Nail Polish Organisation

I never really kept my nail polishes organised nicely and neatly because I never really had anywhere to put them all. However, recently this all changed when I bought a shelf exclusively for my nail polishes, I chose a shelf made by String.

This meant I finally could organise all my nail polishes nicely and in a way that it would be easy to find whatever I was looking for.

 I decided to go for colour coding rather than organising by brand and I think that was the best way to do it! 

The nail polishes are lined up 3 deep. No more time wasted searching for the right colour!

I have a lot of pinks!

Anyone have any better ways of organising their polishes?

Thanks for reading!

M

Midsummer Dream

Being half swedish and going to a Midsummer celebration it was of course vital to paint my nails accordingly! I thought about what would really represent Swedish midsummer and naturally I came to the conclusion I needed flowers and Swedish flags! I decided to go for daisy style flowers on a blue background as that felt more summery and a bit more Swedish than other flower manis I've created before.

Summery and Swedish!

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This was easy to do - the Swedish flags were probably the harder bits, I included a picture of the mani pre-swedish flag as I think this would be cute for any time of year without it, not just midsummer!

Pre-Swedish Flag

I also made prinsesstarta cupcakes!

Thanks for reading!

M

Matte and Gloss Leopard Print

I've done a few different variations on leopard print nails, and this is a very subtle version that I came up with, matte and gloss black leopard print.
This manicure was quite a hard one to get good pictures of, I hopefully have managed to show the leopard print here, but trust me, the effect is much better in real life!

In order to create this mani, I painted my nails with a couple of layers of black nail polish as my basecoat, waited for it to dry then added a matte topcoat. Once that had dried, I painted on the leopard pattern with a nail art brush, using a gloss topcoat nail polish.

I love this mani, though I must say, with all matte polish I've used, the matte effect seems to dull down with time - especially if you use a moisturiser regularly - so this is not a long lasting mani!

Any tips for how to keep a matte mani matte?

Thanks for reading!

M

All Hallows' Eve

So yes, I know this is a little late for a Halloween post (a lot late!!) but I still wanted to share the nail art I had going on for Halloween because I loved it and I LOVE Halloween! I actually did two different manis, one for the build up to Halloween and one for Halloween itself.

The Pre-Halloween Mani

Bloody Talons

Sorry for the terrible picture quality, I forgot to get a good picture and just ended up taking one at work! I had seen this mani style quite a bit, usually the paired with pastel colours or made to look like ice-cream cones, and I thought it could be quite a fun Halloween mani if I had my nails look like they were dripping blood. I quite liked the outcome and may do it again next halloween - though as you can see I evidently didn't give the red enough time to dry before I put a topcoat on - which meant the red bled a bit into the undercoat.

 The Halloween Mani

 For my Halloween nails I decided on black (of course!) with three accent nails - one cobweb, and a two nail skeleton. 

Cobwebs and Skeletons!

Whole Skeleton

I used a black undercoat as my base, and for the spooky accents I used a white nail art pen. To create the cobweb, I drew three straight lines originating from the same point going outwards, I then connected those with slightly curved lines between each of the initial ones to create a cobweb like look.

The skeleton was a little harder to paint, I started with the spine, skull and pelvis, then added the arms ribs and legs (not very anatomically correct though, hehe!).

I loved both these manicures, and I am already excited thinking about what to do this year! Anybody got any good Halloween ideas yet?

Thanks for reading!

M

Pastel Fun

Before I ever ventured into real nail art, I have played around with painting each of my nails a different colour.  I think a even a single accent nail in a different colour can really pull a manicure forward and make it a little more exciting. This is a more subtle way to do nail art, and I feel more appropriate if you don't want to go too far with it or can't for work etc.

I had usually done multi coloured nails picking one  colour, and then painting my nails variations of that colour. This time I went a little bolder and chose just pastel as the theme, with completely different colours on each nail.

I love pastel nail polish and I love this mani. I would like to get hold of a pastel yellow and green, I think it would be nice to switch out the pink on my pinky for a colour like that.

Thanks for reading!

M

Mini Polka

I have played around with my dotting tools quite a bit, and decided to try a slightly more difficult polka dotted pattern (just smaller dots really). I selected black as a basecoat and paired it with a soft pink, as I wanted it to almost appear as black and white, but maybe a little warmer in colour. Please ignore my cuticle on my thumb, TERRIBLE!

I liked how this mani reminded me of close up pictures of fly's eyes, (weird huh?). 
It was difficult to keep the polka dots uniform, and I think occasionally I ended up with slightly larger dots, as you can probably see in the pictures. Despite that, I loved this mani, I think it was quite eye catching from far away, and close up quite impressive. It wasn't too difficult to do, but required quite a bit of time and concentration as well as a steady hand! Well worth the effort though!

Thanks for reading!

M

Geo

This is my first attempt at using taping to create a geometric multicoloured pattern. It was a slow and quite difficult process, and I can’t say that I loved the outcome, but I am most definitely going to be trying it again, as I know this mani has lots of potential.

As with all manis I do that require taping, I use just regular tape that I cut into strips, as I have yet to find a nail tape that is not too sticky (I feel like really sticky tape tends to mess up manis I do with them).  However, this means that often times the width of any stripes are not quite the same, so I am still on the hunt for perfect nail tape that doesn’t hold on too strong.

Anyway, I do quite like the finished result, I like the colours I put together here, and I am excited to try this again with a new colour palette.

Thanks for reading!

M