No Chips Allowed

Hello! 

I know I did promise the tutorial for this mani a little over a month ago now *insert generic excuse about being busy* so here it finally is! 

Hopefully it is worth the wait....

So to with this mani I was actually reviewing some water decals for Born Pretty Store, to be honest water decals isn't something I have ever used before so this was attempt 1 but I have to say it was pretty easy and quick which is everything I love with the added benefit of being super cheap ($0.99) so I would definitely recommend. 

INGREDIENTS. 

Born Pretty Store Nail Water Decals Leaf Flower 

Barry M Nail Paint Matte White

EQUIPMENT. 

MoYou London Crystal Clear Stamper 

MoYou London Holy Shapes 02 

RECIPE. 15-25 mins (including drying time) 

So as I said this was actually my first time using water decals. You get two designs in each sheet and the whole thing is a pretty quick process as you can tell by the time on this mani. I actually wasn't planning on adding the stamping details but then the whole thing was done so quickly I had the time to spare! 

1 - To start I just cut up the decal sheet ready to go. I wanted to have a negative space effect so I painted a clear base coat on the nail and waited for it to dry. 

Looking back I wouldn't recommend this if you wanted the colours to come out vibrantly on the nail. On the sheet the vinyls are stuck on a white background and so when peeled off (the background colour of the decal itself is clear not white) the colours are not as bold as they look against the white background. Especially bare this in mind if you wanted to stick the decals over darker colours as I doubt they would show up very well. 

2 - Once the base coat was dry I went about putting the decals on the nail. 

To do this peel of the plastic film over the decal and pop it in water or under the tap for a few seconds. Once wet place it design facing down on to the nail and hold there. You can slide it around a little to get it in the correct position. When it was in position I soaked up the excess water using a bit of loo roll and then removed the white paper backing which just slides off. 

3 - Repeat this on all nails and then file away the excess of the top of the nail and use an orange stick or nail varnish remover to clean away the edges. Give a quick blast with a hair drier if you feel you need it / want to speed up the process. 

A quick word of warning here is that the decal is all one piece even where there is no design. I accidentally pulled away bits of design by being a bit too heavy handed at this point. 

4 - You can add a layer of top coat here if you like, I didn't but when I do it again I probably will because it would have made the whole thing last a lot longer and sealed those edges away nicely. 

5 - At this point you can either leave the mani as it is or add the stamping details. To add the stamping details simply choose which designs you would like to cover your nail. Apply the polish to that design, scrape of the excess, pick it up with your stamper and stamp it onto the nail. 

I used the Crystal Clear here just to position the lines to make sure they where centred and not covering any bits of the design that I wanted visible. 

For more detailed tips on stamping and using the Crystal Clear click here. 

6 - As always finish with top coat and clean the edges, and you're done! 

PROS. 

As I mentioned this is super easy and looks crazy detailed. I really like the contrast between the sharp white lines and the botanical background. 

Before now I have always created my own decals, there is no doubt that this is A LOT easier and quicker. It is just a matter of finding a design you like which is much faster and less painful than creating your own. So you can consider me a convert. 

Also I think in future I would like to experiment more with cutting different shapes out from the decal rather than just placing it over the whole nail. Again, because you are not spending 30 mins creating a decal you are a lot less precious about it so you can comfortably experiment more. 

CONS.

I would say the main con with this mani was how dulled down the colours where once off the white backing. Like I said I would recommend painting a white background if you wanted vibrant colours. that being said I love the end result and it may have looked a little too busy with the white lines on top if the colours where brighter. 

The other thing I would say is to use a topcoat to seal the decal as well as after the stamping. This is both to protect the mani and your nails in general. Obviously the decal itself doesn't offer much strength, nor does the stamping, so really this whole mani was held together by one layer of top coat. It's tempting fate a little too much to break a nail for my liking! 

Finally I would recommend using a stamping polish for the white lines if you wanted them to be more opaque. The polish I used isn't a stamping polish and while it worked here I would have liked the lines to be a little crisper also. 

Anyway that's all from me for now....I will be back soon I promise. I have been painting and taking pictures but just been a little lazy with actually posting them. So I have lots of manis just waiting to be posted ;) 

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope you all had an amazing holiday season and are still smashing your new years resolutions just like me....signing up to a gym is the same as going right...

I thought I would start of the year by introducing you all to some of the behind the scenes nail care that goes into my looks. A great canvas is important for any mani but you don't have to resort to expensive, time consuming and damaging fakes / acrylics to have long strong nails. 

People are always assuming my nails are fake and can't seem to get their heads around it when I tell them they are 100% real.  The truth is anyone can have naturally long and strong nails. I have listed a few simple steps below, even if you do just one of them you will see the improvement in a matter of weeks if not days. 

So if your news years resolution is to stop biting your nails and start looking after them you have come to the right place. 

Ready for better nails? 

Tip 1.  Keep a nail file on you AT ALL TIMES. 

This may seem excessive but the reason for this is so that you never leave a nick hanging. 

One too many times I have had a small crack in the edge of a nail rip the whole thing clean off by doing something simple like running my hands through my hair. The hair catches the nick and tears of the nail like cheese wire.  

As soon as you notice a nick or jagged edge, file it down until its smooth. 

Keeping your nails in a consistent shape will also help them stay strong. I find points are the strongest for longer nails, but you will see what works for you. 

My go to file is the Soft Touch Sand Turtle file which is so gentle it also works as an amazing buffer. 

Tip 2.  Keep them polished. 

Simply put polished nails are stronger and more break resistant.

Tip 3.  Moisturise. 

Every time you wash your hands or have them in water you should use a hand cream to moisturise. 

I love Premier Dead Sea Hand Cream, it's a little on the pricey side but it's totally worth it. Any hand cream or moisturiser will do the trick but I was given a Dead Sea set a few years ago and no other cream has ever compared in leaving my hands silky soft but not greasy. 

If you prefer cuticle oil to full hand cream, and it's good to apply this especially during colder months to prevent cracking round the nails. 

My all time favourite is Solar Oil by CND, but again any pressed almond or avocado oil will do which you can pick up in bulk. 

Tip 4.  Rounded nail beds. 

First of all let me clarify what I mean by rounded nail beds. I mean that your nail itself is very cylindrical and curved. 

Hopefully you can see what I mean in the picture below. 

Did you ever wonder why you are less likely to break your little finger nail than any other. It's because in most people this will be the most curved nail on the hand. People with very flat nails will  often be the people who struggle to keep long nails. 

But you can't control your nail bed shape right? 

Wrong. 

While a lot of it will be down to genetics there are some products out there which are designed to curve your nail bed as they dry. Most famously OPI Nail Envy. 

If you suffer from flatter nail beds I would highly recommend using this (and filing your nails into strong shapes such as points and almonds).  Trust me it will be the best investment you make in your nails. 

So those are my top 4 tips for growing naturally strong nails that I know work for both myself and my friends. 

Let me know if you have any other tried and tested tips or if any of these helped you below! 

Hey Guys!

I don't know about you but I adore natural looking patterns and this stone effect is one of my favourites and one of the easiest to create. I'm actually not sure what this technique is actually called but I am going to call it a Smoosh Mani because that's really what you do and I like the sound of it :)

Truth be told I wanted a simple but stunning mani and I had a few colours in mind that I wanted to include and so smooshing them together was the obvious solution. 

INGREDIENTS. 

Nails Inc London Court 
Butter London Chat Up 
MoYou London Ginger Rust 
CND Vinylux Weekly Top Coat 

EQUIPMENT. 

Plastic wallet or equivalent 

RECIPE.  20 mins (excluding drying time)

1- Depending on time constraints and how much pattern you want on the nail you can either paint a base colour to start as usual or skip right into the fun part. Because I always get over excited blobbing polish I know there will be enough to cover the nail without a base colour so I skip right ahead.

That and I am always running late and lack in patience...

2 - So here's the fun part. Take your nail polish brush and drop blobs of the different colours of polish onto your nail in different spots. Don't worry about being neat or about colours running into each other, we will be smooshing these together in a moment anyway!

You can spread the colours out so that they are all different the whole way through the nail or you can concentrate one colour in a particular area if you like, it's really up to you and the effect you want to create. 

3 - Straight away while the polish is still wet and runny take you plastic wallet and smoosh it on top of the blobs. You wont need to mix it around, just placing the plastic onto the wet polish and pressing down will smudge the blobs together creating the effect. 

4 - Then using the same technique, position the design on the nail where you want it and press down holding it straight. There is really no right way to do this, sometimes you will love the effect and sometimes you will do the exact same thing and hate it and have to take it of and start that nail again.

This is another reason I don't bother with a base colour, to avoid having to re-paint a base colour each time I wanted to re-smoosh a nail. 

5 - When you are happy with the effect, apply the top coat and seal the edges.

I have a bit of a love hate relationship with top coat as I change my nails so often but like to use top coat with these effects as I really think it brings out the detail especially the metallic polishes. 

And that's it folks...super simple, super fun and super cute.  

PROS.

As always this mani is quick and easy but has a big impact and looks waaaaaaaaay more complicated than it is.  I also quite like the unpredictability of the effect, you never quite know how it's going to turn out and you can have a lot of fun experimenting with different blob patterns.

Another good thing with this is that is it pretty much impossible to mess up. I have no problem admitting there is no real skill needed to create this mani and yet the end result looks so sleek and complex. 

CONS. 

It is pretty messy. I am a messy person but both my nails my hands and some of my table was covered in polish smoosh. This can add time in the form of clean up which is something to bear in mind if like me you often paint and go (so your nails dry on the way to your event/work/etc).

As much as I love the unpredictability I also hate it, sometimes you have a very specific vision in your mind on how you want something to look and it is very difficult to get that with this technique, especially if you don't have all day to keep redoing your nails!

Hello again!

This mani was a super simple overlapping stamping using all MoYou London products (they had a sale bank holiday weekend) including the new Crystal Clear stamper which I hadn't used before.

I can't tell you how many comments I got on this mani but it is actually so quick and easy it's CRAZY.

INGREDIENTS. 

MoYou London Stamping Polish in Cafe au Lait

MoYou London Stamping Polish in White Knight

MoYou London Stamping Polish in Black Knight

EQUIPMENT. 

MoYou London Crystal Clear Stamper 

MoYou London Flower Power Stamping Plate 04

RECIPE.  15-30 mins (excluding drying time)

This was actually my first time using MoYou London polishes and I was amazed at how quickly they dry. Depending on how experienced a stamper you are you could do the whole mani start to finish in 30 minutes using these polishes as they dry soooooo quickly!

1- To start paint two coats of Cafe au Lait on all nails to give a solid base colour.

2 - Once fully dry, pick the floral design on the plate you like and cover it in a layer of White Knight

3 - Scrape of the excess with your scraper or any credit card like object and pick up with the Crystal Clear stamper.

Unlike other stampers I have used from MoYou London and other brands, the Crystal Clear seems to work best by lightly tapping the design rather than rolling over it.

4 - Then using the same technique, position the design on the nail where you want it and press down holding it straight.

A trick to clean stampers really quickly and easily, especially the clear ones which can go cloudy if you use nail varnish remover on them, is to use a lint roller. Just roll the sticky lint roller paper over the stamper and all the excess polish will stick to the paper and come right off. It's so much quicker and less fiddly than using nail varnish remover and takes any dust and bits of the stamper too.

You can clean the stamping plate with nail varnish remover between nails if you are using the same design. Cleaning excess polish off the plate helps the design pick up well, obviously just make sure the plate is dry and nail varnish remover is not sitting on the plate when you go to apply polish to a design.

5 - Once all the nails are done, repeat steps 2-4 with Black Knight. This is where Crystal Clear helps as you can really line up the designs. I stamped the second colour (Black Knight) slightly below the first colour (White Knight) which gives the design an almost 3D effect.

6 - When you are happy with the design, apply the top coat and seal the edges.

Another tip with stamping is when you put on topcoat to dap rather than drag the brush so that you don't smudge your design. Just like applying a glitter polish!

I used the Crystal Clear because it allows you to be really precise about where you position your design, but to be honest you don't really need it for this mani and it is a little trickier to use. So if you can't get on with clear stampers you can still do this mani no problem by placing the nail onto the stamper rather than stamping blind onto the nail.

PROS.

The main pro to this mani was how quick and easy it was but what a big impact it had. Everywhere I went people were asking me about my nails. Like I said the stamping polishes were great because they dried so fast, but also because they are so pigmented to stamp well it didn't take as many coats to get the colour base I wanted as it would of done with other types of polish. I have to say I wasn't convinced about stamping polishes before but after using them I take it all back they are worth it for speed reasons alone!

Like my last mani, another thing I like is that you can do it in stages and get more wear out of it without getting bored or if you don't have the time to do the whole thing in one go. I LOVE manis like this as I am always rushing out of the door but also get bored of my nails very quickly.

Another good thing about this stamping plate is that the design is very forgiving because it is organic shapes not geometric lines. So if you are new to stamping it's much less noticeable if you make a mistake or things aren't quite centred and things like that, which is always nice.

CONS. 

I love the Crystal Clear but it did take a little practice to get used to it and it is much less forgiving than other stampers because of the firmer head.

Once you get the hang of it though it is great to work with and definitely opens up a lot of possibilities with stamping that I can't wait to try. If you love stamping and haven't indulged in a clear stamper I recommend it for sure!

For my first mani I thought I would combine two of the biggest trends in the nail art world right now; Chrome and Nude.

I know everyone has been using the mirror chrome powder lately, but I tried it and didn't really get on with it that well. I'm not sure if different brands would maybe work better but I tried it on a black polish with a gel topcoat (as recommended) and it just didn't give the all over coverage I was hoping for. So for that reason I went back to the old tried and tested classic, obviously the effect is less mirror and more sand blasted, but with this design I don't think it makes much difference.

Another benefit to using a chrome polish rather than powder is time and mess. Not that I mind being covered in chrome glitter on a Friday night but it's not ideal for a Monday morning meeting.

INGREDIENTS. 

Barry M Gelly Hi Shine in Lychee 

Essie No Place Like Chrome 

Snail Vinyls Right Angle Stencil 

CND Vinylux Weekly Top Coat 

EQUIPMENT. 

Tweezers

RECIPE.  30-45 mins (excluding drying time)

So for these nails, because I am using vinyls and a gel polish, drying time is something to consider. For that reason I would recommend you take the same approach I did, paint the base colour (Lychee) on the day before. The reason I used the Lychee on the base is because gel polishes do not work so well with vinyls as they are a little thick.

1- Paint two coats of Lychee on all nails or enough to give a solid colour. Because of the natural tone of this polish and because I am lazy I didn't bother with a base coat.

2 - Once fully dry, peel and remove vinyl stencils and place on the nails in the patterns you like. I place the full stencil on my thumb, middle and pinky finger. On the other two I use the sections that come out of the stencil and are left over to add detail...waste not want not.

To be honest this happened sort of by accident on one of the fingers as when I pulled the stencil from the sheet the whole lot came with. So I stuck some of it on of nail, pulled of the extra bits I didn't want, and then used the actual stencil on the other nail. You could probably use this method to get double the use out of all stencils, its a bit fiddly but far more economical so why not.

3 - Once you have all your stencils in place, fully stuck down, paint one coat of No Place Like Chrome over the whole nail. I like to have one hand fully stuck and do it all in one go to reduce risk of smudging, but even better if you have the patience to do both!

4 - After painting each nail, remove the stencil using the tweezers (again smudge protection) as quickly as possible. This will give you a much crisper line.

5 - Once all the nails are done, touch up any areas needed with a small brush. Sometimes vinyls can remove the base colour a little, but the drier the base colour is the less likely this is to happen.

6 - When you are happy with the design, apply the top coat and seal the edges.

PROS.

What I love about this mani is how versatile it is, I wore it for a full week which is pretty rare for me but it matches pretty much everything and works in all contexts. It's a little less extreme than a full mirror effect but you can still feel part of the trend.

It was also quite nice to spread it out over two days, with the base colour only first then the full mani. If you had to be super serious on day one, you can't get more conservative than a neutral solid colour and the hi shine finish gave it an even more professional boost. Then adding more to the mani to freshen it up meant I didn't change my nails as soon as I probably would have if I had done it all on day one. Plus it saves all important time!

CONS. 

The only down side I would say is vinyls can be a little fiddly especially on hand two. Sticking them on particularly, taking them off is pretty straight forward but again when base colour is removed it can be a little annoying. If anyone has any tips on how to avoid this problem please do share it below!

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my first ever nail art post, hopefully I will see you again soon!