40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Hobbies

So I'm back on the blog and really what better way to come back that with the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas challenge. I may have lost some of my blogging mojo but I know I can get it back and will produce some better stuff as we go along.

This week's theme was hobbies. When it comes to hobbies, I have a lot. I would say I have a lot of interest in the things has to offer rather than having a impatient mind. I started with the idea of volleyball, cos it's what I do most days even I can be rather bad, but the colours weren't right, I smudged the mani, the colours I wanted to use weren't opaque enough. Then, I thought of astronomy. It's not something I do very often but I have been interested in sky gazing for at least 10 years so I figured it'd be good to do since I've never successfully done any galaxy nails. I tried again. I wouldn't say entirely successful in my attempt but I tried. 

I created a marble base with OPI's Sheer Tints I Can Teal You Like Me and Don't Violet Me Down, then applied a coat of flakies from Sephora called Snowflakes and sponged on some Space Queen by Essence to create some sort of galaxy effect. I then did another marble with the tints to create opacity and seal in the glitter. I then tried to create some constellations with a brush and some unnamed white polish but that's when it all went down. :( I topcoated it all with HK Girl Fast Drying Top Coat.

It's super sparkly IRL but I just couldn't capture with the camera. Hmm... Have to get back to practising all this skills I once had. Hehe.

Until next time, 

Laura

The Neverending Pile Challenge: Had To Have It, Still Haven't Worn It

About a year and a half ago, Tasha let me try her Warm & Fozzie polish from the Muppets Collection by OPI and I fell in love instantly. I looked for it in a lot of  places but they seemed to be sold out and I didn't want to pay $20 for a bottle of polish at the department store. Eventually, I found it at a particular shop (that I will not mention because the bottle turned out to be a fake OPI!!!) and paid $17 (yes, $17 for a fake!!!) for one of the most beautiful polishes I had seen until then. And it sat in storage for a while, then more bottles came into the stash and Warm & Fozzie stayed in its place, almost forgotten.

When it came to today's prompt, I had to think which one fitted the category the best since I have a lot of polishes that I bought because I really wanted them but I'd  worn them on at least a finger for a day. Warm & Fozzie didn't even get that kinda treatment so I figured today would be the best day to bring it out and wear. 

I love all the tiny bronze, rose gold and gold shimmer particles of this polish, how they glisten in the sun and how reflective they are. My camera was freaking out a bit at the sight of all the reflected light so I brought the camera inside and used the light box. It's still very pretty. How did I go so long without using it?!!!

And because I can never leave good things alone, I decided to bring out an unused stamping plate to go with the polish. I even had to peel off the blue plastic film off the plate for this mani, I can say it was satisfying. 

I used the tribal pattern from BM-402 and Penny Talk, Blue Rhapsody and Good As Gold all from Essie's Metallic Mirrors collection (which have been used previously). 

I realise this looks kinda Easter-eggy down to the crinkling of the metallic polish over Warm & Fozzie but I was going for a tribal look.

I'm still quite pleased with the way this turned out and I'm glad to be back on the challenge.

Till next time, 

Lautra

The Neverending Pile Challenge: Pastel

I almost thought I wasn't gonna post on the second day of the challenge because I had the idea that I didn't have any untried pastel polishes. Pastel colours don't really complement my skin tone so if I buy one of these hues, I do it for a reason and I will use it. After I had a good look in my stash, I came across a Nails Inc polish that I had bought as a gift but for some reason or another, I never ended up giving it away. So it sat on the rack for year and a half without even having been opened until today.

I present to you Little Miss Sunshine by Nails Inc, a peachy, nude creme that has a very nice, quick drying formula for a lighter polish. It got it opaque in three coats but it would have been fine with two if I had done been a little more careful with the application. To tell you the truth, I wasn't expecting much from this polish from previous experience with this type of colour but I was pleasantly surprised and couldn't stop looking at it for a while. As mentioned,  three coats and no topcoat for the swatch below.

I always get itchy fingers... (that was me trying to be funny, just in case you missed it) when I have plain nail polish and this time was no exception. The image that I thought of when I saw the colour on my nails was one of the many manicures that float around on Pinterest of metallic overlapping triangles over a nude base. I've seen them a lot (but I cannot find one of them right now!!!) and I knew exactly what colours I wanted to use. 

I brought out the striping tape and created one long triangle per nail with OPI's Goldeneye, let that dry and repeated the same process with Essie's Nothing Else Metals. I topped it all off with one coat of HK Girl Top Coat. 

Unfortunately, Some of the Goldeneye polish came off with the tape when I tried to create the purple triangles, then took too long to remove the tape when I was working with Nothing Else Metals, all which left the triangles a little rough. I tried to patch up the missing bits taken off Goldeneye with a dotting tool and it sort of worked but there was nothing I could do with NEM.  I'm tempted  to tag this as nail fail but it looks nice and sparkly from afar and I've learnt that next time, because there will be a next time, to make the triangles longer to help with the overall look and work within appropriate tape removal times with each polish.

I went for the best angles of the mani hence the lack of photos and different poses. :)

I already have the next prompt's mani ready to go and I'm roaring to dive into this challenge fully.

Till next time, 

Laura

GOT Polish Challenge: Ruffle Mani

I've seen ruffle mani plenty of times but, even though there are some very talented ladies out there that can do wonders with this technique, I have never been enticed to recreate one as they seemed a lot of work... Yeah, that's my lazy side popping out. I figured a simplified version would be more suitable for me and it wouldn't put me completely off doing another in the future. I don't even know if I've done the ruffles right but here's my take on the prompt. 

I started one coat of Jacob's Dream from the The Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Collection from Essence (one of my longest named polishes) that was given to me by Tasha in a swap sometime before Christmas 2012. It's almost a one coater so I tried applying a medium coat slowly and smoothly hoping I wouldn't have to do two coats for the base. That, people, is exhibit B of my laziness. After the first coat I applied one coat of HK Girl Top Coat to help Jacob's dream to dry quickly.

Once that base was dry I created the ruffles with OPI's Goldeneye, acquired in January 2013,  letting it dry and then using Jacob's Dream for the following ruffle and so on and so forth. I used the brushes from the polish bottles and I thought the were easy enough to control, however, looking at the unevenness of the ruffles made me realise otherwise. I finished it all off with one coat of the same top coat used above to even the six layers of polish out. 

I created this mani last night and I knew I had to brig out out to the sun but it's not my usual mid-afternoon sun that makes everything look really good but the midday sun that washes everything out with its glare. But I guess that shows how sparkly this mani actually was.

I like this first attempt at a ruffle mani (if that's what we are calling it) but I know it's not my best work. I guess I'm gonna have to try it again...

Till next time, 

Laura

Revlon Parfumerie in Surf Spray, Stamping and Colour Matching

I'm gonna include three bits of information in this post so I'll try to keep it as concise as possible. 

First and foremost, I'm gonna show you another one on the Revlon Parfumerie polishes I have recently acquired. Surf Spray is a slightly-leaning-towards-aqua blue shimmer with light blue and purple almost flakie-like, tiny glitter. It is a rich colour on the bottle but it doesn't fully translate to the nails; not that's a bad thing, it looks different than expected but it's still pretty nonetheless. 

Surf Spray is very sheer and it can take 3-4 coats to reach full opacity; I may have cheated a little and put some undies on to make sure this dried quickly and I didn't use too much of the polish.  Can you tell I used two different polishes for the base?

There's not a lot of difference but if we must, I used Max Factor Mini Nail Polish in Candy Blue on my middle finger (left in the below photo) and Essence's Let's Get Lost on my ring finger (right). I could see a very slight darker duochrome effect with Candy Blue but that might have to do with the fact that CB was the darker base.

After all that, I used one coat of each base colour and one coat of Surf Spray on each nail. There was no change on the depth of the polish whether it had the 4 coats or the undies on. The formula is pretty good and stays where one puts it with the brush. It can get a bit streaky but careful application can solve the problem, if that's something that bothers you.

Oooh! I forgot about the scent. Surf Spray could be interpreted in a lot of ways but these guys seemed to go along the way of washing powder and marine scented hand wash. It's one of the scents that has grown on me and it's not overpowering, so leaving it on makes me feel like I have clean hands when they may not actually be. :/

Now for the stamping, I used an old Sally Hansen in Antique Bronze that I bought for stamping about a year ago because of the colour but it turned out too sheer; now that time has passed, it has gotten a tad thicker and it starting to stamp well on certain colours. The design came from MoYou's Suki Collection - 04 plate and I'm not sure if you've noticed but my pinky and ring fingers mirror the pattern on my middle and index fingers. Super revolutionary, right? I topped it all off with one coat of OPI Mate Top Coat. 

Now for the last part of the post I'm gonna keep it super positive. I am rubbish at picking colour combinations. I usually have to consult a trustworthy colour wheel to see what may look good together and pray that it actually turns out OK. That was until today. Looking for colour wheels on Google, I went past the first couple of results and discovered this interactive colour wheel by Adobe. I would have never thought of the combination above by myself so I was super happy that I could choose a colour close enough to the base and discover that a brown would be a good combination. Considering the base was a shimmer, I figured a simmer would be good. Voila! A good combination.

I've been playing around with it all afternoon and picking polishes from the rack to see future combination and I'm pumped to get some those out. Thank you whomever come out with it!!! I'm hoping by putting this here it might help someone else, maybe...

That's it from me, I wanted to keep it short and I'm still babbling on.

Till next time, 

Laura

GOT Polish Challenge: Green

Hello, hello. I'm a bit short on words at the moment so I'm just going to show you the mani I created over the course of about 72 hours for the green prompt of the Golden Oldie Thursday Challenge. 

I started with two coats of base coat and then layered two coats of Seed Heritage in Emerald, a beauuuuuutiful emerald green with the tiniest turquoise shimmer that I bought in September 2012. Once this base was dry, I added one thin coat of OPI's Just Spotted The Lizard, also bought late 2012, and saran wrapped it while it was still wet. I finished it off by adding one coat of Seche Vite.  

I've loved Emerald ever since first got it. The colour is a wonderfully creamy, lit-from-within, hard-wearing polish with a buttery formula that dries to a semi-satin finish, however, it stains as bad as terrible quality teal polish and it takes forever to dry. I have only just found a good base coat that won't allow this type of colours to stain my nails so I was quite happy to bring it out for this challenge. I enjoyed putting this colour on this time and even though I knew that it would take some hours to dry, I didn't add any quick drying top coat. I went to bed with almost dry nails and woke up with hair marks on my then dry polish. :( I left the colour on for a day thinking that I would have to repaint my nails and went on with my day.

Well I didn't have to because after running around I remembered I had another older green, just Spotted The Lizard. We all know the hype around this polish... I got caught in that hype with no regrets. 

After creating the saran wrap mani, I added some black and green lines but I wasn't that keen on the final result so I left it simple this time. Sometimes, less is truly more.

Till next time, 

Laura

GOT Polish Challenge: Blue

Blue polish has always had a special place in my heart, especially if it's a shimmery royal blue polish. When I saw the GOT blue prompt, I immediately knew I wanted to bring out Aruba Blue, which was my first Essie and its purchase marked the beginning of my polish hoarding habits around mid 2012. I painted my digits with the polish but then I remembered I had purchased Maybelline Mini Colorama in Electric Blue, another royal blue shimmer, back in 2010, so that one should take the crown as the Golden Oldie blue. I'd always worn unusual shades in my lifetime (greenish gold polish at 13, anyone? Yes, it was the 90's) but Electric Blue was my first fashion colour. I wasn't just a kid playing with colours anymore, I was a grown woman making a fashion statement with my nails in a world of nude pinks and black. Yes, I chose to be different. Haha! Polish has been in defining times of my life and I may be reading too much into it. :)

I'm actually using both polishes on the photo below for comparison, Aruba blue on the index and ring fingers and Electric Blue on the pinky and middle finger. Not only was the former my first Essie, it turned out to be my first stash dupe. Even worse, I ended getting Sally Hansen's Azure last year without having memory of why I bought it and now have three royal blue shimmers. At least I won't run out any time soon...

I wanted to make truly old school, so I brought out OPI's beautifully coloured Turquoise Shatter and tried to create a lightning bolt/tape mani. Once upon a time, I tried to reuse this shatter by applying it directly to the nail, without base coat, so it wouldn't crack and after two coats it looked opaque. I top coated it and happily went on with my day but when I removed it I ended up with the brightest blue nails I had ever seen. I took out the bicarb soda and lemon straight away and scrubbed and scrubbed thinking that I was gonna have blue stains for a while. It eventually came off and a big lesson was learnt. Crackles are done unless you are doing an golden oldie mani. Btw, when I said once upon a time, I meant yesterday... :/

I'm gonna have to face it, even though I love these two colours together, this wasn't my best work for a number of reasons. 

• I used a crackle that was lumpy. 
• I painted my dominant hand as I broke three of my blogging nails baaaaaaadly over the last five days. I have little round nubbins at the moment and I don't think they look bad, they're just too short. 
• There are awkward hand poses and fluff in one of my photos. 

Next week, I'm up for dots and know exactly what I'm gonna do. Hopefully my nails are ok by then

Check out the rules for the challenge and some more awesome blue manicures below.

Until next time, 

Laura

It Was On A Starry Night...

You may be familiar with 'Dia de los Reyes Magos' or Day of the Three Wise Men, which is celebrated in some Latin American countries and parts of Europe on the 6th of January, as far as I know. The Wise Men would be the ones that would bring presents to kids instead of Santa Claus, however, the custom has changed, depending on who you ask and some kids get presents on Christmas and today. The adults get to eat 'rosca de reyes', a cake in the shape of a ring with crystallized/glazed fruit and whatever other food the host of the wants to serve. On the nails, I figured showing the star that guided the Three Wise Men to Baby Jesus to give them the gifts would be suitable for the occasion. I must be honest though, I intended to post this at Christmas time but never got around to writing up the words for the photos but it turned out for the better.

I  started with two coats of Butter London's Union Jack Black and saran-wrapped one coat of Max Factor's Extra Frost to create the night sky. I let that dry and used striping tape to create a thin triangle along three of my fingers to create the tail of the star... or comet, whatever you wanna call it, and used Essie's Good As Gold to colour it in. Topped it all off with one coat of Seche Vite.

I had some gold star studs but the mani would looked a bit odd with two different tones of gold so I painted the star with the Essie polish and let it dry for about half an hour. I had to bend the star a little bit so it would fit properly on the nail without snagging onto e v e r y t h i n g like some larger studs tend to do if left flat. I attached it with a drop of Seche Vite but I did it when it wasn't quite dry/tacky so I got some of the Good as Gold on the base. 

That could be considered star dust from the comet... Yeah... It could.

I had a bit of trouble photographing the prettiness of this mani so I tried it with sunlight (photos above) and in the lightbox (photo below). Oh! I also dented my index finger twice, once with a ring because I thought it would be a good idea to take off a ring while the polish was still tacky, and the second from moving my hands around normally.

I was really happy with the way this mani looked, the depth of the 'sky' and the continuity of the comet's tail did it for me. I even kept this for FOUR days. 

Hope you guys have had a good and safe holiday season. Here in this part of the world we've been having 40 degree days, which feels totally like summer.

Till next time, 

Laura.

Happy New(ish) Year!!!

Happy New Year everyone! Thank you everyone that has clicked on anything that has led to this blog for the last year, it's very encouraging when you guys not only visit our page but also comment and seem to like what we do in this little corner of the internet. I hope everyone had a good and safe start for 2014... 

I know. I know, I'm late for the wishes. I really feel like I have lost some of my nail art mojo and whatever I attempt looks very simple, unfinished or too rough. I created a few New Year's manis but they weren't outstanding so I gave it another go after a quick getaway and I think this attempt it's simple but OK.

I started with three coats of OPI's Emotions and stamped over it with Essie's Nothing Else Metals using images from the BM-404 for the flowery pattern and BM-420 for the mask. No base or top coat used.

I was really impressed on how clear the mask came out; it could be that my stamping skills are now awesome or the newer set of plates from Bundle Monster is really well etched... It could be both. :)

Since it's a new year and all, I wanna put out there two blog related thoughts that have been hanging around my head for a while.  

1. I'm gonna post at least 3 times a week on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. There are a few challenges that should help me keep this up and leave me with a free day to do whatever I want. Doable, I think.

2. I'm not buying any more stamping plates until I have peeled the blue plastic film off all the ones I currently have. Plus I just put an order through for some MoYou plates so I should be set. Otherwise, I'll just be hoarding plates and not using them. That's not the spirit, is it? 

I'm looking forward to 2014, I hope you guys are too!

Till next time, 

Laura

Abstract New Year's Mani

I don't do festive manicures very well so I figured the best way to start getting better at them was to start doing them... Whatever may come out of those attempts. For my first one, I tried to do a abstract firework inspired mani.

I used two coats of OPI's Skyfall on my index, middel and pinky fingers followed by one dabbed coat of Topshop's Mardi Gras. On my thumb and ring fingers, I used three coats of Essence in the boy Next Door and stamped the what-I-thought-looked-like-fireworks pattern from the BM-213 plate using Topshop's Blitz, Essence's A Piece Of Forever and a polish green shimmer that I can't recall. I topped it all off with one coat of Seche Vite.

A very simple mani and it may not scream 'New Year' but for a first attempt it doesn't look too bad.

Till next time, 

Laura

In Really Old News...

Guys, guys!!! Did you know Mariah Carey released a range of Liquid Sand polishes in collab with OPI? *Insert Slowpoke meme here*. In all seriousness, I avoided buying OPI's Liquid Sand merely because of the AU$20-$25 per bottle price tag and I wasn't sure I was going to like them. When drugstore brands started bringing out textured polishes I jumped out on that bandwagon ASAP and fell in love instantly at the much lower price. 

Recently, I got a $20 Christmas coupon (which are almost unheard of in this country) for a department store and after some deliberation I decided the best way to spend it was on some Mariah Carey's Liquid Sand minis from last year's collection. I only ended up paying $5 for 4 minis! I don't think I could have done any better online. Woot woot!

Plain swatches were going to be boring, so I paired Can't Let Go up with some plastic nail wraps I got from eBay from this seller and some rectangular studs. Voila! 

I started with two coats of base coat because a. I didn't know if the Liquid Sands stained and b. I've had issues with non-polish nail wraps ripping out my nail bed when removed. Can't Let Go was opaque in two coats and even though I wasn't blown away by it, I really like the darker blueish purple matte finish of it. The nail wraps were also super easy to use and malleable but I managed to get a little bit of one stuck on the cuticle of my middle finger and didn't fix it enough for macro photos. :( That issue aside, they look sparkly and overall pretty especially after I applied a coat of Seche Vite on top of the nail wraps. 

  

I'm pretty happy with this mani and I love those nail wraps. I might have to get some more for Christmas presents... for myself... Or others. 

Till next time, 

Laura