Pink And A Pot Of Gold

A few weeks ago I did this glitter gradient and told you how much I've been loving them and that I would be doing some more in the near future. Well, here is another one. I love their simplicity, yet I receive the most compliments from people when I have something like this on my nails.

For this glitter gradient I used my only Jessica polish which I love - Samba Parade, a gorgeous baby pink. The formula is getting a bit strange on this one, maybe because I've had the bottle for so long! For the gradient I used W7 Gold Dazzle which is just a gold glitter bomb and for £1.95, it can't be beaten. The larger hex pieces of glitter in there are loose pieces that I randomly placed on the nail to give it a bit more variety and sparkle.

Super Funk(y) Pink Jelly Sandwich

I haven't done a jelly sandwich in a while. Usually I just layer glitter over a polish and leave it at that but I had Essie Sugar Daddy sitting in my stash and I think it's a perfect polish to create jelly sandwiches.

I used two Coats of Jessica Samba Parade for the pink base so I wouldn't need too many coats of Sugar Daddy. The glitter is NYX Super Funk, I bought a few NYX glitters from Beauty Joint a while back and I'm really happy with them. I've already done another jelly sandwich with NYX Enchanted Forest and I really liked liked how that turned out too.

So, the layering sequence was: Jessica Samba Parade 2 coats, NYX Super Funk 1 coat and Essie Sugar Daddy 1 coat. I really like how milky and soft Sugar Daddy looks over the fuchsia glitter pieces.

Hearty Half Moons - Quick & Easy Valentine's Nails

And here you have it. The actual Valentine's day mani. I actually did this one last week but was waiting for 14th February to post it.

If you follow my blog you have probably seen this before, I did the same half moon variation back in October 2011 with Illamasqua Purity, just after Theatre of The Nameless was released and all because the shape of the half moon reminded me of theatre curtains! Weird I know! Well this shape also reminds me of a heart so I've had this mani in mind for quite some time and was waiting for Valentine's to do it.

I used Barry M Black over Jessica Samba Parade (my only Jessica polish) as a base colour. I've had this polish for so long that the formula has gone a bit goopy and it was hard to manage, however it's a good quality polish and they have very interesting colours. The only downside is the price, they retail at about £9.45.

Vintage Floral Nails

Hi everyone,

Hope you are all having a wonderful Saturday.

Quite a few friends complimented me on my Chinese Cherry Blossoms nails that I decided to do something similar - summery and flowery. Cutepolish has just recently posted a video on YouTube for this design and I thought I'd give it a go.

I have to admit that I do prefer the look when the red and pink of the roses are blended together as opposed to this one where the red is outlining the pink. I'll try that next time :-)

What do you think of this look? For some reason I like the way it looks on other people's nails but not a massive fan when its on my nails. My mum said these look like a dress my grandmother had when she was younger...lol... that's the point mumsie !!

Here are the products I used:

* CND - Stickey base coat
* Essie - Mint Candy Apple
* Jessica - Samba Parade
* Sally Hansen - Racey Rouge
* MUA - shade 13 (sorry, no colour name)
* Konad - Top Coat








xoxo

Chinese Cherry Blossom Nails

Hi all

The sun is a bit shy today. In fact, we haven't had much of it lately. I just want the summer to get here...quickly !!!
I was browsing the net for "summery" type inspiration and came across a few Chinese cherry blossom nails on YouTube.
I used a minty pastel colour as a base as I'm currently obsessed with this colour, although in my opinion any pastel colour would go well with these:

Products used:

Essie - Mint Candy Apple

Barry M - Black

Jessica - Samba Parade

OPI - Alpine Snow

Bye for now
xoxo

I can have my cake and eat it too...

Hi all,

Double post today to make up for the couple of days of non-posting !!!

Nail Stories is now on Facebook, yaaaayyyy !!!

Since I'm still officially on holidays, I've had a little more time at home which means I've also got more time to experiment with my nails. This morning my husband brought home some cupcakes and they were so colourful and pretty that I had to do some sort of design based on them. I suppose I could have elaborated more but here is how they turned out:

Products used:

Barry M - Blueberry Ice Cream

Barry M - Lemon Ice Cream

Jessica - Samba Parade

Essie - Mint Candy Apple

OPI - Lucky Lucky Lavender

OPI - Alpine Snow

OPI - Keys to my Karma

Thanks for reading :-)

xoxo

If Barbie did Leopard Print...

Hi guys

I was looking at leopard print nail videos on YouTube the other day and came across some really inspirational and funky leopard prints. "endlessxdaydream" has a tutorial that I really liked but instead of using pastel colours, I used more sort of "barbie-ish" colours shall we say.

Base coat was white - OPI Alpine Snow:

The colours of the nail pens I had didn't quite match the polishes I was using but it doesn't really translate to the photo:

I did the slanted line with scotch tape but you can also just draw a slanted line with your polish brush. I then divided the nail with a thin line of blue and shimmer pink Nail Star nail art pens. Dotted the leopard spots and filled around them  in black polish...

Products Used:
OPI Alpine Snow
Jessica Samba Parade
Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream
Barry M Black
Nail Star Nail Art Pen - Turquoise Blue & Pink Shimmer
Nail Art brush (to draw leopard spots)

Thank you for visiting guys :-)

xoxo

Nail Photo shoot 1 - Polka Dots & Rhinestone Black French Tips

Good morning all

Yesterday I joined forces with my cousin who is a make-up artist and a photographer. We used eyes/ nails or lips/ nails for the photo combos.

The model had very short nails so I had to use nail extensions on her (sorry some may look wonky but she had very small fingers and I only had certain sizes extensions).

I decided on 2 different looks. Polka dots (because I don't do enough of those) with a girly pink and blue barbie doll feeling and an edgy black/metallic with coloured rhinestones. The make-up and accessories we applied according to the nail polish colours.

Here are pictures of the hands only:

Products used:

- Jessica - Samba Parade (and I mixed in a few drops of CND Colour Raspberry parfait #519 to customise the colour. Don't worry, no polishes were harmed in this process).

- Barry M - Blueberry Ice Cream

- 17 Lasting Polish - Mini Skirt

I know most people change the design of the ring finger but on this one I decided to change the design of the middle finger !!!

Here is the photo after wardrobe and make-up was applied:

(please note that photoshop was only used on face skin and make-up, not on the nails)

  On the model's other hand I applied Metallic with black tips and a shatter effect on the ring finger:

I thought it looked a bit plain, so I added multi coloured rhinestones along the french tip line and vertically on the ring finger:

Products used:

- Barry M Nail Paint - Silver #288
- Barry M Instant Nail Effects - Black #311
- Rimmel London 60 seconds - Blackout #800

Here are the photos after wardrobe and make-up were applied:

                            
Hope you guys enjoyed the photo shoot.

If you have any requests for a glossy photo shoot, please e-mail me - nailstories@hotmail.co.uk

xoxo

Barry M Instant Nail Effects - Black Crackle Polish

Hi guys,

I thought I'd post about crackle polish, particularly Nail Paint by Barry M Instant Nail Effects.

Crackle polish has been amongst the nail tech and nail blogger world for quite some time now. To be honest, the first time I heard about it was when OPI introduced the Katy Perry collection. I've tried both OPI and China Glaze's crackle polishes but was reluctant that a cheaper brand would have the same effect.

I must admit that I have not yet seen anyone wearing crackle polish in public, as in regular people I see on the train, in the store, at the gym, etc who are not in the "nail world" per say. Does anyone know why this is when its so readily available?

Anyway, I was searching through polishes at the local drug store and found that Boots is currently selling Barry M Nail Paint for buy 2 get 1 free. Regular polish retails for £2.99 and the crackle polishes for £3.99 so I bought myself these 3 little gems. Isn't the blueberry ice cream to die for?!

I was told to apply crackle polish as follows:

1 - Paint base coat - I did this with regular nail polish (i.e. they don't have to be the same brand as the crackle polish). Polishes I used were:

Barry M Nail Paint - Silver
Barry M Nail Paint - Bluberry Ice Cream
Nails Inc. - Coral
Jessica - Samba Parade
Boots 17 Lasting Fix - Mini skirt

If you are using black crackle, you should obviously opt for bright or even neon base coat so the contrast is more striking. Its really up to you what base coat to use as I've experimented with a few and the ones I thought wouldn't look good actually turned out nice.

2 - Paint crackle coat - Let the Base coat polish completely dry and simply put on a thin layer of crackle polish. The crackles will start to form straight away. I put on thin layers because I find that the thinner the  layer, the smaller the crackles. Thick layer = bigger crackles.
I love  the bright colours but I must say that I'm also loving the silver!

What's your favourite base coat colour for crackle? How about multi colour base coats?

3 - Paint Top coat - As with regular polish, a top coat will help seal in the polish and protect the crackle effect on the nail.
The good thing is, I have worn crackle on my nails for nearly 2 weeks once and although the polish was starting to chip, you couldn't really tell because the crackle is a messy look in itself! :-)

P.S. - I apologise for the picture quality. I don't have a very good camera and it was night time. Also for the false nails. I had freshly manicured nails and din't have anyone willing to let me use their nails :-(

Thanks for reading guys.