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    31 Day Challenge, Tutorial, Uncategorised

    Christan Dior AW12 Fashion Nail Art Tutorial

    Here’s a tutorial for my Day 25 Inspired by Fashion Manicure from this year’s 31 Day Challenge. You can see the original post here with plenty of pictures.
    The basics you’ll need are striping tape, black nail polish (or any other colour of your choice) and a top coat.
    I’ve also used tweezers, acetone and some nail art brushes but you’ll see more about that below.

    Make sure your nails are completely clean. If there’s any oil or dirt on your nails, the tape will have a hard time sticking properly. 
    You can use a base coat or colour if you like but I did the design straight on to my bare nails. If you are going to apply any polish make sure it’s completely dry before you apply any tape.

    Place strips of striping tape across your nail and double up a few to make thicker lines. I used some tweezers  to help me place the tape exactly where I wanted it. Try to make sure the tape is stuck down all the way to the edges.

    One nail at a time, paint on your colour. Try to choose one that only needs one coat to be opaque. I just used one coat of A-England Lancelot. Move swiftly on to the next step.

    While the polish is still wet, peel off the tape in one smooth motion from one side to the other.

    If there are any patches where the polish got underneath the tape, use a nail art brush dipped in acetone to remove the unwanted bits.

    Wait until the polish is completely dry and apply your top coat. I didn’t wait long enough and you can see the smudges!
    Use a small paintbrush dipped in acetone to clean up around the edges and there you go!

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    31 Day Challenge, Uncategorised

    31DC2012: Day 25 Inspired by Fashion

    Welcome to Day 25 of the challenge! Today, we have to create nails inspired by fashion so the first thing I did (again) was type ‘Fashion’ in to Google! I came across the Vogue website and started clicking through this season’s catwalk shows.
    I spent a long time looking through and I was waiting to see something… ANYTHING that I could immediately envisage on my nails when the bottom half of a dress from Christian Dior’s ready-to-wear collection caught my eye. I immediately knew that this would be the nail art I’d do to match and I’m so pleased with the way it turned out.

    Runway photo credit: Vogue.co.uk

    For this manicure, I didn’t use a base colour or even a base coat, I went straight in with some striping tape to mark off the lines. I did this for two reasons. Firstly of course, you’ve got the authentic see through look and also I couldn’t be bothered to wait for anything to dry! For the thicker lines I just used two pieces of tape right next to each other. I used nail art tweezers for this step because it’s very fiddly.
    When all the tape was in place, I painted on a coat of A-England Lancelot, one nail at a time, and carefully peeled off the tape using the tweezers. There was some polish out of place, especially near the edges where the tape had come away from the nail a little, so I dipped a nail art brush in some acetone to clean away the bits I didn’t want. When everything was completely dry, I used two coats of Seche Vite to glaze it over.

    Now go to Rie and Cris‘ blogs to see their fashionicures!

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    Swatch, Uncategorised

    Aphrodite Lacquers Swatches: Auction, Supernova and Margarita

    This is the first weekend for months where I have absolutely no plans so I’ve had a pretty lazy Saturday. So far today I’ve worked my way through the entire first series of Workaholics, picked up where I left off on Homeland, dyed my hair and painted my nails about 7 times! I consider that quite a day, especially for a weekend!
    Today I’ve got swatches of some polishes from Aphrodite Lacquers*. These polishes have been sitting on my desk for swatching for weeks now but with the 31 Day Challenge going on, I haven’t had much time for swatching. With the quick break I’m taking from it this weekend I finally had time to sit down and test out these beauties.
    Auction is a pearly white base packed with blue square glitter and small black hexes. I’ve used 3 coats straight on to my naked nail except on my ring finger where I used two coats of Sally Hansen Ion under 3 coats of Auction. There are two coats of Seche Vite top coat on every nail.

    Supernova is definitely my favourite of the three. It’s pink purple and silver hexes in a black jelly base. I used three coats for drama but two will give you full coverage. I used two coats of Seche Vite top coat.
    Margarita is a beautiful green glitter polish somewhere between lime green and bottle green. It contains green hexes, slightly smaller blue hexes and silver glitter in a green jelly base. For this swatch I used two coats of NYC High Line Green as a base and then three coats of Margarita, except on my index finger which is just 3 coats of Margarita. Using a green base has given a slightly brighter result but the polish looks just as great on its own. Two top coats of Seche Vite.

    You can buy Aphrodite Lacquers from Rebecca’s Etsy Shop for $8 plus shipping.

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    Freehand, Uncategorised

    Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

    To make up for not posting for the three whole days this week, get a whopping 3 posts this weekend! You had Day 2 of the challenge this morning and you can expect day 3 tomorrow as well as this gem in the middle.
    In case you couldn’t guess, this mani was inspired by playing cards. I’m not big on card games myself, I can just about manage the simpleton ones like rummy and pig but my brother is big in to poker. For his 18th birthday I wanted to take him on a night out to play casino games but totally chickened out. What a lousy sister I am! Maybe that will have to be his surprise this year. 

    I used two coats of OPI Samoan Sand as my base colour and then freehanded around the shapes with a nail art brush to get the cutout effect. They really remind me of a set of window shutters I once saw that looked something like this.
    The red is Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Rapid Red and the black is… of course W7 Black! It’s topped off with a coat of Sally Hansen Advanced Hard as Nails plus one coat of thickened Essence Better Than Gel Nails to smooth everything over.

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    Stamping, Uncategorised

    The Ones That Didn’t Quite Make It

    Next Monday, Tadashi Shoji are launching a Nail Art Contest on their Facebook page and they kindly invited me to be a part of the line up amongst some other amazing nail bloggers!
    This is a set of nails inspired by one of Tadashi Shoji’s SS13 dresses that didn’t quite make the cut. That’s not to say I don’t like them though, I still think they look good so what’s the point in keeping them a secret?! You’ll see my final design next week when voting opens and I’m so excited to see the other bloggers’ designs. I’m going up against some stiff competition, let me tell you!

    I used Cult Nails Cruisin Nude as a base colour and stamped on the swirly design from Bundle Monster Plate BM314  and W7 Black. I used a striping brush with the W7 Black to freehand the sections at the side. Finally, I topped it with two coats of Essence Better Than Gel Nails.

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    Stamping, Uncategorised

    A-England Gothic Beauty: Jane Eyre Swatch

    I’m so behind on all the nail news. I didn’t even know A-England have a new collection out – the Gothic Beauties. The collection contains 5 shades which are all black based with coloured shimmer and flecks, bar Dorian Gray which is a metallic-y pewter shade.
    The hints of colour in these polishes are very pretty in the bottle but not so obvious once it’s on the nail. As a lover of black nail polish, this is of no concern to me! Jane Eyre is full of bronze and light pink flecks in a perfect black creme base. The swatches are two coats of Jane Eyre* with a top coat of Essence Better Than Gel Nails.

    I stamped on a Red Angel design from plate RA109 using Sally Hansen Insta Dri in Quick Brick. This is definitely some of my favourite stamping ever! It’s very subtle but still striking and it looks very oriental. Definitely something I’m going to be trying with other colour combos.
    You can buy Jane Eyre from the A-England website with free worldwide shipping!
    *This item was sent to me for review. All opinions are my own. See my disclaimer for more information.

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    Freehand, Uncategorised

    NY Fashionail Week Day 2: The Blonds

    Today’s fashion week inspired nail art comes from The Blonds show and was created by CND’s Kristina Estabrooks which you can see here. The theme on the catwalk was ‘Psycho Beach Party’ and there were a few nail looks but this one, Shark Bites, is my favourite of the bunch!

    I used W7 Black as my base colour and Models Own Utopia for the ‘bites’ which I applied with a striping brush. I finished it off with two coats of Essence Better Than Gel.

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