Blue + pink ikat nails

Hey there guys!! During exam time I wanted some nail art to tie me over so I have a basic ikat nails. I don't think I painted them that well and the polish was very thick. But tie me over it did.

The only difference is the coming out the cuticle spike thing, more dramatic ya'know. I like a bitta sparkle and while I adore the combination of pink and blue, it never works very well on nail for me :/ One day I say...

I used a combination of the toothpick and brush, I did to do so many strokes so I wouldn't have big blocks of colour. I had to do various shades of pink to add more interest but I don't think it really helped this design. I don't hate it but it's not my best design in creativity or execution. Like I've done an inverted version of this design a while ago.

Blue: Essie - Bikini So Teeny and Topshop - Razzmatazz
White: Barry M - Cotton
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Pinks: Barry M - Dragon Fruit and Models Own - Radiant Pink 

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

Wild ikat hearts + diamonds nail art

Hi there guys!! I have a nail art look today and it's ok, I wasn't in love with it when I did it and generally it was alright. Went a bit overboard with the lines but at least I tried something new and learnt from it.

Did an accent thing with the green and the pink, the bases by themselves looked a bit off cause one's a pastel and the other's a neon. Didn't get that much better from there haha, no I didn't hate this look but I struggle to say I liked it.
Got some contrast with the hearts and diamonds (like cards!! Diamonds are my favourite suit) and it still wasn't looking right so I added more colours to the base. Still wasn't working so I added the billions of black lines which helped in a sense but we were too far gone by that point haha.

I used the brush of the polish for the general shapes of the hearts and the diamonds then toothpicked all the other colours and the black pen. It was all pretty freeform and it didn't work for this design. A bit too messy for my liking.

Green base: Etude House - No. 86
Pink base: Etude House - No. 60
Extra green: Barry M - Kiwi and Illamasqua - Melange
Extra pink (though can't really remember...): Barry M - Boots LE 2012 B, OPI - Japanese Rose Garden and Color Club - Wing Fling
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Purple: Essie - Lilacism
Dark purple: OPI - Plum & Get It and Barry M - Fashion Icon (glitter couldn't even save it :/)
Blue: Barry M - Malibu
White: Barry M - Matt White

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a really nice day!! :)

The totally doable I have a life challenge! - Ikat monster

Hey there fine fellows, I have the final bonus part of the challenge today as this was one of the ones I missed in the early stages of the challenge and of course I wouldn't pass up a good ikat. I really like how they look!! I did want to do something a little different from your regular ikat, and this is what came of that.

Hopefully you can see the angry, not amused face on the 3 fingers in the middle. It's a monster. The thumb and pinky have spiky claw-like ikat print. This is how I do different. Yeah it's not my cutest look which is a reason why I'm not in love with it. But I'm happy with my branching out, trying something new!! Also with the glitter I included for this look; it looks great matte.

So I freehanded the white part with the brush of the polish. Actually I did the whole coloured bit with the brushes of polishes as I got too lazy to use the toothpick. I tried to do artistic strokes (like I've been doing a lot recently) and finally I used my black pen for the outlines and evil eyes and sad faces. Maybe I should've made it angrier.

Sorry for the slight blur

Purple: OPI - Plum & Get It, Models Own - Indian Ocean and OPI - Polka.com
White: Barry M - Matt White
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Yellow: American Apparel - Neon Yellow
Orange: Models Own - Beach Party
Pink: Barry M - Superdrug Summer LE 2013 A
Green: Barry M - Greenberry
Blue: Essie - Lots Of Lux
Red: Barry M - Carousel

This is the conclusion of this challenge and I had fun with the prompts and messing with them. I came up with some pretty wacky stuff sometimes. It's nice to do a challenge for once, as it may be a while 'til I do another one :/ Always busy I am. Thank you for reading and I hope you have a cool day!! :)

Ikat Diamond X

Hello there you wonderful people!! Ok my less procrastinating thing isn't working out so hot, but that's the thing with resolutions, you can't expect them to be immediate and I don't. But I'll actually have to work on this one, a lot. I like this X, very dramatic, it's obviously not really. But I like how much you can do with ikats, and they look great and are so easy to do.

See dat X, it's v fun. I really like the colour combination here, and the bar glitter all peaking through is pretty cool (unless you hate bar glitter, then it's not pretty cool for you). I was worried about proportioning here, but it all worked out in the end. Hallelujah for my black pen!!

I got my white polish and did a rough diamond, then got the brush of whatever colour of polish I was using and did a diamond blob over the white and finally I did some spikiness with the black pen. Sorted.

Base: OPI - My Current Crush and Barry M - Tinsel Town
White: Barry M - Matt White
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Purple: Illamasqua - Jo'Mina
Pink: Madame Milly - Pink (no name)
Teal: Barry M - Guava
Green: Rimmel - Block Your Green!

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

Ombre Ikat Hearts + Green Jelly Sandwich

Hi there guys!! My exams are nearly over and this makes me a very happy bunny, but arguably my worse exam is tomorrow so I'm hoping I can keep my cool and do my best.
I did this jelly sandwich and I liked the way it looked but I didn't want to leave it plain and it took me ages to decide what to paint on top. But I eventually decided on ikat hearts cause I really liked the way they looked the last time I did them.

I know I could've painted this much better, the ikat just isn't very spiky and I wanted more colour. But it was at a point where there was too much colour and I had to go over with the white again. But then there was too much white and I didn't want to keep going in circles. Though it would've looked better with more colour. I like the heart on my thumb but this mani is just missing something... :/ But hearts are always sweet and the jelly sandwich looks pretty cool with it. 

I started with white polish, dabbed the colour on and then did the black spiky parts (excluding the whole adding more white polish step). They're more gradient hearts cause for an ombre it's only meant to have one colour but ombre sounds nicer, sorry if it bothers you cause it would bother someone like me :P

Jelly Sandwich Base: Barry M - Guava, Orly - Ridiculously Regal, Barry M - Ruby and Topshop - Green Room
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
White: Barry M - Matt White
Red: M&S - Poppy
Coral: OPI - Jinx
Orange: Essie - Fear Or Desire
Light Orange: Models Own - Beach Party
Yellow: Barry M - Lemon Ice Cream

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a fantastic day!! :)

Pick 'N Mix: Liquorice Allsorts Ikat

Hello there you fine folks!! I haven't done a pick n' mix in a while so now is the time to amend that. I wanted to be all clever and make pick 'n mix work in the sense of nail skittles and for sweets you can get at a pick 'n mix.
Is pick 'n mix a worldwide thing? Where you get a little bag and pick the various different kinds of sweets you want and pay by the weight. I'm game for anything food related. Though I was not inspired by the patterns on the sweets so I decided to put the colours into an ikat design. But you can still see the liquorice resemblance!!

I like the ikat design because it is edgy, here are the actual sweets so you can see where I'm coming from with this design. I also like those colours together. On my accent nail I used the colours of the blue and pink sweets (the ones with the little balls covering it?) to give a little variation.

From talking to people I found that people don't like liquorice, I am not in that party. I will be that person who eats all the liquorice cause no one else likes it. I much prefer liquorice allsorts to dolly mixture, it just tastes better and more punchy. Also the colours in liquorice allsorts are brighter, I'm just attracted to bright colours. That said I haven't eaten liquorice in AGES, that should be amended soon.

Pink: Orly - Basket Case
Yellow: Rimmel - Sunshine
Orange: Essie - Fear Or Desire
White: Barry M - Matt White
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Green: Barry M - Mint Green
Blue: Color Club - Sky High
Sometimes it shifted to purple under the black and pink and it looked fab.
Pink and Black glitter: Barry M - Ruby

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

Neon Ikat Diamonds

Hello there wonderful people!! The long week is thankfully over. I'd love to say things are winding down but they are seriously not. This time last year all my exams were over and I was fighting with myself whether to start a blog or not. Now my exams aren't over and my blogaversary is less than a week away :O It completely crept up on me, I thought "Oh it's AGES away". That is no longer the case and May has whizzed past (as the year in general has). I cannot wait til my exams are over, I will be walking with a skip in my step and spontaneously dancing in random bursts at unpredictable moments (and I'm a great dancer :/).
I have been really liking the ikat pattern, and what could be better than combining it with neon. Nothing, cause neon is the best thing ever.

I normally do the triangle ikat shape but I wanted to switch things up and I much prefer the diamonds. They're great! I busted out my 2 neon polishes and of course added accents. Everything I do requires accents but also you don't want to over-neon or the effect won't be as prominent (or something).

My camera was struggling with how bright the neon is, an example of the brightness, is sometimes in school I'd be sitting in class and I'd say "NEON ATTACK!!" and put my nails in someone's face cause that's normal. I edited to make things BRIGHT as they are.
I also want to apologize for my cuticles, I don't know what's been happening as I've been moisturising a lot and they're still messed. Maybe it's stress, but I'm not stressed so I really don't know, also stress doesn't affect the cuticles (at least I don't think so). I genuinely don't know.

I start with the neons. I needed a white base for China Glaze - I'm With The Lifeguard (neon green) as I seem to be the only one with formula issues with this polish. So Models Own - Snow White (such a struggle as we have gone into mega gloopy town with this polish) and Professional Nail Care - French Manicure White Tip (which I don't like as it's just a poor white manicure white with no pigmentation). There were bubbles as nothing would dry but the ikats covered it up so all was ok.
But Snow White was good for the whites of the ikats as it was naturally rougher due to the gloopiness. And the neon pink is Nails Inc - Notting Hill Gate (LOVE), it's neon pink, love is implied.
For the accents the pink is Color Club - Wing Fling and the aqua is Topshop - Green Room. The black is Lovely Me:Ex - Black and occasionally I would fix things with Lovely Me:Ex - White.
The Color Club topcoat smoothed everything out and was generally brilliant.

I love the roughness of the ikat pattern, once again I have been really enjoying it. I like things with a bit of "edge". This has "edge". I hope you all have a lovely weekend and thank you for reading!!! :)

Pink + Blue Ikat Nails

Oh hi there!! Hope you all are well, after this post I am being greeted with a ton of schoolwork. Yay!! -_- I wanted to do a simple manicure and ikat nails fit the bill and they look really cool.

Unfortunately I picked the wrong colour combination, Japanese Rose Garden is such a disappointing colour. It's got a fantastic formula but the colour just doesn't hit the spot, also the glitter was a bad idea (maybe the only time I will ever say that). But in pictures the manicure looks nicer. Otherwise I like it, but I should've used a more vibrant pink but too late now.
Pink: OPI - Japanese Rose Garden
Gold Glitter: Nails Inc - Glamour Glitter
Blue: Barry M - Blueberry Ice Cream
White: Model Own - Snow White (Lovely Me:Ex - White for touching up)
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Formula wise all these polishes are great, I feel bad about bashing Japanese Rose Garden, it's not a bad polish just not my colour, it's awesome for water marbling if that makes things better.

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

Ikat Heart Nail Art

Hello there lovely people. I can no longer look outside as light reflects off the snow and it's extremely bright :P I'm so happy with today's manicure, it's really cute. I've attempted these before though and they ended in utter failure. I mentioned this in a previous post that I had a nail fail that I was really annoyed about. Well that was it, but this time it did not fail. I took inspiration from Bad Luck Barbie cause it's a lovely manicure she did.

Though I much prefer long nails, designs look cute on shorter nails. I like the ikat print in general, it's more "rough", so I'm a fan of this. I just think it's really cute, and I love all things cute. The lil' hearts, ok I think it's cute, we get it :P I also love that black and white glitter. Oh and I love pink too.
Pink: Orly - Basket Case
Light Pink: Barry M - Strawberry Ice Cream
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
White: Models Own - Snow White
Black and white glitter: L'Oreal Color Riche  - Confetti
Strawberry Ice Cream is extremely difficult to use, it's been that way for a while but it hasn't improved. It's very very gloopy (I have had it for a while though), getting a coat on the nail is really hard. But it's my only pale pink so I work with it. I used 3 coats and had bubbles, could have been due to thick coats but there was no other way to get the polish to work. Another thing to mention is that even though Confetti is awesome, it's really difficult to remove, of course there's the tin foil method, but if you're not using that it's hard.

In other news I have watched 3 films in 2 days. And I can't cope, I am such a hopeless romantic (works with the hearts in the manicure). I love chick flicks, even though it's pretty much the same every time, I LOVE it every time. There was Sky High yesterday, which is SO CUTE that I couldn't handle it. It was also quite a quirky film which is my thing. There were superheroes and they incorporated the pop art style and I love that. I watched Toy Story 3 today and that is one great film, Pixar can do no wrong. Finally this evening I watched Miss Congeniality, and yeah I love chick flicks and it was wonderful. I was in a chick flick mood tonight, it's when the girl and the guy get together I feel like crying cause it's all so cute :') Sorry that was on my mind and I love movies, I need more.

Thank you very much for reading (and if you read my movie rave, good on you) and have a wonderful day!!! :)

Blue + Purple Ombre Ikat

Hi there guys!!! Hope you all had a relaxing day, and getting ready the weekend. Mine won't be eventful I can already tell but I also have a couple of days off school which I truly am excited about. Since I liked the ombre manicure I did the other day I was like "More ombre", and ikat was apparently on my mind so also "More ikat".

I really wanted blue and purple even though I knew I didn't have a medium purple. I used all the purples I own in this design. You can see that Lilacism and Berry Ice Cream are rather similar. I much prefer Berry Ice Cream.
Blue (Darkest to lightest):
Kiko - 265
Nails Inc - Baker Street (which was gorgeous as always)
Essie - Bikini So Teeny
Barry M - Blueberry Ice Cream
Revlon - Blue Lagoon
Purple (Darkest to lightest):
OPI - Plum And Get It
Butter LONDON - Shambolic
Rimmel - Purple Pulse
Essie - Lilacism
Barry M - Berry Ice Cream
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
White: Models Own - Snow White
For some weird reason the picture looks nicer than it did in real life. It wasn't so hot in real life, some elements just didn't work. Middle and ring finger colour combinations were nice. Also if you're going to use black don't use a dark background (I've done this before -_-).

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

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 :)