How To Get Studded Nails!

Hi!

 

I'm by no means the best at nail art...a combination of me being clumsy and also impatient usually renders my nails smudged and messy.

 

However you can still try, right? :)

 

 

I spotted these 17 Deconstructed Nail Studs on sale in Boots and from the moment I saw them I knew I couldn't leave without them!

I love the packaging too!

 

 

 

 

 

These studs are pretty tiny to be careful not to knock the little pot over!

 

 

 

1)

First I applied a clear base coat to my nails to stop them staining.

 

2)

I put on one coat of a dark charcoal colour with slight shimmer. You could either use grey or black which would both look great with these studs so its up to you! The colour I used as from the Nail Parade collection from The Colour Workshop that I got ages ago.

 

 

3)

 

When you put on the second coat of polish, apply the nail studs whilst the polish is still wet. I've found the best way to do this is to press them into your finger and then lightly dab the nail to apply them. If they need moving slightly or pressing in further then you can use tweezers or a cuticle stick.

 

 

 

 

4)

Finally, add a clear coloured coat of nail polish over the top to seal the studs and help them last longer on your nails!

 

I'm SUPER happy with the finished result...it looks so edgy and cool and I absolutely love it. I will definitely be using these all the time in the future!

 

The nails studs from 17 are about £4 and in my opinion worth every penny - they did a great job with these!

 

What do you think of studded nails? Let me know in the comments below!

 

Thanks for reading!

Libby x

How To Get Yin & Yang Nails!

Hi!

 

I tried out a nail design look a while ago where I painted yin & yang symbols on my nails and decided that because it was such a fun look it would be great to do a step by step post!

 

 

 

I made this look really bright and colourful and although it is fairly intricate, it isn't too hard to do.

I'm not the best at nail art but I do love doing nail art looks!

Someone with a steadier hand will probably be able to make a better job of this look but it's easy enough that it doesn't matter if you're not so great at doing designs on your nails.

 

I wanted really colourful backgrounds for my nails so I used these colours:

 

From left to right:

 

Collection 2000 Hot Looks Fast Dry polishes in

Scorched, Shimmy Shake, Bongo Beat, Show Off

Then the purple shade is from O.P.I called Plugged In Plum.

 

The reason I love the collection 2000 polishes is that I happen to have them in very bright colours and they're inexpensive!

 

 

 

For the actual symbols I'm also using the Models Own nail art pens in Black and White.

With these you can both squeeze out the colour or use the long thin brush to apply it, but I prefer to squeeze out the colour from the nib at the top.

 

Now lets get onto the design :)

 

Step 1:

 

 

Paint your nails in rainbow colours! I had to use about 2 coats for each nail.

I also think this looks better if you do it in the order of the rainbow, so starting from the pinky finger I used red, gold, green, blue and then purple :)

Then you just want the nails to completely dry so you don't smudge the coats underneath.

 

 

Step 2:

 

 

Using the black nail art pen, draw a black circle on each nail.

I find that you should probably always do the circles slightly bigger than you think because the line will be quite thick and you still need enough space inside to do the design.

 

Step 3:

 

 

Then draw a wavy black line inside the circle. This is fairly tricky but it's not essential to get the shape right. As you can see some of my lines are a bit dodgy but it doesn't detract from the overall look :)

 

Step 4:

 

 

Fill in one half of the circle. This can be quite fiddly but if you take your time you can fill it in as evenly as possible.

 

Step 5:

 

 

Now take the white nail art pen and fill in the other half of the circle. Make sure you let the black dry completely before or it will al smudge together and turn into a blurred grey circle...not exactly what we're looking for here!

 

 

Step 6:

 

 

Then do a white dot in the black half of the circle...

 

Step 7:

 

 

And finally add a black dot in the white section!

Again make sure the white is completely dry or it will all smudge together.

 

And that's it! :)

 

 

I find this looks quite striking and also even if you mess up a bit (like me) you can still get a great finished effect!

This is quite time consuming but it's not too tricky to do, just a little fiddly.

 

It is really important that you let the polish & pens dry completely before you move onto the next step or you could end up with a grey mixed up mess...it can be hard for someone as impatient as me but I think its worth it.

 

Did you like this yin & yang look?

Thanks so much for reading!

Libby x

*REVIEW* Nail Rock Design Nail Wraps

Hi!

I have a comparison post for you today...

I'm sure a lot of people have heard of the Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips...but I've found an alternative in shops and I thought it would be a good time to do a review and see how they compare!

 

 

I have these pink leopard print nail strips and although I can't find a name of the design on the packaging I absolutely love it!

 

I'm a big fan of the Sally Hansen Nail Strips and I've tried 3 of those strips before, all of which I love, but these are slightly easier to find in shops.

 

The Sally Hansen nail strips retail for slightly different prices depending where you get them and which shades you get. On amazon you can find them for as much as £7/8 or as little as around £3/4.

I think in shops they are around the £5 mark.

 

On the Nail Rock website they retail for £6.65 but I got mine in TK Maxx so I got them for £3! :)

 

 

\These have the instructions printed on the back which is always useful!

The instructions for these nail wraps are almost identical for those for other nail strips.

 

 

 

These have a nail file and cuticle stick with them, along with "preparation wipes"...which is basically nail polish remover in a wipe form.

The Sally Hansen strips come with the file (I think the file they give is much better) and cuticle stick but while it doesn't come with the nail wipes it does tell you to wipe your nails with nail polish remover.

It is handy that Nail Rock give you the wipes included but it's not a necessity.

As I mentioned the nail file for these isn't as good quality, it's more scratchy and I don't think the shape if it works well for nails. Sally Hansen strips have a file that has different sides for different purposes, but this just has one surface which is pretty scratchy.

 

 

There are 16 strips here and this is one of the major advantages that these have over the Sally Hansen strips:

These don't dry out.

 

Sally Hansen strips come in 2 packets of 8 strips which are sealed. Basically, once you open that packet they start to dry out, meaning that you can't leave the ones you don't use for different occasions.

With these, you don't have to use them all at once. You could use them as an accent nail or (like I have) use them for every other nail.

It's definitely an advantage to get the strips not sealed in separate packets that dry out because you don't have to use them in one go to stop them drying out.

 

There's a good variety of sizes too; the picture doesn't show it too well but each of the 8 shapes you see above are split into two so there are 16 actual strips.

I really like the design on these, they're kind of a crackle/leopard print pink and black design.

 

 

Here I used a plain black polish from Claire's because I like having complex designs for only every other nail and it also means you can get more uses out of the polish strips! :)

 

So how did these strips apply?

 

I won't lie it was harder to apply these than the Sally Hansen ones.

These strips were harder to shape and they were more difficult to "cut" with the nail file to get the shape right.. As a result as you can see there are some nails where the strip is not quite in the right shape.

I also ended up with several creases and bubbles in the nails. I do get this sometimes with Sally Hansen strips but not as much as with these.

I think it's because these strips are less breakable and they're stronger, which makes them harder to shape and I ended up with more creases.

 

But i'm not too worried about this and I'm still pleased with the look. Because of the actual design itself, the creases don't show up too badly.

 

Now I've had them on my nails for a few days I can say that they've lasted well.
Although because they weren't so well shaped around the cuticles they didn't stick properly and started coming off a little bit.

 

I think overall I won't make an effort to go out specifically for these strips again as I just found them harder to work with in comparison to the Sally Hansen Salon Effects.

If I see a design I really like I'll pick them up because they are still pretty good and especially if I see them in TK Maxx again I'll get a couple but in terms of how they apply I prefer the Salon Effects! :)

 

I hope you enjoyed my review, have you tried the Nail Rock designs yet?

Thanks for reading!

Libby x

How To Get Pink & Black Checkered Nails!

Hello! :)
I have another easy nail art design for you today; the other day I was playing around and came up with a relatively easy way of doing a checkered nails using one of my favourite colour combinations: pink & black!

Products I used:
 

The Colour Workshop Top Coat
(I also used a base coat and forgot to photograph it but they look exactly the same anyway! You can of course use whatever base and top coats you want to. A base coat is important to stop the colour staining your nails but a top coat isn't as essential but it helps the design last a bit longer! :)

Collection 2000 Hot Looks Fast Dry nail polish in "Siren"

Models Own Nail Art Pen in Black

First of all I applied 2 coats of the Collection 2000 pink nail polish to get a really opaque colour:

Then I used the nail art pen to draw black crosses on each nail using the long, thin brush (I think this actually looks like a cool design on it's own...maybe one day I'll just leave it as crosses on my nails because I think it looks quite interesting!

 

 

Then I just uesd the long thin brush again to fill in two sections of the cross. I've found that the squares at the top of the nail are easy to fill in whereas the squares at the bottom are slightly harder but as long as you take your time you can fill them in neatly!

And that's it! it looks pretty effective and you can do it with any different colour combinations (I also did white and black) and it looks interesting but doesn't take too many steps or products to achieve. The nail art pens take a while to dry but I think it's worth it! 

 

Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed my little mini tutorial! :) What are your favourite nail designs?

Libby x



How To Get Colourful Panda Nails! :)

Hello :)
Today I have a nail look that is a little more intricate!
I was thinking about what to paint on my nails earlier today and remembered a panda design I did a while back...however this time I decided to make it a bit more colourful!
I thought I'd do a blog post on how to get this look, in case there are any other panda lovers out there! ;)

I used quite a lot of different products for this look, but you could easily switch it up to make the colours the way you want or to use the products you have :)

Step 1) BASE COAT! I'm using a lot of colourful polishes as the base for this look so it's always a good idea to use a base coat to stop the colours staining your nails...I've had a greenish tinge to mine before now where I forgot to use a base coat and it took ages to grow out. I'm just using a base coat I think from the Colour Workshop Nail Parade kit which had loads of different polishes in it.

Step 2) Paint your nails in whichever colours you want to be the background colours; I wanted bright colours and so I chose these:

I used these 5 colours to paint my nails, from left to right they are: Collection 2000 Hot Looks Fast Dry in Go Retro!, then Bright Lights, then Show Off, then the yellow is a Ruby & Millie nail polish in Yellow, then another Collection 2000 Hot Looks in Siren.

I used about 2 coats for each one to make sure it was opaque and bold.

Step 3)  Draw the basis for the panda's face; a large white spot.
You can use any plain white nail polish but since they aren't too easy to find I used a Claire's Accessories nail tip whitener instead to get a matte white polish.

 

You can go over it a couple of times to get it opaque :)

Step 4) Use black and white nail art pens to draw on the details of the panda. I'm using the Models Own nail art pens in black and white. Alternatively if you don't have any pens and don't want to buy one, you could use a nail brush or a long, thin fairly stiff brush to dip into black and white polishes that you already have, though I've found this harder.

I just have to pause for a moment to show you the amazing packaging on these...

First you use the black to draw on little circles for the ears:

Then you draw on the black dots for the fur around the eyes:

Then a black dot for the nose:

Then a smaller white circle inside the black circles for the eyes (you have to be pretty precise here):

And then finally you have to do a *tiny* little dot inside those white dots for the pupils...

And that's the whole thing! It's very time consuming but it's not too difficult and I find it looks so cute when its done! :)
You can of course use whatever base colours you want, or just have a clear coat underneath if you want.

I really love the way this turned out, last time I simply did the pandas over a clear polish, but I love the colourful effect of the background colours and it looks so bright!
I hope you enjoyed my little tutorial, it was really fun to do and it's not too hard - I'm not the most skilled person at nail art! I find it difficult because my hands are small and so I don't have much nail space, but I can manage this ok :)

Thank you for reading! I'll hopefully do more nail art designs in the future!
Libby x