Textured Dots

Yesterday I was in London again interviewing and had a couple of hours to spare so I went and had dinner with a friend at the Southbank. We wandered through the Christmas market there and had a sneaky cup of mulled wine, it was great :). When I got home I wanted to play with finish and texture so I came up with these matte textured dotty nails:

The base here is two coats of Barry M Espresso which has a gorgeous satin finish- not quite as flat as some matte polishes I have seen. It applies quite easily you just have to be careful not to take too long putting it on a single nail as it starts to dry quickly.

I then added dots of Barry M Lady and OPI Alcatraz Rocks. Lady is a new acquisition and I really like it. I bought it to mimic the look of fresh snow and it definitely does that :). Alcatraz Rocks seems to have picked up the black base of Espresso but I quite like it- it makes this mani more monochrome.

I really like this :) I'm not sure how long it'll last because there's absolutely no top coat involved but I'm enjoying it immensely while it does. I thought I'd share my best picture from London just to finish off this post:

Have a great weekend!

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Autumn spotty nails

I really enjoyed making these nails :) my boyfriend suggested I do some nail art using autumnal colours and I decided to go a little abstract and just do dots in the colours on a nude base.

The colours used here are Barry M Lychee, OPI Every Month is Oktoberfest, OPI A Woman's Prague-ative and NYC Money Never Sleeps. I used two sizes of dotting tool- just pressing a little more lightly if I wanted a smaller dot. I started by adding the large dots to the nail then filling in the spaces around them, ensuring that none of the dots touched each other. 

33DC Inspired by a Tutorial

This wasn't really a tutorial but it is someone else's design. Dressed up Nails did these awesome dotty hearts and when I saw them I knew they were what I wanted to copy for this challenge. I did mine in neon pink and pastel lime green- a fabulous combination which is under appreciated.

The colours used here are Jessica Lime Cooler and Lilypad Lacquer In Pink We Trust- an exclusive made for the UK store Sally Magpies. I did the dots with a dotting tool and freehanded the stripes with a medium length striping brush.

I really like this manicure. I like how in your face it is but also isn't because the pastel green tones it down, just awesome :).

Tomorrow I will have a post summing up my top ten polishes for the winter season now that the clocks have gone back and some of them are a little wild cardy so come and see if you agree with me :).

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31DC Inspired by a Film 33DC Dots

Woo double challenge! Today I am doing film for the 31 day challenge and dots for the Crumpet's Nail Tarts 33 day challenge. I decided to do a very iconic film in dots so that if I mucked it up it would still be recognisable. However, I think I did a pretty good job representing Harry Potter in dots. 

We have a Gryffindor scarf, HP himself, a snitch and a bludger and a wand casting a spell. I think my favourite is the snitch, that large dot is just perfect. 

I used quite a lot of different polishes for this manicure, but I was careful not to use too many to ensure it was a cohesive design. The base is OPI My Vampire is Buff and then the art was done using NYC High Line Green, Park Ave, Chelsea Cherry, Barry M Black, Revlon Hypnotise and Elegant Touch White.

It was fun designing a mani in which I would only use dotting tools to actually portray something. Excitingly, as this goes out I will be off being an extra in the new feature film The Theory of Everything about Stephen Hawking.

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31DC Polka Dots

I love challenges! I love when you push yourself to do something a little unusual because 40 other people are doing the same prompt and you come up with something like this:

This is so not me; it's bright pink but also subtle because of the nude base.

This manicure started off with two coats of Deborah Lippmann Prelude to a Kiss. I then used a striping brush to add the shapes in Emily de Molly Where Boys Fear to Tread. I picked this up on a sale site on facebook and it's not one I would have bought new but I do love it, it's so holographic and the colour is a gorgeous bright fuchsia. I used my striping brush to add pink dots with Where boys fear to tread and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls then for the finishing touch added the dots in black with my Barry M nail art pen. The following photo is deliberately blurred to show off the holographic nature of the polish.

This is one of those "I'm not really sure where it was going when I started but I love where it ended up" nail art designs. You can do this too, just stick to a really simple colour palette (I chose pink and ran with it) and try to keep your lines curvy because that way they look much more organic than if there are sharp corners.

I feel like my skills with my nail art brushes are getting better and I'm really pleased with the content I've been making for this challenge and I hope you've been enjoying it too :)

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Electric Fish

This post is showcasing the fabulous piCture pOlish Electric Dream, a bright pink polish with gold shimmer. This polish was inspired by the coral reef in Fiji and therefore I have decided to pair it with a fish scale nail.

This polish can look anywhere between pink and coral depending on the light and your skin tone, on me it definitely looks more pink. This is two coats of the fantastic PP formula and then a top coat. I think this dries to a slightly satiny finish but I was painting in poor light so I can't be sure... 

I chose a few different polishes to complete the fish scale nail, but I wish I had chosen ones that were similar in finish- there's something about the contrast between the shimmer and the cremes that isn't working for me. I'm still running on a small collection and brought mostly cremes so I didn't have as much choice as I would in Cambridge. The polishes you're seeing are piCture pOlish Freya's Cats, Essie Naughty Nautical, Barry M Passionfruit and Orly Hook Up.

This accent nail takes a surprising amount of time for what it is, I think because you have to dot a different colour every time rather than being able to do a few dots of the same colour. 

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