Nails of the Week-Groovy Grunge

These nails were born form a lack of inspiration, I just ended up layering different colours because I couldn't decide and I realised that a good effect could be had by layering up the colours and then removing some to reveal the layers.

Here's How To:

1. Paint nails a with a good basecoat and a dark colour like a black (a very dark brown would be excellent here but I don't have one so I use black). Wait for it to dry COMPLETELY

2. With a nail art brush (like one with a square tip) paint on very roughly and streakily both a dark blue and a brown colour over different parts of each nail.

3. Paint using the nails art brush the entire nail with a pale minty green

4. Over different sections of the nail paint pinks and purples, again not being  perfect AT ALL!!

5. Dip your nail art brush in polish remover and brush over the nails in different areas to expose the layers, it works best if you do it in downward stripes. Try to show all the colours, the more you apply remover the more polish will come off so vary the pressure you apply and be sure not to remover the colour all the way off to your bare nails!

5. Apply a topcoat and if you can streak the polish even more for that distressed look.

Difficulty: 2/10

Nails of the week-Fleuralicious

As you may remember a few weeks ago I posted about my nail flowers which are just darling... and very easy to use I just stuck them on using my topcoat. Buy them here. All of my friends absolutely loved these and said they were the best I ever did, I didn't really know how to take this seeing as these were lemon squeezy and I usually spend ages on my nails? Maybs I should give up?

Sorry for the chippedness I didn't get to photograph these until I was taking them off!! 

Difficulty: 0/10 (!!!!!!)

Fashion Inspired- Prabal Gurung

These images from the Prabal Gurung S/S 2012 show were so beaut I just knew that they would look great on my fingerlings. I looked at the images and came up with this look including a new technique for me marbling, (without water).

Technique
1. Paint nails with a basecoat
2. Paint nails with one very thin coat of white polish
3. Paint a second very thick watery coat of white polish, and very quickly add a few small drops of dark and light purple to each side of the nail in inwardly pointing triangle shapes.
4. Using a cocktail stick or a pin quickly swirl the colours together, but not too much so that colours remain separate, (you don't want to mix them into one colour).
5. Paint on the Purple and black triangles using a fine brush or a nail art pen.
6. Topcoat.

This sounds complicated but it isn't really, you will have more time than you think to play with the swirls as long as you paint a thick enough base colour on. You could even so this all over the nail or maybe as a gradient from the tip up. It goes without saying that you could use whichever colours you wanted but I wanted to create this Prabal Gurung look so I used his colours.

Difficulty: 6/10

Nails of the week- El Salonisto Inspired

Easy as this week, although I don't take credit for the design which comes from http://elsalonsito.com/. On this site there is also a fantastic photo tutorial although this is extremely simple and doesn't require any skill or special tools!! I mixed mine up a bit by adding the half moons at the top but they could be left out if desired.

Difficulty: 2/10

Nails of the Week- Valentines #4

This weeks inspiration comes from love heart sweets,  the pastel colours and messages which more often than not are less lovely and more erm.. odd but they always are sure to cause a smile! I am not too pleased with how these turned out though, the writing was difficult to do on such a small surface and the heart outline was the wrong shape for my nails, but oh well. I do find that with most of my nail looks, they do take some practice and some tweaking to look right.

Difficulty- 7/10

Nails of the Week- Please don't let it snow!!!

ARRRRG! A word about the title, I hate snow, well... I like snow, but I hate the consequences of snow (Read: I get cold) of so when people tell me that it might snow in Brighton, I have a nervy B. So I am offering the sacrifice of this blog post title in the hope that the gods of cuticles will have mercy on me and get on at their friends in the weather dept.

Let's get back to bussssinessss! These took a while, I will admit, an evening dedicated to my lovely flat 46 ladies and to fraping Bianca and Cece. But it was simple when you break it down.
1. Paint nails white- there really is no other option here I was coping some wallpaper, that we have in the kitchen.(ohhh but you should do a base coat obvs)
2. Using a large dotting tool place pale violet dots all over all of your nail. they do not have to be perfect.
3. Using an artist brush, paint on the flowers in bright pink (my fave part..!) these again do not need to be perfect as no one will look really closely, they will see the print as a whole.
4. Using a dark purpley grey, I mixed this DO NOT use black, draw some squiggles on the petals to distinguish the leaves, again not perfect. Also it's nice to have leaves too.
5. Topcoatalicious!

Sorry for the blurry...Close up down under!

Orig Wallpaper.

Come closer my dear...!

Difficulty: I want to about 6/10 but because of the tool sitch I need to say about 8/10

Nails of the Week- Unicorns Cheer Me Up

Got the January/Monday blues today, so what better to cheer me up than UNICORNS and GLITTER!!!!!

This however, requires the special skills of a unicorn lover and the fairies watching over me as I paint with a tiny brush a unicorn which looks like a weird dog with a baby arm. Yes these didn't go very well, hence I only kept them on for one day but it is the thought that counts...!

Difficulty : 5/10