Monday's Manicure- Yet Another Fail

Currently listening to: Shine a Light by McFly

Good morning girls and welcome to the week :-)

I spend a lot of time reading nail blogs and often I really love other girls' manicures but lack the talent or ability to try similar styles myself. Recently I saw a stunning zip/zebra manicure on Red Hair and Black Polish which I decided to try as Theodora was kind enough to provide step by step instructions. Too bad I didn't follow them! Look at her picture and then look at mine:

What a disaster!
I didn't choose a red base as I had previously worn a red and didn't like the removal issues so I went for Barry M Ice Cream.

I used a brush to outline the *zippers* but obviously my lines were far too thick and I couldn't add dots to make the *zippers* more realistic.

At this point, I knew it was a fail. My animal print only confirmed that realisation. Freehand animal print is not for me. I didn't allow myself enough space to do it nicely either.

Then I was in destruction mode so I stamped random green flowers on the purple base, repeated the stamping on a few nails, and then removed it all. What a waste.

Theodora, I admire your nail art skills :-)

Bye for now,
Laura

Sunday's Stamping

Currently listening to: The Warblers

Hi girls! How are you? How is your weekend going? I'm on holiday in the Lake District now :-) Pictures to feature next week I suspect!

Today's manicure builds on my original rose manicure which I showed you last week I believe.

Can you tell what the difference is?

Originally, my index and ring finger nails were white with two red roses stamped on them. Afterwards, I stamped two exta pink roses on my nails to make more use of my canvas :-)

What do you think?

I actually love the red and pink together but I think it would look better if all my nails were the same. I look forward to trying a variation of this manicure again soon though.

Bye for now,
Laura

Friday's Fingers

Currently watching: The Apprentice

Hello dear readers! Today I'd like to show you another Kiko polish I bought during my May trip to Paris.

This is no255, a dark purple packed full of holographic multicoloured glitter

A really pretty shade but a nightmare to remove

I don't think it will be a polish I will turn to regulaly due to removal issues

Do you have polishes in your collection you avoid using because they're so difficult to remove? Do you like this colour?

Bye for now,
Laura

Thursday's Talons- Ruffian/Half-Moon Fail

Currently reading: Glamour

Good morning girls!

How is your week going? Mine started well but has been going steadily down hill. A week of tax tuition is not fun and this feeling of not being able to get through the exams isn't nice. Musn't grumble though, onto the nails!

I decided to be *brave* and try a manicure that didn't involve using my stamping plates so I settled on a Ruffian manicure and used circular reinforcements as my image outline.

Oh what a disaster. I used a Boots 17 polish in Pink Grapefruit as my base then, once dry, placed the top half of a circular reinforcement sticker on my nails and used Boots 17 Knockout Red to paint above the sticker.

Why was it a nail fail?

Well, some nails smudged, I misjudged the spaces on some nails so the pink area is not of a similar size on all nails and the edges were badly painted, meaning on some nails the red curve actually looks more like a straight line. Disaster.

As soon as I took these photos I removed this manicure. Definitely not one I'm in a rush to repeat.

Have you tried to do a Ruffian manicure? Did you end up with better results than I did?

Bye for now,
Laura

Tuesday's Talons

Currently watching: Top Gear

Good morning ladies :-)

Yesterday's random cracked manicure grew on me a lot during the day, especially the original blue and pink together, yet I still changed my manicure when I got home. Here's what I replaced it with, inspired by Cath Kidston designs:

I used white as my base and placed blue polka dots, using my dotting tool, on all my nails.

I then stamped two red roses on each alternate nail using BM14 and unwisely tried to fit three roses on my middle finger nails. I always make this mistake.

Close up, I love this manicure but from far away the rose details are not clear at all and not many people in real life care so much about my nails that they would ask for a close-up lol.

Do you think this manicure turned out well? Do you feel disappointed if people don't admire your nails?

Bye for now,

Laura

Monday's Manicure

Currently listening to: Dead Man Walking by The Script

Good morning girls! How are you? Did you have a good weekend? I saw Tree of Life, a film I'd been excited about seeing for months. What a disappointment that turned out to be. Have you seen it? I didn't understand it at all and really didn't enjoy it. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a film at the cinema.

Anyway, this week sees me back at college which means bright manicures :-) For today's manicure I used Barry M Pure Turquoise as the base, Asos by Ciate in Lauren for stamping and Barry M Nail Effects.

This wasn't how this manicure was supposed to turn out. Firstly, I used Pure Turquoise and stamped pink roses on alternate nails. That looked awful so I covered it up with Nail Effects and stamped the unspoiled nails with BM203.

I hadn't used that image before but I'll certainly be using it a lot from now on.

However, for some reason I wasn't happy with the overall look so my next step was...

Covering up the stamping with Barry M Nail Effects in pink

It's only the second time I've used the pink crackling polish but I love it, especially with the blue showing underneath.

But I still wasn't happy with this manicure as Pure Turquoise took on a green tone underneath the black cracks and stayed brighter under the pink polish. I like to match. So...

I wondered what would happen if I layered the pink crackle polish over the black stuff. Results:

It's not bad, probably my favourite outcome out of today's numerous variations, and yet I don't love it so expect to see something different tomorrow ;-)

Bye for now,
Laura

Roses NOTD

Currently watching: The Apprentice

Hi girls! I'm back! Finally!

I came back from holiday at 8pm on Sunday and was picked up by my colleague an hour later as we were working away from home this week. I had anticipated a week of blogging but lo and behold, the Premier Inn charges £10 for 24hrs of Wifi access and there was no way I could justify spending that, so I was forced to spend yet another week away from the blogosphere. Oh how I've missed you all!

Back to business as usual, I'd like to show you my first attempt at a rose manicure.

I used white as my base colour and used my dotting tool to put gold dots on alternate nails. Then I used BM14 to stamp red roses on all nails.

I messed up the placing of the stamp on some fingers, and overdid it trying to fit three roses in nicely on my middle nail, but it's normal for first attempts at new designs to be perfect.

I liked this manicure and I'll definitely try it again although, as I'll soon show you, I wasn't able to leave this one alone and actually modified it.

What do you think of this manicure? Are you a fan of rose prints? And what have you been up to in my absence?? I'd love to know!

Bye for now,
Laura