Burns' Night Nail Art/BPS Striping Tape Review

Hi friends! Just a quick post from me tonight - some Scottish-y themed nail art for Burns' Night and a wee review of this striping tape from Born Pretty Store. (Discount code at the bottom of the post, too!)

Baroque 'n' Roll | Nail Art

Bahahaha. Yes, that excruciating pun did just happen. I'm not even going to apologise for it.

Hello and Happy New Year! How I've missed my wee blog. November and December were really rather busy months for me and I ended up being away from home quite a bit, so sadly nail art had to take a back seat. I'd say it was a pretty productive time, though, and I'm looking forward to what 2014 will bring... I hope it will be a joyful, prosperous year for you all. :)

Nail art!

Blue & Black Splodges/Cow Print | Nail Art

Holaaa! Another winner of a post title... We're off to Spain for a week tomorrow (well, tonight) so I really should be doing something sensible, like packing. But here I am! I painted these nails last night and I like them a lot - they were really quick today and I have such a thing for blue & black at the moment. I think they look a bit like very funky cow print nails, though I didn't strictly go in with that in mind, haha.

The blue is Kiko 336 - basically a dupe of Nails Inc Baker Street (which I don't own) and all those like it. LOVE this kind of electric blue and I really hope it never goes out of fashion!

Must dash! Have a splendid week!

Mini Messy Floral Mani | Nail Art

Hi friends! I've been busier than usual lately but happily, I now have some new nail art for you. Hooray! I feel I should warn you upfront, though, that my photos are somewhat inconsistent - I decided to take them next to my window but it was one of those days where the light changes from one second to the next, so I ended up with a real variety of colours and brightnesses haha.

Aaand here's a close-up of the H&M dress I based them on (which I have had for years):

I'm so so pleased with how these turned out - they're really cute but the loose-ish interpretation of the flowers keeps them from feeling cutesy. I didn't reproduce the fabric pattern precisely, but I hope you'll agree that these capture the sense of the dress nicely. 

I used Barry M 'Passion Fruit' (from the Gelly line) as my base colour. I picked this up just last week and I'm so glad I did. My pictures don't do it justice but it is a fantastic shade - a really bright, coral-y red (not the orange my camera seemed to think it was!). The white detailing was added with a cut-down brush; I used a kind of dabbing/blobbing technique for some of the smaller flower petals. 

These nails were relatively simple to do, perhaps deceptively so: since the pattern is quite messy and haphazard, your flowers shouldn't be too perfect, so you can be quite freehanded about it and no one will know if you make a 'mistake'. I did a couple of matching accent nails on my other hand and they broadly match, even if they're a touch more 'abstract'. ;)

What do you think about these? Do you enjoy this kind of floral? Also, if you've been following for a wee while, you might have noticed that I've had (another) file-a-thon, haha, so feel free to let me know how you feel about this nail shape, too (I really like it, for now)!

Blue 'Ikat Beach Tote' Nail Art

Hihi! This is really going to be a quick post because I'm really going to go to bed. Honest.

These nails were inspired by this beach tote bag which appeared as an a sidebar ad during a recent blog-reading spate - who'd have thought there was inspiration to be found in internet adverts?! If you have a better name for this design, let me know!

I began with a base of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure 'Thinking of Blue' (two coats), which I love. It has a slight dustiness, but also a certain richness and perhaps the littlest hint of 'blurple'. I really like the CSM brush, too (although you can get wonky ones) - flat and quite broad with a rounded tip which fits my cuticles nicely. I added the white pattern with a nail art brush and finished off with the teal detailing, using A England 'Galahad'. If you've been reading my blog from the start, you'll know I love A England and Galahad is another delight - sometimes he looks dusty and sometimes bright, but always beautiful.

It would have been nice to be able to fit a little more of the original pattern onto my nails, but I had to enlarge individual elements of it in order to give Galahad a fair showing. I am very pleased with this design, but I felt a little let down by my execution - I was just having one of those nights where nothing would behave as I wanted it to! Still, I think it looks quite lovely in person since the imperfections are less noticeable when I'm not inspecting them microscopically!

Owning the awkward thumb. 

So, what do you think? Do you dig the design? What about the bag itself? Apart from anything else, I think these colours make a really great pair - even if I need to get back to practising my freehand skills. My index finger with the little diamond is probably my favourite - how about you?

Hope you're all well - not long 'til the weekend...!

Feelin' Hot Hot Hot | Chilli Pepper Nail Art

...So we can rum boom boom boom!  

Hiya!  Getting all spicy with this hot little chilli (or 'chili' for my American friends) number!  

I honestly have no explanation for how this happened.  I had intended to do something entirely different but it just didn't work out quite exactly as I wanted and then this idea just popped into my head.  I'm really glad it did.  These nails are pretty different (I think) from most of things I've done before, but I think they're rather cute & fun.  I like them!

[An aside: do you get yellow chillis?  If not, those ones are just ordinary peppers...] 

I started with a white base (always a joy...) then painted the pepper-y shapes in Kikos 236 & 239 (lighter & darker reds, respectively), Barielle 'Lemondrops' and Sinful Colors 'Exotic Green'.  I added the stalks with Sinful Colors 'Last Chance' and then outlined & detailed with a skinny brush using a black Orly (Liquid Leather?).

Overall, I'm really happy with these.  I wanted them kind of 'arty' looking and they might be a bit too 'sketchy' in places and insufficiently so in others but I think it's a relatively forgiving design in that regard.  I also wonder if it might have been better with the chillis 'peppered' about (BOOM) a little more sparsely; if you try it, make sure you take into account the stalks & outlining when spacing your chillis!

If you've been following my nails for a little while, you may have noticed that I've changed my nail shape; I fancied a wee change & I'd broken corners off a couple of nails on my other hand, so the time seemed ripe.  I quite like them when they're painted but they do look a bit odd to me when they're not!  What do you think?  Does it suit me?  Is there another shape I should experiment with?  I'll almost definitely end up back with my trusty squares sooner or later...

Final thought: I think a print similar to this could be really cute for summer skirts/shorts/dresses...then you'd be looking HOT (and again!) all the time!  What do you think?  Could peppers be the new bananas?  Chilli jokes appreciated.

Hope you've had a top notch weekend.  I leave you with this: