Ikat Pattern Manicure

Hello there. I've been seeing this around and I thought it looked pretty cool but it was Very Emily's design that made me need to do it. I woke up not being able to wait to do my nails. Mine are no where near as amazing as Emily's but I quite like my attempt.

I unintentionally did the same configuration on both hands. I preferred it on my right hand, unintentionally made it more spiky. My lighting was very red today (:/) it was strange.
Base: One coat of Models Own - Snow White, 3 coats of Topshop - Green Room and one coat of w7 - Polar Bare. That took ages to dry -_-
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black (no name)
White: Models Own - Snow White
Orange/Peach: Essie - Tart Deco
I need more Tart Deco in my life. The last time I used it was June. How insane. Green Room never photographs right, Green Room is also extremely tedious. It's a disappointing polish. But I think the ikat pattern is great, it could become my new leopard print. Time will tell...

Oh lots more ikat to come :)

Remembrance Poppies

Hello there. Today is Remembrance day, a day to remember all the people who died in wars. I did a little manicure to commemorate this.

I really like it, I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out but I think it's really cute. It was also really easy, I think I'll do it again with a different colour scheme.
Blue: Barry M - Blueberry Ice Cream
Red: OPI - Dutch Tulips
Green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black
Black: Lovely Me:Ex

I hope you are having a good day :)

It's-a-me Mario!!!

Hello there!!! It's the weekend, thank goodness ;) This is the manicure I had on my birthday, for my birthday I wanted to do my perfect manicure. Which obviously involves the main moustachioed man himself, Mario!!!

Needless to say, I love it (just having Mario on my nails ;)). And I'm very happy with how the faces turned out :D It's also perfect for Movember (Guys are growing out their moustaches to raise awareness for prostate and testicular cancer) this month!!! I think it's a great cause :)
Red: OPI - Dutch Tulips
Blue: Nails Inc: Baker Street
Peach: w7 - Linen
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black (no name)
White: Models Own - Snow White
Light Blue: Barry M - Blueberry Ice Cream
Brown (just a little bit): w7 - Brownie
I also had to use one of my favourite polishes, Baker Street. I love Mario, if that sounds crazy I don't mind. Mario games are by far my favourite. I could have done 5 Mario faces but I decided that I wanted to do 2 perfect ones instead of 5 substandard ones (my OCD wouldn't be able to handle that :P). Also the Baker Street had to appear as well :)

                                                Just a little close up of Mario, isn't he cute? :P

It makes me want to do nail art of all the members of the Mushroom Kingdom. Ok it's set I'm going to do that. I'm looking forward to seeing the other Movember designs this month too :)

Jack 'O Lantern

Hello there. This is the manicure I wore on my other hand with the Frankenstein design. As you can tell I've gone for a pretty drastic nail cut. I thought it would be be a good change as I don't like having to cut my nails so frequently. But I am not liking short nails. At all. I cannot wait til they grow back. Anyway pumpkins are cute :/

I genuinely like this halloween design, same kind of idea as the other one. I love the missing tooth on the pumpkins, I have to do that more often!!!! :)
Orange: Chilli Pepper - Orange (no name) with a little bit of Bourjois - Tangerine Fatal
Black: Topshop - Gypsy Night and Lovely Me:Ex - Black for details
Green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black
White: Models Own - Snow White as a base for orange.
Short and sweet post, what a rare occurrence!!! :P

Little Frankenstein

Hello there. I've got some halloween nail art, oh yeah, oh yeah :P Reiterating my point about CUTE halloween nail art, cause there's too much scary nail art (and scariness in general) out there. Joking aside, I do have this nail art and on my other hand I had a contrasting design, which will be put up soon. Oh and I should've taken better pictures, my camera battery was dying and I got twitchy and tried to take my pictures quickly and carefully that obviously didn't work. Well they're still alright :)

It wasn't originally meant to be Frankenstein, but it just kind of happened. Inspiration struck when I was sitting beside a girl who drew a little face on her book and I thought it was adorable and decided to incorporate it into a design. So kudos to her (I don't have a clue what kudos is, or are). I made slight alterations to her design and voila, my little bit of halloween nail art. My gradient was slightly too crazy, but I wanted something simple on the other nails and obviously that means "PILE ON THE GLITTER".
Green: Rimmel - Misty Jade
Dark Green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black
Sparkly Black: Topshop - Gypsy Night 
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black (no name)
White: Models Own - Snow White
Glitter: Barry M - Silver Glitter and China Glaze - Luxe and Lush (which you can't really see)
I have now truly seen how awesome Gypsy Night is, it's really the holographic glitter within that I love.

Dunking Apples

Hello there. This was the nail art I wanted to put on top of the crazy galaxy like background. I decided to do it, and I guess it's ok. It's similar to rebeccalikesnails's, unintentionally. Her's was super cute. I thought of dunking apples cause I guess that's what happens at Halloween and autumn parties (I've not been to many). I'm terrible at it, I just end up feeling slightly unwell after trying to attack an apple. But at my friend's parties, they go all in, and it's actually pretty impressive.

See what I mean about murky waters? No, you don't cause it's not there :/ I tried. The stark contrast between the deep background and the cutesy apples work together in a strange, strange way. Well you may not think that :P
Red: OPI - Dutch Tulips
Green: Rimmel - Misty Jade
White: Models Own - Snow White (which is starting to get stringy :()
Brown: w7 - Brownie
Blue: Kiko - 265
Pink/Purple: OPI - Japanese Rose Garden/Rimmel - Purple Pulse
Shimmer: Models Own - Indian Ocean
Glitter: Revlon - Radiant (blue glitter) and China Glaze - Luxe and Lush (flakie)
I'm not too big of a fan of this design, I just don't like it, but I do :/ I don't know :(

I really wanted to show all these different lightings cause they all show different aspects of the design :)

Combo: Galaxy Like

Hello there. I'm not really sure if this is a combination, but I thought I might as well put it under this category. This was originally meant to be the base of some Halloween nail art (since I still haven't done them :/) but it turned much different to what I was expecting. I still might use it as a base, but it definitely deserved some photos on it's own.

The word I would use to describe this is mental. I was trying to create murky waters or something like that, but I thought it turned out Galaxy-esque, and I love galaxy nails so it's good in my books. It's like a really easy way for galaxy nails.

I started with one coat (ONE COAT!!! :)) of Kiko - 265. The one my best friend got me, honestly I thought it was a bit too dark for my liking when I first used it. But obviously I was using it wrong or something because when I used it again it was nice. The blue shimmer in it is gorgeous, and one coat. I'm not one to be fussed about formula but one coaters are nice.

So craziness begins, I was planning on using a makeup sponge to sponge on the colours but I gave up on that and just used the brushes of the nail polish to do random shapes on different areas of my nails.
I used...
Purple: Rimmel - Purple Pulse
Pink: OPI - Japanese Rose Garden
Blue Glitter: Revlon - Radient
Purple/Blue Shimmer: Models Own - Indian Ocean
But I think the glitter that brought it all together was China Glaze - Luxe and Lush at first I used a little bit then got a little crazy with it. Piled it on, but I think it looks so cool. Definitely different from what I imagined but you have try new things to see if they work :)

Gradient Leopard Print

Hello there!!! I've been super busy this week, so no painting or blogging the past couple of days, but hopefully as the week is winding down I'll have a bit more time on my hands. I've kind of been going gradient crazy, it just ever since I perfected my gradient technique (it's still not very good :P) I've been doing lots. I've also apparently gone leopard print crazy too. But really, I want to do leopard prints all the time. It's amazing, to think there was a time I didn't like leopard print :O

This is potentially one of my favourite manicures I have ever done, as shown I combined leopard print and a gradient. I love it so much, I went into it without a clue with what I was doing. But sometimes it's better that way (most of the time, no). I started with a gradient.

Ok I had better lighting when I took that picture and it looked better once I added I Lily Love You, but it shows the bare bones of the gradient.
Light Pink: Barry M - Strawberry Ice Cream
Middle Pink: Per Una - Pink (no name) (this really tied the gradient together)
Hot Pink: OPI - Charged Up Cherry 
Glitter: Barry M - Pink Iridescent and OPI - I Lily Love You
Light Blue: The Face Shop - BL601
Blue: Revlon - Dreamer
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
I loved the colours :)

Right hand picture, my photography skills were failing me as the lighting wasn't great and I was really shaky for some reason. I added the light blue spots. But I thought it didn't look right, and I always thought Charged Up Cherry and Dreamer would look really nice together so I went over the bottom spots with Dreamer, and voila. This happened. As mentioned before, I love it, I definitely love it more than I thought it would. I was also surprised that it worked, cause normally when I don't have a clue what I'm doing it never turns out right. But not this time, the gradient combined with leopard print fills my heart with joy with it's beauty ;P

Cookie Monster

Hello there!!!! This is a little mani that I've wanted to do for a while. I don't really remember Sesame Street that well, but the characters are ultra cute, therefore this mani came to submission (not sure if that made sense :P).

Hehe I think it's cute. I wasn't sure if I wanted to do another Cookie Monster on my thumb but I thought "Are there more cookies or Cookie Monsters?". Problem solved. Wasn't too sure of the "bites"out of the cookies but I guess it makes it slightly more interesting.
Brown: The Face Shop - GL112
Dark Brown: w7 - Brownie
Blue: Nails Inc. - Baker Street
White: Models Own - Snow White
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black

Here is an extremely tilted right hand picture, but Cookie Monster is still being awesome :P Omnomnomnomnom.

Cherry Blossoms

Hello there. I based this manicure off the cherry blossom design I used for my "Hello Kitty Gone Wild" manicure. I got a lot of compliments for that specific design so I thought I'd do a full manicure with it.

I had difficulties with how to position the branches but otherwise it was fine as the design is so sweet. It was very easy to do and doesn't require a lot of polishes, my friends also commented how they liked how the green faded to white (they are too cute :3) so a somewhat successful gradient :)
Green: China Glaze - Re-Fresh Mint
White: Models Own - Snow White
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Pink: OPI - Charged Up Cherry
Re-Fresh Mint was almost one coat, it's very pigmented but lighter than what you would expect. Love the colour combination, the pale green and the hot pink just go really well together.

I love sushi nails yes I do

Hi there. By the way the title was a reference to gunnarolla's song "I Love Sushi (Let's Get Fish-Faced)". It's a mixture between cute and really really weird. Anyway I did some sushi nails, I was feeling uninspired so I looked up some examples when I stumbled upon a tutorial by Reinerainyday (it was just SO cute :3), so I did my rendition of it :)

I do love sushi though, unfortunately sushi in the UK isn't that good, but that's means I can savour the times when I have good sushi (^_^). That aside sushi nails are so cute!!! If that point hadn't been made already :P I just loved having this on my nails
White: Models Own - Snow White
Black: Topshop - Gypsy Night and Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Pink: Per Una - Pink (no name)
Pale pink: Barry M - Strawberry Ice Cream 
Hot pink: Per Una - Fuchsia (no name)
Coral pink: H&M - Check Me Out
Green: Barry M - Mint Green with OPI - Jade Is The New Black (which I painted over)
Yellow: Rimmel - Sunshine
Orange: Essie - Tart Deco
It's quite different to the original, but that was the point. This is the way I do it :P


I took a picture of the little line up of sushi (slightly out of focus), it's so cute!!! I could add a face to any food design and automatically just love it :)

Roses in a midnight sky

That makes it sound fancier than it really is. This kind of goes hand in hand with my last post (or hand in foot :/) with the roses. Except I did it on my toenails too. Sorry if toenail posts aren't your thing. I don't normally do nail art on my toes (mostly cause I can't see my toenails most of the time) but I accidentally poured out too much polish on my sheet and I'm not one to waste polish. I like my toenails (as weird as that sounds), they can get freakishly long though. In the pictures my toenails are short compared to how long they can get.

I started with Barry M - Indigo with Models Own - Indian Ocean on top. I felt like purple toenails. I didn't really like it too much, I like that combo but I didn't feel like that. So I added Revlon - Belle and I already liked it much better.

By the way, toenail pictures are so difficult!!! You can't control your toes like you can control your fingers. I literally had to position and hold my toes. I already wrote the polishes I used in my last post but I'm gonna write it again cause I like too :)

Pink: Essie - Your Hut Or Mine?

White: Models Own - Snow White

Green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black

I thought it looked really cool, just seeing my toenails with a nice design is really awesome. 

Autumn vintage floral nails

I probably could do these once a month since I love this design so much. But this time I think I've finally perfected the design. I used to use "season appropriate" colours (cause I've been doing a great job currently... ":/) this time. Also colours I don't tend to use that much even though their nice.

Is that autumn enough for ya? :P I prefer my right hand cause there are more roses. Also on my left hand I was dipping my bobby pin in the wrong place therefore showing more white. The colours are slightly off (e.g. pink is far more rosy) as my natural lighting place is probably going to be out of use for the next couple of months since it's getting darker earlier (but I love that, it's like the "autumn feeling". Or is that just me again?).
Green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black
White: Models Own - Snow White
Pink: Essie - Your Hut Or Mine?
Purple: Essie - Lilacism
I have a horrible cut on my right thumb so instead of badly editing it out I turned my thumb around. So clever I know, it's just I normally show the whole thumb design. But it wasn't anything that crazy. The shimmer from Your Hut Or Mine? showed up well in this design, it's truly lovely. I do really like Jade Is The New Black and Lilacism, it's just not my favourite colours or polishes so unfortunately don't get used as much as they should. I should change that.

I want to try different variations next time I do this (probably soon), like different ways of doing the roses and obviously different colours. I just love this!!!! :)

Stripes, Spots and Bows

Hi there. I wanted to use Blue Moon as a base to some nail art, so that's what I did. I didn't really know where I was going, stripes, spots and bows I guess was my main thought. Didn't turn out how I would of liked it to though.

I think it looks clownish, the pink polka dots on blue doesn't look nice. I'm proud of my freehand stripes though, I don't have patience for tape and it never impresses me either. I like the bow on my left thumb but that's it. After finishing with the basic colours I went a bit crazy with the glitter, I wanted glitter. That's all I can say.
Blue: Barry M - Blue Moon with Models Own - Indian Ocean (which is super pretty!!!)
Pink: No7 - Me! Me! Me! with Barry M - Pink Iridescent 
Purple: Essie - Lilacism with China Glaze - Luxe and Lush
It's ok. I'm probably just too fussing though :P

Domo Kun Nails

Hello there. I've been trying to get back into my simple but cute nail art again. It truly is my favourite. So I did some Domo nails, I can't say I'm a massive fan of Domo or anything. But he's cute, and that's the most important thing :)

It was so simple, of course I had to make sure everything was proportioned etc. but otherwise still simple.
Brown: Paris Collection - Mauve Melody with The Face Shop - GL112 underneath
Red: Essie - E-Nuff Is E-Nuff
Black: Lovely MeEx - Black (no name)
White: Models Own - Snow White
I originally started with The Face Shop - GL112, but realised it was way too light. It might be the only brown nail polish I like. Someone gave it to me a while ago, and I thought I'd never wear it, but I thought the same about green nail polish. It's very pretty, I realised it's pretty metallic when putting it on. The main downside is that it's a nightmare to remove but super easy to apply. I thought I might as well mention it.

Mauve Melody is probably the closest brown I have, it has a weird blue/brown shimmer. I'm not a fan but it's alright. I do like my little Domo design, cuteness for the win :)

floral nails inspired by my top

Hi guys, I was really stuck with what to do with my nails but I looked down at my top and decided to do the design from that. I got it from Forever 21 a while ago, I used to not it that much but recently I've been wearing quite a lot cause it has these awesome mesh straps. Mesh = love. I don't actually like the format of the top, but I love wearing jumpers etc. over it.

                                             (Close up of the pattern)

To the nails!!!!

Obviously the design on my nails ended up quite different from the actual design. But I still like it. It's sophisticated (a word not normally associated with me). The colours I used were also a lot less subtle.
Blue: Revlon - Dreamer
Pink: Essie - Your Hut Or Mine?
Orange Coral: Essie - Tart Deco
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black (no name)
But I still think it's a cool design and I'm definitely happy with it, I love all things floral too so that probably helped ;)

Hoot Hoot (Owl Nails)

Hello. I was in a "I don't know what to do with my nails" mood, but owls came to mind. I want to go back to doing super cute nail cute and not really difficult nail art (cause I'm never pleased with the results).

These nails were inspired by Supa Nails design. I originally had the thumb design different but I did something that messed it up so I changed my design. Anyway here are the nails.

Yay I really like them and they're cute!!!! ^_^ This is me trying to be season appropriate. I changed the design a bit with the little hearts and the little triangles and the happy eyes ^_^. Which I quite like, but only because of the different colours. If it was one colour I wouldn't like it.
Pink: OPI - Charged Up Cherry
Blue: The Face Shop - GR501
Orange: Essie - Tart Deco
I used 3 of my favourite polishes for this hand. I wasn't sure what to do for my index finger, but I decided I liked it plain and I kept it that way.  Charged Up Cherry always turns up really orangey for me. I don't know why. The first picture isn't very colour accurate and honestly I'm too tired to do anything about it :/ The second picture is far better :)

I switched up the colours for my left hand, I normally don't like mismatchy hands but if it's the same design with different colours = I love.
Red: OPI - Dutch Tulips
Blue: Barry M - Indigo
Purple: Essie - Lilacism
I really like Lilacism even though the whole purple thing, it's a nice colour and a nice formula. I love the clash of red and purple, during the first day of the 31 day challenge with red nails. I had painted my toenails in Lilacism and adored the clash. It's slightly more season appropriate.

Sweet As Cherry Nails

I have mentioned before that one of my weaknesses are cherry nails. I am envious of people with their perfect cherry nails. I don't know why mine always turn out so bad. I'm just not neat enough :P I took inspiration from Emily's Nail Files with her cherry nails. Hers were way cooler but I did a simplified version. I liked the idea of bigger cherries with less order (so exciting I know ;)).

Version 3.0

I really like it, it's the first time I've looked at my cherry nails and actually liked them. It's totally crazy. So much better than my other attempts. I like the pink base, it mixes it up :P Cause it's actually cute!!! :)
Pink: Per Una - Pink (no name)
Red: OPI - Dutch Tulips
Darker Red: w7 - Burnt Amber
Green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black
White: Models Own - Snow White

Version 2.0

My cherry nails from the 31 day challenge. Just a big mess, darker green stems probably would've helped. The whites dots were also not looking right.

Version 1.0

My first attempt at cherry nails almost a year ago quite soon after I first got into nail art. I used the cutepolish tutorial for this. Her were far nicer. Yeah didn't improve much from the second time to the first time. Haha and awkward bottle hold, I'm not really one to hold the bottle now. Just not that great overall, but I was still learning. I was using lots of random polishes I had, my white polish was ridiculously sheer and the other white polish I used was probably the Natural Collection one. The green is Barry M - Mint Green. You can see how my cherry nails have evolved :)

Back to school nails

It's that time of year again -_- Back to school, I was basically trying not to think about it, even thinking of not doing these nails but I thought I might as well. I thought about doing back to school skittles but once I got an idea in my head I knew I had struck gold (more like bronze. Or some other precious substance).

I got the idea of a pencil and notebook paper and I was set. I love that pencil, it's so simple. There's a little bookworm in the apple, I would've liked him to be a bit cuter but after a couple of attempts I gave up. I first used tape for the straight lines as I don't have a striper. But I realised that all the taping effort wasn't really worth it so I went to freehand stripes, and they turned out better than expected.
White: Models Own - Snow White
Yellow: Barry M - Lemon Ice Cream
Mustard Yellow: Topshop - Naked
Pink: Per Una - Pink (no name)
Red: OPI - Dutch Tulips
Blue: Revlon - Dreamer
Green: Rimmel - Misty Jade
Light Green: China Glaze - Re-Fresh Mint
Brown: w7 - Brownie
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Peach: w7 - Linen
Despite my doubt about this mani, I really like it, and it's super cute. Made me feel happier looking at it in school :)

Geek Nail Challenge: Bomberman

Hi everyone, decided to add an extra manicure for this week's theme. Now slightly regretting that decision because of the outcome of the manicure. I decided to do Bomberman because I recently found a Bomberman t-shirt hiding in my old wardrobe, ok that t-shirt is awesome and I think it's great. When I found it I chopped off the collar and put it in the wash (it was pretty dusty). I can now confidently say I will wear that t-shirt forever.

The other reason I choose to do Bomberman is because I recently found my Bomberman cartridge for DS, I didn't even know that I owned it!!!! It's a game developed by Hudson Soft.  It's a great game, only for Battle mode is enough. Many hours on that game have been spent by my friend and myself. One thing though, the remote control bomb is totally overpowered, I could actually win (the computers were hard :/).

      (Thumb: Bomb, L-R, Bomberman, Speed up power-up, Brick block, Fire up power-up)

The gist of this manicure is that it didn't turn out the way I wanted and it ate up a long time. I definitely underestimated the difficulty. It was the black outlining that was the worst. It's just not as neat as I'd like it to be!!!!
Green: Barry M - Mint Green
Dark Green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black
White: Models Own - Snow White
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black (no name)
Yellow: Barry M - Lemon Ice Cream
Red: Essie - E-Nuff Is E-Nuff
Brown: Paris Collection - Mauve Melody
Orange: Bourjois - Tangerine Fatal
Blue: Barry M - Blueberry Ice Cream
Pink: Barry M - Strawberry Ice Cream
The green and the dark green are meant to be the checkered floor in the Bomberman arena. It kind of worked. Well I'm going to put pictures of my t-shirt cause it's awesome and takes away from my disappointing mani.

                        (My camera made my t-shirt look blue, it's purple)

                        (A better picture, I just love the retro Bomberman)

This is the best part of the t-shirt, at the back of the collar there's a bomb!!!! :O It's amazing. The collar is a bit rolled up cause of me cutting the collar off (I like t-shirt with wider necks), I would've cut off more if the bomb wasn't there. No one will see it as my hair covers it, but knowing it's there makes me happy. I also found a retro Pac-man top (:D), can't wait to chop off the collar. I got them both a while back from Uni-Qlo, so glad I found them!!!

After that failed manicure, something happy had to show up. AND, check out everyone else doing the challenge!!!! :D