Detailed Pink Roses

Hey everyone! Do you ever do a design and whilst you're painting it you just know you're gonna love it? That was how I felt about these nails. I pushed myself slightly out of my comfort zone painting the roses and I was so proud of how they turned out. They were inspired by these fabrics I found on Pinterest, and I decided to combine two of the designs to go hand in hand, but I kind of wish I'd just done the roses on all fingers.  I wore these for a week and I couldn't stop staring at my nails the whole time. I was especially pleased with them because I have so little time to paint my nails these days and I sometimes worry that I'm losing the skill, so it was nice to see that I haven't. It's definitely given me the bug to try out some more designs that are slightly out of my usual style once I'm back from travelling so watch this space. 

Tutorial Tuesday: Barry M Blue Roses

Hey everyone! I hope you had a lovely weekend, it's been really sunny here for the past few days which has been a nice break from the usual dreary weather, but it's gone back to rain again now. Over the weekend I attended to Scratch Star Awards, where I was shortlisted for Best Nail Blog. Unfortunuately I didn't win, but Sammy did and she definitely deserved it more than I did, her blog is iconic. I'll be doing a full post on the event (and my nails of course) in the next few days but I wanted to post a tutorial today, as it's been so long since I did 'tutorial tuesday'. 

Today's tutorial is for these cute and simple floral stripes. I've done designs similar to this in the past using different shades, but it's always nice to see how I've progressed and also experiment with different colours against 'old' designs. You also can't go wrong with an easy combination of flowers and stripes. I was asked my Barry M to create some tutorials using their spring releases back in March, and this was one of the looks I created using the Sunset Gel polishes*. Tutorial is after the jump.

Dark Romance Roses

Hey everyone! Today I'm showing you the second roses design that I promised in this post when I mentioned that I hadn't created roses in a while but ended up creating a couple of designs at once.  It's also my first nail art post using the newest Barry M - Sunset Collection*, which I reviewed here. I don't want to claim these to be 'realistic' but they're probably as realistic as I'm going to get as I don't tend to try to make roses look real, ever. With these I really did just mix pinks together until I thought it looked okay and they ended up looking a lot like petals (or at least I think so), I just wish I'd added more detail to the leaves!

Barry M Superdrug 50th Birthday Limited Edition Polish

Hey everyone! I've been quite delayed showing you this polish I know but I wanted to show you with some nail art and as you know until a few days ago I hadn't done any in a week or so! Anyway, I really liked the roses from my St George's Day nails, so I decided to combine the two. They're probably more suited to valentines day but nonetheless I really like them and I wore these for 4 whole days (shocker).

I used 2 coats of Birthday Nail Paint and it's super easy to apply, I didn't need any placement. This is with 1 coat of Seche Vite as well.

This is of course Limited Edition so if you want it I'd grab it quickly, it's already been out a while. You can find it here for £2.99 which is a good price considering it's limited edition.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Alice

St Georges Day Nail Art

Hey everyone! Can you believe it? I'm posting 2 days in a row! I guess it makes up for my lack of posting last week. So today in England is St Georges Day, which for those of you who dont know is the national day for England (although unfortunately it's not a holiday so we don't get a day off!). I've teamed up with Avon again to bring you some St George's Day nails and I really like how they came out, this is the first time I've managed anything near a realistic looking rose!

To create the flags I painted 2 coats of Avon - Real Red, and once that was dry I used striping tape to mark out a cross and then I used Avon - White over the top. Then I finished off with a coat of Seche Vite to seal in the design

For the roses I used Avon - White for the base, then I used Avon - Noir Emerald for the stem of the rose, and Avon - Real Red for the flower itself, mixed with Avon - White and Avon - Black, and again topped off with a coat of Seche Vite

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Alice