Pick N Mix Nails Catch up post!

Apologies for my absence, the holidays are always super busy in the Painted Claws household.

Instead of doing a series of posts for my catch up manis for the 52 week challenge, I'm putting them together in one giant post!

Pick N Mix Week 2 -3 colour Gradient / Pink

Week 2 of the Pick N Mix challenge, and the prompts this week are 3 colour gradient and Pink.

My nails aren't really long enough for 3 colour gradients at the moment - I cut them right back when I went on holiday at the end of august and they've been quite slow in growing. I also have quite short nail beds, so its not the best.

Instead of a 3 colour gradient including pink, I went for a pink ombre - I have far more pinks than I thought I did!

Nub Club - Christmas Reindeer

A few weeks ago I bought some gorgeous little deer charms from She Sells Seashells, but there was one little problem - my talons were (at the time) too big for them! I was devastated. The poor things would have just looked completely lost on my nails.

So the nail breakage was kinda good, as it means I can finally get my cute little (rein)deers on to my nails!

Hallowe'en 2013 - Trick or Treat

Mmmm candy.

Now to be perfectly honest, I was a bit stuck on what to do for all five nails. You see - I never went round knocking on doors and demanding tasty treats as a child. We just straight up asked for cash. We never really got that much, or at least not much per house - perhaps 20p or so - but as a small child that might as well be a fortune. In fact, I can only remember being given something edible once, and that was because the very nice man in the house had just cooked cupcakes but had no change left.

Hallowe'en 2013 - Things that go BUMP in the Night...

What better to go bump in the night than...

Frankenstein's Monster!

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.

Pink Wednesdays

Time for another Pink Wednesday!

This week we've got a design inspired by The Nailasaurus' Waterfall Manicures for Pink Wednesday, and I had so much fun raiding my inexplicably large stash of pink polishes for this one!

The base for this is OPI Step Right Up, a beautiful pale pink which is unfortunately super sheer. This is four fairly thick coats to get it opaque.

The waterfall itself is done in OPI Kiss Me On My Tulips, Orly Sterling Silver Rose, Orly Lola and Essie Big Spender.

I love the look of this mani and I've been wanting to try it for ages, so what better opportunity than a pink wednesday!

An InLinkz Link-up

Pokemon Challenge Gen II, Round 12 - Ice

Ice is yet another pokemon type I don't use (unlness there's a dragon pokemon trainer in the elite four). I'm such a simple soul when it comes to pokemon, haha. So this week's pokemon is another in the "aww isn't it cute" category - Swinub.

I used swinub as an excuse to try out my new BarryM Matte in Mocha, which comes out as a beautiful milk chocolate colour with a great waxy finish. Two coats were used in the nails above, however I totally could have gotten away with one as its such a pigmented polish and it dries lightning fast.

The glitter used for the snow on my other nails is OPI Pirouette my Whistle which looks awesome matted, I love it.

An InLinkz Link-up

Pokemon Challenge Gen II, Round 11 - Rock

Carrying on on the theme of "Pokemon I love that aren't quite a full picnic", I present to you....

SUDOWOODO.

Green on Green Half Moons

I picked up Orly's Lucky Duck and OPI's Live and Let Die in a blog sale last week and I totally couldn't resist using them.

Lucky Duck (the half moons) is an amazing bold green creme, with great colour. I looooooove this colour. Three coats for full opacity but you could probably get away with two careful coats - I have to admit I'm not entirely the most delicate when doing my nails. Thank god for acetone and a clean up brush!

The rest of the nail is done in Live and Let Die, one of the OPI Bond collection. A dark, glittery, foresty green, this polish is a one coater and dries in fairly reasonable time too. The glittery shimmer in this just lights up when the light catches it, it takes the polish from normal but pretty to amazing.

The half moons were done with paper hole reinforcement stickers, bargain from WHSmith. I love halfmoon manis, they look so classy and awesome.

Whats your thoughts on the green on green?

An InLinkz Link-up

ER31DC Week 30 - Inspired by a Tutorial

I was originally going to do gradients for this, until I realised that that was a bit of a cop out because I love them and they're dead easy. Also I had no inspiration other than "do a gradient". So I went surfing through the great and mighty google to see what I could find in the way of tutorials there.

I found this super easy tutorial on Nail Art Express for corset nails, and I immediately knew what I was doing.

These were done with a base of Rimmel's Princess Pink for a nice nude background, with the corsets themselves done in OPIs Meet Me On The Star Ferry. Meet Me on the Star Ferry was part of my birthday present from Mr Painted Claws and is an absolutely amazing polish - a metallic, muted pink that looks super classy and nice.

Birthday Polish Haul

I turned 27 last wednesday, and I got some amazing polish-based presents from  Mr Painted Claws and from my bestie and Chief Enabler Rachael (of Racho's Nail Love).

Just to warn everyone in advance, this is gonna be a fairly pic heavy post - and these are just the bottle shots! I haven't even gotten time to think about swatching the lot!

ER31DC Week 23 - Inspired by a Movie

Apologies for the massive lateness of this post, but I'm off on my holidays on sunday and last minute panic is in full swing in the Painted Claws household. And by that I mean my other half keeps telling me not to worry and I keep writing insane lists and losing things.

This mani was inspired entirely by Rachael over at Racho's Nail Love and one of the mani's she did for a recent challenge - Comic-Con Geek Week Day 3.

I love Stargate. I remember watching the film so many years ago and absolutely adoring it. I even had the video game for the Mega drive back in the mid-90s. I was terrible at it. But the thing that captivated me most and the one thing that ties all of the various versions together is the gate itself.

ER31DC Week 22 - Inspired by a Song

Nothing jumped out at me to do for this one, so I decided to stick my iTunes on and let it decide for me. Thankfully my music collection is varied beyond most people's wildest imagination, and the first song it threw up on shuffle was this beauty...

Swatched - OPI Animal-istic

OPI Animal-istic is part of the Muppets Collection, am orange leaning red polish filled with sparkle, shine and magenta-red glass fleck/shimmer.

Sad thing is, I don't think I like it?

Fun With Glitter

As I was playing nice and trying to figure out what base colour & glitter combo to use for my 31 day challenge nails on saturday, I stumbled upon two polishes that I've never really used.

OPI's Thanks A Windmillion is a new purchase from the joy that is Fragrance Direct (OPIs for £3.99? How could I resist!) and is a beautiful pale sage green, wonderfully classy looking and pretty.
Orly's Halo is a super sparkly and super packed gold and silver glitter in a clear base that can easily be used as a full coverage polish - see this post for swatches of it and the other two polishes I got in the trio a few months back.
With one of these polishes being new and the other being a glitter, neither had really been used for anything yet, so I decided to stick 'em together and see what happened - classy, muted green with super bling gold-and-silver.

Long and the short of it - I think its amazing.

Swatched - Dutch you just love OPI?

I do indeed love OPIs. What I don't love, however, is their RRP. £11 for polish??!? Lordy. At that price I'd only own one or two, if I was feeling expensive that month.

So when I found a local stall selling OPIs for £3.99, I lept at the chance.

One of the beauties that I picked up was 'Dutch you just love OPI?' which, despite its mildly silly name, is a wonderful medium purple with a gentle golden shimmer.

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 10 - Gradient

I love a good gradient, me.

Since I figured out how to do it I've done loads - check out my gradient tag. Its a great background to other manis, such as striping tape or spots and its soooooo easy to do its unreal. Plus every time I wear one to work my co-workers are dead amazed haha.

The colour scheme in this mani was inspired by one thing - the sun. Its finally made an appearance here in the refrigerator known as the north east of England, and thus everyone has gone absolutely mental and decided to wear shorts and have BBQs. We take what we can get here in Newcastle - enjoy it while you can, because it may not come back for another six months.

Pokemon Challenge Week 14

I'm far too excited about this week to produce justification of my pokemon choice. There ain't enough Ghost pokemon to have much of a choice from in the first generation, but they're all awesome anyway so it doesn't matter.

GHASTLY!