Fingerfood’s theme buffet: Galaxies

It’s not been long since I last did galaxy nails, but they are a look I really love and want to learn to perfect so having missed a couple of weeks of the theme buffet challenge this was a great one to jump back in with.

I decided to go with a pink themed galaxy this time and think it’s turned out fairly well. I’m really happy with the thumb which I think has the right balance of dark and bright to create the illusion of depth that makes galaxy nails look so good.

I always enjoy doing galaxy nails as I love sponging and there’s something very satisfying about doing something which feels quite random and you’re not 100% sure how they’re gonna turn out and then getting a result you’re happy with (hopefully!) I also like that you can just keep adding layers til it looks right!

I used: Inky Six – Butter London, Sky – Picture Polish, Fairy Floss – Picture Polish, Luna – Zoya, Incognito in Sausalito – OPI, Pomegranate – Barry M

Techniques challenge: Gradient

I was really sad to have missed last week’s prompt of water spotted as I’ve only tried this technique once and would like to give it another go. I’ll definitely try and do it when I have a day free.

Gradients are a technique I love and often but not always have success with. I tried a vertical gradient not all that long ago with pastel shades (check it out here I wanted to try this technique again with bright rainbow shades. I came across something similar by Sparrow Nails who I borrowed the idea of a glittery topper from.

Mainly this gradient went well but I’m not sure I used the glitter topper well. One some nails where the gradient was’t as smooth as I’d hoped I was glad of it as it hid the gradient a bit and made it look really fun and rainbows. But then there were some nails where I was thrilled with my gradients and felt sad to cover them up with glitter – plus I think I was a bit heavy handed with the glitter on the middle finger.

Overall I’m pleased with it despite my nails looking very short after a nasty break on my index finger a couple of days ago.

I used: I Just Can’t Cope-Acabana – OPI, Papaya Punch – China Glaze, Pomegranate – Barry M, Violet Femme – Picture Polish, Baker Street – Nails Inc, Def Defying – China Glaze, Hello Holo – Essence

Tri Polish Tuesday: Red, Green and Purple Colour Blocks

This colour scheme is a tricky one that I’m struggling to find ideas for. I thought colour blocked nails would be an easy road to go down and did a quick search for a bit of inspiration and found these monochromatic colour blocked nails by Chelsea’s Get Nailed. Of course mine aren’t monochrome but I loved the pattern.

My lines aren’t all that straight but I actually love the colour scheme with these particular shades of red, green and purple which work so much better together than I thought they would.

I used: Bevin – Zoya, Gatwick – Nails Inc, Faux Pas – Illamasqua

Neon dotticure

Firstly an apology for disappearing for a little while. I had to make an unplanned trip back to the UK last week due to a death in the family and decided to take a short break from blogging and blog-related stuff.

I’m back home now and ready to get back to painting my nails and blogging about it!

The nails I’m showing you today were some I did for a prompt on the GOT Polish challenge a few weeks ago and never got round to posting. It’s far too late to post them for the challenge now but I quite like this mani and thought posting a few pics that have been hanging around and need to see the light of day would be a good way to bring my blog back to life!

It’s a nice simple dotticure using neon(ish) shades which I was quite pleased with and really like the dots in various sizes and mosaic-like effect.

I used: My Boyfriend Scales Walls – OPI, Lady in Black – OPI, Psychedelic Orange – Rimmel, 420 – Flormar, Matt Aqua – BYS, Pink Rose – GOSH, NA07 – Flormar

Techniques Challenge: Skittles

I’m not sure if these really count as skittles but I like them anyway! I was thinking of doing something cute and cartoony in a different colour on each nail and started looking for some inspiration. I came across these nails by Polish Art Addict. I loved them straight away and decided to try and skittle them by doing the paint drips in different colours.

I painted the stripes in first with a striping brush and then did the paint drips over the top, outlining them in black and adding white shine lines to try and make them look 3D. I think I did a fairly good recreation of the originals and was really pleased with the results!

I used: My Boyfriend Scales Walls – OPI, Lady in Black – OPI, Grosvenor Street – Nails Inc, I Just Can’t Cope-Acabana – OPI, Def Defying – China Glaze, Papaya Punch – China Glaze, Baker Street – Nails inc.

Tri Polish Challenge: Red, Green and Purple Sugar Spun Mani

I was a bit stuck for ideas with this new colour combination for Tri Polish Tuesday (yes, I know it’s Wednesday – late again!) and couldn’t think of a design that would look really good in these colours. I decided to use a technique I like instead and have another go at sugar spun nails.

They worked out pretty well but I’ve got to get some ideas going for the next three weeks of these colours!

I used: Pistachio Drage – L’Oreal, Violet Femme – Picture Polish, Red Vamp – Layla, Just Gorgeous – Anny.

L’Oreal Pistachio Drage and Coco Tweed

These are the last of the L’Oreal polishes I bought and decided to swatch and share with you. The tweed topper is also my least favourite of the three I tried. Where I really liked the unusual colour combinations in Jackie and Grace Tweed, Coco Tweed in black and white just doesn’t excite me as much. I think I like the subtlety of the other polishes more and feel they’re a lot more wearable for me. They also feel pretty and summery which is great now that it’s hot and sunny every day and I’ve got all my summer clothes out. Coco Tweed is probably more suited to autumn and winter which is not what I’m feeling right now! It does apply really easily, just like the other Tweeds.

I do, however, love Pistachio Drage which is a perfect pale green, very fresh and spring like with a nice application (2 coats in the picture). I can see myself getting a lot of use out of this one.

So I hope you’ve enjoyed my swatches. I usually stick with nail art on this blog but think it’s nice to have something different from time to time, especially when I find a polish or collection that I think is fun and worth showing.

He Picks My Polish Again!

I really enjoyed last month’s “he picks my polish” challenge and so did my husband, so I was happy to hear that there would be another round this month.

Ed took his time looking through my polish collection and tried to pick polishes he thought would go nicely together. I loved that he chose green and purple as it’s one of my favourite colour combinations. He chose these polishes:

I Scream: Ice Cream! – Catrice, Bloomsbury Square – Nails Inc, Pearly Peacock – Kiko

I haven’t had much use out of the Nails Inc 3D glitter set so I was happy to see he’d chosen one of them. Although I loved the colours he’d picked for some reason I had a hard time thinking what to do with them. Finally I decided to go with a stripy taped mani as I’m still on a mission to improve my skills with striping tape.

I like the result but think it looks a bit like Christmas wrapping paper and perhaps isn’t the most seasonally appropriate mani I’ve ever done! It’s a fun combination of colours though and nice and bright and sparkly, so I can’t really complain! I think my striping skills are improving and are looking straighter and neater. Yay!

Finger Food’s Theme Buffet: Something New

I’ve seen a video by @Stylish_Mom popping up all over the place recently and thought it would be a really fun one to have a go at for something new. I have never thought of using acrylic paint like this so it was a new technique for me which I really loved the look of.

I started with watered down acrylic paint colours straight out of the tube but they didn’t show up all that well over black. I found that mixing a bit of white in made them stand out much more and create a similar look to the original. It was a really easy process of dotting on little blobs of very watery acrylic paint and then touching each dot with a q-tip to soak up almost all the paint leaving the little rings. It was great to find a technique that’s so quick and easy to do and still looks really fun and cute!

I used: Lady in Black – OPI and lots of acrylics.

Techniques Challenge: Foils

I was really looking forward to this day of the challenge as this was a technique that was completely and totally new to me and I was excited to give it a try. I bought a pack of foils and glue off ebay and watched a few tutorials before feeling ready to give it a try.

First, I found the glue a bit tricky to apply. It was fine for doing whole nails but when I tried to just do the tips I couldn’t get a neat line as the glue seemed to shrink away from the polish underneath.

I was surprised that it was relatively easy to get the foils lying flat and smooth as I had thought it would be a problem but it wasn’t at all! I had read that top-coating foils could be difficult and I tried with a couple of different non-quick dry top coats (on my non photo hand of course!) but they both made the foil break up and look a bit dull. So the picture you see is without top-coat. That’s also the reason the base colour doesn’t look as nice and smooth as usual.

I definitely want to experiment with foils a bit more and am glad this challenge got me to try them out!