Nude Sparkle Nails

This design was purely to try out a couple of nail art supplies that I had recently purchased. These were the rhinestones and the striping tape.

I started by painting all nails with 3 coats of an off white shade called ‘Marshmallow’ from Barry M’s Frosted Cupcakes range. This has small flecks of silver glitter in it.

Once this was dry I attached a single silver rhinestone near the base of each nail that is a kind of double pointed oval shape which I got from Born Pretty Store.

I then added a stripe of a thick iridescent striping tape in a dark purple shade just above the tip line of each nail. This shines to green in the light.

Unfortunately I found this tape peels up quite easily at the sides. I might try it with gel polish and see if that can hold it down better than normal top coat. I also think that the design might have looked better if I had used a different colour on the tips of the nails but never mind.

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Teal and Bronze Lace Stamped Nails

Originally this design was going to use a mandala stamping plate, however neither of my clear stampers would pick up any part of the design. My firm Konad classic stamper was able to pick it up without problems, but that stamper is too small for the current length of my nails. Plus I wanted to be able to see exactly where I was placing the design. I’m not sure if it’s because I got a plate that wasn’t etched too well, or whether it is a problem with my technique etc. In the end I had to give up and opt for a lace type design from another plate from Born Pretty; BPL-028, which works perfectly fine with my clear stampers. I will have to go back and experiment with the Mandala plate next time I cut my nails down short enough to use with my Konad stamper.

Anyways, for this design, I started by painting my nails in 2 coats of a light teal/tourquize shade from Barry M’s Coconut Infusion range. Once this was dry I went over it with a fast dry top coat.

My middle finger nails are always the first ones to break normally, but I have been lucky lately. However I have bent the one on my right hand a few times without breaking it in the past week or so. When removing my design from last week, I did notice that a weakened line was starting to form where the nail was becoming bendy and likely to split. As I wanted to have long nails for this design, I placed a layer of my normal base coat, then cut a small piece of normal DIY masking tape to place over the weak point, and then another coat of base coat over the top. This added some strength back to the nail so that I can at least get another week or so out of it. At first it was very obvious that there was a square of tape under my nail varnish, but once all the layers of the design had been completed, this had become smoothed out and hidden.

Next, I used a bronze glitter nail paint from Barry M, and a makeup sponge to sponge a gradient onto the tips of each nail. Once this was dry, I used a black stamping polish by Konad and the lace design to stamp onto each nail. I wanted each nail to show a different part of the design, with the thumbs and ring fingers to be completely stamped over, and the rest to just have the edge of the design stamped onto them.

The lace design has a small circle in the center of it. So to finish off the design, I placed a small rhinestone into the center of this circle where it appeared on the thumb and ring fingers. I then finished everything off with a top coat.

Duochrome Magnetic Nails

The polish I used for this design is from Born Pretty Store. It is from their ‘Chameleon 3D Magnetic Aurora Series Cat Eye Nail Polish’ range and is called ‘Astral Realm’.

It is supposed to be used over black polish but for this design I painted one coat of a dark purple as the base for each nail. On the ring and thumb fingers I painted it diagonally across half of the nail to leave some negative space.

Over the top of this I painted 2 coats of the magnetic polish. On the second coat I used a magnet with a wavy sort of pattern.

The effect came out really pretty. The magnetic polish is a duochrome with hues of purple, green and gold.

I completed the design by placing some petrol coloured rhinestones across the diagonal lines made on the thumb and ring fingers.

Gold Sticker Stripe Nails

For this design I tried out some gold nail stickers I bought from the Born Pretty website along with a bold blue polish.

I started by painting my thumb and ring fingers in 2 coats of a bright royal blue colour.

On the rest of the nails I used 2 coats of a light pastel blue shade.

On top of these light blue nails I used 1 coat of a very fine gold shimmer overcoat. However although it looks really pretty in reality, in the photos you can’t see it at all.

On the darker blue nails I then placed a stripe of the gold nail sticker across the width of the nail. These stickers had a design of thin gold lines going diagonally in a triangle pattern.

Blue Sparkle Stripe Nails

I think the result of this design is quite pretty.

I started by painting my middle and ring fingers with an off white shade with small silver flecks of glitter in it.

On the remaining nails I used a light blue shade.

On the thumbs I then used a very dense light blue glitter. This also has some flecks of gold glitter in it.

To finish off the design I used a very thin light blue glittery striping tape. I placed 1 stripe of this on each of the middle and ring fingers going vertically to the one side of the nail.

Glitterati Stripes Nails

For this design I wanted to try out some glittery striping tape that I recently purchased from Born Pretty.

I started by painting all nails in a black polish. I used 2 coats on the thumbs, middle and ring fingers, and 1 coat on the rest.

On the little and index fingers I used 2 coats of a polish that has a translucent black base and a dense multi glitter in it. This is called Rockstar from Barry M’s glitterati collection.

On the thumbs I painted the bottom half of the nails in the same multi glitter polish. On the middle fingers I painted about 3/4 of the way up with the glitter and on the ring fingers I just painted the tips.

I then took a thin silver glittery striping tape and placed this along the line where the black base and glittery polish met. On the ring fingers I also placed 2 extra stripes of the same tape nearer to the base of the nail.

Teal Sparkle Nails

Please excuse the messiness of this design. It was my first ever time trying out gel polish and a UV lamp. I think I painted my layers a bit thick so they came out uneven in places. I found that the brushes held a lot more product than I expected when compared to normal nail polish. I guess it’s because the consistency felt a bit different.

However I found that the smaller flecks of glitter covered the nails before the larger ones had chance to. I then used a gel top coat over the glitter and cured it before repeating this on the other thumb.

For the ring fingers, I repeated the same process and used the same loose glitter. However I dipped each nail in the glitter pot instead and used a fan brush to brush away the excess.

By this point I had got loose glitter everywhere and some of it got stuck to the other nails that I had only put the base coat onto. In hindsight I should have done the glitter nails last.

I then painted and cured all the remaining nails in a black gel. On top of this I used a no-wipe top coat and cured it. I then applied a metallic teal nail powder with an eyeshadow applicator before using another layer of topcoat to finish the design.

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Blue Diamond Nails

For this design I wanted to place diamond shaped duochrome glitter flakes in sort of random broken up rows.

I started by painting all nails in 2 coats of a metallic bright blue colour.

Once this was dry I took the smallest sized dotting tool I had to help me pick up the diamond glitter flakes. I found that using anything bigger than this made it impossible to place them precisely.

I used a clear top coat and painted one nail at a time. Before the top coat dried fully I placed the diamonds onto the nail in the pattern I wanted.

I tried to arrange them in rows going along the length of the nail. But I did not make full rows, as I wanted there to be gaps in the design. I tried to make it so that every nail was completely different to the rest.

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I then held everything together with another coat of top coat. I found that the diamond flakes showed up a lot better in indirect light so it was hard to photograph them well. I also did a small video so you can see the design a bit better.

Double Stamped Nails

For this design I tested out a duochrome green stamping polish that I purchased from the Born Pretty website a while back. I really love the colours in it. It is like a dark green base with a lighter green and almost gold shimmer. I decided to go for a double stamped effect by stamping the same pattern first in a plain white and then the duochrome green over the top of it.

I started by painting my middle and ring fingers in a dark green shade from Barry M’s Gelly Hi-Shine range. On the rest of the nails I used the shade ‘Tiki Hut’ from Barry M’s Coconut Infusion range.

On the index finger, I placed one single small rhinestone on the top middle of the nail. On the ring fingers I placed a medium sized rhinestone on the top middle of the nail, and then 2 small ones on either side of it.

On the little fingers, I stamped the pattern I was using (from Born Pretty plate BPL-028) in the green over just the bottom half of the nail. I then painted a white line across the middle of the nail where the stamped pattern ended.

On the remaining thumb and middle nails is where I did the double stamping. First I stamped the same pattern from plate BPL-028 in a white stamping polish. Then I did the same with the duochrome green. However I made sure that I placed them slightly differently each time so that you could see the pattern in both the white and the green on the nail.

Nude Lace Nails

I’ve been really busy lately so for this week’s design I needed to do something that I could complete quickly, so I went for an easy stamped design.

I started off by painting all nails in 2 coats of ‘Skinny Dip’ from Barry M’s Coconut Infusion Range.

Once this was touch dry I used a quick dry top coat and used liquid latex around each nail to help with clean up.

I then finished off the design by stamping a lace pattern in black over the top of each nail. The stamping plate I used was Harunouta #3.

I then peeled off the latex and cleaned up around each nail before putting on my final layer of top coat.