Party Nails

One thing that I remember finding tricky to find online is party nails, or at least last time I checked I was put off by the top results as too tacky, too difficult or not party enough (or at times, too much party). However, when I got Kiko's grey holographic polish and there 2012 Holiday Glitter I had a great colour combination to base a suitable design on, so off it went.

I had a party coming up and we'd been asked to put cocktail dresses on, so it gave me an opportunity to try it out. I had originally planned to just use the holographic as a base and add a glitter top coat on the ring finger, but changed my plan. To have a little more "happening" in the design I decided to try a triangle pattern.

I started off with the grey base and then cut triangular pieces of tape to place with spaces in-between (for alternating triangles). This way I would have alternating glitter and grey triangles. I have mentioned it before, but I'm going to stress it again: if you decide to use tape, it's important that you let the polish try completely first, as it will otherwise leave marks, and allow longer time for drying before removing it as well. The tape technique also has a tendency to create very sharp edges and the glitter polish's structure enhances this. TTo even get a reasonably even surface, I applied two fairly thick layers of top coat, using Sally Hansen's Diamond Strength Base & Top Coat.

I'm really happy with how it turned out (especially after the time spent doing it)! The contrast between the warm colours of the glitter and the cold grey works well and are going to complement the champagne coloured dress I was wearing (with red details).

Party nails - glitter triangles

The Avengers Assembled

It's little less than a year ago that The Avengers Assemble movie came out, but as you might have heard most of our super heroes are returning with solo movies (Iron Man 3; April 2013, Thor 2; October 2013, Captain America 2; April 2014) . We are both huge fans and have for a long time been planning on doing The Avenger nails, now is finally the time.

As you can see we opted for slightly different designs, Gema's longer nails allowed her to paint whole faces whereas Charlotte went for her good old favourite of splitting the design between the two hands.

Charlotte's nails:

I have used the digits for the characters, well aware of having to drop one (Black Widow in this case, since I couldn't find a good enough design and it annoys me a bit that her sole purpose in the movie appears to be sexy). The thumb was left to carry the Avengers' A on a pale blue background.

For all the black details you can see I used Sharpies, also for the red stripes on Captain America's body. Any white details were done with a toothpick and so we were also the red on Iron man's head. The silver detail's on Thor's armour were done using a home made dotter (ie a pin stuck in a rubber) and the As on the thumbs with a silver striper from Primark.

Assembling the Avengers

Gema's Nails:

I tried to fit in as many characters from The Avengers movie as possible! For the thumbs I did black A's on a glitter background as a slightly different Avengers logo.

On my right hand index finger I did Captain America. I used the Peacock Green holographic polish by Kiko for the colour of his blue suit. I then added his A logo on his forehead and face detail with a combination of toothpick and sharpie fun.

On my right middle finger is Iron Man. The gold foil by Barry M polish is the background. Then completed his armour by adding red polish and some red craft glitter to give it a more metallic look. Face details I used a Sharpie.

On my ring finger is Thor. Voodoo by L.A. Colours is the green background (which I also use for Loki on the other hand). I also used silver foil by Barry M polish for his helmet and neon yellow for this golden hair.

I decided to go with the Avengers movie version of Nick Fury on my little finger (pinkie) using silver foil Barry M polish for the background and drew in the detail using a Sharpie.

Nick Fury | Thor | Iron Man | Captain America

On my left hand index finger I used the comics representation of Hawkeye which is a mainly purple suit with a H logo on his forehead above a face mask. I used a Sharpie to outline the details and then filled in the H and mask with purple craft glitter.

On the middle finger is the hulk. I used a neon green for his face and added the rest of the detail with a toothpick.

On my ring finger is the mischievous god Loki. I used the same Voodoo green background as Thor and then Barry M gold foil to colour in his striking head gear. I added a big of gold glitter on top of that to aid the strikingness...

Little finger is Black Widow. She was a tough character to do since her logo is the common marking of the black widow spider in the comics however this is usually a small feature around her waist. I wanted to continue with the faces theme instead of just doing her logo or a black widow spider and based it mainly on the movie representation of her.  

Hawkeye | Hulk | Loki | Black Widow

Am looking forward to The Avengers 2 in May 2015 with the hinted villain at the end of The Avengers Assembled, Thanos as he would be an interesting character to attempt in nail art.

Assembling all our Avengers together ^_^

Mass Avengers Assembling

AAAA

We hope you liked these ^_^

- Nail Art Love -

Owl will be your Valentine

With it being Valentines season, Valentine nail art designs were done.

On my nail model Athena, she requested owls with a Valentine twist. 

The base coat was the Kiko Holographic nail polish in Peacock green. I used a pin and toothpick to do all the art work and detail for these nails.

The tree branch was done using Purple Ash by Models Own.

Antique burgendy (dark red) by LA Colours was used for the body of the darker owl and hearts.

Absolute (neon pink) by LA Colours was used for the body of the lighter owl and hearts.

Flicker and Black velvet by LA Colours were used for the owls eyes and beaks.

^_^

- Nail Art Love -

Exciting Additions

Apologises for my lack of posts and a belated Happy New Year ^_^ !!

I have quite a few exciting bottle additions that I received as christmas gifts and the three kings gifts, adding to my ever increasing stash!

Overall I received 20 bottles of nail polish... 20 bottles!

Got some useful and interesting nail art bottles that shall hopefully be put to good use soon in teal, 14K, purple shimmer and midnight glitter.

Am rather excited over this rather extravagant polish which claims to have real 18K gold flakes inside it by O.P.I. Thinking it would look good with a contrasting base coat colour and may contribute well towards our romance theme nail ideas for February.

I have mentioned some of the holographic polishes before in my christmas post that are done by Kiko. Luckily I received the rest of the colours as gifts that they currently sell and would highly recommend trying them out as they are now in the sale (£2.40 per bottle), quite a bargain price for holographic polish. The colours they offer are Peacock Green, Jewel Pink, Silk Taupe and Steel Grey.

The ORLY Fired Up collection are a range of fantastically pigmented metallic shades called Flare, Smoulder, Flicker and Rapture. Am really looking forward to thinking up a design that will incorporate these colours together creating a big metallic party. Also received a lovely metallic purple called Cabaret that has light blue undertones and gives of a great shimmer once applied.

These colour changing polishes, that alter their shade are pretty awesome. This is their shades when indoors but when it is exposed to sunlight the colour changes because of the spectrachrome crystals which is a technology apparently invented by NASA for their space program.

The first three shades are Ariel (which changes from aquamarine to purple) , Aurora (which changes from pink to dark pink) and Belle (which changes from yellow to pink). They are really cute however the quality of these are more catered to be used by kids, so their consistency is rather tacky and don't endure for long. However they are good fun.

The large bottles are Electrick (which changes from metallic blue to metallic green) and Ruby slipper (which changes from silver glitter to red glitter). The quality of these polishes are good, have good endurance and a clear top coat doesn't affect the colour changing properties.

Thank you for reading and my next posts shall be trying out some of these newbies.

- Nail Art love -