Neon Bubbles

The manicure today is based on the Neon prompt of my March Nail Art Challenge. I do love the bright and colourful look of these nails. If anything, they are even brighter and more striking in real life.

Colourful Neon Holi Manicure

Holi, the Festival of Colours, is a spring festival celebrated widely in India and parts of South Asia and the world. Everyone, the young and the old, colour each other with coloured powder and water and use water-guns and balloons for the water fights. Its a joyful festival to get together, forgive and forget and have a lot of fun! This Bollywood song is a good one to get an idea about how its celebrated!

Pink Flowers!

I was really looking forward to using a couple of the Models Own Chrome polishes I got to stamp with, and they did not disappoint. I have used one of them here for the stamping. Also, I really wanted to try out the floral image on the BP 54 plate - I haven't used such a large floral image before and it looks very unusual and eye-catching, I think.

Blowing Kisses!

I love those "girl blowing dandelion" manicures and have wanted to try one for a while. But since its close to Valentine's Day I thought I would do hearts instead of dandelions. I didn't have a stamping plate with the face though so I thought I would try my hand at painting mine freehand. It is much trickier to paint the silhouette of a face on your nail than on paper, let me tell you! This is how it turned out ...

Roses - a double stamping manicure

I saw this dress somewhere which had a leaf print on a blue base which looked very pretty. I thought I would try that on my nails but also add some pink roses to the mix! This would make such a pretty Spring manicure.

Happy New Year 2015!

A New Year means new beginnings - so here's to a new beginning for my little blog!
I have been painting my nails and doing some nail art these past few months - but not as much and I think it shows! I am a little rusty but it can only get better from here.
Here is a fireworks manicure for the New Year celebrations.
The base polish is Models Own Diamond Luxe Marquise Maroon. The images stamped are from the MoYou London Festive Collection Plate 05. The gold polish used for stamping is OPI Love Angel Music Baby.

Guest Post at Life in Lacquer - Pink Butterflies Stamped Manicure

If you like this manicure, then head over to Life in  Lacquer to read all the details and see more photos. I am posting there today to fill in for the lovely Jade who is away on holiday!

Summer Bling!

The prompt for my GOT Polish Challenge was bling. My first thoughts were a manicure with black and gold or something dark and sparkly like that. But since its summer, I am in the mood for something sparkly - but bright and colourful!

Neon Tortoise print! - GOT Polish

Its been sometime since I last posted. I was away from home for a few weeks and the last few posts were scheduled before I left. After I came back, we were all sick one after the other and I just did not feel like painting my nails - which is unusual! Also, I broke a nail and had to cut them off. And when I did this manicure, it seemed to me like I had lost touch with my whole paint-clean- photograph-post routine. So although, the manicure turned out all right, I am not too happy with my clean-up, pictures and other details like that - but hoping things will settle back into the old routine from the next one!

Easter Eggs & Bunny Manicure - Tri-Polish Tuesday

Continuing with the eggs theme for Easter and the pink, blue and yellow colours for Tri-Polish Tuesdays, here's another Easter eggs manicure!

For this manicure, I used the same base as before - Models Own Speckled Eggs Nail Polishes in Duck Blue, Dove Pink and Goose Yellow.

Speckled Colour Block Mosaic Manicure - Tri-Polish Tuesday!

I have the speckled blue, pink and yellow Models Own polishes here again in a colour block mosaic manicure.

I started with a base of Barry M Matt White and waited for it to dry completely. I did the nails one by one - marking out the blocks with striping tape. I filled the blocks in with Models Own Speckled Egg Nail Polishes in Duck Blue, Dove Pink and Goose Yellow.

Speckled Eggs Manicure & Models Own Review

I have the Models Own Speckled Egg nail polishes on my nails today. The three nail polishes that I have used are Duck Blue, Dove Pink and Goose Yellow. These also happen to be the colours for my Tri-Polish Challenge for April.

It was really hard to decide which colours to get - they are all such gorgeous colours - perfect for Easter, spring and summer. The matte black glitter for the speckled effect just adds to the gorgeousness. They do look a bit like bird's eggs and definitely like the Cadbury's Mini Eggs!

Colourful Flowers to Celebrate Spring!

I have a special Spring Manicure today! Its a stamped manicure but I have used a glazing or lead light technique to fill in colour into the stamped images. With this technique, you stamp an image with a dark stamping polish onto a light base, for example a black stamping on a white base, which is what I have used here. Then you can use a dotting tool to fill colour into the image with translucent polishes. Julia from Messy Mansion has done a good tutorial video on this technique.

For this manicure, I painted my nails with Model's Own HyperGel White Light. I stamped an image from the XL image plate 10 from the MoYou London Pro Collection with Konad Black. I really like Konad Black for stamping because it is such a dark, vivid black to stamp with but it is tricky to clean up and stains my cuticles.

Models Own HyperGel - Swatches, Review & Stamping

(A word of warning - Very long and photo heavy post!)

All Models Own Products on their website are on a half off offer until the 4th of February 2014, to celebrate their Facebook page reaching 250,000 Likes. This includes their yet to be launched Hypergel Nail Polish range. This range will be launched in stores by mid-February. This is how Models Own describe their Hypergel range - "HyperGel! 10 brand-new mega-shine shades that are highly pigmented, long-lasting and chip resistant. Enriched with lotus flower oil, the gel-like finish gives the professional shine of a salon manicure. The collection is completed with limited edition colour caps, topped off with colour-matched high-shine swatches on the lids that reflect the gel effect finish of the polish so you can select the perfect shades!"

Delivery was extremely quick for me and came bubble-wrapped in a pretty box - I got it within one day of ordering. I have swatches and reviews for six of these new shades. And I also tried stamping with them to see how they performed. I have to add here that this is the first time that I have swatched so many polishes. Its only when you do it yourself, do you realise how difficult it is to take colour accurate pictures of the swatches! It made me appreciate even more how much great work some of the bloggers put in with their beautiful nail polish swatches!
The range is quite similar to the Barry M Gellys, in my opinion. The colours are gorgeous and the formula is good and easy to work with. The formula is generally thick but it does vary from colour to colour - some are thicker than the others. The thick ones are good one-coaters. But I think for the thinner ones, two thin coats give good results. All the polishes are super shiny and glossy and I loved all the colours I got. All my swatches are two coats without a topcoat, other then the stamped manicure, where I used top coat.

31DC2013: Day Two - Orange Nails

The second day of the 31 Day Challenge 2013 - and here are my Orange Nails.

For this manicure, I painted my nails with Model's Own Copper Pot. After they were completely dry, I used striping tape to mark out the pattern. Then painted on top with Barry M Gelly in Mango. Removed the tape while the polish was still wet but waited for the polish to dry before adding a top coat.

I am much happier with this striping tape manicure as compared to my first one. And I love this Barry M Gelly - although I think the whole range is pretty great.

Day two done and counting!

Coppery Butterfly Wings

For the butterfly wings, I used:
Base Polish: Model's Own Copper Pot
Stamping Polish: Konad Black
Image Plate: Nailz Craze NC01
I used a dotting tool and Konad white for the white dots.

I really like the colour of the Model's Own Copper Pot but the formula is quite thin. You can get away with two coats if you stamp on top but if you were to wear it on your own, you would need three coats, in my opinion.

I love this butterfly wings stamps - it just makes your nails look so dressed up and gorgeous.
Thanks for reading!