Ana Sender Nail Inspo

Emma or I pinned this print onto our 'We Heart Inspiration' board on Pinterest a while ago. The print is from a lovely Spanish blog called Ana Sender. I loved the messy geometric style of it, and the simple monochrome colour theme with a splash of fresh mint.

This has been on my nail art to do list for a while and I finally got round to doing it. It took a little longer than I had expected as there were so many triangles to draw, however it wasn't that hard to do so the time flew by.

I started with two coats of Models Own HyperGel - White Light. This is a great white and fully opaque in two coats. The HyperGel colours are gorgeous and the finish is super shiny. The only hesitation I have about them is the same as all gel  effect polishes, the formula is thicker and can therefore be a little bit harder to work with, meaning I have to concentrate more on getting it right first time!!

I painted the tiny black triangles on with the tip of a small brush. At this point I was very glad the original print was a bit messy as it meant I didn't have to get them all perfectly straight and equal! I spaced out the triangles in the same way I do polka dots, making sure to leave enough room for the outlines.

 

For the outlines I used another Models Own polish - Top Turquoise. I was tempted to use a lighter mint colour as in the print, but I knew the white background would lighten the shade and was worried that a pastel mint would get a bit lost in the sea of white. Whilst painting the outlines I was glad to see my suspicions had been correct and the turquoise was appearing lighter and very close to the shade of the original print. Again I used a small brush to add on the outlines, and neatened up any errors with a white nail art pen at the end. A little secret - the Barry M nail art pens are wonderful for covering any errors or neatening things up, I use the white almost like tippex!!

 

I'm a bit sad that this photo came out so poorly as I love this design and it is definitely one of the best I've done recently. The pattern translates perfectly across into nail art and I hope it's one I'll get to do again. I'm thinking of mixing up the outline colours a bit, maybe some super bright neons when we get to summer!

Love,

I Inked Myself

Polishes: Barry M 'Strawberry Ice Cream', Barry M 'Shocking Pink', Barry M 'Pink Flamingo'

How cute is this little jellyfish? I bought some new stickers (yes. I am a saddo who still buys stickers at my age!) which included this little guy so I thought I would turn him into a nail art star! So cute. It took me what seemed like a gazillion times to do this. At first I used the light pink on all my nails but accidentally smudged the accent nail when seeing if it was dry. This happened a second time (doh!) and I gave up with the light pink and switched to the hot one. Then I drew the jellyfish on but my black nail pen splodged on the eye and I had to start over. Again. Sooooo frustrating. So no, this one isn't perfect either but I really couldn't give it another go as I was beginning to lose the will to live!

Have you ever had to re-start a manicure due to "technical issues"?

Hugs

Herschel Supply for Liberty

So Emma and I have fallen in love, no not with each other, with the gorgeous new Herschel Supply collection for Liberty. Ok, it's a backpack, probably not something you'd expect us to be swooning over, but come on, it's beautiful. Liberty prints are awesome, everyone knows this, so team them with classic Herschel design and you get brilliance. This inky Liberty print (Melly) comes in a few colours but I was particularly enticed by the mint, blue, pink and black pattern. The colours are so wonderful together and the result is a fresh but beautiful design. I was inspired to create nail art with these colours, and loosely based on the pattern.

As I haven't yet worked out how to create inky nail art I decided to go for a more graffiti/grunge pattern. I started with a white base and then used a dry brush to dab on mint green and pale blue across most of the nail. I then added pink and black specks on top and smudged these around with the dry brush. A really easy design to create and it gives a lovely overall look.  

I wasn't sure about these at first but received lots of compliments on them, so they must have been better than I thought!

Love,

When Life Gives You Lemons

When I saw these River Island shoes I instantly wanted to recreate the print on my nails. Whilst it was tempting to try a different colour combination for these nails I just loved the original too much to stray. 

I created this look in the same way as my Aloha nails. Tutorial here. I painted on my base colour (Barry M's 'Cobalt Blue') and then drew the lemons and leaves with my white nail art pen. I then filled in with the yellow (Barry M's limited edition yellow from last summer) and green (Max Factor's 'Cactus Green'). I used my white nail art pen for some highlights on the lemons and then outlined everything using a black nail art pen.

I love a bit of fruity nail art but tend to stick to pineapples and bananas so it was nice for a bit of a change. I really liked how these turned out and was devastated to have to take them off but I will be definitely be wearing them again in summer (if I can persuade Jo to do my right hand). 

Hugs,

Blue Eyes

Eye based nail art seems to be having a mini revolution at the moment. Emma has done two designs featuring eyes on the blog already (here and here), so I thought I would join in the fun! These big blue peepers were originally inspired by a WAH Nails design, but I adapted it a little. I've also seen lots of eye designs by the folks over at I Scream Nails.

The eyes were super simple to create:

                  1. Paint on a semi circle of white at the tip of your nail

                  2. Add a smaller semi circle of colour to form the iris

                  3. Add a third semi circle in black for the pupil and add a white reflection dot

                  4. Outline the eye and add lashes using a black nailart pen

I started with a couple of coats of Barry M Limited Edition multicolour glitter. The base for this polish is clear, so the result was a semi transparant glitter background for the eyes, which I love! The white, blue and black nail art pen are also Barry M shades.

I love these nails so much, can't get over how cute and silly they are. I think my eyes look a little surprised!

Love,

I Predict An Earthquake Up In Here

I don't know about you guys but I have a notebook for all of my nail art ideas. I pop all manner of things in there - straight out nail designs, colour combinations to try, prints I like, inspiring song words, all sorts! My main use for the notebook is for inspiration when I get a little bit stuck. You know how it is, you're on a roll, popping out nail designs left, right, and centre and then all of a sudden you hit a wall, get brain freeze, whatever, the ideas just dry up. This happened to me last week so it was back to the notebook to try out some of the ideas I had collected. 

This design is one of those that's an oldie but a goodie. I think I originally saw it at WAH nails called 'Earthquake'. I used two Models Own polishes: Apple Pie and Bora Bora. This look is relatively easy to accomplish. Paint your nails half with one colour and half the other - this doesn't have to be particularly neat as your 'crack' will cover any overlap. Wait to dry and use a white nail art pen or polish and brush to draw pattern down the middle. Et voila! - earthquake nails. 

What do you do when inspiration runs dry?

Hugs

Queen Of Hearts

So Valentine's is over and done with for another year, but we aren't ready to say goodbye to the hearts just yet. In fact, we probably never will be, sorry! Hearts and nails just go so well together, there are at least 3 heart-based nail designs floating around my head at any one time. 

I've seen a ton of negative space nail art around recently which inspired me to try this design. This is almost the exact opposite of one of our earlier posts where I left an empty heart shape inside a red outline, have a look here (please excuse my awfully uneven nails, eek!)

This time instead of Bright Red I used Barry M's Gelly Red which is a thicker, darker polish. I find that most red polishes are thin and opaque, which means they need three coats and I'm way too lazy for that! I was glad to find that the Gelly polish was opaque with two coats, or maybe even one if you apply thickly. The colour of this polish is not as bright as my previous reds. Although this is only a subtle difference it makes it a lot more wearable. An opinion I'm sticking to even if my colleague re-named it 'Prostitute Red' - I chose to ignore her (thanks TDS). 

I love this mani but think I prefer the negative space on the inside of the nail with polish surrounding it as I kept thinking I'd chipped my nails, and a few others mentioned that too.

What's your favourite negative space mani you've seen recently?

Love,