Tie-Dye on the Highway

Hello!
I'm back after an unintentional hiatus in which my nails had to be cut and polish was not being my friend.


Anyways, I wanted to try a sort of tie-dye type design, due to my recent obsession with it, but I thought I'd play it safe and just do a gradient. I first painted all my nails with two coats of a cheap white Natural Collection polish (which, by the way, is surprisingly good for something costing £1-2) before sponging on China Glaze Electric Pineapple at the base of the nail with a make-up sponge. 

Once that was dry, I used a pale pink that may have been Barry M Strawberry sponged onto the middle of the nail and my current favourite nail polish ever to exist (OPI I Vant to be A-Lone Star) on the very tips. Finally, I used Seche Vite on top of it all to make it super shiny! It doesn't really look like tie-dye but resembles it enough to keep me happy :)

P.S Sorry for the even worse than usual photos! Not sure what happened but only one photo turned out even remotely good enough!

Easter/Spring Nails and THE WORST WATER MARBLING EVER

I'm going away over Easter to see my mum so I probably won't have time to post this tomorrow, which is why it's going up a little early. I'm particularly excited for Easter this year as I gave up chocolate for lent and I can't wait to be able to eat it again!

Anyways, I came up with this little nail design as I was going along and it turned out pretty good...

Colours used:

• OPI I Vant to be A-Lone Star (blue)
• American Apparel Factory Grey (lavender)
• American Apparel Army Jacket (green)
• An old unnamed Avon pink
• OPI In My Back Pocket (orange for the beak)
• Barry M Black
• Natural Collection Nail Tip Whitener

To do this, you need to first paint the base colour on each nail and let it completely dry before sponging on the lavender and the green. Once this is dry, dot on the white with a dotting tool, pinhead, toothpick, bobby pin or whatever you can find that would get similar results. For the ring finger, paint a pink oval and dot two black circles near the top for the eyes of the chick. The beak can be dotted on too, but you will need a smaller tool (I used a toothpick). The white egg can be free handed with the normal polish brush or you could use a smaller nail art brush. All my nail art bushes are dirty (I'm awful at remembering to clean them!) so I used a toothpick to outline the egg and then just filled it in with the normal brush. Add a topcoat and voila!

Now onto the water marbling...

Effie Trinket Inspired Nails (Pink and Gold)

Hey!
I watched the Hunger Games on Thursday and it was absolutely amazing! I've been a fan of the books for about a year and a fan of Josh Hutcherson since I was about twelve (I even put his face all over my wood tech project that year!) so it was good to finally see the film version. Whilst watching, I noticed Effie Trinket's pink and gold lipstick and thought it would make a good nail design, but a few seconds later, I saw the costume designers had already thought of that! 


This is the best photo I could find of Effie (played by Elizabeth Banks) and her nails: 

It's not great, but you get the idea. So to begin with, I painted my nails with a base coat and then a bright pink. I'm not big on pink or red nails, so I used the only one I had, which was Barry M Shocking Pink. 

From what I saw, this pink was an almost perfect match so it was lucky I had it! With a make-up sponge (although I'm sure if you were careful, you could use some scrunched up tissue or something), I then sponged on some orangey gold polish to the top half, focusing on the tips. I tried a yellowy gold first, but it didn't look quite right, so I switched to a Max Factor polish that I couldn't see the name of. I THINK it may have been called Bronze but I got it a few years ago so the colour could be different now. Anyway...LOOK HOW PRETTY IT IS!

I had rotated them and saved it about ten times but apparently Quincey (my laptop) was not in the mood so you will have to deal with wonky photos taken at odd angles. I don't think the photos do it justice either. It was really easy to do and looks basically exactly the same as the ones Elizabeth Banks had in the movie!


Goodbye, butterfly :)