Pink Wednesday

Welcome to yet another Pink Wednesday!

We've had glequins, stripes and a waterfall so far, this week is the turn of a fairly understated mani with one of my favourite techniques - dots.

ER31DC Week 11 - Polka Dots

The very first post on this blog was a polka dot mani, many moons ago (Ok, it was only in January, but it feels like ages.). I didn't even have dotting tools back then, I just did the dots freehand with a little paintbrush I pilfered from my Other Half's miniatures painting kit. I love the cute, vaguely retro look of a dotticure.

I decided to use my two newest additions to my stash - A England's St George and Morgan Le Fay, courtesy of Chloe on the Facebook group UK Only Polish & Beauty Swaps (I love this group but its totally tempting to bankrupt me!).

I'm so glad I have dotting tools now, doing this with a paintbrush is so hard, haha.

Work Week Nails - Spotty!

I actually made an effort for once for my nails for work, thanks to the three day weekend we've just had here in the UK.

Managed to pick up OPI French Quarter For Your Thoughts for only £3.99 and really wanted to give it a try as I'm quite fond of grey polishes at the minute.

Colours used for the spots were Sinful Colors Savage and Be Happy, as well as Essie Mojito Madness and Asda George Quick Dry Polish in Cloudless Sky.

ER31DC - Week 3

Week 3 of the Extra Relaxed 31 Day Week Challenge, this week's colour is yellow.

I only own 2 yellow polishes - Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure in Yellow Kitty, which is a soft, pastel yellow; and BarryM Yellow, which looks like an American Taxi. I was fairly stumped with what to do this week to go with the yellow, until I remembered a really old website layout I created whilst in uni. Mid-grey, sky blue and sunflower yellow halftone gradients all over the place, with shy blue and sunflower yellow highlights on white text. It wasn't as awful as it sounds, honest. But when I remembered that, I pulled out my trusty dotting tools and created this...

ER31DC - Week 2

Ah ha! Caught up.

Week 2 is Orange, a colour I was always convinced I didn't suit until I stopped being afraid of wearing anything that wasn't black. I love orange on nails, and I'm pondering doing a super 70's orange/white/brown mani at some point because that is one of my favourite colour combos ever.

I decided to do an orange skittle as I really couldn't decide what I wanted to do or which orange I wanted to do it with. I found I had quite a few different oranges today, ranging from quite pastel to pretty damn in-your-face.

Spring Pastels

Easter is coming, and spring is coming, and I've finally given in and busted out the pastels.

I'm gonna be completely honest - my thumb is hiding because I managed to take a chunk out of the blue by incautiously shoving my hand in to my pocket before the 6 million coats of blue had dried properly.

The polishes used in this delightfully cute mani were - Sally Hansens Complete Salon Manicure in Yellow Kitty, Revlon Blue Lagoon, with spots in BarryM Matt white.

The colours on these two polishes are absolutely adorable, especially when covered with my matt topcoat, however there is one major downside with both - they're streaky and take loads of coats to go opaque. And by loads, I mean like five or six regular coats for Blue Lagoon and four for Yellow Kitty.

Blue Lagoon, when not matted, does have its good points as it has a beautiful silvery blue shimmer in it. 

New BarryM Gellys

The new BarryM Gelly Hi-Shine colours came out Feb 13th in Superdrug - Lychee, Greenberry, Papaya and Dragonfruit. Being not the biggest fan of pinks I opted out of buying Dragonfruit, a bubblegum-pink shocker, and picked myself up the other three. I was massively excited to use them in a mani... and then never really got around to it.

I've used Lychee plenty in my Pokemon Challenge nails, its a beautiful beige-cream colour and perfect for quite a few pokemon, but I've finally gotten around to using my favourite of the lot - Greenberry.

Greenberry is a beautiful light green-y turquoise - not as blue as it appears in the pic above - that dries to a super high shine like the rest of the Gelly range. It goes on quite streaky at first but soon evens out, and would be perfect on the second coat if laid on slightly thickly.

I was originally going to substitute Lychee for Papaya, which is the coral orange/pink, but as much as I love the colour I couldn't bring myself to not use Lychee. Might try some sort of gradient with them tomorrow for work?

Perfect summery solution to the completely unexpected three inches of snow that fell today. I really should watch the weather forecast more...

Done with BarryM Gelly Greenberry, Lychee on my ring finger and LA Colours Art Deco in Black for the stripe.

Snow!

It snowed, this week. For England, it snowed lots. At the worst point our street was about half a foot deep in snow, which I'm sure doesn't sound like much to inhabitants of Northern Europe or the northern end of North America, we're far more used to just being wet.

So, in honour of the odd weather - snowy nails!

These really were the product of a sunday trapped in the house by the weather. Both the snow and the snowman (who I have named Armand for some reason) were painted free hand with my teeny little paintbrush. The brush I'm using at the moment is just something we had lying around the house as the other half used to paint Warhammer miniatures - its a Citadel standard with shortish bristles so not much good for nice neat stripes but not bad for spots and actual painting.

Colours used were George Quick Drying Nail Varnish in Dazzle for the main colour, BarryM white for the snow, and little bits of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Rapid Red, Models Own Pro Jack's Black and BarryM Block Orange for the snowman's details - yes, he even has an orange carrot nose.

I have to admit that the main colour is just a cheap polish I bought ages ago for £1 from Asda, but it turned out to be an absolutely gorgeous shimmery navy. Formula for the polish itself is a little on the gloopy side, but that may be because I've left it while a while before I used it.

Spotty!

I love spotty things. I also love stripy things, but I've got fairly shaky hands and no long striping brush so I figured it was best to stick to what I could do pending the procurement of a nice set of long striping brushes.

I got a triple pack of Essie the other day from TK Maxx - three bottles of what I suspect to be Forever Yummy, but sadly they have no identifying mark on the bottles and the labels they do have have no barcode or anything. I'm very fond of reds, especially the less orangey end of the red spectrum. I'm kinda convinced, although I'm really not sure if I'm right in this, that I don't suit the orange/coral colours, so over the years I've ended up owning a lot of very similar shades of red.