NYE Glitter Gradient

Hey everybody, I didn't do any Christmas nail art this year, so I thought to round off the year, I'd actually do a blog post on some simple New Year's Eve nails. Honestly, these can be worn any time of the year, but since it's that time of the year, I thought I'd just call them NYE nails!

I really like glitter gradients, and I'd been seeing quite a few around on Instagram, but I don't own a lot of glitter polishes that can be used for a gradient. Then I remembered I had this very old polish from a brand called Savvy, it used to be one of my favourites when I was just getting into nail polish and nail art around three or so years ago. I'd forgotten how much I loved it till I started sponging it on. It's absolutely packed with glitters and the base is a slightly dark blue so when built up with a few coats it becomes pretty opaque on it's own or it's even better with a dark blue polish as a base.

I chose to keep it simple, using only this polish with nothing else except for a clear base coat to protect my nails and make it last longer. The part of my nail that's packed with glitter took maybe two or three coats with a sponge and some smart glitter placement to get it that covered. I love how it's turned out and I think it looks even better with my longer nails than it would if they were shorter.

That's it for tonight's post, which also makes this my last post of the year! I've ordered a bunch of new nail art supplies so I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with nail art next year and hopefully more time and motivation to do them so stay tuned for a bunch of cool stuff in 2016!

Happy New Year everyone!

- Melissa.

Floral Decals - Born Pretty Store Review

*This product was sent to me for review, all opinions are my own

Today's review is on these gorgeous water decals from Born Pretty Store! The pack come with two different designs, so you've got a bit of choice on which decals you might want to wear or incorporate into your nail art! 

I chose to use to purple geometric looking decals but only apply them to two nails as I wanted them to be a feature and not the whole design. But I also didn't want the other two nails to overtake the decals so I chose to pair them with Ulta3's Losta Fun which I think matched them quite well!

I used a white base under the decals as the non-coloured parts were clear and I wanted them to stand out on my nail. They were slightly difficult to apply though and it took me three tries to get a decal on my ring finger because it kept folding in on itself or not sitting straight on the nail and just all around wasn't working. I had no problem with the middle finger though! That one went on easily and it's my favourite design of the whole thing.

I really do love these decals, I wore them for about a week with only slight tip wear which is normal, and they were easy to remove with polish remover just like normal nail polish! As with the previous decals I posted about, they can be cut to the size of your nail or you can easily clean up the excess around the cuticles with some acetone.

Don't forget you can use my 10% discount code: MEPUK31 at checkout!

Thanks for reading.

- Melissa.

Colourful Square Water Decals - Born Pretty Store Review

*This product was sent to me for review, all opinions are my own

I'm back with another review of some water decals from Born Pretty Store! These decals caught my eye straight away because they were so colourful and geometric and I loved how they looked in the pictures. I was also curious to see how they transferred onto the nails because you had to cut them to fit instead of them being nail shaped already.

Turns out it wasn't that difficult! I cut the decal into rectangles that were about the width of my nail, I didn't worry about the length too much because I knew I'd just acetone to clean up the extra bits. But if you have short nails and want to get the most use out of decals like this then I would recommend cutting them to the length of your nail as well. You won't waste a lot that way.

It was really easy to clean up the excess decal around the cuticles and tip of the nail because the decals are thin. However I wish I had used a white base underneath because the colours weren't as solid or vibrant as they were on the paper backing.

I also had a few issues with lumps under the decals, I wasn't sure whether it was water or air or just the way I put them on but they didn't flatten out. I also wasn't too keen on some of the colour combination but that's mostly because I don't like the colours red or brown and they're the biggest squares on some of the decals.

So overall these aren't my favourite patterned decals but I do like that I could cut them how I wanted to, which made it easier to apply them and easier to shape them and clean up.

Don't forget you can use the code MEPUK31 for 10% off at checkout on their website!

- 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.

Palm Tree Decals - Born Pretty Store Review

*This product was sent to me for review, all opinions are my own

The people at Born Pretty Store were kind enough to send me some of their nail art products to review, so first up are these summery water decals which I thought were really cute and easy to incorporate into nail art!

I chose the black decals because I already had a mani in mind when picking them. I've seen this design done by so many people that I always wanted to try it out but knew I'd never be able to hand paint the palm trees so when I saw these decals, I knew I had to get them.

To create my sunset base I used three polishes on a sponge to create a nice gradient. They were: Fierce N Tangy by Maybelline Color Show, In My Back Pocket by OPI, and OPI On Collins Ave by OPI. I then used those three colours on a small fan brush to blend the gradient together even more and to further even it out once I'd done that I used some acetone on the fan brush and lightly swept it across the nail to make it smooth and very blended. It turned out really well and I was very happy with it!

These were the set of decals I got, and as you can see there's a wide variety of designs to choose from but I went with the simple palm trees by themselves and the palm trees with the sun and grass. As usual, water decals are so simple to use as all you need to do is cut out the image you want, remove the plastic protector, dip the cut out in some water for 10-15 seconds and then gently remove the decal from the backing (if damp enough it'll simply slide off). Once that's done you can then carefully apply them to your nail using tweezers, flatten down, let it dry and then top coat it to protect it and help it last longer!

I added black polish to the middle and ring fingernails to help make it look like one picture as only the trees were the decal, whereas the index and pinky ones were all part of the decal and didn't need anything added to them.

I love how these turned out and I'm happy to have finally been able to do this design after loving all the ones I've seen over the years. It's one of my best gradients too.

Make sure you check out all the nail art products on the website and don't forget that I have a 10% off discount code to use when you buy anything from Born Pretty Store, the code is: MEPUK31.

Enjoy!

- Melissa.

Simple Splatter Nail Art

As you should all know by now, splatter nails are one of my favourite designs to do. Whenever I'm lacking in inspiration I always do some splatter nails to help out and I always feel happy with the outcome of them.

This time around though I did things a little differently. Instead of using straws like I always do I decided to use a bobby pin; specifically the bit where it curves at the end. Now I cannot for the life of me remember where I first saw this idea, but I know it was in a video and it was only mentioned in passing. I've tried searching Instagram and YouTube for where I think it might've come from but I can't find whatever video it was that I first heard it in so I don't know where this idea came from originally. 

But anyway! Using a bobby pin for splatter designs has it pros and cons. It definitely made the design much neater because it doesn't result in huge blobs ending up on part of the nail and kind of ruining the whole thing. But on the downside it took foreverrrr. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't and a lot of the time I couldn't get the positioning right so it ended up on the paper and nowhere near my nails. In the end though it was worth it because it's such a simple design. There are no big blobs, all the colours can be seen and it looks awesome!

I used the following polishes: Sapphire Siren by Maybelline Color Show, Secret Story, and Shake Your $$ Maker, both by Essie.

I'm definitely going to be using this method for future splatter designs because I really do love the outcome of it!

Thanks for reading.

- Melissa.

Swirled Nail Art w/ Black Accents

Recently I've been wanting to do borders around my nail art but haven't had the right design that I thought would look good with it. So the other day I did some swirled/marble nail art using cut up sandwich bags and thought it'd be perfect to do some black borders around it!

I used Orange Fix, Chic Chartreuse, and Fuchsia Petal all by Maybelline Color Show. I smooshed all of those colours together with cut up bits of a sandwich bag and I really love how it turned out! The green comes across as more of a yellow when mixed with the other colours, but that's okay.

I then went in with Black Satin by Ulta3 and carefully did some borders around each nail, and then thought it'd look even better with a line down the middle of the nail. Not sure which ended up better but I only took photos of the end result and everyone who saw my nails while I was wearing them absolutely loved them!

I think it looks really cool and makes it even more eye-catching! I topped it with Revlon's Matte Top Coat but it didn't make them completely matte, only dulled them down a bit so I think I might need a new matte top coat!

- Melissa.

Purple Pond Mani

Today's post will just be a quick one considering I did this mani for the blue prompt in the challenge in September, but had the urge to try it out in a different colour recently.

I used an OPI Sheer Tint again in the colour Don't Violet Me Down and I still really love this type of mani. I did less dots than last time so there's less definition than my previous one but it still looks super cool and 3D.

I really enjoy the look of this design because it's simple and still stands out. I think I did three or four layers on the sheer tint because I didn't want it to be too thick since I wanted to top coat it and wear it for a few days.

That's it for today! Thanks for reading.

- Melissa.

Simple Black & White Nail Art

Hi everybody! Today I'm posting about a nail art idea that I had stuck in my head for weeks and finally got around to doing it today. It's nothing special at all, and as I was doing it I realised it wasn't working out the way I wanted it to in my head. But it's simple and still looks like great nail art anyway.

I used Snow Me White by Sinful Colors and Black Satin by Ulta3 on a thin, medium length striping brush. After doing the lines I went back in with some of the white polish on a smaller striping brush just to clean up some of the black and neaten the lines up.

I think this would look pretty cool with a colourful sponged base and white for the stripes, or even a rainbow pattern for the stripes on a white base, the combos are pretty much endless.

That's it for today, thanks for reading!

- Melissa.

Ripped Nails - Halloween Nail Art

I never really do themed holiday nails but I thought I'd get on the Halloween bandwagon and do some gross, bloody, ripped nails. There are a bunch of tutorials and designs like this out there but I was inspired to do this after seeing Jessie from Nailed It NZ's video on zombie nails!

I had so much fun doing this! I used an array of red, maroon and black polishes as well as red and black lipstick, food colouring and eyeshadows. I didn't have a specific technique to it, I mostly followed Jessie's tutorial, starting of with a messy red base, cutting/ripping the nails and then gluing them on and then I just went kind of nuts with all the polishes and lipsticks, then i smudged on some dark purple, red, and brown eyeshadows around my nails and down my fingers. I basically just layered everything on, trying to make it textured and as realistic as possible. It was so damn messy!

They are absolutely disgusting! I actually started to feel sick while editing the photos and every time I looked at them before I took them off I just got a little queasy. Even while writing this I feel a bit sick. But I'm really proud of them! I knew they were either going to turn out really awful or really amazing and I think they're pretty amazing! It feels so good to go out of my comfort zone and end up with something this cool.

That's it for today's post! I hope you enjoyed them and weren't too grossed out like I am!

- Melissa.

Bright Marbled Nail Art

Hey everyone! So I'm going to start off by acknowledging the fact that I haven't posted for a month and then ignoring it, so let's get into today's nail art!

If you follow me on Instagram then you'll have seen I've been posting some phone shots of recent simple manicures that I've done as I try to get back into the flow of it. I didn't even finish the 31 Day Challenge but it still killed my motivation. It wasn't until today that I had the strong urge to do nail art and take proper photos of it with an actual camera in a light box instead of using my phone at my desk.

I'm really happy with these nails! The colour combo is awesome thanks to the polishes I used. Water Orchid by Sally Hansen, In My Back Pocket by OPI and a pink polish by Kester Black that they created for BellaBox.

I used cut up pieces of a sandwich bag for this, which is honestly one of my fave designs to do because the combinations are endless and every nail turns out differently but they always end up looking awesome.

How freakin' pretty are they! I absolutely love the lighter bit on my ring finger that looks like a river splitting into different sections or canals or whatever they are. Each nail is different and that's what I love the most about this design. I always end up loving this type of nail art so I knew I'd be happy with the outcome and that's why I did them today!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 23 - Inspired By A Movie

Today's prompt is based on a movie and I had a really hard time figuring out which movie I wanted to do because I honestly don't watch a lot of them, and the ones that I do watch are pretty impossible to do nail art on. But I was browsing ideas and decided to base them on the movie Tangled, which is honestly one of my favourite movies. 

I did some really simple nail art, the ring and middle finger are based on the scene with all the lanterns in the night sky and the pinky and index finger are loosely based on Rapunzel's hair when it's plaited and has all the flowers in it. They're simple designs but I think they represent the movie pretty well!

I used waaay too many polishes for this so I'm not going to list them all, but I did base the flowers on a previous design by Sarah over at Chalkboard Nails.

Thanks for reading! 

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 22 - Inspired By A Song

I had the idea for today's prompt after I recently got Halsey's album Badlands and have been listening to it almost non-stop since. I really love the song Colors so that's what inspired me today. 

My index and pinky fingers were inspired by the lyrics "everything is blue" and all I did was simply dab a bunch of different shades of blue onto the base of a triangle sponge and then dab that onto my nails to create a slightly ombre, mixed up blue design.

My middle and ring fingers were inspired by the talking part of the song, precisely the following line "you touched me and suddenly I was a lilac sky". I used two purple polishes and a white polish to create the purple ombre representing the lilac sky line. I really love how this design turned out, it was pretty much exactly what I imagined in my head. It's simple, but still represents the song.

So that's all for today! Thanks for reading!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 21 - Inspired By A Colour

This prompt is always one that stumps me when I get to it because it can mean anything. Usually I just pick a base colour and roll with that and do a random mani but this year I decided to actually get inspired by the polish names! I had a browse of my polishes and came across an Essie polish called Dress To Kilt, a nice deep red, and I instantly thought of doing a plaid design. So that's what this design is today, an attempt at plaid, which honestly I'm no good at and in the end it just becomes a bunch of vertical and horizontal lines. Despite all that though I kinda like how it turned out!

The other two polishes I used were also by Essie and are Go Overboard and After School Boy Blazer, which I guess also ties into the plaid design if you think about school uniforms! The base is My Vampire Is Buff by OPI.

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 20 - Water Marble

I absolutely love water marbling but I don't do it often enough because it's messy and I'm lazy. But as the prompt calls for it today, I picked a few Essie polishes and went to work. This time though I decided not to do my usual design and instead went with dropping the polishes anywhere in the water (as opposed to the normal bullseye) and swirling them around till I got a pattern I liked. As you can it was a bit hit and mess with that technique but I think they still look really cool and it was nice to do something a bit different!

The patterns on each nail kind of remind me of planets and I absolutely love that!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 19 - Galaxies

This is probably one of my favourite days of the whole challenge because I love me some galaxy nail art! I can definitely see myself improving over the years every time I do this prompt and this year is my best to date. I was extremely happy with how my nails turned out because I didn't hold back from using more colour and making it brighter than the past two years.

I used a bunch of polishes for this so I can't name them all (mostly because they've already been put back in their drawers).

And I only have one picture today because I started using a new camera and wasn't exactly sure what I was doing so I ended up with only one good picture but oh my god is it a good picture!

I was so damn in love with these nails! I still am, but I was so sad when I had to take them off for the next prompt. Hopefully now my photos will improve greatly!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 18 - Half Moons

Today's prompt is half moons and honestly I have no feelings towards this nail art design. Sometimes it looks nice, but I think I've only ever done half moons once away from this challenge. I just don't think they're that interesting, but in saying that, I did actually enjoy how my design turned out this year.

I started with a gray base and applied some half moon nail vinyls that I got from here, sponged on white polish over the gray and then did a combination of a blue and pink polish to make this sponged purple colour! I love sponged designs so I think that's why I was happy with how it turned out compared to if it'd just been another solid colour.

It definitely didn't photograph as nicely as it was in person, but you can still see the different colours and how combined they've turned into the purple!

That's it for today! Nothing that special.

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 17 - Glitter

I had a lot of trouble with today's prompt because the original design I did didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to so I went with a completely different design and I didn't really love that one either, but there was no way I was redoing a bloody glitter design for the third time so I stuck with it. It's not even that bad but for some reason I just wasn't in a glitter loving mood!

The glitter is by Maybelline Color Show from their Brocades collection I think, but I can't remember the name. It has small gold specks as well as all the silver so it's a really nice combo but it's not in your face with the gold.

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 16 - Geometric

Hello! Once again I'm writing the next few blog posts all in one go which means they'll be back dated and I won't have polish details because I'm bad at blogging. But anyway, onto the mani!

I love doing geometric designs so for today's prompt I wanted to lay out a geometric pattern and then fill the spaces with a bunch of different colours, and that's exactly what I did. This is one of my fave designs of the challenge so far, I really love how it ended up!

I didn't plan too well though because I wanted to have two spots for each colour on each nail but that only worked out for two of my nails. Oh well, still looks awesome and I was so happy with the end result!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 15 - Delicate

Today's prompt is another one that I'm not too fond of! I am no good at delicate designs and in the past two years I've always just done a variation of a French manicure. But this year I had zero ideas so I sat down and ended up with the mani below. I used some glitter, some dots and even did a border!

The base is Peach Bloom and the glitter is Orchid Bouquet both by Maybelline Color Show. It's a really lovely glitter top coat that I did one layer of and then sponged on the rest to get a lot on my nail without making it too thick! The purple border was done using the purple striper from Ulta3. I was going to do dots all over the nail but when I did the first two I thought that looked a lot nicer than doing them all over the nail.

I don't know whether this is very delicate but it's minimal and simple and I guess that's the same thing!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 14 - Flowers

I'm not a huge fan of doing floral nail art. I've done some designs in the past but I've never been completely happy with the end result. I guess I'm just not a floral person. But I persevered and did a very simple, blobby type of design.

I started with a base of Bikini So Teeny by Essie, and for the flowers I used Fuschia Petal and Vivid Rose, with Peach Bloom in the centre and Chic Chartreuse all by Maybelline Color Show.

I quite like how this one turned out because I didn't care too much about the application and placement of the flowers. I just blobbed them on and went with it!

- Melissa.