Floral ruffian

I have been looking at some fashion pieces to get ideas for my nail art and this dress by Albert Ferretti inspired these off centre ruffian floral nails:

I used Nails Inc Porchester Place for the orange base then painted on the ruffian (tutorial) with Barry M Lychee, sitting it slightly off centre so I had a sweep of colour down the side of the nail. I then used a small nail art brush and Barry M Passionfruit and Key Lime, NYC Blue Sky and Nails Inc Phoenix Place to draw on the flowers. The accent nail is NYC Blue Sky with Digital Nails Ultimate Ginger. 

I love this! I'm making a really effort to come up with some unusual colour combinations and nail art choices and I just love how this came out. The off centre ruffian is very fresh and cool, and incredibly easy to do if you have steady hands. 

For my right hand instead of using a brush to draw the flowers I used my dotting tool to put on splotches of the same colours- it looks exactly the same from a normal distance but you can see the difference here:

If you are not confident using a brush I would just go in with a dotting tool- it's still very effective.  For such a simple design it looks amazing! 

Tweet

On trend 2014: White Nails with Neon Ruffian

I enjoy the palette cleanser that white nails provide but find them a little stark and boring on their own so today I'm going to show you a way to add a pop of colour using a gradient ruffian.

I wanted a neon pop to this so I used Orly Hook Up and Holla and Lilypad Lacquer In Pink We Trust with OPI My Boyfriend Scales Wall. There was no particular order to where I put the neon polishes but my nail beds are only really wide enough for two colours- if you have wider nail beds you could put all three on each nail.

I have made a photo tutorial for this look so you can recreate it at home:

1) Freehand stripes of your chosen colours vertically on your nail- it does not matter what this looks like at the tip (one coat should do) but make sure you paint the whole nail to help the white polish level later on.

2) Top coat! Make sure you topcoat to prevent streaking of the colours onto the white later!

3) Paint a stripe of white up the middle of your nail leaving a small strip of the colours exposed at the cuticle

4) Paint up the sides of the nail so that the colour is seen in a crescent moon shape at the base of your nails. It will take two coats of white to make this fully opaque- have a tiny brush on hand to use with acetone incase you make a mistake (because you have a layer of top coat over the colours you can correct small mistakes without losing the colour)

Then topcoat your final design, clean up around your cuticle to get the perfect oval shape and you're good to go.

NB this design makes your nails look shorter but your fingers look longer- if you have short nails that you dislike you have been warned! This is easier if you use a white polish with a small brush (the OPI was a little too big for my tiny nails). If you use my tutorial I would love to see it :).

Tweet

Textured bats

I am finally getting into the swing of things for halloween- it's not such a big deal here as it is in the States but I am still going to a party dressed as a sugar skull. Anyway I got a sudden desire to paint bats on my nails and I did it with one of my textured polishes- Barry M Countess.

The base for this is a matte ruffian of Barry M Mango and Vivid Purple.

I just painted on the bats with a small nail art brush and I'm really pleased with how they came out :)

Tweet

Lacquer Lust Bow Chica Wow Wow Ruffian

I am desperately trying to work my way through my pile of untrieds and am having some success but it's definitely something I have to think about other wise I do resort to using familiar polishes. The main polish in this manicure Lacquer Lust Bow Chica Wow Wow is one of my untrieds- a deep blue holographic polish I decided to pair it with the bright pink of piCture pOlish Electric Dream in my current favourite manicure style- the ruffian.

I loved this, the sun helpfully came out for a little bit while I was wearing it so I do apologise for the background of the two sun photos, I took them on the move in case the sun went back in.

Bow Chica has a really strong holo effect but it's more of a scattered holo than a linear one- although as you can see below there is some bend to it.

I love this combination, it's really fun and very simple to do. Because it is quite plain this mani is also very easy to wear and could be dressed up or down depending on the occasion.

I'll be back tomorrow with some halloween bats :).

Tweet

The colour challenged picks my polishes

So I am jumping on the bandwagon of people who have had their significant other choose a few nail polishes for them to do some nail art with and today my lovely Stuart picked out NYC Lexington Yellow, piCture pOlish Orbit, Pocket Money Polish Yellow Submarine and OPI Taylor Blue. While I'm mentioning Taylor Blue Work, Play, Polish posted today that it's going to be sold again in November so check out the link to her blog to read about that.

I really don't use ruffian nail art enough, it's really suited to the round shape that my cuticles have. I loved the look here before I added Orbit although I do like the dark contrast on the tips.

I thought I would talk you through my thought process here: I knew that the yellow would have to go on first because it is definitely a two coater and I would struggle to get it opaque over either of the blues. I then thought it would be really cool to have a bright pop of colour be painting on the OPI as a ruffian and then putting the PMP over the top tying those colours together. I meant to use Orbit to do the ruffian on my accent nail but totally forgot so the only way I could think of to include it without throwing the whole mani off was to paint on a thin tip with it but it's quite thick and difficult to manipulate.

Not too bad really :), at one point he had both of the blues and an orange very sheer jelly polish and I was worried. I had fun doing this and it was really interesting to see what my boyfriend pulled out of my collection.

Tweet