Neon + Christmas Pop Art

Hello there fine folks!! The week is winding down and it's almost Christmas!!! :D :D :D I never knew December would be so crazy, hopefully I'll get to keep you up to date. I love pop art and I love all things neon, unfortunately combined it's not the hottest combo but it's still quite nice. I might try to do something better another time.

Ok first things first the neon glitter over mint green is messed up, it worked last time cause the base wasn't so pink but it is and neon glitter (with mild pink base) over mint green looks grey. And it's gross. So never again. Also it was bubble city and super thick. But I really the pop art elements painted, I just love the polka dot effect thing, that's ma fav. Pop art is just so awesome, and I quite like the Christmas colours over the neon but the grey base is something I am not a fan of. But no matter what neon glitter is simply beautiful.

The white turned yellow over the green once I added topcoat, it was weird I'm not sure what happened. I really like the Jinx polka dots and by the way all the colours in this manicure are much brighter in real life. I did my normal painting style, with pens and toothpicks and polish brushes.

Bright Jade: Barry M - Greenberry
Shimmery Red: OPI - Jinx
Green: Rimmel - Block Your Green!
Red: M&S - Poppy
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
White: Lovely Me:Ex - White and Barry M - Matt White
Neon glitter and base: Lush Lacquer (or Polish Me Silly) - Clowning Around and China Glaze - Re-Fresh Mint

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely day!! :)

31DC2013: Day 11 - Polka Dot Nails

Hello there guys!! We're onto polka dots today, I wanted to do some 3D polka dots which I saw at Chelsea Queen's instagram. I thought it looked awesome but lacking that bit of substance I like, I had a mildly crazy idea and I decided to roll with it.

I call them pop art polka dots, I adore the pop art style SO MUCH and I'm slightly sad that it's been not used to full potential here. That changed today. I simply painted some explosions then did the polka dots over them. I didn't purposely do the pop art theme, but I'm happy it turned out that way. 3D polka dots look so cool and they are so easy to do!
So yes I am very much enjoying this manicure, I didn't think I could come up with something substantial for polka dots but one constant with polka dots is that they are cute. I am onboard with that and if they look this cool, I now have more respect for polka dots.

The neon is still happening at PlumeriaPainted (who cares about being season appropriate, obviously not me), I had to try Beach Party by itself and I just love it. I love all the neons and clearly I need all the neons. I'll be writing a full post on Beach Party soon, expect glowing things about it.
I toothpicked the explosions and used bobby pins for the dots. I'm also glad I managed to space the dots out right, I have made the dots not spaced out right before many a time.

Orange: Models Own - Beach Party
White: Barry M - Matt White
Black: Rimmel - Black Pearl
Red: Essie - E-Nuff Is E-Nuff
Green: Max Factor - Cool Jade
Purple: Illamasqua - Jo'Mina

Thank you very much for reading and I hope you have a great day!! :)

Smart cookies at a party

Hi there guys. I hope you're feeling ok and good, sometimes ok is ok for me. I wanted to do some food nail art (my favourite) and I decided on some cookies. The outcome was different than expected, in good and bad ways. Smart cookies remind me of last year when my friend drew a dinosaur in my homework diary, which led me to draw a dinosaur in my other friend's homework diary. Our dinosaurs were bezzies and my dinosaur was a dumb apple and her dinosaur was a smart cookie :') I don't know if this makes me cool or not (we'll pretend I'm cool).

I used Algae Veronica's "graffiti" design as part of my design, I personally don't think it looks like graffiti but I think it looks awesome. I really like her style, it's so bright and bold!! Anyway this is the "at the party" element, I added some glitter BOOM those smart cookies are at a party! I originally thought it was like explosions in the background but my friend said it looked like they were at a party and I was like "Oh yeah...".
My cookies aren't as cute as I wanted them, it's actually just the middle finger cookie I don't like. Otherwise they're quite cute. You don't tend to find smart cookies at parties :P
Brown: Nails Inc - Porchester Square
Dark Brown: w7 - Brownie
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Green: Illamasqua - Nomad
Orange: Essie - Fear Or Desire
Purple: Essie - Lilacism
Pink: Barry M - Fuchsia
Pink Glitter: OPI - Excuse Moi!
Blue Glitter/Blue Shards/Small Pink Glitter: Models Own - Freak Out!
Silver Glitter: Barry M - Silver Glitter and Revlon - Belle
Holographic Glitter: Barry M - Hologram Hexograms
White: Lovely Me:Ex - White
I didn't want to risk smudging the design with topcoat but I felt the design needed smoothing out. I now realise my issues with topcoat. Everyone said "Take your time with applying topcoat" and I was like "Haha lol let's just not listen and go lighting fast with topcoat and smudge everything". Ok it wasn't all me but it was mostly me, I do blame topcoat too though. I always thought "Get topcoat over with quickly and it has less opportunity to mess up". Wrong. But I took my time and smudging is significantly better, ok there's still a bit but not bad at all. Lesson for today: Apply topcoat slowly, it's worth it.

Thank you for reading and have a lovely day!!!

Pop Art Nails

Hey there, I've been a bit stuck with my nails lately, I have a long list of ideas but I never seem to be in the mood for any of them. I'll just have to wait until I am :/ But I wanted to paint something "edgy", I was so stuck I looked around other blogs for inspiration, I settled with a pop art design from Kayla Shevonne. She used a tutorial from Professionaldq whom I'd never heard of but she has some really cute pop art nails and I will definitely be using her tutorials in the future (or maybe just the pictures :)).

I wanted to do this nail art design for the colour scheme alone. I love it. And after this manicure I absolutely adore the look of pop art, especially the dots. I've done a pop art design before and I really liked it, but I haven't gone back til now. I just love the way it looks, I think it's fantastic (pop art, no narcissism intended) and I need more pop art in my life.
Red: OPI - Dutch Tulips
Yellow: Barry M - Lemon Ice Cream
Blue: Barry M - Blueberry Ice Cream
White: Models Own - Snow White and No7 - Snowflake (as base) and Lovely Me:Ex - White
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
And I made it matte which made me love it more. I'll confess, I haven't used topcoat properly for 6 months. Yep you read that right, 6 months. I used to be the girl who needed topcoat for everything, but then I grew to hate topcoat (it was a bad time). Simply because it always smudged and smeared my nail art (I would wait days before putting on topcoat and it still smeared :/), my previous pop nail design is a prime example. So to stop my nail art from getting messed I stopped using topcoat. The reason I'm coming back to topcoat though (not only because of matte nails) is because at Christmas my friends got me some rapid dry. I was a bit wary and decided the proof would be if after using the rapid dry the design wouldn't smudge after topcoat. And result... SUCCESS!!!! As also proven by the picture, obviously I will be doing more testing and dipping toes back into topcoat territory, but I think it's looking good. Um topcoat ramble?

I wanted to used a different colour scheme on my right hand, which I think is ok. But could use some revising. I'm growing to like Basket Case a lot.
Pink: Orly - Basket Case
Light Blue: Revlon - Blue Lagoon
Dark Blue: Kiko - 265
Peachy/Orange: Essie - Tart Deco
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
White: Lovely Me:Ex - White

Thank you very much for reading and have a wonderful day!!!