Monochrome Party Nails

*** Some of the items in this post were provided free of charge for honest review ***

Born Pretty Store kindly provided a few items to me for review in the middle of last month - this is the first of 3 posts showing you these items and how I've chosen to show them off.

Pick N Mix Week 5 - 80s / 3 dark colours

I was a bit torn this week, but as winter is coming (or so says Ned Stark...) I opted for 80s - dark colours will get used enough in the next couple of months anyway. They can wait.

Neons, on the other hand, can not.

Here be Dragons...

Having this weekend off polish making has actually given me time to paint my nails, and thus there will actually be some posts in the next week or so!

These nails were actually what I wore to work last week - quickly thrown together on sunday night before bed, with the colours being picked by Mr Painted Claws.

Base is Nails Inc New York Noir - since I got this as a freebie in Glamour magazine a month or two ago this has been my absolute best black polish. Its actually a little devastating that I've only got two bottles as its so much better than the other black polishes I've used. The only one I've found that comes close is Sinful Colors Black on Black.

The edge highlights are A England Dragon on my pointer, middle and pinky and Models Own Bronze Rage on my ring finger.

I love tape mani's, they're so easy to do!

What does everyone think? Like the colour combo?

Pokemon Challenge Gen II, Round 16 - Dark Type

Dark was first introduced as a type in Gen II, and since then theres usually at least one pokemon in my party that knows a dark-type move as its so strong against psychic.

I'm quite fond of all of the dark type pokemon introduced in Gen II, but very little beats an eeveelution.

Umbreon!

Hallowe'en 2013 - Gothic

Slightly delayed Hallowe'en post - unfortunately I've been a bit under the weather the past week and a bit so nail were put on a bit of a back burner whilst I attempted to sleep it off.

Hallowe'en 2013 prompt 4 - Gothic

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

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

Frankenstein's Monster!

Hallowe'en 2013 - Pumpkins & Jack O'Lanterns

I'm terrible at pumpkin carving, mainly because I hate the smell of pumpkin! Not the best at Hallowe'en, but I love looking at other people's carved pumpkins - some of them are absolute works of art!

Mine, however, are slightly childish. Like my actual pumpkins would be!

Hallowe'en 2013 - Scary Movies

This was a bad prompt to pick.

I'm terrible with scary movies - heck, I was terrified by The Little Mermaid as a child - so I went for the most Hallowe'en appropriate film I knew... Nightmare before Christmas.

Pokemon Challenge Gen II, Round 10 - Psychic

WOBBUFFET!

Wobbuffet is painted in BarryM Cyan Blue, with details in the usual Models Own Pro Jack's Black and Sinful Colors Snow me White

Somehow I've ended up with two copies of the same picture for this mani, rather than more than one useful picture... so I'm gonna leave you with a GIF.

An InLinkz Link-up

ER31DC Week 29 - Inspired by the Supernatural

I did try and do mermaids for this one, but only after I had painstakingly painted my nails with a super sheer polish did I realise that I did not actually own the fish scale stamping image that I thought I did. And then hand drawn scales came out badly.

So I went on to do the obvious... Vampires.

Not the crappy sparkly kind though. I grew up watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer with proper vampires in it.

Guest Post - Rachael from Racho's Nail Love

Hi all! I'm Rachael from Rachos Nail Love. I'm here while Becca is absent, soaking up the beautiful sun on her holiday as she kindly let me do a guest post for her! By let me, I think I bugged her a lot and just told her I was doing one.. but it's a good one I promise - can't have anything less than the best for my best friend :)

So anyway - here I go! I started to rack my brains about what sort of nails to do. I had a few ideas of what I would like to try, but as you will know - ideas don't always pan out!

So my first idea was negative space nails. I also love skittles / skittlettes where you have a variety of nail designs with one common aspect like colour, theme etc. And I really love studs, and especially stud crosses. So I thought I would try and throw them all together in a black and gold combination. I loved it until I realised I didn't have any gold tape to finish off my negative spaces. Thats okay - I'll try and freehand it. WRONG! Totally ruined it. Here's what it turned out like. No good.. don't know why I even stuck my name on it!

But I loved the cross, so I decided to keep that and start my other nails again. Bye bye negative space! So I had a perusal of bloglovin, pinterest and instagram and then I remembered some beautiful nails I saw over at Paulina's Passions. I loved them so much, so I thought I would try some splatter nails again. 

So here are my final version nails. I had to add studs, because I love them soooo much at the moment! These ones are from a wheel from Born Pretty Store. I do have to say sorry though as by the time I was finally happy with my nails, the light wasn't great, so the photos are a little dark! Sorry!

What do you think? The colours I used are my new favourites - Deborah Lippmann Modern Love and Essie Naughty Nautical along with my trusty Sinful Colors Black on Black and Snow Me White.

Well, hope you enjoyed my blog post - thank you again to my wonderful friend Becca for letting me do a guest post for her, I hope she loves it too! :) 

Rachael xxx

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...

Quickie Mani - Coral & Black

This colour combination has been everywhere this summer so I figured, while I had Catrice's Pimp My Shrimp on from its swatch the other day, that I should give it a try...

From thumb to pinky we have - Born Pretty Store Heart shaped gold stud, freehand painted heart in Models Own Pro Jack's Black, freehand lines and (slightly obscured by the light shine) medium round gold stud, half Jack's Black & half Pimp My Shrimp with gold square studs, and black freehand tip.

Base colour for everything was, of course, Pimp My Shrimp, and all of the studs came from this collection of nail art studs, from the wonderful Born Pretty Store.

ER31DC Week 19 - Galaxy Nails

Oh my word these were a right faff on. Don't even think they've come out that well, but I'm a heinous perfectionist that is unhappy unless I'm absolutely perfect on the first try, so not much to worry about there.

ER31DC Week 18 - Half Moons

Ah, a blissfully easy week in the 31 day week challenge - half moons. Not really much I can say about half moons, except they always come with the biggest problem... what colours??!? I have a terrible habit of wearing colours that are either too similar (green and green, turquoise and teal etc etc) or ones that would sear the eyes out of a normal human being (offensive pink and super orange orange, as work by me to work this week).

For once, I ended up with something vaguely classy.

Stormy Skies & Raindrops

I loved the MUA Stormy Skies polish so much I decided to use it in a mani with my new rhinestones I snagged myself from eBay.

Stormy skies aren't something we've seen a  lot of lately, thanks to an odd occurrence of actually warm weather turning up when its actually supposed to.

Swatched - MUA Stormy Skies

Its such a shame that the MUA polishes only come in teeny little bottles, because I'd really love a full sized bottle of this.

Stormy Skies is a black/dark charcoal gray polish with a slight golden shimmer, kinda like a black counterpart to last week's Dutch you just love OPI... but 1/10th the RRP. MUA polishes retail for just £1, which is super cheap, especially when the polish is decent quality.

ER31DC Week 15 - Delicate Print

Apologies for the slightly late-ness of these, this mani was ready to go yesterday but I trapped a nerve in my neck and rendered my right arm useless.

Yeah, I'm not big on delicate stuff. All a bit girly for me. So today's challenge of a delicate print was immediately de-girlified by the fact that I chose rather non girly colours.

ER31DC Week 12 - Stripes

I love stripes. I'm actually really surprised that I haven't done more stripey manis on here, but then again I only have one roll of striping tape. I'm preserving it haha.

The base colour for this mani was given to me by my Chief Enabler, Rachael of Racho's Nail Love and is Orly Lola. I have a bit of an odd love for all things "offensively pink" as I like to term it, which is quite amusing as I'm not big on the whole girly thing.