DIY Triangle Patterns Tape Manicure

I had a lot of fun playing around with tape and nail polish this weekend, as you can see...

 My base is Sally Hansen 'Mint Sorbet', although the camera really changed the colour in this first photo. 

 Tip: I used a really tiny pair of sewing scissors, which made it way easier to cut smaller shapes out of the tape!

Allow the polish to dry a little before peeling off the tape. I had much better results that I usually do with tape manis by using a fairly old roll of masking tape that had a lost a bit of it's stick, so it came away quite easily without taking of the base colour or smudging the patterns as I peeled it off.

 I'm really loving triangle/geometric patterns at the moment!

Gold Galaxy Nail Tutorial

Hello blog! I'm so sorry I've been neglecting you recently. I'm just struggling to find time between working endlessly and fitting in sleep and meals and other such things. And to make matters worse, my guest post went up on Yes, Teacher! yesterday! Which is in itself a very nice thing, and I have to thank Sarah for giving people the opportunity to contribute to her blog, and congratulate her on the birth of her baby boy William! However, it meant that a few more people visited my very neglected blog. Which again is a very nice thing, and super thanks to those who decided to follow along! However I feel kind of like I've had guests drop in and the house is a mess and I can't even offer them biscuits and tea. So my apologies! I'm desperately trying to get things cleaned up and back on track around here. So how about a quick nail tutorial? (alas, it's not even a very good nail tutorial. I'm falling apart at the seams here blog!)

So this is my attempt at a 'gold galaxy' manicure. There are plenty of galaxy nail tutorials out there that are far, far better than this one, but I mainly wanted to experiment with the gold. I'm not really happy with how the actual 'galaxy' part turned out, but it was my first attempt so I can definitely work at it more for next time. So maybe think of this more as ideas and inspiration than a proper tutorial!

I'm using a bunch of colours I picked up from Sportsgirl, which is what inspired to try this out in the first place. I mean, have you ever seen a gold so shiny?! So here we have Sportsgirl 'All That Glitters', 'Debut', 'Denim', a shimmery blue that I've had for years, and Sally Hansen 'White On'. I also used a make-up sponge and a skewer for dotting. 

 First off, I painted all my nails in two coats of dark blue and allowed them to try enough to put the tape on. 

I put the tape across at varying angles, and did two coats of gold. Fortunately this gold is pretty strong and showed up reasonably well over the blue, but I guess it might have been better to do blue over gold. But it always gets complicated and messy with tape manis!...which is probably because I'm super novice, but oh well.

 Next, I sponged a little of the shimmery, lighter blue in a wide, diagonal line across the nail, to add a bit of depth to the galaxy look. This is where I think I went wrong in achieving a really good galaxy look, as I was afraid the sponging was going to ruin it so I really held back. However, most of the tutorials I've seen really sponge a lot of lighter colour on there, so if I did it again, I'd certainly sponge more and maybe try and blend with the darker blue. 

 I then used the skewer to create 'stars' of various sizes...

 And finished off with a goat of 'All That Glitters'. Again, I think if I tried this again, I would use a coat of really fine gold glitter, as I think the dots of big glitter here compete with the stars. 

I must also apologise for the fact that by the time I had time/day light to properly photograph my nails, they'd chipped a little.

 So there we have it, a super novice, super messy manicure, that might hopefully give someone out there some inspiration. Let me know if it does!

'Pink Ribbon' Pink Ombre Manicure Tutorial

Happy Mother's Day to all you lovely mother's out there! Each year, my mother and I have a tradition of participating in the Mother's Day Classic charity walk/run to raise money for breast cancer. We participated this morning in fact, and Melbourne put one of it's finest weather shows, complete with persistent rain and freezing temperatures, but it was fun none the less, at there's always a great atmosphere at the Mother's Day Classic.

 Pink being the colour of breast cancer awareness and the pink ribbon being the symbol, I thought I'd do a themed manicure for the classic this year, but it's also just a pretty basic pink ombre for any occasion. This is a pretty straight forward tutorial as I'm certainly no expert nail artist myself, but hopefully it might give someone some nail inspiration, if nothing else. I must also apologise for the bad lighting and quality of some of the photos as I had very limited time to put this together...I should also apologise for the horrible, tatty state of my fingers and nails... But on with the show!

You will need: 

A range of pink nail polish colours, from a pale pink to dark/hot pink, with probably 1-2 shades in between. 

A make-up sponge

A nail-art pen (although you could just as easily use a toothpick or small paintbrush).

I don't have the biggest range of nail polishes to work with, and I'm not a huge pink person (these are some I was given years ago), so my pink shades ended up being pale pink, a more pale plum sort of colour, coral and hot pink, which probably wasn't the best combination for creating a really gradual, nuanced ombre, but you have to work with what you've got! 

Step 1: Prep with a base coat and paint all your nails in your lightest shade of pink. As I was working with the pink ribbon theme, I chose one nail to be my 'accent' nail, so I didn't paint that one in the light pink, but more on that later...

Step 2: Sponge some of your second shade about a quarter of the way up your nail. I find it works best to sponge back and forth between the two colours you're blending a few times, so you don't end up with a really obvious line between the colours. Then, sponge on your third shade about halfway up the nail, followed by the forth shade, on the tip, making sure the blend in between.

Step 3: (for those going with the 'Pink Ribbon' mother's day theme) Paint your 'accent' nail in your darkest shade of pink. Allow to dry and draw on a pink ribbon design using a nail-art pen, or a toothpick and your lightest pink polish shade.
(Unfortunately, I hadn't allowed the nail-art pen to dry quite enough before I put the topcoat on, which explains the little crack in the design).

Step 4: Finish with a quick drying topcoat and you're done!

As I said, you could definitely get a much nicer ombre effect with a better range of pink than the ones I had to work with, although I think the coral added a great, intense brightness amongst the pinks. Let me know if you try this, or have any other, similar designs to share, I'm becoming a bit obsessed with nail-art and love finding new ideas!
Hope all the mothers out there are having a swell day!