Spring Flowers with Holo Glitter | Gel Polish Manicure

I decided to record myself doing my nails. This wasn't mean as a tutorial more of a nail GRWM but you may learn something from this video. Sadly the video quality is not as good as I had hoped because the colour keeps changing but I think you can still see what I am doing. I hope my next attempt at a nail video goes better. I am hoping to record my own nails every time that I do them and also throw in a few quick nail art experiment videos in between.

Anyway here are the nails I did, I have kept it really simple because I couldn't decide what to do. I wanted to use my new colours and also my new holographic glitter.

Spring Flowers with Holo Glitter Nail Art.

This manicure could easily be recreated in regular polish although I would probably skip out on the loose glitter and use a glitter polish instead.

If you want to watch how I did these nails, here s the video.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to add them as a comment.

Manicure Monday - Green and Silver Zig Zag Design

Green and Silver Glitter Zig Zag Nails

When I did this manicure my camera battery died and I had to take the picture with my phone, so please excuse the quality.

This is a gel polish design.

This manicure is similar to designs I have done in the past but this is a new colour. My client brought in a picture from the Orly Nail Girls and chose this awesome green colour.

To do the zig zag design first paint the nail with your desired base colour, we chose white, and then dot out the design in your second colour before joining the dots together to make your zig zag.

On the middle finger we did a full silver glitter nail.

The rest of the fingers and thumb were just painted green.

Yay for me getting this post up on time.

Day Two - Technically I already failed

My first post was actually posted at 12:04 am on February the 2nd, so my plan for a post every day has already gone out the window. Lets just pretend that didn't happen, it was still the 1st in parts of the world......

Anyway onto today's post.

I am already struggling to think of ideas for posts, I dread to think what I'll be writing at the end of the month. Today I'm going to stick with something I know, a nail post.

These are a set of nails I did on myself using gel nail polish and fine craft glitter. I'm not going to go into too much detail on how to do these, but if you have any questions just ask. :)

I started by doing a basic french manicure with gel nail polish on all fingers except for the ring finger (i'll explain that one in a minute) and adding the gel topcoat, then I lightly buffed the shine from the topcoat so my glitter wouldn't slip around to much. I then drew a line in a gel nail polish colour similar to the glitter colour I wanted to use. Before setting the green line I sprinkled fine glitter over the wet polish and then cleaned up the lines with a brush. If you have a lot of excess glitter where you don't want it, gently blow on your nails. Once I was happy with the lines I set the nails in my UV light. Once set I brushed off any loose glitter with a nail brush, the kind you use to clean under your fingernails. Then I sealed the whole design with a gel topcoat. If the glitter was still a little ruff I again buffed the topcoat and glitter area until it felt more smooth and applied another layer of topcoat.

Now for the ring finger, I applied my base coat, set in lamp, then one coat of colour, set in lamp, then another coat of colour, before setting I sprinkled the green glitter over top until the whole nail was covered in glitter. I then set the nail in the UV lamp. Next I brush off any excess glitter and applied gel topcoat. I buff the surface smooth paying extra attention to the free edge. Then I painted on the lace design with white gel polish. If you would like a step by step let me know. If you're not confident with hand painting you can also do this with Konad stamping if you have the right plate. 

That's all for today, hopefully there will be more from me tomorrow.

Mint and White Heart French Manicure

Long time, no blog. Feels like I start every post with something along those lines and a promise to post more frequently from now on. No such promise this time, I will do the best I can to post more often but I will most likely fail to do so. 

The upside to being absent for so long, I have plenty of photos of nail designs that I can now share with you. Instead of lumping them all together in one post, as I have done previously, I thought I would give more detailed explanations of each design in their own separate posts.

This first design is using three polishes, a white (Orly White Out), a minty green (Orly Gumdrop, is slightly more minty in person) and an optional glitter polish I used Wasabi. I can't remember the brand name of the glitter polish, but if anyone needs to know I can search it out for you.

I start with basecoat as always then apply a few coats of Orly Gumdrop, you can use any colour you prefer. Then using the white polish draw to semi circle shapes at the tip of the nail overlapping in the centre, creating the heart or lip french. This shape of french is very easy to do because the brush does most of the work for you. You may need to do two coats of the white if the colour underneath is showing through. You could stop here if you want to, but I chose to continue and using a dotting tool and the same white polish I added a few white dots along the line of the heart tip.

You may see in the photo I added a few rhinestones, which you may like to do also, although I prefer the design with out. At the time of this manicure I had on some very grown out acrylics which I was being lazy about removing so I added the rhinestones to disguise the acrylic nail which was most obvious on my ring finger.

I know that was a very rambly explanation, so if you have any questions do not hesitate to ask.

Manicure Monday: Nail Care Routine and Nail Art Tutorial

Pink and green nail art

To make up for missing last weeks Manicure Monday, today is a double whammy. I am doing a step by step nail care routine and also a nail tutorial for this look.

First off, let's start with nail care.
Step 1: Trim nails with nail clippers. You only need to do this if you are wanting to shorten your nails dramatically. Make sure not to cut your nails too short.
Step 2: Using a fine grit nail file, file your nails to remove sharp edges and get the exact nail edge you want. This is the point where you can make your nails round, square, pointy etc.
Step 3: Remove excess cuticle. See the video for my rant about what you can use to soften your cuticles.
Step 4: Trim off any hang nails.
Step 5: Buff your nails to remove ridges if you have any. You can skip this step if you want to.
Step 6: Remove any oil from your nails using a cotton pad with nail polish remover on it. This is an important step because if oil is left on the nail, the nail polish will not bond with the nail and it will not last.

Now on to the nail tutorial.
Step 1: Apply a base coat. This will help your manicure last longer and prevent staining.
Step 2: Apply the colour you want for your border all over your nail. I chose O.P.I. Kiss me on my Tulips. I only needed one coat to get the opacity I wanted. If you need to apply two coats, go ahead and do that.
Step 3: Make sure your border colour is dry and then go in with your middle colour. I chose O.P.I Fly. Apply this like you did the first colour but leaving a 2 to 3 mm border of your first colour at the cuticle and side walls. Let this dry and then apply another coat to reach your desired opacity.
Step 4: You can at this point choose to leave it as it is or make a full border by painting your first colour on the tip of your nail as though doing a very thin french manicure. I chose not to.
Step 5: After making sure your nails are at least 90% dry, apply a top coat. Then once it is dry, your manicure is complete.

I would like to add a little disclaimer about the video. This is the first time I have ever recorded myself on camera and you may notice I stumble over my words and ramble quite a lot, so please do not judge. Also the pink does not show up true to colour in the video, it is an almost neon pink. The photo does it more justice.




The files I used in this video are here. And here is the buffer and cuticle pusher.

Manicure Monday: Colourful Gradient Nails

Colourful Gradient

I haven't had much time to play around with my own nails recently,so for today's post here are the nails I did on my friend.

The photo doesn't really show the manicure off, it looks much nicer in person.

As always I started off with a base coat on all nails.

On the pointer and pinky fingers I painted the whole nail with a pale blue then sponged a layer of purple over two thirds of the nail concentrating the colour intensity at the free edge of the nail. Once this was dry I sponged a purply pink colour onto the tip of the nail.

On the middle finger I painted the entire nail a bright pink colour then sponged an orange onto two thirds of the nail, again focusing the intensity of colour on the free edge of the nail. I then sponged a yellow polish onto the tip. This gradient was the least obvious and great for a more subtle look.

On the ring finger I painted the entire nail yellow then sponged a fluorescent green nail polish over two thirds of the nail focusing the intensity of colour on the free edge of the nail. I then sponged the same blue I had used for the base colour of the pointer and pinky fingers on the very tip of the ring finger nail, because of the green underneath it gives it a minty green look.

I then painted all the nails with a clear glittery polish and a top coat to seal it all in.

Easy Temporary Tattoo Nail Art

Hello internet people!

I love doing nail art and I recently lost my nail art guinea pig to overseas travel, so I have been suffering a little bit of nail art withdrawal. I have been spending a lot of time watching nail art videos on YouTube.

I struggle to do nice nail art on my self because it is near impossible to get both hands looking the same quality. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am definitely not ambidextrous. I stumble upon the temporary tattoo technique whilst watching YouTube videos, it basically involves painting your nails, sticking a tattoo on top then sealing with a top coat. Great for getting both hands to look good.

Here are some pictures showing how I did my temporary tattoo nail art.

Start with freshly manicured nails.
I filed my nails, gently pushed back my cuticles and applied cuticle oil.
Make sure you remove the cuticle oil by washing your hands before applying polish.

Always apply a base coat to prevent staining your nails.
I used OPI Nail Envy.

You need to apply a base colour of your choice.
I chose OPI Fly and applied two coats.
Make sure the colour is completely dry before starting with the tattoos.

These are the tattoos I used. They cost $1.

I cut shapes out of the tattoos that I wanted on my nails.
I applied it by placing the tattoo on to my nail then pressing a damp cotton pad on top for 10 seconds.

Thumb with star tattoo applied.

Finished nails with two coats of Nailene Acrylic Strong Top Coat.

I hope you enjoyed my nail art, you can recreate this in your favourite colour and with any tattoos you can find. Remember you can also cut up the tattoos like I did if they are too big for your nails.

Thanks for stopping by. :)