31 Day Manicure Challenge Day 14 - 'Flowers'...and tears!

Good evening readers.

Today I am posting up a picture of my 'Flower' or floral nails. Whilst I love the end result, I was far from dissatisfied with what I saw when I removed the polish (you'll see what I mean in a minute).

First, here is the eye candy:

This is Sinful Colors 'Innocent'. Hmmm.

 To do this, I used the 'Innocent' as a base and sponged on Barry M's Matte White. After two layers of Sally Hansen's Diamonds, I used image plate S5 to stamp on the cherry blossoms. I then went in with my tiniest art brush and painted in the petals and centre with acrylic paint, before adding a few black dots for effect. My back was aching after that!

Just look at the absolute horrors I saw when I removed it...

'Innocent' is not so innocent after all. The staining is horrific. I was bawling about it all over Twitter today and after soaking my nails in lemon juice and using two stain removal tablets (effervescent ones) I still had no joy. I think I'm going to have to take some drastic methods here...baking soda here I come. By the way, thanks for the tweets of advice my dears :)

Aside from the 'stainage' I hope you liked it!

xx

31 Day Manicure Challenge Day 13 - 'Animal print'

Hi all!

Today was animal print day.

I'm deliberately not looking what other lacqueristas have done before me because I'm really trying to remain original. It's hard though, especially when it's the end of the day and I'm sitting here staring at bare nails with not a single idea coming to mind.

Okay, enough of the crying! Here is my animal print...be easy on me because I was tired.

Color (do you know how hard it was for me not to type COLOUR?!) Club 'De-Luxe-Cious

Bundle Monster plate BM-221

Hmm. Lazy stamping here.

Tomorrow the theme is flowers. Gahhhhhhh!!!!!

31 Day Manicure Challenge Day 12 - 'Stripes'

Day 12 of the challenge and...oh dear.

I'm not sure what to say, other than I'll be glad to get the acetone out for this. Yet again, it looked good in my mind's eye, but having worn it for a full day, this baby needs to go. The acrylic paint just sort of sits on top of the polish as if it's uncomfortable. It makes ME uncomfortable looking at it!

Maybelline's Midnight Blue layered with their Flash Cosmic (a clear jelly withe green and blue opal glitter).

On to the next one!

xx

31 Day Manicure Challenge Day 11 - 'Polka dots'

Hey everyone!

So today is polka dot day! I'm pretty late in the day posting this, but only because I didn't want to take off my gradient pattern. Whilst I'm enjoying this challenge, it's irking me that I can't wear the mani longer than a day - especially after putting time into it. Okay, so no-one is threatening me with a flogging if I don't change my polish everyday, but I don't want to let the challenge drag (I'm actually looking forward to letting my nails rest for a bit).

Anyway, here are my nails.

The Face Shop nail polish with Sally Hansen's Golden Cinnabar dots, topped with Wet 'n' Wild's Tipsy.

I'm sorry, I couldn't help but pose a little with my new toy. I had my old 3GS for two years so I'm pretty impressed with the latest iPhone technology *cheesy grin*.

See you tomorrow with 'stripes'!

xx

31 Day Manicure Challenge Day 10 - 'Gradient'

Hey everyone, hope you are well.

Today's manicure is one of my favourites of late and I'm loathe to remove it, if I'm honest with you. I enjoy doing gradients and sponging - mostly because it's pretty easy to do.

Essence's Purple Diamond, sponged with Rimmel's Pompous and stamped with Stargazer Silver. Pinks and purples are my most favourite colours to use for a gradient.

The rhinestones were a part of a sample pack that was available for review, provided by Viva la nails.
I don't know about you, but whenever I use rhinestones, I find myself debating whether or not to use a top coat or just glue them on and go. Sometimes a top coat will dull the shine of the stones but failure to use one can also result in them falling off into your cornflakes at breakfast time. Not good for the teeth or the digestion.  Luckily, after using a top coat with these, I'm happy to say that they are still pretty shiny. Good stuff.

 I have so many to play with and if you look closely, you can see that the stones come in three, if not four sizes.

The plate used.

I'm going to enjoy wearing this for the day, but I'll have separation anxiety after removing it :(

Until tomorrow...

xx

31 Day Manicure Challenge Day 9 - 'Rainbow'

Hi all (and a big hi and welcome to my newest readers)

Today is rainbow day!

These 'rainbow nails' were one of my favourite manicures to do. I used a base coat and then my trusty acrylic paints. Thinking about it now, the pinkie is missing a stripe of pink...ah well.

Sally Hansen's 'Diamonds' was layered over the acrylic paint twice. I bought this from Superdrug for 45p - I kid you not!

I decided to stamp over the manicure and used the M60 image plate that I bought from Bornprettystore
Admittedly, I'd been looking at this plate on-line for a while and when I saw it in the sale, I snapped it up.  I'm happy to say that the images were clean and crisp; sometimes you get plates that have defects in them; they have spots or nicks that end up with polish in them and get transferred to your nail, thus ruining your manicure. The only issue I had with this plate was that this image was just too narrow for my nails. I had to transfer the entire image and go back in and a re-stamp again. You can see how messy it looks on the index finger.

I'm a little disappointed because I actually really like the pattern on the top left. It's a shame that it didn't fit. Nevermind, I'll just have to be creative with my applications in future!

I'll be back tomorrow with gradient nails...

xx