Twin Post with The Polished Fangirl: Hibiscus

I’m back with another twin post. This month I was paired up with Erika from The Polished Fangirl for the theme of flowers. Our flower was hibiscus which we were really pleased about as it’s a favourite for both of us.

We agreed that a flower like this requires some bright tropical shades and wanted to use a turquoise background and a pink flower. I was inspired by this beautiful photo and while browsing what other people had done with hibiscus nail art came across this beautiful manicure by Pretty Project which is almost exactly what Erika and I had been talking about doing.

Initially I didn’t intend to do an accent nail with rhinestones like she had done but after a horrible break on my index finger earlier in the week I thought it was the best way to hide a nail that’s not a particularly nice shape at the moment!

I’m really pleased with how this mani turned out. Make sure you check out Erika’s hibiscus nails and the other participants in this month’s flower themed twin post through the inlinkz. (We’re posting all this week so check back later if it’s looking a bit empty at the moment!)

I used: 389 – Kiko, Hoopla – Ciaté, Indian Rose – Rituals, Melodious Utopia – Orly

Twin Post: Primary Colours with Manis and Makeovers

Another twin post! this time with Lothwen from Manis and Makeovers.
Our group’s theme for the month was colours and we got primary colours. Lothwen came up with the great idea of doing puzzle pieces which I thought would look great in the bold primary colours and of course link in with Autism awareness month.

We decided to outline our puzzle pieces in black and use silver as the fourth colour in the puzzle square. It’s a fun and simple design which I’m really glad I tried. I used black acrylic paint for the outlines which I never seem to get as neat as I’d like but overall I think the effect is great.

Check out Lothwen’s fab primary colours puzzle mani here!

</a

I used: Red Vamp – Layla, Southwark – Nails Inc, I Just Can't Cope-Acabana – OPI, Fit for a Queen – Ciaté, black acrylic paint.

Lothwen made this pic so you can see our designs side by side:

>

Twin post: Snakeskin nails with the Bubbly Brunette

For March’s twin post our theme was animal print and I was paired up with the lovely Christina from the Bubbly Brunette and assigned snakeskin nails. Christina’s blog is filled with a lot of swatches of a great range of polishes and some fantastic nail art – check her out!

I came across this video tutorial which shows four ways to get a snakeskin effect on your nails. We decided to go with natural colours with a metallic scaly feel and as we both owned Just Spotted the Lizard by OPI decided to incorporate that polish which seemed very appropriate.

I was really keen to try the mesh/netting technique and went out and bought a variety of meshes to try out. It looked so easy in the video but I had a bit more difficulty with it than I anticipated. Some meshes were too absorbent and the polish soaked into them. I tried lightly sponging the polish on but that tended to result in an extremely subtle and often patchy look which wasn’t what I was going for. When I used a brush the look was better but a lot of polish either soaked through the mesh or got underneath the mesh when I wasn’t careful enough with the bristles.

I was starting to get a bit frustrated so I ended up using a sponging method but then painting bits of it back in where it looked too feint or patchy. Once I had my brush out I couldn’t resist trying to improve the design by adding a rough brown outline to make the scales stand out a bit more. (I’d wanted to use a medium brown coloured polish as the base colour originally but just couldn’t get the scales to stand out over it, so sponged white and pale brown over the base and then sponged the scales on. Adding the brown outline made me happy to be bringing the brown I’d originally wanted to use back into the design.)

So it ended up a freehand design based on a pattern of sponging through mesh. I liked the result but didn’t feel it was instantly recognisable as snakeskin which is a shame.

Make sure you go and check out what Christina did for her snakeskin nails over at the Bubbly Brunette

And check out animal print twin posts from the other members of our group being posted this week here:

Twin Post: Abstract Pattern with Fairly Charming

I recently joined a Twin Post group which is new for me and I really like the idea of collaborating with other bloggers. This month’s theme for the group is Patterns and my twin blogger Stefanie from Fairly Charming and I were assigned abstract as our style of pattern.

I was a bit puzzled as to what to do with this very open them to begin with but Stefanie suggested doing something very free and unplanned. I loved the idea and thought we also needed something to tie our ideas together so we were still creating twinned manis. We decided on bright (possibly neon) colours, dots and squares to create a spontaneous abstract pattern each. I tried a neon yellow base first but the neon yellow looked so horrible with my skin tone I opted for a bright yellow creme instead.

So here’s what I came up with! I was quite pleased with the result and felt it was my first proper bit of nail art for this year and my free-handing skills will only improve if I give myself challenges like this!

I used: Sumner Place – Nails Inc, Draycott Place – Nails Inc, Blue Collar – Orly, NA07 – Flormar

Make sure you check out Stefanie’s abstract manicure over at her blog Fairly Charming (I think we’re in very different time zones so you might need to wait til a bit later in the day for her post!)

You can also check out what the rest of the group created for their patterned manis here:

Looking forward to next month’s!