Instyle Freebie Polish adventures

Instyle magazine came with a free Nails Inc polish I got the shade 'You're a Peach'... quite a charming name.

With this new shade I felt inspired to try out two different looks. The first design is a 'Naughty but Nice' theme, naughty being the fish net style tights on the index, middle and little digits. Nice being the 3D bows, which I got from a nail art kit for my birthday (Thank you to the FANTASTIC 5!)

The second design is a 'I heart Instyle' theme which I sent in for an competition and as a little thank you for the free polish. Did french tips with the Instyle logo on the index, middle and little finger. The 3D hearts were again from the FANTASTIC 5 !

- Nail Art Love -

Gem 

Gold and Sugar

Recently bought a new polish which is a rough leather effect from Kiko called Poppy Red from the Sugar Mat collection.

Fell completely in love with the colour and realised it matched a dress of mine perfectly.

I chose to wear the shade with a gold ring finger manicure which I thought picked up the golden flecks in the rough polish rather well.

with flash

- Nail Art Love - 

Gem

Zoo nails

Having a somewhat childish motive on my nails makes me happy. Yes, I'm easily amused, but to be sat at your computer and suddenly realizing that you've got a zoo dancing over the keyboard is pretty amazing. 

I can't remember what it was that triggered the idea of a zoo. It might have been that I wanted to do the pandas again and that I came across the idea of the giraffe somewhere. 

Which one is your favourite?

Social media & operating systems

As you might often notice, I try to get my inspiration for designs for upcoming events or trends. Especially now when I, for some reason, haven't got that much random inspiration the events become even more important and one of the bigger one in my calendar was a hackathon with work.

How do you make a design for a hackathon? The idea of using different logos related to tech has crossed my mind and now seemed like a great time. Said and done, one of the categories at the hackathon was social medial so the left hand nails were decorated with well known logos: facebook, twitter (a very fat twitter bird), reddit, a black&white instagram and Google. Yes, Google was in this case counted to social media. 

The right hand had three easy choices: the Linux penguin, the Windows flag and the Apple apple. I wasn't very keen on breaking the OS trend I had going and it took me a while before I remembered that I could use the Android alien too. Sure, the apple and the little Android-man weren't the best, but that detail on right was easier said then done. For my thumb I opted for Cisco, a hardware company which is mainly known for their routers and switches, or in dummy terms the hardware that the Internet uses.

 Main conclusion from this? If you've got time and patience you can get far in nail art with a toothpick! Yes, it's far from perfect but in most cases you can guess from the context.

Dripping colours

Bright colours, playful with a dripping effect. All details done with a toothpick, make sure to have patience for getting the shapes right!

Roses, roses, roses

Summer, I finally got summer! After some chaotic weeks in England it was finally time for my holiday back in Sweden. One of the best ways of telling myself that I now had more time was to sit down and do a proper, more detailed design since a few weeks back. However, I lacked some creativity and it look a while looking at the surrounding garden before the roses came to mind.

I've admired this design many times before, at first glance it looks rather tricky. But, looking closer, it's not that much harder than most others I've done. My biggest challenge this time was to find the right shades of pink!

To make this rose, find a base colour and make blobs for the flower. Then take a slightly darker shade and draw three lines - two along the edges (but only part-way) and then one which makes a small twist in the middle. Finally, using green paint a leaf on each side. Voila, you've got a rose!

Red/gold halfmoon design

Earlier during the summer (or, the calendar definition of summer at least, it doesn't seem like England's weather agrees) a few of us went to an event with a fairly strict dress code of  knee-long dresses and hats for the ladies and morning tails for the gentlemen. I went for the brave move of a bright red hat to go with my nougat dress, picking up the colour of the red beadles. Since as much as possible was meant to be matching, the nail design had to be well thought through. Best way of approach? Ask reddit.

I started off with lying out potential colours next to the dress to see if anything stood out. So far I'd been thinking about a half moon design or the simpler ring finger design but wasn't entirely convinced. Thanks to all of you who came with suggestions, it definitely helped!