Honeymoon Nails: Honu

Hello all :)  I hope you've all had a lovely Christmas and have some exciting plans for tomorrow night!  I just thought I'd squeeze in a quick post before the new year.

As I've mentioned before (once or twice..), in August this year, my husband and I went to Hawaii on our honeymoon.  I've previously shown you some dragonfly nails inspired by Hawaii, which you can see here, and today I have some more Hawaii-inspired nails to show you.

Our hotel had a tidal lagoon that was FULL of turtles!  It was totally amazing.  We went out snorkeling everyday (me with my life jacket on, since I float like a brick) and there were so many lovely turtles around.  They'd also come up on to the beach every afternoon to soak up some sun before sunset.  Turtles have well and truly established themselves in my top 5 animals, which of course is where every animal aspires to be...

So, first a real turtle:

And now my attempt:

I sponged on some turtley colours - this is super simple and I love the effect, but if you're not sure how to do it you can take a look at my tutorial here - and then added my little gold honu.  Looks just like the real thing, no..?

What do you think?  Do you think I managed to capture enough turtliness with the sponged background, or would you have gone for something different?

PS. Happy new year!

Lizard!

I am utterly convinced I've already posted this, but I can't find it anywhere...so apologies if you've already seen this.  It is entirely possible though I just dreamt posting it.

So this was actually supposed to be for a guest post for Sincerely Stephanie.  I was...um...somewhat overwhelmed, shall we say, to be doing a guest post on such a massive blog.  I spent ages trying to think up something to do, something that could possibly be good enough to be posted on Stephanie's blog.  I finally came up with the idea of doing an aboriginal art inspired manicure.  When I was in school, we did a module in art on Aboriginal art and I really used to enjoy drawing animals and filling them with various patterns (the platypus was my particular favourite).  The original plan was to do a different animal on each nail, so I googled a few ideas, but I decided it would just end up looking too busy and I wouldn't be able to get the kind of detail I wanted on such a small scale.  So I decided one animal across all the nails would be best, and settled on a lizard since that's sort of the right proportions to draw across your nails! Then I did it, decided it was rubbish, and did something else for the guest post instead (you can see that here if you're interested).

So here's what I ended up with:

I used the DIY decal technique for this, and it was one of my first times doing it, so I used like 2 or three coats of Seche for the base of it - turns out you don't need it that thick!  So that meant when I was trying to stick the pieces on my nails they were a bit too stiff to mould to the curve of my nail and they got a bit creased and cracked.  I still think the idea was cute though, even if the execution left a lot to be desired!

What do you think?  Do you prefer this or the manicure I ended up using for the guest post instead?

Then and Now #1: Elephantastic

Hello all!

Firstly, sorry for all the seemingly random post on the weekend.  I was tidying up my 'Reviews' tab, and it totally didn't occur to me that if you follow via Bloglovin' you'd have got an email with all those posts in!  However, the Reviews tab is all finished and tidy now, so do take a look and let me know what you think of the new layout.

You'll also notice something new at the bottom of my posts!  I've added some pretty buttons to allow you to easily share my posts.  Please also let me know what you think about these, both in terms of how they look and functionality.

Anyhoo, on to the nails!  Aaaages ago I said I was going to do a series of Then & Now posts.  I've seen these on a few blogs, and I liked the idea of revisiting some of my old manicures and seeing if I could do any better now.  However, due to being of the procrastinating nature that I am, I never got round to doing it.  Until now!  So, I present you my first then manicure...

I thought this was like proper awesome at the time.  And to be fair, it did have googley eyes.  This was actually the first ever manicure I posted on this blog!  Aww...  You can take a look at the original post here.

To be honest, I was a bit worried about doing this, because I was worried it would prove what I've suspected for a while...that my nail art is getting worse rather than better.  Here goes...

I went for a slightly different approach this time, but still with the googley eyes of course!  I stuck with Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream for the base, but this time I used Barry M Grey, OPI Skull & Glossbones and a touch of OPI Sparrow Me The Drama for the elephant.

So what do you prefer, then or now?

Don't forget to pop over to my Facebook page HERE to vote for which manicure you'd like to see my recreate next week!  

Flip Flop #10: Half Moons

I've had this manicure in my 'ideas' folder for aaages, and I finally got round to trying it!  I pinched the idea from Top Coat It - you should check her blog out, there's some fantastic nail art on there.

CRABS!  And sparkly disco crabs, at that.

I used China Glaze Kalahari Kiss (the colour isn't very accurate here!) then I freehanded on the half moons and claws using Barry M Bright Red and Red Glitter, then added eyes with a dotting tool and Barry M Matt White and Black.

Aren't they adorable?  So glad I finally got round to trying this!  And yes, the fat claw on my thumb crab is totally intentional...

Flip Flop #5 and Polish Days Mash Up

Hello ladies :)  I only have one day left in work this week, happy days!  Honestly, what are they even paying me for lol.  I'm going on a visit to Elekta on Thursday, which is a company that make linacs for radiotherapy, so that should be interesting!  For my new followers, I'm a trainee medical physicist by the way :)  Then on Friday I'm going home for a long weekend.  It was my little sister's birthday last Saturday, so I'm going back to spend some time with her shopping and drinking milkshakes.

So anyhoo, today is day 5 of the Flip Flop Challenge, and the theme was 3D or decals.  (As an aside, my right hand is so cold I'm actually struggling to type...time to put the heating on I think!)  Um...yes, so, as it happens, this theme fitted perfectly with the manicure I'd already done for this month's Polish Days!  Is that cheating?

This month's Polish Days theme is nature.  I've been loving The Polar Bear Family and Me on the BBC (I haven't seen the last episode yet, and god help anyone who tries to ruin it for me *glaaaaare*) so I created these cute little polar bear nails!

More velvet nails!

I used Barry M Matt White under the flocking powder, and Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream with a rubbish Saffron glitter that never dries, hence the state of my thumb nail.

I literally love polar bears so much.  The guy on the program got to hold a little baby one, and I don't think I've ever been so jealous of anything ever.  He did also have a bear having a good go at eating him...not so jealous of that one.  If anyone's interested, the program's on You Tube (as I discovered when I went to watch the second episode on BBC iPlayer and it was gone!  Almost ruined my day!).

I drew the face on with a Sharpie.  I then went and did some dishes (a rare occurence) and both face and flocking powder were still intact.

31 Day Challenge - Day 31: Recreate Your Favourite Challenge

Sorry for doing a bit of a disappearing act there!

Today I have my final manicure for the 31 Day Challenge.  It seems quite fitting that I'm posting this late, considering how many times I got behind during the challenge!  It's a good job I didn't attempt to do it in 31 days really...I'd probably still be finishing it now.

So anyway, I decided to base today's manicure on one created by Kimber, our lovely challenge organiser, for Day 13: Animal Print.  I was initially going to do a cat, as in Kimber's mani, but after painting my base colour, I decided to go with a dog instead.  And then I wished I'd chosen a brighter colour for my base...presumably because I think dogs are more fun than cats??

I used NYC Central Park for the base colour, and then added my dog and paw prints using Barry M Matt White and Black.

And here's a bonus picture of my dog!

If you want to take a look back through all 31 manicures, you can see them in the Challenges tab at the top of the page.

Don't forget to check out all the other lovely ladies who've taken part in this challenge!

Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner

Kat at Hooked On Polish

Diana at Nails By Diana

Meredith at Perfectly Polished

Kate at The Painted Pony Nails

Cee at Absolutely Cee

Nail Narcotics

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful 

Mixed Mama

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Patty Greenberg

Liz and Lisa at Lozlosa 

Mari at Nailista 

Greta at How Was Your Day?

Miss L at Beauty by Miss L 

Gini at Sassy Paints 

Chameleon Stampede 

Pam at Nail-E-Glance 

Me, Myself and Polish

Untried: NYC Central Park

31 Day Challenge - Day 23: Inspired by a Film

It's the ciiiircle of liiiife!

The Lion King is my favourite film ever.  I don't care if it's aimed at 6 year olds rather than 23 year olds, I love it. It has the perfect combination of cheesy songs and cute talking animals.  What more could you want from a film?

So, naturally, there was no other sensible choice for today's challenge manicure - inspired by a film.  Although when I googled the picture I wanted to recreate for my manicure, I almost changed my mind to something easier lol.  But since I'd already posted yesterday that I was thinking about doing The Lion King (fool) I figured I should probably give it a go.

Since I'm aware it's not entirely (ahem) obvious who everyone  is, I shall interpret for you.  On the left we have Simba and Nala, on the middle finger is Rafiki and a little Zazu, and then on my ring finger is Scar.  Timon and Pumbaa should've been on my little finger, but I wasn't convinced you'd be able to tell the difference between my lions and warthogs, so I surrendered at that point.  I quite like the overall look though, even if my animal painting abilities are shocking.

I used Barry M Bright Red for the sky, and then painted on the sun with Barry M Lemon Ice Cream while the red was still wet, so that I got some orangey bits.  Then I used Barry M Black for the tips and the detail. Yet another Barry M fest.

Have a look at all the other film-inspired manicures:

Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner

Kat at Hooked On Polish

Diana at Nails By Diana

Aly at Wonderland Beauty

Meredith at Perfectly Polished

Nicole at The Color Republic

Kate at The Painted Pony Nails

Cee at Absolutely Cee

Nail Narcotics

Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed

Shelby at Shelby's Swatches

Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful 

Mixed Mama

Joanna at Sweet Polish of Mine

Patty Greenberg

Liz and Lisa at Lozlosa 

Mari at Nailista 

Miss L at Beauty by Miss L 

Gini at Sassy Paints 

Chameleon Stampede 

Pam at Nail-E-Glance

Me, Myself, and Polish 

Robin Sparkles