Sponged Nails Tutorial

Sponged nails are one of my favourite things to do when you're in a bit of a hurry or can't be bothered fussing about with brushes and tape and all that jazz, but still want something that looks a bit more interesting than just plain nails.

You can use any colour combination you like for these, and as many or as few polishes as you like.  You can see some examples of my sponged manicures here and here.

You will need: -

•  A metallic polish
• Black or white polish
• Two shades of your chosen colour
• Sponge

I use a make up sponge, but you can use any kind of sponge.  If you can't get your hands on any sponge at all, you could even used scrunched up bits of cling film or tissue.

Here's the step-by-step photo tutorial:

1. Prepare your nail as usual, and paint with your lightest polish (white or the lightest shade of your colour).

2. Tear off a little bit of sponge, and put a few drops of one of your other polishes on to some paper.  Dip your sponge in the polish and dab off the excess, then randomly sponge one or two areas of your nail.  The order you decide to sponge your colours in is totally up to you, and depends what sort of look you want over all - whichever colour you sponge last will be the most dominant.

3. Repeat with your next colour.  Use a fresh piece of sponge for each colour (you literally only need like a 5mm piece).

4. Add your final colour.

5. If you're not totally happy with the colour balance you've got on your nails, now's the time to go back in with a few little dabs of extra polish.  Sometimes I end up with one hand being a lot lighter than the other, so I add a bit more dark polish to one hand to even them up.

6. Clean up and add your favourite topcoat.  Sorted.

In keeping with well-established sponge-manicure tradition, here's a photo of my lovely doggy.

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

Pink Fridays #2

Happy Friday!  Woo!

October is breast cancer awareness month, and so I've decided to make my Friday's pink!  You can find out more about breast cancer and Pink Fridays at Breast Cancer Care.

This week for my pink manicure I decided to have a go at a pink sponged manicure, like the one I did inspired by my doggy for the My Favourite Things challenge (which you can see here).  But in pink, obviously.

I used a base of Barry M Matt White and then sponged with Max Factor Disco Pink, Barry M Bright Pink and a Special FX polish (they don't have names, poor things).

In keeping with sponged manicure tradition, here's a picture of Bailey playing with her bear and looking very pleased with herself :)

I'd love to see how you're making your Fridays pink!  Post your pictures on my Facebook page! You should actually be able to now as well, I didn't realise it was set so that people couldn't before, sorry!

Do you have any exciting plans for this weekend?  My boyfriend's parents are currently on the M25 somewhere en route to coming to visit us for the weekend. I haven't seen them since August, so it should be good! (The wine's in the fridge...).

My Favourite Things: Favourite Animal

I totally forgot today was Tuesday.  To the extent that I saw people had posted their challenge manicures and I was thinking 'why are they posting a day early..?'.  Never mind, I've had a cup of coffee now and I'm fully aware of what day it is, so here's my post!

I'm a very indecisive person.  I genuinely cannot choose a favourite animal (or colour, polish, food...).  When I was first starting this challenge, I asked my boyfriend what my favourite animal is.  He suggested a tiger.  I do love tigers...having a pet tiger would be AMAZING, but people tell me I can't.

LOOK AT IT!!!  Awwwwwwwww.

Anyway, I didn't actually go with tigers in the end, so no more baby tiger pictures.  I actually decided to do a mani inspired my dog - technically my favourite animal ever :D

 I sponged on some Bailey-type colours; I used Barry M Matt White and Gold Foil, OPI Over The Taupe and 17 Nightshade.  Then I added some little doggy paw prints with a dotting tool.

And here's my inspiration :)

Here's the schedule for the rest of the challenge.  The next post will be favourite food on Thursday - still no idea what I'm going to do for this, I love all food!