Digital Nails Spectraflair

When I was browsing the Digital Nails etsy shop I came across her Spectraflair top coat- a top coat which can make any polish holographic by applying it over the top. How could I resist that? I first decided to try it over solid polishes just to get a feel for the effect. If it doesn't come out in the pictures allow me to express how amazing this polish is: there are rainbows flying off my nails! I tried it over A England Dorian Gray, Barry M Racing Green, Barry M Black, Nails Inc Hampstead Heath and OPI Eurso Euro. One coat of spectraflair wasn't enough for my tastes (although if you're not secretly a magpie it would be) and two coats was magical.

More details below the jump

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Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes by Lac Attack

A polish so beautiful it deserves its own post even though I showed you it over a different polish yesterday. I don't have a lot to say about this- I'm letting the pictures do the talking.

I love this glitter and I especially love it over Barry M Blue Grape.

Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous :)

Seriously, get over to Harlow and Co and get yourself a bottle! *Sold out now but worth waiting for the next restock.

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Lac Attack Graduation Nails

We have to wear quite sober clothes for our graduation so I'm having a party on my nails. I just got The Horcrux of it and Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes and decided to pair them together and wow! I forgot to take an alone picture on my left hand so these are my tiny right hand nails.

These were the two polishes that really drew me from the collection, I love black glitter combinations and everyone was raving about WWW so I wanted a bottle. I got mine when Harlow & Co got a restock and in fact they still have them in if anyone is lemming them. *Sold out now but worth waiting for the restock*

I then put a pattern over the top of them using my Barry M silver nail art pen. Again this pattern is based on semi circles and triangles.

I thought it was fairly appropriate to be wearing Harry Potter themed polishes to a graduation ceremony.

It seems like three years have flown past and it will be sad to leave this group of people behind. On the other hand it is very exciting to be starting a new stage of my life.

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June Tri polish post 4

Sometimes the best things are simple:

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Nails Inc Tribal Nails

I put down two coats of one of my new Nails Inc polishes which is a gorgeous grey with orange shimmer. I think it's called Covent Garden Ballet but most of my polishes are currently boxed up for moving out of university and I can't be sure. I got it as part of a set of 10 polishes for £20. I was just going to leave it but then I started doodling with my Barry M Black Nail Art Pen on top of it. I like the finished result:

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June tripolish 3

I almost didn't have anything to show for the third June tri polish challenge as due to a break my right hand nails are incredibly short and I really didn't want to take the polish on my left hand off as it's amazing (you'll see it tomorrow). So in the end I decided to just do a mani on my very tiny right hand nails.

I ended up with this stripy, flowery mani. I put tape over my base coat to make the two strips of naked nail then freehanded the coloured stripe using a short striping brush then stamped on the flowers. the gold flowers on red remind me of embroidery on chinese dresses.

This is again NYC Chelsea Cherry, Greenwich Village and Lavender Cupcake with Full Metal Jacket. 

I'm not totally convinced that I like this but it is definitely interesting and eye catching. 

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A England Barbed Wire Gradient

I decided to do another gradient and stamping combo. I hadn't used A England Princess Sabra since I got it so I thought it was about time to get it on the nails. It is a little thinner than previous A England polishes I've tried and required two coats to reach opacity. I have a photo of it on its own to show you the olivey goodness that this polish has.

And then I gradiented it with A England St. George and Tristam. These three polishes produce a fantastic gradient because they all have the same scattered holo look.

And just for good measure I stamped over it using a BM barbed wire design and Nails Girls Gold polish.

I like the barbed wire look, it sort of looks like my nails are off limits.

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May week nails

For our ball week I have been doing a lot of other people's nails and I thought I'd take the chance to show you a few of them in a post.
These were for Rose to go with a multicoloured dress with some pixellated styling on it.

Barry M Guava and Black nail art pen, Jessica Lime Cooler and Bourjois Sunny Sun

These were for my friend Fiona to wear with a white dress with red flowers on. This is some of the most consistent stamping work I've done so far so I was very pleased with it.

OPI My vampire is buff and I'm not really a waitress

These ones were for Abi. This pattern probably looks familiar as I've used it a few times(here and here) but again this is a design by The Manicurator.

OPI My vampire is buff and NYC Full metal jacket

This one is for Mary, stamping using a BM plate

Emily de Molly Oceanic Forces and Barry M Silver Foil

These were for Helen, when I give my friends free range on my polish collection they tend to go for the more interesting indie crelly glitter blends. I'm surprised more main stream brands aren't producing these sorts of polishes yet.

Emily de Molly Majestic Flight and NYC Full metal jacket

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Mosaic nails

I saw these nails by One nail to rule them all and decided to do a version of them using Nails Inc Horse Guards Parade as the base and the Barry M Summer Gelly collection for the colours.

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Barry M Gelly Stamping

I fancied trying stamping with my Barry M Gellies and also came across an Emily de Molly polish that I've had for a little while and totally forgot about, Copper fields. So this is Barry M Mango stamped in Passion Fruit with an accent nail of Copper  fields

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June tri-polish 2- roses

For my second tri-polish mani I thought I'd have a go at two techniques new to me, a skittlette (inspired by Chit Chat Nails) and freehand roses (inspired by the Nailasaurus). My roses need a little more work but I enjoyed painting them.

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My 100th Post! May Ball Nails

Wooooo! I made it to 100 posts. Thank you everyone who's following me and everyone who comments on my posts, it makes me so happy when people like my nail art.

Yesterday I went to an end of exams ball at Downing College, Cambridge and did nails to match my dress and jewellery. I got the idea from a Pshiiiit! design I've had on my Pinterest for a while. I didn't want the nails to over power the dress so I went for some subtle gold stamping. 

The base here is A England Tristam, the gold is NYC Full Metal Jacket. I put down a coat of Tristam and then taped off triangles of my nails and stamped the design on in gold on my non accent nails and put a coat of gold on my accent nails. I then stamped over the accent nails with Tristam and top coated everything. 

Here is a photo of me in my dress (Ted Baker for Selfridges) :) I did my own hair based on a Gwyneth Paltrow style from Sliding Doors (if you haven't seen this film you should go watch it- it's amazing!).

I also added some rhinestones to the base of my shoes to commemorate May Week '13 (yes Cambridge May Week actually happens in June- I'm not entirely sure why). 

And here are a couple of pictures of the ball.

And now I'm going to sleep a little longer in preparation for another party tonight :)

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June Tri-polish Challenge 1, floral stamping

I was not feeling the inspiration for the June colours of pink, purple and red at all. I only actually owned   2 pink polishes until recently. However, I happened to accidentally put NYC Chelsea Cherry, Greenwich Village and Lavender Cupcake near each other and an idea was born. I decided to gradient these together and then stamp over the top with Lavender Cupcake.

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Glittery Fishtail

I wanted glitter and my favourite mega glitter is Nails Inc Maida Vale and I decided to fishtail it with Barry M Black. My camera was not happy with this manicure in any way, it sort of threw a hissy fit and made the photos blurry. You can still see the awesomeness of this manicure though.

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Essie Fishtail

I recently got my hands on five polishes from the Essie 2013 Summer collection and decided to pair three of them together in a fishtail look. This is  Naughty nautical, The girls are out and Full steam ahead.

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Digital Nails Run you clever boy

This is the final Digital nails polish that I have to show you from the last lot that I bought and it is Run you clever boy and remember, a polish dedicated to the mysterious Clara Oswald. Here is the beautiful polish and a picture which could well have been the inspiration for this polish. Run you clever boy is a deep maroon coloured polish with green colour shifting flakies.

Source:Smiles on rainy days

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Houndstooth nail decals

I saw the tutorial by Gnarly Nails on how she made her neon houndstooth nail decals and I thought it looked like a fantastic idea. I don't have that many suitable stamping patterns so I also went with houndstooth but I have some other ideas in the works. I love this, I made these  two weeks ago and then they made for a really quick mani change today and they look fabulous. I also have a job interview tomorrow so I needed to have matching nails for once and this is a really easy way to get nail art on both hands.

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Samba coat inspired nails

My boyfriend, Stuart, is in a samba band and for his costume has a crazily painted coat. A picture taken of him at one of the gigs ended up in the Cambridge newspaper and I decided to do nails inspired by motifs in the coat :). And ta-dah here is Stuart playing away- sorry about the quality it's a picture of the newspaper, and the nails I came up with: I did them all in acrylic paint on a base of white nail polish.

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When Monkeys Fly

For an end of exams present my friend got me OPIs When Monkeys Fly, the highly discussed polish in the Wizard of Oz collection due to some of the bottles having curling glitter. So I was eager to get it onto my nails and see if mine had the curl. They do curl but not enough to bother me and I was on standby with tweezers to turn them over to sit on the curve of my nail. I decided to use a glitter sandwich to show this off using OPI Bubble Bath as my jelly. I left the glitter as is on my ring finger to show off the holographic hexes which get masked by the  coat of bubble bath.

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Polish Days: To Boldly Go Challenge

I was so excited to see that the polish days June theme was scifi, one of my favourite shows as a child/teenager was Stargate SG1. Me and my dad would watch it every night and I've been planning a star gate themed mani for the past couple of weeks. I decided to use this as my first opportunity to use acrylic paints on my nails. I'm a terrible artist so I didn't have paints just lying around- I came across a big set in TK Maxx a couple of weeks ago and picked them up. I can see why people use them for detailed nail art, they are so much easier to manipulate than nail polish.

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The Pandorica Opens

I got Pandorica from Digital nails along with the other Doctor Who themed polishes and have been saving it until I was short on time as I knew I wouldn't want to do nail art over the top of it. This polish is special to me as I got together with my boyfriend just after watching the two pandorica episodes one evening :). After I saw the swatch of it on Accio lacquer I was really excited because I love holographic polishes and boy is this polish holographic.

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There's something fishy going on

I love fish, I think they're fascinating biologically and just to watch. It's a long running joke amongst my friends that I am just obsessed with them, therefore it won't come as a surprise to any of them that I have taken the final step and painted fish on my nails. I used the Mr. Candiipants tutorial for the design of the coy and the Manicurator design for the fish scales on my other nails.

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Striped Half Moon

Stripy nails with a nude half moon have been popping up all over the place, notably on Pshiiit! and Globe and Nail this week. When I got my hands on the new Barry M Gelly summer collection polishes I decided to do this with Mango and Passion Fruit. I'm not normally an orange person- I don't think I've used my single orange polish since I started my blog and for a good few months before that but Mango is a beautiful creamy orange which really suits my skin tone (fair, very fair). I used hole reinforcer stickers to create the half moons and then free handed the lines of Passion Fruit using a short striping brush, I then added a curve of gold from the Revlon Nail art expressionist set using the thin striping brush included in the polish.

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The Ultimate Ginger- Digital Nails

My second Digital Nails parcel finally arrived :). I was really excited by the Ladies of Who collection and got four of them although now I wish I had bought Hello Sweetie as well. The first one I wanted to put on my nails was actually Run You Clever Boy, which is surprising because I'm not really a red kind of girl but my outfit choices conspired against me and I ended up wearing The Ultimate Ginger, a tribute to Amy Pond. This polish is a reference to the excellent episode where they meet Vincent Van Gough. For me this episode shows the heart of Doctor Who and highlights why fans love the show so much- how could you not be moved by the Doctor taking a struggling painter from a time when he is not appreciated to somewhere where an art critic will tell him that he is the greatest painter who ever lived. I think it also deals with the issue of depression in a very sensitive manner "the painful days don't take away from the good days".

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Expelliarmus

My Digital Nails parcel came last week and I've been working my way through these polishes ever since, once I took off Ultimate Ginger which I will be showing you tomorrow, I put on Expelliarmus, the Martha Jones inspired nail polish. I'm not really a purple person but this polish has enough interest to make me enjoy it and whoever I end up giving it to out of my friends will probably love it. The formula is excellent, I didn't have to fish for the large circles and the glitter applied really evenly. There is an awesome bright blue shimmer to this polish so I decided to pair it with my new Orly neon blue, Blue Collar. This is my second time using the Manicurator's geometric French tip design and I think it works really well with these two polishes, I used a white underneath the blue to make it more neon.

Click on the jump to see some more photos of this and of a Cambridge event.

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The Pineapple Incident

If you watch How I Met Your Mother you may have come across the episode entitled The Pineapple Incident. It's a fantastic episode which revolves around a pineapple found by Ted's bed when he wakes from a drunken night out which no-one can explain. This has been a joke between me and a friend for a while so I ordered a Konad plate with a pineapple on it and did two colour stamping of pineapples on my nails. I couldn't resist gifs ;)

Source: thefrychronicles

And here is my nail polish interpretation

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