Royal Wedding Manicure and Giveaway reminder

Hi friends!

As I type, I'm watching the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.  In fact, they are taking their vows now!

I'm not a Royalist, but I will say that I do love a good wedding...and I did like Princess Diana *sigh*.

Here's my manicure. I worked hard on it last night and hand-painted everything other than the silver hearts and crowns (BM plates). As a result, I've watermarked these ones.

Hope you like!


If you haven't already entered my giveaway, do it here because it ends at 12am GMT!
xx

My first attempt at 'one stroke' nail art.

I really wanted to post last night but wow, I had so much trouble using my acrylic paint. Well, not trouble exactly, but I'm no artist and using the paints didn't come naturally.  To get some tips on how to create different effects, I watched this 'one stroke' tutorial and tried to apply the technique to my nails for two evenings straight. Tonight, when I was about to pack it in, I came up with something passable!

 As I was just practicing, I painted directly onto my nails - without a base coat :-0!

 My naked nails are pretty bad at the moment - stained in a major way. But as I never wear french manicures, it's not too much of a problem. I only have this on my left hand so it's coming off in a sec...just thought I'd share it with you.

I'm going to keep working at this technique!!!!

 I forgot to show the brush I used (thanks RM!)

 I bought the 'one stroke' flat brush on the right specifically to use on my nails, but the hair felt a little too long.
I tried to trim it and subsequently ruined it by making the hairs too blunt and thick :-(.  Luckily I managed to find one of my old gel brushes (left) which worked pretty well.

  I think I need to look for a smaller, shorter haired flat brush in future but I reckon you can get such brushes in any crafts or art supply store.

Rimmel nail art, brushes and a light box!

Before I start with my usual blather, I would just like to say a big hello, welcome and thank you to my new subscribers and any new silent readers. To my other Google Friend Connect (GFC) friends and wonderful readers, thank you so much for continuing to visit and comment; it really puts a smile on my face. I will be running a giveaway soon to show my appreciation and to celebrate my 100th post...I'm nearly there!

Now that last years holiday festivities are out of the way, I've had some time to work on my own mini craft project. I'm eternally striving for 'the' photo with my budget point-and-shoot camera, my flat is very dark and because I tend to do my nails and take pictures at night, I decided to make a light box (to give me some decent lighting when I take my photos at night and capture 'real' colours). I have access to a DSLR camera that I could very well learn to use...but I SHOULD be able to take photos with my own camera.

Please click here if you want to see how I made my light box...

Otherwise, here was my manicure last night.  I don't know what possessed me to do this, but I thought I'd put the pictures up anyway, lol!

 This was taken without a flash, with the totally wrong camera setting and with my new light box.

 I intend to buy another cheap desk lamp for better lighting...and also re-work the settings on my camera because the colour does not translate well at all.

Daylight.

Ah Rimmel, how I heart thee. There are so many colours, the price is good and the formula is nice.  The only thing I don't like is the 'Xpress Brush'.

It's flat and rounded at the tip to help you apply neatly in one second. Good idea, but it doesn't work if the brush has stray hairs poking out. I actually prefer working with sharp corner of a brush.  This rounded business is not for me. I'm old skool.

How do you feel about these brushes? What kind do you prefer?
Thanks for reading!