Halloween Free Hand Spider Nail Art

For my manicure today, I painted my nails with Bourjois No Chips No. 11. Once dry, I used acrylic paints and a nail art brush to draw the spider webs and the spiders on the middle finger and thumb with the help of this great tutorial. I finished with a top coat.
I quite enjoyed the nail art in this manicure. The webs and the spiders were relatively easy and fun to do. And although this was not my intention when I started, the colours and the nail art I chose did remind me of Spiderman, specially because the nail polish looks more red than orange in the photos. I think I have to do Spiderman themed nails sometime with this nail art!

Hope you have a Happy Halloween!

See what the British Nail Bloggers have been up to this week!

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Gold Paisley on Scarlet and Revlon Top Coat Review

Diwali, the Festival of Lights is just around the corner so I have been thinking of some Indian themed manicures. Today's manicure is just a little attempt towards that. For this manicure, I used the nail polish, Collection Cosmetics Scorched, which is a shimmery red-orange colour. I stamped the gold paisley on the nails from the Bundle Monster plate, BM315, with Barry M Gold Foil.

Also, I have been using the new Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat for the last week or two and thought I would do a quick review. This top coat is certainly quick dry - it is touch dry within a minute or two. It is however much thinner than some of the other quick dry top coats that I have used, say Seche Vite. The disadvantage of it being thinner is that it does not make the nails quite as glossy as Seche Vite. On the other hand, because its thinner, it is easier to apply, it does not bubble up even with a couple of coats and it did not streak my stamping. I think it is especially good to use as an intermediate top coat when you want the base layer to dry before you do your nail art. Overall, I am quite happy with it and would definitely buy and use again.

Halloween Stamping Nail Art - Double, Double, Toil and Trouble ...

Fire burn and Cauldron Bubble ...

Another manicure with Halloween inspired nail art. For these nails, I used Essie Fear or Desire with one coat of Sinful Colors Serena and Chloe on top for a bit of sparkle. I stamped with images from the plate HD04 with Konad Black.
I really like these images, specially the cauldron - it reminded me of the scene from Macbeth with the three witches! I had to then search for that scene on the net to enjoy a good little read!
I'm not really into scary or gory images for Halloween, nail art or otherwise - so this manicure is just something that I really enjoyed wearing - its suitable for Halloween but still pretty cute!

Breast Cancer Awareness Manicure

Its the last Pink Friday of October 2013 and here are my breast cancer nails.

For these nails, I used Misa Funky Punky Pink. I used pink MoYou rhinestones on all the fingers, except the ring finger. On the ring finger, I used hexagonal glitter to shape out a breast cancer ribbon.

The breast cancer awareness campaign has certainly got me thinking about my health - hope it has helped everyone in the same way. Wishing you and your families good health, as always!

Halloween free hand Witch Nail Art

Time for some free hand Halloween nail art today. Its a simple black manicure but with an accent nail, which has a yellow moon behind a witch flying on her broomstick. The witch is painted with acrylic paint and I originally painted the moon with acrylic paint too - but it didn't come out smooth and the paint was quite thick so didn't dry for ages. So I started again and painted the moon with nail polish as well. 

For this manicure, I used Revlon Black Star. I painted the yellow moon with NYC Lexington Yellow and a nail art brush. The witch was painted free hand with acrylic paint and a nail art brush. I used this wonderful tutorial to paint the witch.

Happy Halloween!

See what the British Nail Bloggers have been up to this week!

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Stamping over a holographic base

For my Sunday stamping manicure today, I chose China Glaze Holographic Astro Hot. I stamped with images from the MoYou London XL Plate 10 from the Pro Collection, using Color Club Revvvolution.

I know, another pink manicure - but it seemed an appropriate choice for floral nails!
These China Glaze Holos don't have a very strong holographic effect to begin with but I also did not get the chance to photograph my nails in the sun to bring out the holo effect. It seems to happen to me quite frequently - its fairly sunny when I think of trying out a holo nail polish but the moment I do my manicure, the sun invariably disappears! I think I need to stop with the holos to get some sun!

Pink Friday for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, October 2013

Its time for another pink manicure to support the Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
To show your support, you can register at the Wear it Pink website and wear pink on the 25th of October. To quote the site, "To join forces all you have to do is grab something pink, wear it on Friday 25 October and donate £2 to Breast Cancer Campaign. With our ideas for wear it pink at the office, in primary school, secondary school and at home you can make sure everyone joins in. This year there are great prizes for some of our fundraising heroes who pay their money in by the end of November, too!"

I really like the water marble designs that I see on blogs and youtube but I have had unpredictable results with it myself. I definitely need practice perfecting that technique but after the number of times I had to do it for my one manicure for the 31 Day Challenge, I think it will be some time before I gather up the courage to try it again! In the meantime, I came across some good tutorials for dry marbling on the internet. Of these, I tried this one by Tartofraises, which I loved. My attempt is not as perfectly beautiful as the original but its still very pretty and I really loved wearing this manicure.
For this pink manicure, I used Revlon Cupid again. For the marbling, I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Emerald City and Plum Power. The sparkly silver is W7 Moondust. I used a fine nail art brush and a dotting tool for this design.

See what the British Nail Bloggers have been up to this week!

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Stripes, stripes, stripes ...

I really like the MoYou London Image plates - they have brought out some unique and unusual images on their plates, but even their more straightforward images, like stripes and dots stamp really beautifully. This manicure uses one such plate, which has stripes, dots and other geometric patterns. These images are lovely to use on their own or to use as a base for double stamping, if you are so inclined.

For these nails, I used Color Club Alter Ego and stamped with Konad Black using MoYou London XL Plate 01 from the Pro Collection. I really like the sparkly polish between the plain black stripes. Here's another look ...

Gold Stamping on gold and black half moons

I chose the classic black and gold colour combination for my manicure today.

I started off by painting my nails with Barry M Gold Foil. Once this was dry, I used paper hole reinforcers to mark out the half moons near the cuticles and painted the rest of the nails with Barry M Black. I removed the reinforcers while the black polish was still wet. When the black polish was dry, I stamped with the gold foil and the image plate Pueen 47.

Do you think the stamping looks a little bit like a peacock's tail feathers when its dancing? Maybe its just my overactive imagination! But maybe I ought to try this image with a blue-green base!

Pink Friday for Breast Cancer Awareness

Another edition of Pink Friday to raise awareness against Breast Cancer.
If you are in the UK, you can support the fight against Breast Cancer by binning your bra. To quote the campaign site,
"In 2010 a team of nine scientists and researchers at UCL's Institute for Women's Health are devoted to carrying out novel research to improve breast cancer detection and survival. Their salaries, equipment and lab space are entirely funded by the goodwill, generosity and tireless efforts of the organisation's volunteers, patrons, donors and supporters.
The Bin Your Bra campaign not only keep textiles out of landfill, it helps small businesses in Africa and raises vital funds for their ground breaking research.
The final amount raised is based on the weight of bras collected so more bras mean more funds and every £1 raised moves us closer to our ultimate goal, a future free from breast cancer."
The website for this campaign has information on where in the UK, you can bin your bra.

For this pink manicure, I did a gradient with Barry M Matt White and Revlon Cupid. The accent nail was stamped with Konad White and MoYou plate 13 from the Princess Collection. The pink rhinestones are from MoYou as well. Its all finished with topcoat.

Wishing all my readers good health!

See what the British Nail Bloggers have been up to this week!

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Essie For the Twill of It from the Fall 2013 Collection

Essie For the Twill of It is from the Essie Fall 2013 collection. Essie describes it as, "rich medium brown with reflective green shimmer" and "rich maple lacquer with reflective olive shimmer".

This polish is a gorgeous duochrome - it has shades of metallic grey/brown and flashes purple and green. Its quite a thick formula and although I applied two coats, you can easily get away with one. I really liked the formula - it was easy to apply and dried fairly quickly.

You can see the purple here ...

I wanted to take some photos in the sun to get the colours more vividly today. But as luck would have it - we didn't really have much sun after I decided to apply the polish - it was really sunny up to that point! My camera didn't pick up the green as well but you can see a hint of it here ...

I loved wearing this gorgeous polish! Its in stores now.

Double Stamping on Blue

The Sunday stamping challenge for my stamping group this week was to stamp with an image plate ending in 2. I just couldn't decide on which image to go with, of the few image plates that I have which end in 2. I did however, want to try a fuschia/red and blue colour combination since I love coral and turquoise together! I tried stamping with Sally Hansen Insta Dri Flashy Fuschia on Barry M Gelly in Guava but the fuschia didn't show up as well as I wanted - the base was a bit too dark for it. And since I couldn't decide on one image, I decided to try some double stamping with gold and black instead.

I painted my nails with Barry M Gelly in Guava - I think its a really pretty colour. I then stamped with Barry M Gold Foil with an image from Pueen 42. I stamped a floral image from Konad M82 on top with Konad black. I added gold hex glitter at the center of the flowers and finished with topcoat.

Pink Nails for Breast Cancer Awareness Month - October 2013

October is Breast Cancer Awareness  Month. Its a good opportunity to brush up on the information you need on the subject and to be aware of any changes to your body.  You can celebrate Pink Fridays this month to raise awareness and also register at the site to donate money to this good cause. I will be painting my nails pink on Fridays this month to show my support.

For my pink nails, I painted three nails with Sally Hansen Salon Manicure Frutti Petutie. I added the rhinestones to the nails while the polish was still wet. I painted the two accent nails with Boots 17 Style Slave. I then marked off the silver stripe with tape and painted on either side - the pink is Sally Hansen Frutti Petutie and the blue is Color Club Williamsburg.

Here's some other bloggers who are doing pink manicures today for this cause (inlinkz code kindly set up by Dimpal). Wishing you all good health!

See what the British Nail Bloggers have been up to this week!

An InLinkz Link-up

31DC2013: Day Thirty-One - Honour Nails You ❤

Last Day of the 31 Day Challenge today! This challenge was a huge learning experience for me. I tried so many new techniques and ideas - and although I need to practice and improve on most of them, its a start. Also, I am fairly new at blogging and this challenge was really like jumping in at the deep end. The challenge is over now but I will be putting my new found knowledge to good use, hopefully!

For today's challenge, I decided to recreate the fish tail manicure done by the lovely Lucie! Of course, its difficult to match her beautiful manicure but this is my humble, little attempt!

For these nails, I used a base of Claire's Cosmetics Blue Mirror and then alternated diagonal brush strokes to form the fishtail with Boots 17 Style Slave and a special edition Barry M glittery pink, BLE2012. In my experience, the things to remember for this technique is to wait a minute between each diagonal stripe to let it dry a bit before the second. Also, that these nails take some time to dry since the multiple brush strokes make it a bit thick. The fish tail nails look absolutely lovely and I can't wait to try them again with other color combinations!