Summery Single Chevrons

Since it's Summer here in Australia, I thought I'd do a few designs relevant to the season, ones that are bright and colourful but still simple. Today's design is single chevrons, with some pastel colours sponged over the nail vinyls. This could also be a design to wear in Spring as well, but since it's Summer, we're going with that today.

The white base is Snow Me White by Sinful Colors (as always) and the four colours are from Sally Hansen: Water Orchid, Wet Suit, Kelp Yourself, and Bubblegum Pink.

I absolutely love this one! Pastel designs always look pretty good and I think the design goes really well with the length of my nails because I could fit that extra vinyl in at the tip. I also topped it with Sally Hansen's Big Matte Top Coat again because it's so good!

Thanks for reading!

- Melissa.

Pink Gradient Chevrons

Today I have some simple gradient chevrons to share with you! I wanted to do something easy but something that still looked like it took a lot of effort. I don't think I've ever done a gradient chevron pattern, but I could be wrong!

For this design I used this brand of nail vinyls (the normal website is down for maintenance) and then sponged a few pink polishes over the top of them to make the gradient. I used Hot Spring by Ulta3, Secret Story by Essie, and Fairy Floss by Ulta3.

I really like how these turned out, I probably could have done another coat but I was worried that would cause the polish to drag too much when I pulled the nail vinyls off.

Anyway, that's it for today because it's only simple and there's not much else to them!

- Melissa.

Rainbow Mix n Match

I have another mix n match mani to show you all today! This time using rainbow colours. This mani took some patience, especially with the striping tape and chevron nail vinyls because you have to work quickly before the polish dries and lifts when you take the tape or vinyls off. That of course happened to me; I just don't work quick enough but it's nothing that can't be fixed with a striper brush and some white polish!

The colours I used (from bottom to top of the right hand side on my ring finger)

Mojito Madness - Essie

Fresh Squeezed - Ulta3

Bright Me - Ulta3

Strawberry Sundae - Ulta3

Bahama Mama - Essie

Blue Marlin - Ulta3

My lines on the detailed designs are perfect but I still enjoy it, it's fun and bright. Oh, I almost forgot the main reason I did this mani, I was inspired by my phone case from here.

I was going to do that design on all my nails but getting the striping tape aligned in between the opposite striping tape bits was so hard and I didn't have the patience for it haha.

Hope you enjoy this mani! I have a few more posts planned in the next couple of days so keep an eye out for them!

31DC2014: Day 8 - Metallic

Hello lovelies! As I said yesterday, metallic nail polish is my least favourite polish ever. I probably own only three or four metallics out of almost 200 polishes, so yeah I really don't like it. Therefore, it was a bit of a struggle to come up with something today, but I went with this chevron design of two slightly metallic polishes.

I used two Savvy polishes: Ufo and Cosmic.

Hopefully they're metallic enough to pass for this prompt. Thanks for reading!

Chevron Nail Art

Hi everybody! Today I'm using the purple gradient from yesterday as the base for some chevron nail art. This is a bit out of my comfort zone as I had a lot of trouble using the nail vinyls when I first got them. If you aren't in the nail art community or you just have no idea what Nail Vinyls are, let me direct you to this website and this instagram. Linda, the creator of Nail Vinyls reposts pictures and videos on her instragram on how to use the various products in the Nail Vinyls range. They make doing certain nail art a whole lot easier. However, until I did these nails, I thought very differently about them.

When I first received the Chevron Minis in the mail I was very excited about them because I had been seeing almost everyone's posts on Instagram about them and chevron is such a fun design that I wanted to try them out for myself. I was mega disappointed though because they just didn't work for me the way I had seen them work for so many other girls in the nail art community. I was frustrated to say the least when it pulled the base colour up and then dragged the top colour around as well. I did what the instructions recommended but I quickly gave up. Thinking back to it, I know it was my fault as I didn't top coat the base colour before using the Nail Vinyls and I was just really impatient about the whole thing. This turned me off them for a while and I sort of forgot that I even had them until recently.

Now, flash forward to this afternoon when all of a sudden I had the idea to use them on top of the purple gradient I did. I'm so incredibly glad I had a sudden brainwave to try them out again because I'm in love with the way they've turned out and I now understand where I went wrong the first time I tried to use them. As the gradient had been top coated with a fast drying top coat the day before, it made it super easy to put the vinyls on and then remove. That's the secret to it all (although not such a secret because Linda suggests this in the FAQs on her website). I was just too eager to try them out initially that I hadn't wanted to top coat them and then wait an extra 10-15 minutes. I will have to try that method out though instead of waiting a whole day after applying a fast dry top coat, so stay tuned for that post!

Now, onto the photos! I used Black Satin - Ulta3 and you can find the purple polishes here.

I love, love, love how it's turned out! I can't believe I waited so long to try them out again. I think I'll definitely be making a few more purchases from the Nail Vinyls website in the near future!

Sorry this post was a bit wordy, I guess it turned into a mini review but I felt the need to share my experience because in the end it turned out great, which is just a reminder to keep practising and trying and eventually things should work out the way they're supposed to!