Purple Grey and Grace Green Mix ‘n’ Match

For this design I used the Models Own Purple Grey and Grace Green from my previous post. I thought these colours would look great together and I was right, they look gorgeous!  I painted the base of these nails before I went to sleep to make sure they where completely dry before I painted the tips, as I was worried the nail guides would peel off my nail varnish if it wasn’t dry all over.

                                      

When I got up this morning I stuck the nail guide stickers on and painted the tips the opposite colour to the base.   I peeled the stickers off after painting every 2-3 tips and I didn’t get any chips!  The coverage of these polishes is excellent so when doing the tips you only need 1 coat to completely cover the base colours.  I used Models Own 3 in 1 Basecoat, Topcoat and Gloss to finish off my nails.

This design was easy to do and because of the mix ‘n’ match effect it makes this design look interesting but sleek.  These colours are perfect for this wintery weather we are having and is easy to create yourself.

Models Own Gooodies :D

The fabulous people at Models Own have kindly sent me some goodies to try out so I’m going to do a review on each of these products (and the new nails pens that I bought last week) within the next week or two! I asked for some more autumn/wintery shades as all of my nail varnishes seem to be bright or glittery and so they sent me these beauties:

I’ve done some swatches of each of the colours (from left to right-Nude Beige, Vintage Pink, Pray, Purple Grey, Prussian Blue and Grace Green).

I have been struggling to decide on my favourite for over a day now and I still can’t decide so maybe I’ll know after a few nail designs using these colours. I think the Purple Grey and the Grace Green are going to look fab together so I think I’ll do a design using those too first! The surprise out of these 6 was defiantly the Prussian Blue. This was the 1 colour out of these that I must admit I didn’t have on my Christmas list but I really love it! The best way I could describe it is as a midnight blue, which is more matte than the rest of shades, but it really compliments the colour and I think it could be the new black. From what I’ve seen online Grace Green and Nude Beige seem to be the most popular shades but I think Vintage pink should be up there too. My Models Own collection is growing much more quickly than I thought it would and I've put a couple of things to one side for a giveaway in the future so watch this space!

***The World’s Most Expensive Nail Varnish***

Models Own have just released their newest nail varnish, which will set you back a jaw dropping £83,000! This nail varnish is called Gold Rush and when painted onto nails it looks like gold leaf, which sparkles and glimmers like tiny diamonds but feels smooth. The amazing lid is hand made from a solid ingot of yellow gold with 1,118 diamonds! So if there are any generous millionaires out there who want to get me a Christmas present you can buy this beauty from Frost of London…I’ll keep my fingers crossed but in the mean time Models Own will be releasing Gold Rush Ready to Wear on their website from mid December at an affordable £5!

Matte About You!

For this design I used Models Own Black Magic and Models Own Misty Grey for the base colours. I then used Essie Matte About You Finisher on top of that to create the matte effect. Matte finishers are great value for money as you can double your nail varnish collection as it can turn all of your shiny nail varnish matte in seconds! Rimmel also have a matte finisher that is a bit cheaper (about £4.50 compared to Essie around £7) and I’m sure it will be just as good. I used black and silver nail pens to do the designs on the top.

I really love the way the designs on the top stand out from the matte base coats but I don’t think these will last very long because there isn’t a topcoat to seal all of the nails but time will tell I guess. The photos don’t do these nails justice as my camera has broke so I’ve had to use my old one!

♥ Barbie Nails ♥

This is another WAH Nails inspired design. I used Models Own Sophie’s Pink, a white nail pen and Models Own 3 in 1 Base Coat, Top Coat and Gloss for this design. This pink is a really bright girly pink but it does need 2 coats which is unusual for Models Own nail varnish but I’m not complaining because I love the colour!

I would strongly recommend practicing drawing the hearts and writing ‘Barbie’ using a nail pen with both hands before doing this on your nails and as you can see by the photo the writing on my right hand isn’t as good as the left so clearly I should have had more practice!

POW Nails!

'Pow' is my favourite WAH Nails design so I thought id give it a go and as you can see I made a bit of a mess of it but I’m determined to practice until I get them right. I used some of my new Models Own polishes for this design (jade stone, Lilac Dream, Lemon Meringue, Pastel Pink and Feeling Blue).

How to paint these:

1. Paint all nails with different colours

2. Using a white nail pen paint the speech bubbles on

3. Paint the white dots on

4. Paint around the speech marks with a black nail pen

5. Write the words in the speech marks

6. Finish with a topcoat

I think the main reason these didn’t work as well as I hoped was because I put too much nail varnish on and I didn’t have time to tidy up around the nails. A whole nail of nail varnish peeled off in one go within a day and the nail varnish on the rest of my nails are peeling off too so Seche Vite topcoat is in my bad books at the moment!

Leopard print nails 1 week later…

As you can see two of nails lost quite a lot of the varnish but the rest lasted really well! I’ve noticed the Seche vite topcoat its very good for drying all layers of your nail varnish quickly but after a few days the nails varnish can peel off in big pieces which is annoying. I think if another topcoat was put on every 2-3 days there’s no reason why your nail designs can’t last for well over a week!

***Boots 3 for 2***

Boots have got a great 3 for 2 offer on at the moment which includes 100s of make-up products and nail varnishes including Models Own products! I’ve just bought 6 more nail varnishes for only £20, which is the same price as the Models Own Christmas gift sets so if u want a bargain where you can mix and match get down to Boots!

Here’s my Models Own collection now:

Models Own News

Models own are releasing their very own nail art pens on the 15^th November…They are releasing a black and a white one but in the future they will have a whole range of gorgeous colours! They will be £6 each which is a bit expensive for nail pens, especially ones that look exactly the same as my cheap (24 for £9.69) ones from eBay but when they release more of their colours I will be happy to pay £6 to get my favourite models own shades in the pens.

Models Own have also just released some Christmas Nail Polish box sets. They are sets of 6 for £20, which gives a saving of £10 and they make a great Christmas gift. To get updates from Models Own direct to your email address sign up for their newsletter on their website!

Leopard Print

So here is WAH Nails’ most popular choice…LEOPARD PRINT! I’ve wanted to do leopard print for weeks now after seeing someone’s Konad leopard print nails! I went onto eBay and bought a Konad stamper and scraper set which came with the leopard print M57 plate for £7.40, which was a bit of a bargain as each individual plate is about £5 each! I haven’t used the set yet as I was put off it after reading some instructions online about how to use them. It just sounded like a lot of hassle, mess and fiddling but I’ll have a go soon and let you know if it is as tricky as I think it will be! As you’ve probably guessed, I used some of my nails pens instead!

Firstly I did a coat of Models Own 25 Carat Gold. After a few minutes I used a brown nail pen to make 5 or 6 large dots on each nail and then I used the black pen to draw the black leopard spots on. I used the Seche Vite topcoat again for this to see how good it is and so far I’m impressed! I’m writing this on Monday, a whole 4 days after painting them and so far I can only find a few small bits missing off the tips:

I put a topcoat on the night I did them, and 1 on the Friday night but I’m going to leave these until this Thursday night to see the results after a week!

Strawberrylicious

This is the first nail design that I copied from WAH Nails. I’m not too sure why I picked this as my first one, I think it was a combination of the fact that it was the last time in the year that I could get away with having summery nails and I didn’t think it would be too difficult for a first attempt!

To do this design I used Models Own Red Alert for the base, and then used a yellow nail pen (which I got from eBay) to do the seed shapes. I was a bit nervous at first but after doing 1 nail I realized it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be! I then realized I didn’t have a suitable green for the tips and so a quick trip to boots for a hunt for Models Own Green Grass or Green Tea ended in my buying Barry M Spring Green as Boots didn’t have either but I was very pleased with the colour. I tried out my new topcoat on this design, it’s called Seche Vite dry fast top coat and it made my nails look really shiny and it fully dried all of the layers of my varnish in minutes! This nail varnish is supposed to last ages but after a night in work I found it had worn away at the tips so I did a quick touchup on the tips the following day and it didn’t budge for 3 days until Thursday when I got the nail varnish remover out ready for a new design for the weekend….

Sparkly Black tips

So i ended up having a hectic weekend with shopping and birthday parties so i'm blogging today instead...but better late than never ey?

I did these nails by using some nails guide stickers that I got off ebay a while ago to produce the curved line quickly and easily. I have found when painting the tips of fingers these are a godsend! Sometimes they don’t work perfectly, for instance if u haven’t stuck the sticker down all along the nail, but 9 out of 10 nails normally turn out perfect without the need of a touch up. On ebay there are a range of different shapes available but I’m a fan of the classic curved shape. I used a coat of Models Own Black Magic for the base and then put a thin coat of models own Silver Fox on the top. I usually make sure I remove the stickers before the nail varnish dries as I find the line is smoother because dried nail varnish can chip as the sticker is pulled off. I then used a coat of models own 3-in1 Base Coat, Topcoat and Gloss all over the nail to finish this design off.

1st post…why I’m here

I’ve always been obsessed with painting my nails, and being blessed with strong/long nails I have always made sure my nails had a perfect French manicure. Recently I have become more experimental though and so I have decided to collect my nail art in a blog to share ideas and hopefully get my creative juices going again.

I discovered Wah Nails while looking on the web for some inspiration and absolutely fell in love with it! It has really given me the confidence to do more daring things with my nails than just coloured tips. I love soo many of the designs and I have a folder on my desktop with over 250 images from this site for inspiration. Here are some of my favorites:

My plan is to start off by using inspiration from the professionals (Wah Nails) to practice and then start designing some of my very own nail designs.

I’ve already got a few photos of some of my nails from the last few weeks so I will put them on at some point this weekend to get me going and then I will blog whenever I have any new designs, ideas or anything else I think is interesting!

Wish me luck :)