Showing posts with label Saran Wrap. Show all posts

Tutorial Tuesday: Saran Wrap Nails

Hey everyone! Super quick post, it's late and I have to be up early to go to London tomorrow. I'm off to do something exciting, which you shall see very soon. Today's tutorial isn't a very original one, in fact I think the idea originated from Nailed It, but hopefully you will appreciate it nonetheless. I have a load of christmas tutorials coming your way, but they wont start until December, I'm a strict scrooge!

Step 1: Paint your nails with a base colour, I used Barry M – Dragon Fruit
Step 2: Once your base layer is dry paint a layer of a contrasting colour over the top, (I used Barry M - Blueberry Ice-Cream) do your nails one at a time with this and the next step - and be quick
Step 3: Roll up some cling film in to a ball and dab it onto the wet blue nail varnish
Step 4: Finish off with a topcoat (I use Seche Vite) to seal in your design, and you're done!

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!
Alice

P.S Have you entered my giveaway yet?

I'm Having Mixed Feelings

Hello everyone!! Today's post is a very simple Valentine's Day mani since I've been hard at work on the really awesome nail art coming tomorrow and Thursday.

nails nailart nail art polish mani manicure Spellbound Lacquer glitter bars squares hearts red pink grey gray saran wrap Mixed Feelings indie holiday V-Day Valentine's Valentines Day Sally Hansen Pink Blink NYC New York Color Sidewalkers

I started with a saran wrap mani using Sally Hansen Pink Blink and New York Color Sidewalkers. I admit deciding to change my original idea of stripes to a saran wrap mani wasn't the best choice; I'm not perfect! Still, topping it all with Mixed Feelings was the right choice. And I guess with a name like Mixed Feelings the pink and grey kind of fits.

Mixed Feelings is an unreleased Valentine's Day polish of mine. If there's enough interest I may decide to release it later on though so definitely let me know if you want it. It's perfect for Valentine's Day, but would make a good every day polish. Also, don't forget to check out my Etsy shop next week for new polishes!!

Blogs to Love Friday #1

Welcome to the first post of the Blogs to Love Friday linkup. I was so excited when I first heard of this linkup and I'm even more excited now that it's time to share my favorite posts I read this week. But first ... if you want to join this linkup being hosted by My Beautiful, Crazy Life and Mrs. Monologues read this post and add this button to your posts.


 

Now onto some of my favorite posts of this week. They may not have been posted this week, but I did find them and read them this week.
  • These Mattified Splatter Nails by modnails may not have been posted this week, but I did find it this week. Be sure to check out her other nails because they are all amazingly awesome!!
  • I use this Coconut Banana Bliss Smoothie recipe almost daily so that has to count, right? It doesn't really come from a blog. I found it on Pinterest though, which is kind of like a blog, lol. I made two very simple changes to the recipe: substituting the coconut oil with coconut water and the Sustain packet for 1 tbsp of yogurt.
  • I look forward to every new post by Sensible Stylista and her newest outfit post has me wanting to rush out and buy some printed skinny jeans. Seriously? Her every post has me wanting to rush out and buy something! I know some of these things won't look good on me, but she makes them look so great that I want them anyway!
  • There are many things to love about The Freckled Fox: her wonderful fashion sense, her adorable crafts, her yummy looking food, or even her amazing photos plus much, much more. However, I adore The Freckled Fox for her hair tutorials! The one I think most deserves sharing is the Posh Faux Hawk. OMG, I am so in love with this look. What odd and slightly weird girl has never dreamed of having a Mohawk at one time in their lives? I certainly have. Almost went for it too, but the reality of having to wear it day in and day out hit hard. This is one hawk you can love and leave and love again!! Still, if faux hawks aren't your thing, I'm sure she'll have a tutorial that is more your style. 
  • This Double Saran Wrap Tutorial video by DullLikeGlitter is another very old post, but one I was super lucky to find on Preen.me this week! She also has a picture tutorial post on her blog. I tried this with light pink, white, and baby blue but can't wait for summer to try her bright red, yellow, and blue look!
nails nailart nail art polish mani manicure Spellbound Lacquer Valentine's Day V-Day Valentine Valentines saran wrap double tutorial Blogs to Love Friday linkup link up pink blue white Sally Hansen Pink Blink Color Fever petites Creme Blue

I keep trying to expand my V-Day mani ideas to incorporate colors other than white, pink, and red. I decided to substitute the often used red for blue in this one, and I think it still has all the makings of a good V-Day mani.

Saran Wrap Valentine's Day Nail Art Tutorial

Hello again everyone! I missed my post yesterday, but I have a really great excuse! It was mentioned in an answer to one of the 1st Blogiversary Giveaway entries that one of you wanted to see a Saran Wrap tutorial. There were more than a few of you who wanted to see video tutorials. So, I was spending all day yesterday editing my first real nail art video. I have a whole new level of respect for video bloggers!

nails nailart nail art polish mani manicure Spellbound Lacquer holiday Valentine's Day Valentine Valentines tutorial Sally Hansen Pink Blink white saran wrap tutorial video

Here are the nails I'll be showing you how to create in the video. This is a very easy mani to do, and with pink and white polish it is perfect for Valentine's Day!



I don't really have the set up or the best software/know-how for this, but I gave it my best shot. Enjoy!

K is for ...

Another day, another ABC Challenge post. With K words like ketchup and kazoo to choose from what was I going to do?? It actually took me a few days and much dictionary browsing to find something worthy of a mani. I bring you:

K is for ... Koi.


nails nailart nail art polish mani manicure Spellbound ABC Challenge K is for Koi fish saran wrap method face glitter shimmer Wet n Wild Club Havana orange Pure Ice Poker Face L.A. Colors White animal

I confess that when I started these nails I still had no idea how I was going to accomplish them. I knew I wanted to do koi and use Wet n Wild Club Havana and white to make a splotchy pattern but that was about it. After using two coats of Club Havana I decided to use saran wrap to dab on the white. This gave the koi a very unique swirling watery pattern. I also used the saran wrap to dab on some Pure Ice Poker Face, a sheer shimmery golden orange polish, in an attempt to create the glittery metallic looking scales of a koi.


nails nailart nail art polish mani manicure Spellbound ABC Challenge K is for Koi fish saran wrap method face glitter shimmer Wet n Wild Club Havana orange Pure Ice Poker Face L.A. Colors White animal

I'm sure you know by now how much I love my accent nails. So, no matter how unique these nails looked alone, I just had to add an open-mouthed, barbel-whiskered koi like fish face.

I will not be posting tomorrow as I will be spending the day with family. To those who celebrate, Happy Thanksgiving. To those who don't, have a great day anyway. Spend time with family and be thankful for all you have. :)

Saran Wrap + One Stroke

Hey everyone! So today I have a couple of techniques bundled into one. I love 'saran wraps', even though I've only ever done one before, and I've wanted to try the 'one stroke' nail art technique that I've seen a number of bloggers use. I actually watched a number of tutorials for this and none were what I was looking for in my design so I just googled a few pictures and worked with that but I'd say the most helpful was this one.

For my saran wrap I used a base of China Glaze - Refresh Mint and then put Barry M - Cyan Blue and Berry on top. I know there's a few techniques out there for this but I just dab the wet nail varnish with a bundled up piece of cling film. I've included a picture of the saran wrap on it's own too :)

Then I used white and blue acrylic paint for the flowers, added a coat of Seche Vite and then stuck the rhinestones on with extra top coat


Also, some time this week I'm going to be starting a new 'challenge', which isn't really a challenge, just more of a project. I have 22 old images of nail art I did when I first started my blog, then got annoyed and deleted because they're such bad quality photos, so I shall be starting a 'then and now' project, to see how, not only my photography has improved, but my skills too. I shall hopefully be posting them once a week for next 22 weeks but we'll see how that goes! What do you think?



Hope you like them!
Alice

Collection 2000 Hot Looks: review and nail art

Hey everyone! I've still not taken the easy way out and gone home yet, battling through it (though I wish I didn't have to) so again I'm bringing you a post that I did before I came here. The lovely Hannah from Collection PR was so quick in sending me these and I intended to be quick in posting them. I swatched them straight away but the stress of moving got in the way and I've only just got around to editing them. I hope you enjoy my first official review even if it took longer than intended! All pictures were taken in natural inside light. I'll show you swatches first and then at the end I'll show you the nail art I created with these 4 polishes, but I'm warning you now of the extreme overload in pictures you're about to receive!






First up we have 'Shimmy Shake' which is a gold 'shimmery' glitter. When I saw this you can guess what my reaction was because of my impatience with removing glitter, but it was actually incredibly easy to remove and for that in particular I think I will be returning to this product. The picture above is 3 coats with no top coat. 

I decided about halfway through that this was definitely a polish to be used with layering, so I decided to put it over black. The ring finger has 2 coats and the rest all have 1 and I definitely prefer it like this:


Next up is 'Fruit Loop', a lovely peach colour. I own a lot of peach polishes and had expectations for this to be opaque within 2 coats but I found myself needing a third. That may just be the perfectionist in me or bad application on my part but the pictures below are 3 coats. It definitely does what it says on the bottle though, this polish dries incredibly fast! 




Next up is 'Angel Wings', I'm so glad Hannah sent me this colour because it's the kind of grey I've needed for so long and never had. It's a beautiful light grey and, like Fruit Loop, dries really fast. I used 2 coats in the pictures below:




Finally we have 'Button Moon' which is definitely my go-to blue now. I'm sure you all know of my obsession with blue polishes, especially baby blue so you can imagine my reaction when I saw this. Although, whilst it dries fast like Angel Wings and Fruit Loop, I had some slight issues with application on my pinky finger. I think I may have applied abnormally thin coats, which suggests that you may need slightly thicker coats for opaque application. Nonetheless the rest look great and I was definitely impressed with this product due to it's drying time and it's opacity compared to other baby blues I own.






In relation to application I would say all four are good in relation to drying time, although Shimmy Shake seemed to dry on average the same as most polishes, and opacity. Colours-wise there are also a great range of colours in their collection which I would definitely recommend, but out of these four Button Moon would of course have to be my favourite. 

Next up is some nail art using the 4 polishes above!


First of all is a gradient (still practising!) using Button Moon and Fruit Loop. I originally tried this the other way around but despite Button Moon's consistency in application it was way too thin to be used for gradients. Although I do like how they turned out this way!


Glitter alone will never be something I'm a fan of so of course I had to add something to them. I do wish I'd added black outlines to the hearts to make them 'pop' a bit more but for a quick design I quite like it. Button Moon and Fruit Loop were also both very opaque for nail art and dried very fast (perhaps too fast in Fruit Loop's case, I had to keep using new polish more often than usual)


And finally; the least obvious of the 3 designs, saran wrap nails using Fruit Loop and Angel Wings. Unfortunately I couldn't get a good picture of these but they were a lot more obvious in person I promise! This was my first time trying saran wrap nails and I was surprised at how easy is is. Both polishes were good with consistency and despite Fruit Loop's earlier issues it was very opaque atop of Angel Wings.

I hope you enjoyed my first review! I would definitely recommend Angel Wings and Button Moon, but that's just because of the colours I like, Fruit Loop and Shimmy Shake are both also impressive for the price range. 

Collection 2000 Hot Looks retail for around £1.99 in Boots and Superdrug

Alice