Happy 2014!

First post for 2014! I hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Years and enjoyed your break (If you had one) I thought I would share some manis done over 2013 that I never got round to posting.

Spots & Glitter French tips
I wasn't as happy with these nails, because they didn't turn out how I imagined them in my head.
Simple french tips, which I then used a dotting tool to dot on the pink spots and swiped a bit of silver glitter on top of the tips.

Love nails
These nails were simple and cute.
Painted white nails with love written on the ring finger and a little red heart on the middle finger

Purple, Blue & Flocking Powder nails
Have a look at one of my previous posts about using flocking powder

What manis have you done lately?

January Nail Art Challenge ~ part two

I'm a little late in showing you the last half of the January Nail Art Challenge. The last half I felt like it was rushed and I didn't do such a good job. Well you can judge for yourself.

Polka dots nails! Someone mentioned that these nails look a little like licorice allsorts. 

After a couple of days the bright color of the dots faded slightly.

 

I couldn't think what to do for Burgundy so I put my matte top coat over a shiny burgundy polish and I added the silver diamantes so that I was covering two manis. 

Not a favourite of mine, I don't really like the burgundy polish.

I also put two mani together - Vintage & Shiney. I wasn't sure what shiney meant, I guessed super shiney color which is the red. I wanted to do a different sort of vintage than the normal pale color polish and roses so I thought this would be cool. Unfortunately my flowers didn't turn out so well.

Have you participated in this challenge or are participating now? Leave a link to your post in the comments and I'll check it out

Subtle Snow Nails

This is a tutorial of how I did my Subtle Snow nails for the January nail art challenge. To the left is the navy blue I used as a base colour for this mani. This is a gorgeous colour, it's from one of my favourite nail polish brands Chi Chi mainly because their colours are always brilliant and have cool names. This one is called "It's raining men".


This is a picture inside and below is a picture in the sunshine. You might be able to see there's a slight sparkle in this polish.

The next step in this mani is to paint the white tips. Find yourself a eyeshadow sponge brush or even a make up sponge. Paint the sponge with your white nail polish and then dab it on the tips of your nails and slowly work your way up your nail as shown in the below picture.

This was after one application using the eyeshadow sponge but I didn't feel it was snowy enough so I did the same things as before but worked a bit higher up the nail and made the bottom of the nails a brighter white.

So here is a picture after I finished applying the white and I was really happy with how it turned out.


The next step is to get the snowflake dots. To achieve this I used one of my dotting pens. I dripped some white polish onto some cardboard and then dipped the pen into the polish and dotted it onto my nails in a way to make it look like falling snow.


The two pictures below show you how to do it.

This is the final look after I had placed all my dotty snowflakes. I wanted to add that extra bit of sparkle to my nails so I added another one of my ChiChi nail polishes on top.


In the below picture you can see the colour I used on top, it's called "Paparazzi Princess". I took the picture out in the sun so you could see all the sparkles.

Let me know if you give this mani a try and tell me how you went.

Yummy Lolly Nails ~ Whimsical by Revlon

I love Revlon nail Polish and I've been wanting this one for ages but have never been able to find it in the shops. So I went to trusty eBay and found a fairly cheap one for sale.

Whimsical #430 is a very light blue jelly like nail polish which it is extremely sheer. It would be perfect for layering over nail polishes to give them that something extra. It has baby blue and pink hex glitter as well as smaller pink hex glitter pieces and even tinier iridescent blue glitter spread throughout.

I decided to put three coats over a white nail polish & pink nailpolish as you can see in the above picture.
I think this would look really pretty over a baby blue nail polish which I might try another time.
The amount of glitter you get each coat is quite good and it's easy to move around the glitter with the brush.

I named these my Lolly nails because they look so edible and sweet don't they? Overall I do like this polish and I think it will be a favorite of mine.

Do you have a favorite Revlon color?

Anyone hungry for some M&M's?

Wow I haven't posted anything in a while so here's a post about some nails I did a while back. I have always wanted to do this nail art design but never got around to it. I thought that now is the time! And to top it off, it was so easy and effective! To achieve this manicure I picked five M&M's colors - yellow, green, orange, brown and red. I painted each colour on and once they were dry I drew the M's on with my white nail polish and my dotting pen. As always I add a top coat to finish it off and that's it really! I wished that my 'M's' turned out a bit better but otherwise I like this as a quick manicure. You could do the same with Skittles. Pick 5 of the Skittles colours and the instead of whie M's you do S's. That would look very cute.

What do you think of this manicure?

"Tia" Nails

Happy Thursday! These nails are inspired by my gorgeous dog Tia. {Pictured below} She's a girl so she has a lot of pink things and I thought this design suited her so well, so I decided to name this design "Tia" nails.

 Step 1. Paint all nails white.

Step 2. Next I did the pink heart which I used a dotting pen (or you can use a toothpick). 

Step 3.Paint the thumb in light pink crackle nail polish.

Step 4. Paint the 'Feature' nail in pink glitter {I used Revlon #230 Popular}

Step 5. Once the white nail polish is completely dry on the pointer and pinky finger get some removable sticky tap and cut it into thin strips and stick to nails like the picture. 

Step 6. Then paint the pink nail polish over the whole nail including the tape.

Step 7. Once the pink is dry then carefully remove. (You may need to get that toothpick out to touch up if a little bit of the nail polish comes off with the tape).

Step 8. Then add a top coat to finish it off!

Right: All the nail polish colours I used {not including my base & top coats}

Do you have a pet? What type of nails would you do for them?

Bye for now ~ Sami X

Love Birds & Cherry Blossoms

Hey! I haven't posted in a while because I've been a bit busy. I did these nails on the weekend so I'm sorry I'm only posting about them now. I decided to do these nails because someone I follow on instagram is having a 'copcat' competition. To enter you must choose one of her manicure designs she has done and try to copy it. She is giving away 9 nail polishes and 2 stripping tapes to the winner. So this is the design that I chose to replicate ~ "Love birds & Cherry Blossoms"

Step 1: Paint all nails in one color. I chose Revlon's Minted #85.

 Step 2: Using a black nail polish pen to do the branches *Make sure you keep the feature finger free of branches because that's where you will put the lovebirds.

Step 3: Put some light pink nail polish onto a piece of cardboard and then use a dotting pen to dip into the nail polish and then dot onto the branches.

Step 4: Do the same as above but instead of light pink nail polish, use white and then once again with a darker pink. 

Step 5: Then put some brown nail polish onto the cardboard and using a thin dotting pen (or toothpick) to do your birds and then red nailpolish for the heart.

Step 6: Wait for it to dry before adding your clear coat and then you're done!

I loved doing this manicure and found it wasn't very hard compared to other manicures I have tried. I knew this would be too hard to replicate on my right hand because I'm right handed, so I did a simple cherry blossom branch design on there instead. I have had so many compliments on this manicure and it didn't take up too much time to do. I'll keep you updated if I get nominated (there are other people that have tried this same design so I have some tough competition!)

Would you give it a go? Let me know if you do :)

Bye for now ~ Sami X