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!

Pastel Easter Egg Manicure Tutorial

Tomorrow's April 1st, which means it will be Easter faster than you can say 'hot cross buns', so how about an Easter Egg manicure tutorial? 

Step 1: Gather your colours and materials. I'm using Mellow Yellow by Sally Hansen, Shine On by Kit, and Sweet Pea by Australis. I thought pastels would look cute for Easter eggs (although the yellow might be a little bright to really be considered a pastel. I would also have liked a white to do some dots, but alas I didn't have one.) I've also got scotch tape, a Sally Hansen nail art pen, a tooth pick and a small paintbrush (although I imagine a nail striper would have been better, but alas again, I don't own one). 

 Step 2: Paint all your nails your chosen base colour and allow to dry (I'm so very messy with my nail polish, hehe). And do make sure that they are COMPLETELY dry, to avoid making the mistake that I made, and prematurely putting tape on my nail. What a mess that was!

Step 3: Take a piece of scotch tape and cut curved shape that roughly follows the curve of your nail, to create the stripes of the Easter egg. Place about a fifth of the way down your nail and press the edges firmly down so the second colour of polish won't seep underneath. 

Step 4: Paint on your second colour and gently peel off the tape. The next thing I did was flip the tape around so I could paint a second curved stripe at the top of my nail, as pictured above. 

 Step 5: More stripes and dots! I used a paintbrush to create this middle stripe, so it's not as neat, but you could definitely do it with tape if you had the patience, which I didn't, haha. Using my third colour, I then added in dots using a toothpick.

Step 6: Experiment! The great thing about Easter eggs is they come in all sorts of gorgeous colours and patterns, so I had a bit of fun varying the size of the stripes, and got my nail art pen involved to do some zigzags as well. 

 Step 7: Seal with a quick drying top coat and enjoy!

Apologies for the messiness of my nails. I tend to be incapable of painting my nails without also painting a good portion of my skin as well. Sadly, my supply of nail polish colours is fairly limited, so I'm not too sure about this result. I think some more delicate pastel shades such as pinks and blues might have looked more Eastery, so I'd love to see if anyone tries this out in different colours!