Sunday's Subtle Stamping

Currently watching: X Factor

Good morning girls!

How is your weekend going so far? I had to work yesterday and attend a stock take so that wasn't much fun but at least I have today to myself so I can finally blog again :-)

During the week I painted my nails using Yves Saint Laurent in Pink Moon which is a lovely terracotta pink shade full of purple shimmer.

I then stamped using Lilac Ice by Collection 2000 and Bundle Monster plate BM203.

Please excuse the tip wear, my photos were taken after three full days of wear.

I really like this stamp but I can never decide if it's best to have a light base colour with a dark stamping colour or the other way round for this image.

What do you think?

Bye for now,
Laura

PS I saw Breaking Dawn this week and really loved it! Did anyone else like it?

NOTD

Currently listening to: The Script

Good morning!

I think we've all seen recently how bad my freehand nail art is so I went back to stamping :-)

I chosen Eyeko Vintage as my base and then used a blue shimmer (Powder Blue) from Collection 2000 to stamp a full nail image from BM203.

I knew it wouldn't show up well but I wanted something to lift the green as I feel this shade can sometimes look a bit plastic-like.

I then used Asos Lily to stamp floral images from Mash m20

It looked quite nice in reality but it's hard to photograph the detail well. I hope you can at least get an idea of how this manicure looks.

What are your thoughts on this manicure?

Bye for now,
Laura

Thursday's Talons: Nail Care

Currently listening to: Science and Faith by The Script

Hi girls,

I hope you are all well and having a good week. Today is the final day I have to work in Liverpool which means the end of my long working days (7.30am - 7pm) and the start of blogging properly again, yay :-)

Today I'd like to show you the products I use to help me take care of my nails. For those of you who have followed me for some time, you might have noticed that my nails are a lot longer now than they used to be, especially back in the day when I would complain about peeling nails and end up cutting them right down.

My nails still aren't in great condition but they're better than they used to be. Here are the products I believe have helped strengthen my nails:

OPI Avoplex High Intensity Hand & Nail Cream and OPI Avoplex Cuticle Oil. When I first bought these, I used the cream twice a day and the cuticle oil once a day, I think. Recently I've been neglecting this routine and have only used the products a couple of times a week so I need to start using them more regularly again. I'm not sure if these specific products have helped my nails or whether other brands of cream and oil would help just as well. Do you have any recommendations?

My nails used to peel a lot which in turn caused my polish to chip at the tips very quickly. Someone suggested I started buffing my nails so when this product caught my eye, I decided to grab it.

This is a mini nail file which has four sections to file, smooth, buff and shine your nails.

I actually haven't used the buffing file but I've made good use of the smoothing file and that's certainly helped the condition of my nails. My only complaint with this is that the file designed for filing isn't great. I would really like a glass or crystal nail file now.

Finally, I use OPI Original Nail Envy and Collection 2000 2 in 1 Base Coat and Ridge Filler. When I first got Nail Envy, I used it as instructed for two weeks with no other nail polish. I didn't see great results but now I use it as a base coat all the time. I would like to think it's had some effect. The Ridge Filler is also a product I use whenever I paint my nails to create a smooth surface for polish. Apparently pink top coats are more effective at preventing staining from bright and dark colours than clear top coats so that's something worth bearing in mind.

So there we go ladies, those are the products I currently use to help take care of my nails. Have you tried any of these? Would you recommend any products I haven't tried? What products do you use in your nail care routine?

Bye for now,
Laura

Thursday's Talons (Fauxnading Fun)

Currently listening to: Higher Window by Josh Groban

Hello dear readers,

Did you like my mattified take on Accessorize's Storm polish? I did, but I couldn't resist stamping on top of it last weekend. I chose Barry M in Pure Turquoise as my stamping colour and used a full nail image from my Bundle Monster plates, one which I hadn't used for a while and is always tricky to place well.

As you can see, the stamping didn't turn out very well and I had lots of smudges. I think the colour combination worked though.

I jazzed it up a bit more with a feather on each thumb nail stamped in a metallic blue from Collection 2000.

The feather was actually my favourite thing about this manicure. I can't believe I hadn't thought to use that image before. I think we'll be seeing it much more in the near future ;-)

What do you think of this manicure? What's your favourite Konad/Fauxnad image for stamping?

Bye for now,
Laura

Festive NOTD

Currently watching: Mary Poppins

Good afternoon girls :-)

One of the things I was looking forward to seeing when I came home for the holidays was my nail polish collection. There were only so many bottles I could justify taking with me when I moved in August so unfortunately I had to leave quite a few behind, over 40 in fact!

For today's manicure I was tempted to use No7 in Pink Grapefruit as my base with Collection 2000 in Green With Envy as my stamping colour and the star image from Bundle Monster image plate no21.

I'm sure the star image is the one I use the most as you can never go wrong with it, no matter what length of nails you have or where on the nail you position the stamp.

I rarely use dark reds or greens because I find they're difficult to remove, stain my nails and get into all the chips I have in my nails, which just isn't nice at all. However, a couple of my nails are quite short at the moment and I think subconsciously I'd already decided to go for the big cut so I suspect after this weekend (I need "long" nails for New Year's Day) I'll be sporting ten very short nails. Aw.

Bye for now,
Laura