More bridal nail sets!

Finally, all dust has settled and I can now post photos!

The first three - (i) Laced (ii) Royal Princess (i) Crowned Queen

Next three - (i) Floral Punk (ii) Quirks and Dots (iii) Jewelled

And the last three - (i) Lace and ties (ii) Star! (iii) Aqua Mermaid

Originally, I wanted all nals to be this!

And the ring finger to feature this!

But alas, I did not manage to find time for all that, and because I went over to Hong Kong to get married, I was lacking a full equipment for the works!

It's a girl thing

Got myself some new nails, the red nails are pretty and all but the polish from Rubi wasn't good at all :(

Here's a short review of the red Rubi nail polish:
1. Too translucent, you'd need at least 5 coats or something before it looks opaque
2. It peels. Literally. From the ends you can see the nail polish un-rolling itself off the nails
3. It washes away easily, the sides of the nails started to lose the red coat after a while
4. It's sticky. I'm particular about how the nail feels, and with Rubi it just feels like it'd stick on to my skin when I touch it
5. It's a really pretty red though, with a highlighter tinge. Very striking.

And here are my new nails. It's so girly!





Here's a small tip: To clean the cuticle skin from nail polish, you may wish to cut the top of your cotton sticks in half, producing a sharp tip. The plastic tip in the cotton stick will be revealed once the cotton is chipped off and you can use it to clean those hard-to-reach corners :)



Here's my flickr showreel with the nail work done over the past two months :)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62721683@N08/show/

Visions of Love, Passion

2nd Palette Experiment - Visions of Love, Passion

Colors used for this palette:

#01 #02 #03 

#04  #05 #06

#07

#01 - Dark purple (Sally Hanson)
#02 - Bright Red (Rubi)
#03 - Bloody Red (Sasa)
#04 - Metallic Pink
#05 - Black (Faceshop)
#06 - Gold (Sasa)
#07- White (Chatmingon)

 

Done hating, due loving

New brush tool for nail art (Daiso)

Experimenting with this, but it was not very helpful

My 4 most used surgical tools - needle, cotton sticks, dotter, brush

Work in progres

Love Blossoms #03, #04, #05 (Steps)

Infected Love - #4 & #05 (Steps)

My Heart All Cut Up - #02 & #07 (Steps)

Swirling Love - Every color (Steps)

Young Little Love - #02 & #04 (Steps)

Seduction - #03, #05, #06 & #07 (Steps)

Love is a disease - #02 & #07 (Steps)

True Bloody Love - #03, #05, #07 (Steps)

Love like a lifeline - #03 & #07 (Steps)

Love Prints - #02 & #07 (Steps)

Love is golden - #03 & #06 (Steps)

 

Unexpected Guest during experimentation

What I did:

Love Blossoms: Using a metallic pink base, I picked up some black on the needle to paint out branches. Adding a dot of bloody red with the dotter or brush, the flowers are added and immediately you have the design
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Infected Love: Like Love Blossoms, using the metallic pink for base and black on needle for vein design
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My Heart All Cut Up - Bright red for base, then using white you paint the top of a heart at the tips and the pointed shape of the heart on top of the nail. The inverted colors make it feel like the heart (in white) is cut out
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Swirling Love -  A little more complicated, but start first with a dark purple base. I basically laid out all colors on paper (like the first image set with all the colors) and with a brush I just mix different colors to add swirls. Sometimes I mix #03 and #05, sometimes #02 & #06. At the end of it, you have multi layers of different color.
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Young Little Love - Start with a metallic pink base, then add the french twist of bright red, with three pink dots for an over-the-top cuteness. Just like all young, puppy love. Sweetened and too cute
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Seduction - Gold base, with bloody red forming a v shape at the mid-section of the nails. Paint the bottom of the V-shape bloody red and then add in the black outlines. A little white to the black laces will make it look more defined
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Love is a disease - White base, with bright red inverted heart near the tip. Add in dots and you'd have the design look like the above pattern
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True Bloody Love - Inspired by the vampire love stories. Using white as base, and bloody red for the blood trickle design. Mix bloody red with a pinch of black and make the gradient paint upwards from the tip of the nails
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Love like a Lifeline - Simple bloody red base and a white on needle nailart
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Love Prints - Bright red base with a white strip down the nail. Add little hearts to the white, first make two dots like Mickey Mouse ears and then using a brush, paint the rest of the heart shape
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Love is golden - Two coats of bloody red and start brushing gold paint from the tip of the nails. Have in intensely concentrated at the tip and slowly fade it upwards. Like a gradient
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Hope you like this experiment brought to you by Nailify.
Next week - Green Eyed Monster and Its Jealousy

Nails of Nature

After staring at work panels constantly pinning the colors of blue, pink, yellow and green on my screen and into my brain, I became hopeless infected. The brain starts to tick that way, and the colors take over every shred of common sense left until nothing remains.

So I decided to give myself a treat during the weekends and wanted to paint the town, I mean the nails red. Or the colors picked out below -

That's right! Those colors are haunting me! But I only realized it after finishing a 40 minutes nail-painting session.

What you need-
- Deep blue, Hot Pink and Sunny Yellow (all from FaceShop)
- Jade Green from Etude House
- Base Coat and Top Coat of your choice
- Cotton Sticks (ear-cleaning types)
- Nail polish Remover
- A4 Scrape Paper (except newspaper)



Beauty Regime:
1. Coat nail with 2 layers of Base Coat
2. Color the nails green, evenly
3. Add a French Twist of blue at the edge of the nails
4. Dab a swash of yellow on the paper and pick up some with the cotton stick
5. Dot the nails, at random positions for each nail to point where you would paint flowers
6. Dab another swash of pink and pick up some with the cotton stick
7. Using it like a brush, dab pink onto the nails to create the design of a flower
8. Don't wait too long before the green dries properly, or step 5-7 would prove to be difficult
9. Finish with 2 layers of Top Coat for each nail
10. You can refresh with another Top Coat after every three days if you wish to keep these nails for a longer period of time



And you're done! More photos here

Rio, Amigo!

I did this in less than 15 minutes.

Mainly because I'm too lazy a person to do any manicurial stuff on my stubby toe nails :(

This is my Rio-palette, inspired by that parrot movie


Deep blue, Bright Yellow and Highlighter Pink, all from FaceShop.

Here's how you do it:
1. Apply yellow over the entire toenail, as it is the lightest color of the three
2. Make a mental note to divide the nail's surface area into three segments
3. Apply pink on either segment on each nail, randomly
4. Apply blue on either of the remaining segments, randomly
5. Finish with 2 layers of top-coat


And done!

French Twist

You've heard of a French Tip, but have you heard of a French Twist for the nails? This sweet design is inspired by some nail artists sharing their awesome works on Youtube, which is a wealth of inspirations by the way.



So how do you work the French Twist? First off, here's what you need.

Needed:
- 2 Nail Polish Colors (Pink from FaceShop and White from Chatmignon)
- Cotton Sticks (the kind you use to clean your ears)
- Base coat of your choice
- Top Coat of your choice
- Nail Polish Remover
- Cotton paper
- Paper you no longer need (except newspaper)

The Beauty Regime:
1. Check out how to prep nails for nail polish application here
2. With base coat properly applied in step 1, apply your first coat of base color (pink in this example)
3. Make it a double coat, you need a smooth coat for the other steps to work properly
4. Take out your white polish (or other colors if you wish to be more daring, but white is classic French and works nicely with many colors)
5. Position your working hand at a slanted angle, and once you feel your steady hand set it, lash your brush across the nail to create the slanted effect
6. Chances are you won't make a pretty coat with just one try, so make sure you do not have too much white polish each time you repeat step 5 till you have a nice proper coat of white tip
7. Take the base color you used, and smear some on the paper
8. Using the cotton stick, pick up some color and apply three dots across the slanted white tip
9. You can clean up any mess using another cotton stick or cotton paper to pick up some nail-polish remover and wipe clean the messiness
10. Once all is done, top it off with 2 coats of top-coat. Remember to refresh your top coat every three days or so if you want it to last



And you're done!

More photos here.