LOVE & HATE Nails PLUS a Video Tutorial!!!

YAY!!!

Something new and exciting for you guys today!! 

 I'm a huge fan of body art and tattoos, and while flicking through a tattoo magazine I saw a pretty lady with the words 'Love' and 'Hate' tattooed on her knuckles. It was instant inspo for these mani's!

For 'LOVE' I used a base of OPI 'Alpine Snow' and then my black Uniball Signo gel pen to draw the lines of the lettering in. It is a great tool in nail art as you have so much control over the pen tip unlike of the end of the paintbrush, which can go a bit crazy on me sometimes. In the large opening on each letter I filled it in with OPI 'Over & Over A-Gwen' and 'Black Onyx' and then blended them together to create a more 'gradient' look.

For 'HATE' I again used 'Alpine Snow' and black Uniball Signo gel pen, but in the opening I blended together OPI 'Black Onyx' & Essie 'Butler Please'.

These are the pens I used but they don't have to be the Uniball Signo brand. 

Other brands that make similar products are:

• Pentel Hybrid Gel Grip
• Pilot Juice
• Sakura Gelly Roll
• Sakura Suffle 
• Sakura Glaze
• Yatsutomo Y&C Gel Extreme

However, any pen that has a very liquidy ink that resembles a gel consistency should work well. I only favour the Uniball Signo brand because once it's dried for a couple of minutes it doesn't smudge with a top coat, but if it has dried and you change your mind, a licked finger will remove the design so you can start again!! It's genius. I have no idea why top coat doesn't budge it but I'm NOT complaining.

I also filmed a little video showing how I did the lettering. In this I didn't use polish in the empty space, I just filled in in with pen to save filming time.

And I have also filmed a demonstration on how easy it to draw on and wipe off. So great for mistakes. Just don't try taking off half the design or you are destined to fail haha

Hope you guys enjoyed this post and found the tutorials useful!

Pink and Blue Hand Painted Roses

Hi all! 

I have a super cute mani that I did yesterday to show you today and it's super easy! It's some simple acrylic paint roses over black. It's so chic and easy to do, plus acrylic paint is so forgiving with any mistakes and lets you fix them with no problems at all!

I think they turned out fantastic and both hands only took me about 25 minutes to complete.

I used Sally Hansen Miracle Gel in 'Blacky O' for the base (how great is that name!!) and a mix of polish and acrylic paint for the flowers, but you could easily get the same look with only paint.

It's a much more flexible and creative way to do roses instead of stamping and the colour combinations can be endless!

Sunset Gradient & City Skyline Mani

Happy Friday guys!!!!

So first, fantastic news!! My camera tripod finally arrived today so i can finally start filming tutorials. Now, who wants to teach me how to edit videos?? Anyone??

Secondly, I finally did a skyline mani I have been wanting to do for SO long. 

 

I decided to go with a sunset inspired by the one I saw yesterday from my window and then added a mixed NYC/Sydney skyline of buildings to the nails. I would post the two photos I used for building inspiration up, but with all that sticky copyright law and not knowing how to properly credit/if I have to ask permission, I'll just let you search for them under 'city skyline sunset' on Google.

I used two Sally Hansen Miracle Gel polishes in shades 'B Girl' & 'Pinky Promise' and added Sinful Colors 'Unicorn' between them over a base of white. You can only see a tiny bit of the pink behind the buildings but that was intended to give the sky just a little more warmth.

Then I got the black acrylic paint out and drew in the buildings and topped it all off with G&G HK Girl Top Coat (my favorite top coat EVER!!!). I had to include the Sydney Centrepoint Tower because it's so unique and has
definitely inspired me to do a Sydney only skyline with the Harbour Bridge and Opera House soon!

Why acrylic paint? It is easier to use, dried faster, doesn't smear with top coat and doesn't ruin your brushes as fast with having to submerge them in acetone all the time to clean polish off. With acrylic paint it's just little warm water and they're clean.

Hope you like them! I honestly think this will be one of those mani's that is really hard to remove. They keep catching my attention and making me smile. #nailartproblems. Wanting to paint your nails but not wanting to take off what you only just did!!

Have a fantastic weekend!!

My Polish Display

Hi ladies!!

So I spent my Friday night and Saturday morning re-arranging my polish shelves! I know right, party animal!! You're so jealous, I can tell.

I have four shelves that I made all by myself (with only slight boy direction) that hold a LOT of polishes, however, I have since acquired about twice the amount of polish I had when I made them and had no room left :(

I did find photos on my computer of when I made the shelves so it will be a future step by step blog post if you guys want to see how I made them?? Just let me know in the comments if you want a walk through DIY shelf guide :)
 
So anyway.. This is how I was displaying my polishes originally.

Simple rainbow spectrum that I arranged by my swatch sticks and how they look out of the bottle. It was sometimes annoying because sometimes a polish can look a lot lighter or darker in the bottle so when they were on my shelves a few of them looked 'out of place' even though they were arranged correctly by swatch colour.

See more after the jump!

Sons Of Anarchy Nails

Hello everyone!!!!!!

Sons is back!! SONS IS BACK!! I mean, it sucks that it's the last season but still.. More Jackson Teller on my TV is great news!

I started with a simple gradient using OPI 'Black Onyx' and Bliss Polish 'Jax'. So pretty. I could have worn it alone like this! Sometimes nothing beats a good gradient and 'Jax' is just so pretty!

And then I went crazy with the art. I did it all with acrylic paint and nail art brushes. I tried to copy the Sons font and then free handed a reaper skull. I'm not super happy with the reaper but on my teeny pinkie nail I think it's alright for a first time free handed reaper.

Can't wait for this season but I'm dreading all the mayhem. I'm scared. Kurt has proven that no one is safe and I have a feeling this last season will be total bloodshed. I just don't want it to end. I don't want any characters I love to die. My poor heart can't handle it.

Are you a Sons fan? What are your reactions on the first episode?

Football Nails!!

Hi everyone!!

So, I kinda like watching NFL. Even as an Aussie it's my chosen football to watch. The hits are massive, the plays are technical and the players are hot!

These were done for the first game of the season which one of my two teams played in. GREENBAY! Unfortunately they lost, but first game loss against last years champions is still a win for me since they held their own! 

I used Essie 'The More the Merrier' and my trusty white gel pen for the field marking index nail (the 5 and 0 stained my nails permanently for some reason...), Kleancolor 'Cappuccino' for the base of the football nail and my gel pen for the white lines, Ulta3 'Frog Prince' for the base of the Greenbay Packers nails and Rimmel 'Bluetiful' for the base of the Seattle Seahawks nail. The rest I did with acrylic paint, gel pens and nail art brushes.

The next set of nails I did for the Patriots first game on Sunday. They played the Dolphins. They lost. It was all very confusing.

I re-used my football and field marking nails and redid the middle nails to make life easier. I had NO idea how hard doing the Patriots logo was going to be until I started. Pats, why is your logo so difficult?? 

I thought the face was going to give me the most trouble and so I got really focused on it.. and then forgot to leave heaps of room for the star! Oops!

I used a base of Rimmel 'Bluetiful' again and then did the entire logo with acrylic paint. LOVE them.

Teal Leopard Nails

So..... my obsession with Teal and Mint shades continues.... I did some leopard print nails, and I must say, for someone who hates leopard print with a passion I sure do love it when it's on my nails!

For some reason my light box gave this a really weird 'blurred' look and I just couldn't get it to look focused. I used China Glaze 'At Vase Value', 'Keepin' It Teal' and OPI 'Fly'. I painted all the detail with a dotting tool so this is a fantasic mani for beginners to try because you don't need any tools. You can do the big dots with the end of a dressmakers pin and the smaller dotted lines with the end of a ball point pen (Make sure the pen is empty or it will transfer the ink to the polish too).