More roses!!

Afternoon everyone! Today's post is a bit random! I was having a play about with some of my blank false nails at home and thought I'd show you one of my designs. I used BarryM's black for the base and their white for the rose detail. As you can probably tell from my previous posts I love painting roses!

Unfortunately it didn't photograph quite as well as I would of liked, but hopefully it doesn't look too bad! I used small nail brushes to get the detail on the rose and the swirls. 

So I hope you like today's design! Come back on Monday to see more! Have a great weekend everyone! 

Nicole x

@nicolesnailsuk

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Tutorial time!

Hi everyone, today's tutorial time is a really nice and easy tutorial, created in a similar way to my nautical themed nails a couple of days ago.

I've used rimmel's 60 second 'rose libertine' which is a really lovely dark pink, and obviously as the name suggests, dries nice and quick. I found 3 coats was slightly better than two.

Wait until it's completely dry, preferably over night to get the best results and then all you need is a white nail art pen (I used my trusty Barrym pen).

Use the nail pen to create little flowers on each nail. You can make the petals whatever shape you like, rounded petals are slightly easier to do compared to the shape I have done. Try and make each nail different. Do some flowers small, some bigger and some large and slightly cut off the edge of your nail. 

Once you've done a basic outline go back and thicken up the lines, and add small lines in the centre of each flower to add more detail. You can leave the rest of the nail blank but I've added small dots, with the odd bigger one here and there too. 

So I hope you enjoyed today's tutorial, give it a go at home! Just add top coat once dry! 

Nicole x

@nicolesnailsuk
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Instagram: #nicolesnailsuk

Sparkling Space Dust

Afternoon everyone, today I've got a couple of my favourite new polishes to show you from Rimmel. They are both part of the Rimmel 'Space Dust' range and I'm totally in love with them! They are textured glitter polishes so they dry nice and fast and two coats is plenty.

If you don't like the feel of the textured polishes, a coat of glossy top coat over the top will make them nice and shiny. This light brown glitter is called 'aurora' and it's a really nice and subtle shade. 

The purple shade is called 'moon walking' and I really love the colour. I'm always bias towards purple anyway as it's my favourite but this is a really nice vibrant shade.

Space dust is available in 5 different shades, which I can't wait to try because I love these! 

Nicole x

@nicolesnailsuk
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Instagram: #nicolesnailsuk

Nautical nails #2

Today's post is another nautical themed post, but in a completely different style to my last one! I've used BarryM's blue moon for the base colour, but this would also work really well with a dark navy colour.

                           

I've used BarryM's white nail art pen for the designs and they were all done freehand. The only other thing I used was masking tape for the stripes on the ring finger. 

                        

This type of design is so easy to do at home and you can make it your own. Choose any designs you like and just go for it! 

I hope you all like today's design. Come back tomorrow where I'll be showing off some of my favourite rimmel colours :)

Nicole x 

@Nicolesnailsuk

Cath Kidston patchwork

Hi everyone, welcome to today's post. Today's post is Cath Kidston inspired. Over the weekend I had a brochure from Cath Kidston delivered, as usual I need everything in it! But there was a lovely patchwork apron in there, with a collection of different patterns in each square and this inspired me to do a patchwork design on my nails! 

So I chose a collection of colours for the base. This was quite time consuming as I had to tape a section, paint it and then wait for it to dry so I could do the next section. With a steady hand you could do this without the tape but it's much better looking with tape, as the lines are nice and straight.

I used a range of different patterns and methods for each section, all Cath Kidston inspired, using a mix of techniques and colours. 

So I hope you like today's design! Have a good week everyone!

Nicole x

@nicolesnailsuk

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Nail constellations

Afternoon everyone! Today's post is featuring MUA's nail constellation, or caviar as some people call it. 

I've used a base colour from Nails Inc called Holland Park Road, which I love! It's a really nice dark purple/maroon colour, really unusual. Love it! 

The MUA constellations are a mixture of different shades of pink with the odd turquoise and white in there too. They do a really nice collection of colours in this range, my other favourite is a collection of all different shades of turquoise.

So I've done a different design on each finger for this mani. They aren't the easiest of things to use and they do go everywhere but just make sure you are prepared. Lay down a piece of paper with a crease down the middle first so you can pour the extra balls back into the pot. I just use topcoat to stick them down and tidy them up with a cuticle stick so they finish nearly round the edges.

I have to be honest here and tell you I'm such a perfectionist that I actually individually place the balls exactly where I want them for the more detailed designs, like the stripes. But when covering your whole nail I find it's fine just to pour them on and flatten them down afterwards. 

Lastly just make sure you put plenty of top coat on top otherwise you will find you'll start loosing sections here and there. 

Hope you've enjoyed today's mani ready for the weekend. Return soon for more tutorials and manicures! Enjoy your weekend! 

Nicole x 

@nicolesnailsuk

Tutorial time!

Evening everyone! Another late post today! I'm doing rubbish this week! 

Today's tutorial time is my second rose tutorial, this one is slightly more detailed though, and a bit more Cath Kidston style. 

I've used BarryM's 'blue moon' for the base colour. Put on a few coats and wait for it to completely dry. It's best if you can leave it over night because that way the roses will be a lot easier to do. 

Add random white blobs wherever you want on the nail. Just use the end of the brush to do them, they don't have to be very neat, just nicely spaced out. 

Once they are dry you'll ideally need a nail art pen to do this, I've used BarryM's pink art pen as the pink stands out nicely with the blue and white. Carefully draw round the white circle, leaving gaps here and there, making some lines longer than others and some just spots. Generally the only rule is to try and put a small line in the middle to create the centre of the rose.

Once they are all done you just need to add the leaves. This is exactly the same as the last rose tutorial. Just use a darker green and accent it with a lighter one, in little green triangles. Randomly place them on the roses, you don't need two on each, just whatever you feel looks best. Use a thin, small nail brush to do this part. 

I used BarryM's watermelon for the darker green and Rimmel's pear drop for the light green, but you can use whatever shades you want. And that's it! Just seal with your top coat and your good to go! This design looks great as just an accent nail or on each nail. You can play around with the colours as much as you like, I just like the blue as a background colour as it makes the roses pop without being too bold.

So I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial, if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask :)

Nicole x

@nicolesnailsuk

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Ring A Ring o' Roses

Afternoon everyone. Sorry about today's late post, it's been a bad nail day today! So I've spent today playing around with a few different designs, but this one was my favourite.

The main base colour is Rimmel's 'ring a ring o' roses' which is my favourite pale pink! I used three coats, as I like my polish nice and thick. 

 I then used BarryM's black nail art pen to create a bird design, with a cage on my thumb nail and small birds over the other fingers. I accented each bird with a little white as well to add a bit more detail. 

And of course once it was all dry I added my trusty top coat to protect the design. 

I hope you like today's design. Return soon for more designs and tutorials, and don't forget to add me on twitter to find out when the next post is up on the blog. 

Nicole x

@Nicolesnailsuk

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Instagram: nicolesnailsuk 

The gradient experiment

Hi everyone, welcome to today's post. Today I've done a bit of experimenting with gradient polish. I've seen plenty of these on Pinterest and to be honest they make it look a lot easier than it actually is! 

I decided with a purple gradient using BarryM's 'plum' for the darkest part, Rimmel's salon pro 'purple rain' for the middle and BarryM's 'berry' for the lightest. 

Get yourself a sponge and add a line of each from dark to light, then press the sponge on your nail. This makes a lot of mess as it gets polish on most of your finger! But just use a cotton bud to tidy up around the edges with remover. 

I found it wasn't as easy as it just being a perfect gradient first time. I ending up adding either more dark or more light to the nails to help the gradient be more obvious and dabbing with the sponge or a cotton bud to blend the extra polish in. 

As usual I decided I needed an accent nail! So once the gradient was dry I taped up half of my ring finger nail and then I created the gradient again in the opposite direction. Then I removed the tape while the paint was still wet, and again touched it up a bit. 

Lastly add your top coat once dry and your good to go! I think when doing this again I would probably use a make up sponge that's less textured to help with a smoother texture to the gradient. And I'd also maybe use a lighter selection of colours, as I found the dark purple really hard to completely remove from my skin around my nails and I think possibly it may blend better if the darkest colour wasn't so dark. 

So give it a go at home and see what you think :)

Nicole x 

@nicolesnailsuk

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Instagram: nicolesnailsuk 

Simple French manicure

Afternoon everyone! After giving myself the weekend off from blogging I'm back today with a lovely French manicure to show you all. 

It started out with a nude base colour (of course from BarryM!) this is my favourite nude I've tried so far. It looks great on its own and hasn't got that pinky tinge to it you sometimes get when using French manicure sets. 

I've used BarryM's white for the tips as it goes on nice and easy and even. You can buy stickers which have a slight curve to help you get a neat line for a manicure, but to be honest I find it easier to just carefully paint on the tips. As the end of the nail brush is always straight I just use this to create the straight line. 

Use a small nail brush and some remover, or a corrector pen to just carefully neaten up any smudges along the line. 

I love to add sparkle whenever I can so I've used a really fine tipped pen, which I was given years ago in a no7 gift set, which is a silver glitter. I just followed the line I created with the white, this is also a great way to hide any imperfections on the white. 

On my accent nail (ring finger) I added a line of tiny Stones, just to add a bit of bling! Just add a line of top coat and use a cuticle stick to gently place the stones along the white line. Then add lots of top coat to seal them on! 

So there's today's French manicure, hope you enjoy! 

Nicole x 

@nicolesnailsuk 

Tutorial time! Time for tea x 2

Hi everyone, today's tutorial is an add on for my 'time for tea' tutorial from a couple of days ago. It's just a few ideas that you can add to the teapot and tea cup design. 

I used the BarryM 'blue moon' again for the base colour and the BarryM nail art pens for the details. 

The most important thing with this cupcake stand design is to paint the little circle plates first, if you draw the line through the middle before hand it will give the illusion that the pole through the middle is in front of them. As with the tea pot I mixed white and black to make a grey to make the plates more realistic. Then use a black pen to draw a line above each plate, stopping in the middle, this makes it look like the pole is going through the middle of the plates. 

Then decorate them however you want! I used a pale pink just to add a few spots onto the plates. 

I also added some cupcakes on my other nails which are nice and easy. Just choose a couple of colours and paint a basic cupcake outline. Then once dry use either a thin nail brush or nail pen to add some details. I like to lighten the design up with bits of white afterwards as well. 

And that's it! You can use any colours and any pattern on the stand and the cupcakes to jazz them up a bit and then your 'time for tea' nails are ready to go! 

Enjoy your day everyone!

Nicole x

@nicolesnailsuk

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Moody mink!

Hi everyone, today's entry is a more chilled out entry compared to yesterday's madness! Last night (thanks to my lovely sister letting me borrow her hands) I just did a bit of free styling using MUA's polish 'moody mink'. This is a steal at only £1, and by the looks of it 2014 is going to be the year for these nude style shades. 

The glitter is my trusty favourite BarryM's 'lady' textured glitter. If your not a fan of the textured polishes, just add a couple of coats of normal top coat just to smooth it out. 

There's no need for any tape or nail brushes for this kind of design, just a bit of patience and a steady hand. Just see how you feel at the time and go with whatever collection of patterns pop into your head! 

So this year definitely keep an eye out for these kinda of shades, especially from MUA as they are a bargain!

Return tomorrow as I have another tutorial planned, to add to yesterday's 'time for tea' 

Nicole x 

@nicolesnailsuk

Pinterest.com/nicolesnails

Instagram: nicolesnailsuk 

Tutorial time! x 2

And here you can see the tea pot pouring the tea! 

So I hope you have enjoyed my time for tea tutorial! Remember to add me on twitter! 

Nicole x

@nicolenailsuk

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Tutorial time!

Afternoon everyone, welcome to todays tutorial that I'm calling 'time for tea!' As usual I'm using BarryM polishes. The base colour is a really nice pale blue called 'blue moon' and the white is also BarryM. All the details were using BarryM nail art pens. 

I used BarryM white and a nail dotter for the polkadots, you can see a tutorial on the best ways to do polkadots on one of my posts posts. 

This design has a tea pot on the left thumb and a tea cup on the right thumb. I used the BarryM black nail art pen to do a basic outline of the teapot. I find the best way is to do dots in the basic shape first as you can see what your doing better. Then literally just join the dots! Fill in the shape with white polish using a small nail brush, and use this as a chance to tidy up your black outline. Wait for it to dry then do a second coat so the blue underneath doesn't show through. 

I made the teapot a bit more realistic by putting a blob of black and a blob of white on a piece of paper and mixing a little of each to get grey. Then just dap round the edges to give the teapot a rounded impression. 

I then repeated the process with the other thumb. This was probably one of the most difficult designs I've done on my right hand, so go slowly and be patient because it's difficult! 

Next using a tiny nail brush and navy Polish add a small design to the teapot and teacup, I did tiny little stars but you can do whatever you want in whatever colour you wish! 

The last step is to add the tea! I used BarryM's duchess textured glitter for this. I used a small nail brush and painted a tiny line coming out of the teapot and then a slightly thicker line from the top of my nail into the teacup. Once this was dry I added a couple of extra lines of detail using the white and black art pens just to get the tea more realistic.

The blogs now not letting me add any more pictures so please go to the next post to see more!! 

Goodie Bag!

So today's blog is slightly random, including a little bit of make up talk as well! 

Some of you might have seen last week that I won an amazing Rimmel goodie bag after submitting a picture of one of my nail designs, so I thought I'd show off some of the lovely things I received in it. 

I was obviously most happy with the varnishes! Especially the pink one 'ring a ring o'roses' which I featured in yesterday's pastel blog. The goodie bag also included two salon pro varnishes and a nail repair varnish.

So today I tried out the kohl black eyeliner, which I was really pleased about because I wear quite a lot of it! The black is nice and dark, it's been on 5 hours now and still looking neat and tidy so I'm very impressed. The scandaleyes mascara brush is huge, but not as hard to use as I expected. The lashes aren't overly bold, but no clumps so that's good! 

I'm completely in love with the scandaleyes eye shadow stick and can't believe I've never used one before! Comes out perfectly and even with no mess, and the gold shimmery colour (bulletproof beige) is lovely and not too bold, so perfect for work today. 

I didn't wear the stay matte foundation today, as I normally only wear powder for work but I have tested out the colour. It comes out the tube looking quite dark so I was worried, but once rubbed in its actually a lot paler and a good colour. 

Lastly I tried the Vinyl Gloss, this went on nice and even and again is a really lovely colour, which isn't too bold so perfect for work. The colour is 'Paparazzi' and is a pinky, shimmery shade. Very nice! It also lasted really well, was a good hour and a half before I decided to reapply again, which I was pleased with. 

So I hope you find my mini reviews helpful today. I'm not normally too into my make up but I'm loving this selection and can't wait to try the rest! Thank you Rimmel! 

Tomorrow I'll be doing another nail tutorial, so make sure you come back to have a look! 

Nicole x

@nicolesnailsuk

Pretty pastels!

Morning everyone! Today I am going to show you a design using some lovely pastel colours, with a different design on each finger. I've used a number of different colours and brands for this design, the main colours are: 

Thumb: Nails Inc - Wellington square
Index finger: BarryM - Berry
Middle finger: Rimmel - Ring a ring o' roses (love this name!) 
Ring finger: Nails Inc - Belsize Grove
Little finger: Rimmel (salon pro) purple rain

I put a different design on each finger, the dots on the little finger and thumb were done using a nail dotter and I did the stripes by hand on the ring finger using a long nail brush. I'm most pleased with the little buttons on the middle fingers. I used black and white BarryM nail art pens to get the tiny detains in each button. And the green tip on the index finger was just done with a normal brush very carefully! 

So I hope you like today's designs, any questions or comments please don't hesitate to ask :) and remember to add me on twitter! Have a great day everyone!

Nicole x

@nicolesnailsuk
Pinterest.com/nicolesnails
Instagram: nicolesnailsuk

Revolutionary Removal

It's Sunday, so going for a nice chilled out blog today. I'm going to be showing you the best way of removing nail polish that I've found so far.

I saw this method ages ago online but to be honest I wasn't that convinced, but now I'd never go back as it works so well! 

All you need is nail varnish remover and cotton balls. Rip a cotton ball up into 10 nail sized pieces, and fill the nail varnish remover lid with remover. Dip each piece of cotton ball into the remover and then stick it to each nail.

Leave it on for a few minutes, then scrape the cotton ball off and it should take most if the polish with it. Obviously it won't get rid of it all but it does most of the hard work for you!

It doesn't work quite so well with glitter polish, but that's always hard to get off however hard you try. I find doing this method with glitter polish and then removing the left overs with a cotton pad, instead of a cotton ball works the best, and is the quickest way of getting the glitter off. 

So give this method a go at home, you'll love it!
Enjoy your Sunday everyone!

Nicole x
@nicolesnailsuk
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Instagram: nicolesnailsuk

Sparkly Saturday!

Hi everyone, sorry about the late entry today! Been a busy day! I'd planned for this entry to be slightly simpler seeing as it's the weekend, but I got a bit carried away!

I started with the nails inc base colour, and planned to just add glitter but I discovered some Lacey stuff in my sewing box so I did a bit of experimenting! 

Unfortunately it doesn't photograph very well but I was quite pleased with it. I had to try a few different ways to get it to look decent. Putting top coat on top took the pink colour out of the lace, so the only way it worked was the put a thin coat of the base colour on and gently place it on the nail, then as it dried the lace stayed put! 

After this I decided to put some glitter on top instead, because you just can't beat glittery nails!! So I added BarryM's rose quartz on top, which has got to be one of my favourite glitters because it's just sooo sparkly :D 

So I hope you all enjoy your weekend, tomorrow I'm going to be looking at the best ways to remove nail varnish :) 

Remember to check out my twitter! @nicolesnailsuk

Nicole x

Marvellous Matte

Morning everyone! Just time for a quick blog before work :)

Today I'm looking at my new polish from BarryM's matte range. I went with the black polish, or 'espresso' I've been so excited about trying this out and I wasn't left disappointed! It's so nice to have something a bit different, other than the normal shiny polish. 

The matte on its own is lovely and smart, but I felt it needed a bit of a design, so I used BarryM's normal black varnish and a small nail brush to paint a simple swirly pattern on my nails. It's quite hard to photograph so hopefully you can see the designs ok. 

So all in all in love the matte varnish, looks smart and dries lovely and quick. I found two coats was more that enough to look nice. 

Hope you all have a lovely Friday! 
Nicole x     
@nicolesnailsuk
Pinterest.com/nicolesnails

Tutorial time!

Hi everyone! Welcome to today's tutorial. After a discussion at work, the girls were asking how I did the rose pattern on my nails a few weeks back (you can see the pic on my first post) so I thought I'd show you a really easy way to do it yourself at home. 

I've chosen rimmel's pear drop for the base colour, which has a really nice sheen to it. I then added random blobs of white, you can do them as big or small as you want. Then just choose two colours to decorate your white blobs. Pinks tend to look the best, just choose one dark and one light. Put small amounts on each white blob and swirl them around slightly. Once dry I add a touch of white on top just to lighten them up. Then with a small nail brush and green Polish add tiny triangles for the leaves. I like to use a really dark green and once dry use a lighter green and do a tiny stripe to make them more life-like. Simple! I like to have an accent nail, so just using a long nail brush I added stripes using one of the pinks from the roses and white. 


Then just add a top coat to seal it and your good to go! I hope you all have a great day! Remember to check out my twitter page! @nicolesnailsuk

Nicole x