striped nail art

Couture Nail Art Challenge: Inspired by Monique Lhuillier

I was feeling a bit exhausted from doing a new manicure every day (again) and was looking for something quite simple for this one, which is not easy given some of Monique Lhuillier’s most fabulous creations are anything but simple.

This bold but simple silver and black dress was just what I was looking for and I’d just picked up a new silver polish which I was eager to try out, so it all worked out perfectly! The silver needed several coats but was very pretty and looked amazing in the sunshine.

I was fairly pleased with the result – it was a pretty manicure but maybe a bit too simple for my taste. I think my skill with the striping brush is improving and my lines are looking less and less wobbly every time I try something like this.

I used: Just Gorgeous – Anny, Black Taxi – Nails Inc.

Textured stripes

I saw this idea ages ago before the challenge and really liked the idea of the stringy textured stripes. I didn’t go for a full rainbow effect like the original and kept it to just two bright colours and white.

On The Polish Well‘s blog it said it was a simple manicure to do, but I’m not so sure! My polish didn’t go as stringy and workable as I’d hoped it would and ended up looking a lot blobbier than it was meant to. Maybe some polishes work better than others for this technique? Plus as soon as I put a top-coat on I lost any kind of texture I ever had (The Polish Well did mention this on her blog, but I was hoping it wouldn’t smooth it out completely)

The result wasn’t bad, just not textured and striking like the original. actually, nothing like the original at all!

I used: Great Tichfield Street – Nails Inc, Nottingham Hill Gate – Nails Inc, Impulsive – Revlon, White – Bonbon.

Day 12 Pre-Spring Challenge: Stripes

When I saw the theme of stripes, the obvious idea was something involving tape, but as I’m not a great fan of using tape I wanted to find an alternative. I thought of animal print like zebra or tiger stripes but then remembered a tutorial video I had seen a while back for using a fan brush to create fine overlapping stripes and thought I’d give it a go. Avoiding tape and learning a new technique seemed like a great idea!

I was worried it might be difficult to do, but it was actually really easy to get a nice result. I think the colour combination helped it look striking and it was one of the quickest manicures I’ve done for this challenge!