Cute Pandas

This was the last bit of nail art I did before I left Japan and all the packing and organising an inter-continental move took up all my free time and left me no time for nails.

My boyfriend loves pandas and when I was browsing nail art videos on YouTube and came across this one by cutexxbeauty I knew he’d appreciate it!

It was very easy to do and I loved the result. I like that the pandas are quite simple and there’s not too much detail as some of the other tutorial videos I saw for panda nail art were more complicated and some of the pandas looked a bit strange in the end and not half as cute as these ones. Sometimes simple really is best!

The kids I taught in Japan all loved this one, and I got a few shrieks of kawaii! from my female adult students too.

Although most of the time I prefer more abstract designs, cute nail art is certainly something I’ll come back to from time to time as it’s a lot of fun!

Rainbow taped nails

I had seen loads of tutorials on nail taping, all emphasising its suitability for beginners and thought it was definitely worth trying. I liked the bold contrast between black and rainbow colours in this YouTube tutorial by superwowstyle, who has a lot of really nice tutorial videos and some great designs.

I can’t say I was thrilled with the result. Taping is definitely trickier than they make it look in these videos! My strips of tape were clearly too wide and the gaps between them too narrow, the placement was uneven and I guess I didn’t stick them down carefully enough as some black seems to have leaked under the tape, leaving the lines looking a lot less straight and neat than I wanted!

Not to be totally negative about this, it was a great learning experience and next time I’ll know a lot of the pitfalls to avoid! I’ll also leave way more time, as cutting the tape and getting it all ready took ages! I guess it wasn’t a total disaster, the black and rainbow contrast is still quite nice, but it’s not going to be one of my proudest nail art moments.

I used: Revlon Red – Revlon, Yellow – Sweets Sweet, Matte Aqua – BYS and Black -Decorative Nail

Out of the blue

This one had no artistic skill involved but was the first chunky glitter polish I ever bought. I wasn’t sure about it at first as it was difficult to get it to go on well. This was 2-3 coats of the polish and involved a certain amount of pushing the larger glitter pieces into place or encouraging them to come of the brush with the aid of a toothpick. It felt like more work than it should have been!

I do like the effect in the end but think it would look nicer over a dark colour rather than straight onto the nail, as it has a slightly bluish tinge to it which made my hands look permanently cold.

It also peeled off in quite a strange way, leaving little curls of polish all around the edges, but this could be to do with the fact that I went scuba diving the day after I painted them and perhaps the 90 minutes or so that they spent in salt water didn’t agree with them…

I’ll try this one over a dark colour another day (and not take them down to the bottom of the sea next time!)

Out of the Blue – BYS

Pearly

Well it’s been a long time since I used this blog, so despite my good intentions it didn’t quite go as planned. Can I blame it on moving continent, settling into a new job and trying to finish my dissertation for my master’s degree?!?
Anyway, although I haven’t been blogging that doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing any nail art. I have loads of photos ready to upload and now my life is marginally less crazy than it was a month or so ago, I’m ready to start putting them all up on here.

This pearly nail art was my first attempt at applying any kind of 3D items to my nails. I’d hit my local ¥100 shop and found loads of bits and pieces for nail art and thought I’d give it a go. To begin with I planned to just apply one little pearl to each nail but it looked kind of strange, so I added a second one – which still didn’t look right and then ended up with a third one! Groups of three are always a good way of making something look complete, as I learned when studying design, and the three pearls together were much more pleasing to the eye.

It was fun to try out but a little bit impractical for my taste. When I realised I couldn’t remove flat magnets from the whiteboard at school, I knew I would probably use nail jewels sparingly in future.
I didn’t use any glue to attach the pearls as I had read that they would stick quite well if pressed into the nail polish while it was still drying and then covered with a top coat. They lasted fairly well, with one pearl falling off the day after I did them, but the others lasting a couple of days.

The main problem I had with these, was that when my top coat dried it left little air bubbles which makes the silvery polish look a bit strange. Not sure why this happened.

I wouldn’t rule out using nail jewels again, but I would like to think about the design a bit more next time, as these probably aren’t the greatest looking nails ever. At this stage, experimentation is the most important thing, so I can learn what I like doing, what’s fun or easy to do and what needs a lot of time and practise!

I used: Pure Pearl – Revlon, Gold glitter – ? and cheap pearls from the ¥100 store