each nail. Then I painted a second colour over the top one nail at a time and removed the tape straight away. I waited for that to dry and added a final top coat, attaching the studs while that was still wet.

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Snippet: Stay Optimistic

Press Sample

China Glaze Tart-y for the Party

Stargazer White

Aphrodite Lacquers Optimistic

Gradient tutorial here

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LOL

Like a lot of you here (you know who you are!), I'm a bit of a meme addict and I'm slowly but surely making my way through Know Your Meme on my nails! 

I kind of cheated with this one by creating a decal rather than freehanding it straight on to my nail.

I started by painting a thin coat of clear polish about 2x2cm on to a sheet of plastic and letting it dry. Then I used acrylic paint with a nail art brush to draw the face. Once it was all dry, I peeled the whole thing away from the plastic and stuck it to my nail using a coat of clear polish and smoothing it down with my finger. Finally I used a brush dipped in acetone to remove the excess at the edges and top coated it.

Unfortunately the result is chock full of air bubbles but they're not super visible unless you get very very close!

I used Barry M White as my base colour and created the face using the method described above. For the LOL text, I used a nail art brush with Rimmel Heart on Fire.

Previously: Nail Art Like A Sir, Paint ALL The Nails

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