Tutorial: Textured Marble Nails

I’ve been wanting to try these nails for a while. It’s a simple concept and I love how it turned out! It gives your nails such a lovely texture and it’s easy enough to do quickly. I wanted very earthy colours to imitate a stone/marble texture. Check out the photo tutorial if you want to try it yourself!

 

The polishes I used were:

• Undercoat nude: Modi 43
• Dark brown: OPI “Wooden Shoe Like to Know?”
• Light brown/gold: Tip Top 919 “Iced Almond”

If you live in South Africa and are looking for some super cute nail midi rings and nail rings, check out Nail Candi.

Stained Glass

I’m writing this post from another country, hemisphere and season. It’s scorching hot and beautiful in South Africa at the moment. I’m staying with my boyfriend’s family who live on a lake just outside of Johannesburg, the views are absolutely spectacular (I will post some pics in my next post).

I created this post at the end of February but I’m only getting the chance to post it now.  Tip Top South Africa (they are apparently a fabulous nail polish, I’m still waiting to get my hands on a bottle) have a competition running which ended today. Sorry for the late notice to anyone that may have wanted to enter. Check out the Tip Top South Africa Facebook page. I’m not sure exactly how their competition works, I think it has 4 sections (one each week) and then a winner at the end. Either way, there are some awesome pics up that you can go check out. I think that people overseas can also order Tip Top on their website.

Last week’s theme was “stained glass”. I love participating in these themes because it pushes me to try new things and do things I wouldn’t usually do. I really like how this turned out, but I couldn’t tell you how I did it. Lots of time and patience. The one with the window frame I used a dotting tool for and then painted the black on top. The other nails I used nail art brushes for and mixed darker and lighter colours to create a gradient effect. I hope you like it!

 

Boracay nails

Hello everyone! I have a good reason for not posting in a few days, I was in the Philippines! I had so much fun lying in the sun and doing various touristy activities.

While I was there I also had a manicure. It was very simple, as they didn’t really specialize in nails.. but it was fun anyway 🙂 It cost me about 200 Philippine Peso ($5) with my hotel discount. So I’m not complaining.

The Philippines was amazing, everybody is so helpful and friendly, I just wish I could go back! 🙂

Here are some pics. They are by no means proper nail art blog pics, but I thought it would be fun to share them anyway 🙂

I put “Wooden Shoe Like to Know” OPI on my toes before I left..

Day 10 – Lights

The topic for today is “lights”. Easier said than done! Originally I wanted to do something colourful, like colourful Christmas lights. But, I quickly  changed my mind.. I went for a simple manicure!

I used OPI “Wooden Shoe Like to Know” (my only OPI 😦 But I love it), a black nail art brush and a gold glitter polish. I tried to make it look like a string of lights, but I’m not sure if it came across like that.

Anyway, here it is 🙂 Its really really simple, but I hope you like it 🙂

“Wooden Shoe Like to Know” and Green Glitter

I know I’ve posted a lot today, but I just want to do a quick post with a mani 🙂

This is OPI “Wooden Shoe Like to Know” with a Modi green milky glitter polish on top. Topped off with an OPI top coat.

To be honest, I prefer this milky glitter on a lighter under coat, but I kind of like how this turned out. What do you think?

Stickers and shells

A while ago I had a small online spree. I bought all sorts of nail art things to try out. One of those things was crushed shells. I’ve been dying to try them and tonight I finally did. I found the shells quite scratchy, but I found that if you put on a thin layer of shells and lots of top coat then it feels smoother.

I also used sticker french manicures for the first time. I got these cute, shiny white stickers from a local store called Skin Food.

I also used an opaque Konad pink and a OPI top coat 🙂 I hope you enjoy my mani! Let me know what you think 🙂

 

“Wooden Shoe Like to Know” & Lace

I ordered some lace stickers and have been dying to use them. I used OPI’s Wooden Shoe Like to Know and a white nail art brush to do the stripes by hand. It’s a very simple manicure, but I like the way it turned out. What do you think?

Arsenal Fan Nails

Ok, ok.. This may not be the most popular topic seeing as 100% of the people following my blog are girls. But, my boyfriend asked me to do a manicure of his favourite English Football team, Arsenal FC.

I was quite excited to do it because I like to try new things with my manicure attempts. So I accepted the challenge. I used quite a few random polishes, a Sally Hansen Xtream Wear “White on”, Konad gold, some nail art pens and brushes for the finer details, topped off with an OPI top coat. Here’s how it turned out:

I based the design on their logo and their uniform, so here are some pics to show you in case you aren’t the biggest fans.

I took a bunch of pics, so I put some into an animated gif for fun (see if my computer skills work).
What do you think? I hope you enjoy this, even if you aren’t a huge football fan! 🙂

Gradient glitter nails

I’ve been fascinated with the gradient nails that go from darker to lighter. When I first saw them I honestly thought people had different nail polishes for each nail, I was in awe! But, looking back I realise how silly that is. I found this mani surprisingly easy, although it uses quite a lot of nail polish because you have to mix it. I started with a very dark purple (Sally Hansen – Xtreme Wear “Flirt”) and mixed more and more white with it. Then at the end I sponged on some glitter (black and silver to the two darker nails and silver and clear polish to the lighter nails). Topped off with an OPI top coat. 🙂 Here it is…

What do you think?

 

Silver leaf nugget nails

I bought this silver stuff online. I didn’t know what it was called at all, so I Googled quite a bit. Eventually I found out they are called silver “nuggets”. Does anyone else have another name for them?

Thank goodness I found a tutorial on YouTube which shows how to apply this stuff. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKy05_WZFs0. It was very helpful.

My silver “nugget” (it still doesn’t feel like the right name, but I’m just going to roll with it) came in a slightly different packaging. It was all scrunched up already, so I just ripped it up like she shows on the tutorial. Here is a pic of what mine looked like.

And here is what it looked like on the manicure:

 

I decided to use a metallic looking Sally Hansen for the base coat (Purple Potion). It’s purple and it shimmers blue. Quite retro, but I like it. I also topped it off with OPI top coat.

What do you think? I hope you like my mani 🙂