The Digit-al Dozen does Decades Day 5 - The 60s (but the 1660s!)

Hello everyone! Today brings the Digit-al Dozen Decades week to an end and I have loved every minute of it! Everyone's art has been so creative and the diverse interpretations have been awesome! I'm finishing with a curveball, born out of a school project that Scarlett did a while ago. I've had this idea on the back burner since then (fire pun - yay!), and seeing as the Great Fire of London happened in 1666, I bring you the 1660s!

I started with a base of Models Own Lemon Meringue, before sponging on OPI Yellopalooza, Barry M Gelly Mango, OPI The Drummer Is Hot and Dream Black to create the burning skyline effect. I then painted in the burning building silhouettes with Color Club Rebel Spirit, watered down with a little acetone in places, before finishing with Seche Vite.

So I'll admit this isn't the cheeriest topic to end the week on, but I am in love with how this came out (even if I did have to do it twice after I painted it upside down the first time - grrr!). Decade week has been a blast, and if you haven't checked out everyone else's manis for the week you are missing a treat! Follow the Inlinkz below to check out all the other ladies' work :)

Sam xx

An InLinkz Link-up

Happy Birthday to my beautiful girl! FingerFood's Theme Buffet - For Scarlett

Hello everyone! Today's post comes with a "Beware - sappy, proud mummy" warning. My beautiful Scarlett is 8 today!

All the lovely ladies who take part in the Theme Buffet have been posting manis for Scarlett all week and she has been beyond excited to look through them all and read all the posts. To get fully involved Scarlett chose the pattern and polishes for the nails I painted and then asked if she could also paint mine, so this is a blog post with two authors - one 30-something, the other 8 (proudly displaying her own watermark!) :)

 

Starting with mine (age before beauty and all that!). Scarlett adores all my glitters from L-A Glitter Nails so she picked out five (yes five!) of her favourites and asked for a wavy, stripy creation, so I freehanded sections of Apple, Peacock, Sapphire, Grape and Eggplant which I then separated with fine lines of black acrylic paint (black polish would've looked too "lumpy" over the glitter) and finished with two coats of Seche Vite for a smooth and shiny finish.

Next up is the birthday girl (in her own words):

Hello everyone! I am Scarlett, I am going to tell step by step how I did my mum's  

nails the other day.

First I painted a bright yellow Models Own (called lemon meringue), then I waited for it to dry.

Next I painted some thick dots in barryM purple (called blackberry).

Next I did the same thing in green, but with a thinner dotter.

Last of all I surprisingly found out that I wanted to get the thin dotter and use another barryM but this time it was a pink one called grapefuit.

That is the end of my talk and thank you everyone for my fabulous birthday nails I love them all lots and lots! Now I will hand you back over to my mum.

I hope you like Scarlett's birthday nails from both of us! The buffet theme for next week is Galaxies, which is another one of my favourites. In the meantime, I just have to get through this weekend and an overly ambitious party theme (because hiring a choreographer and taking advantage of the fact that your husband is a music video director and shooting a pop video with a bunch of 8 year olds seems like a really good idea at first!). She is also insisting that I recreate my glitter bomb on my own nails for her party just to add to the totally unstressful few days that I have ahead! :D

Sam (and Scarlett xx) xx 

An InLinkz Link-up

The Digit-al Dozen does Decades - 70s Paisley

Hello everyone! Today sees the start of another Digit-al Dozen week and our theme for this month is Decades. I'm a lot happier with this theme as there is a lot of scope to stretch it! I'm starting with pretty much my favourite print of all time, mostly famous (and infamous!) for being omnipresent in the 1970s, but luckily for me it had a minor resurgence in the 90s that I was able to take advantage of and wear it to death for about a year. Fortunately, I'm not a teenager any more and don't care what anyone thinks, so now I wear it whenever the hell I like :D

I started with two coats of Jessica Ruffled Bottoms, before painting in the paisley shapes with LA Colors French White. I added the inner details using Barry M Gellys in Lychee and Key Lime, Models Own Lilac Dream and a little more Ruffled Bottoms before finishing with Seche Vite (still haven't chosen that new top coat!)

I'm loving this, but then again I would - its paisley! I know its not everyone's cup of tea, but it floats my boat every time!

Same time tomorrow! In the meantime, check out everyone else's Day 1 Decades :)

Sam xx

An InLinkz Link-up

GOT Polish Challenge and NAILS Mag April Challenge - Pastel

Hello everyone! Today I painted my nails while watching "Frozen" with Scarlett which may be responsible for some of the colour choices. I'm not really a fan of pastel colours, or Disney films if I'm honest, but I'm enjoying this one so far, and its the quietest that Scarlett has been for about a week in one sitting, so I'm happy with that! Luckily, the NAILS Mag challenge prompt for today is also Pastel (serendipity, yay!) so its a buy one, get one free today too :D

I started with a base of Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau (I adore this as its opaque in one coat!), and then added curves of graduated dots in Nail Essentials Silver Shimmer. Once dry I added smaller dots inside the silver of OPI Gargantuan Green Grape, and Models Own Lilac Dream and Lemon Meringue before finishing with Seche Vite.

Quite a simple design for me, and I toyed with the idea of adding more to it, but I think it works fine as it is so I'll leave it there :)

I have had the chance for a bit of a catch up this morning and am making good progress with my first Digit-al Dozen manis which will be coming at you from the 14th April - I can't wait to show you all some of them. It'll also explain why my fingers have spent a lot of this morning stuck together with nail glue, and why I am therefore now missing sections of skin from a couple of fingers... 

My MoYou plates also arrived today and I haven't even had the chance to play with them yet - how's that for self control?! If I get a chance later today, that's next on my agenda, so hopefully I'll have some manis featuring those too...

Sam xx

An InLinkz Link-up

NAILS Magazine 31DC - Mint (Is it summer yet?)

Hello everyone! I'm back again and we're almost at the end of the NAILS Magazine March challenge. Today's theme is "Mint". There were lots of options open for this one, but he furst thing that pops into my head is Mint Choc Chip ice cream and I stopped thinking right about then :)

I started by painting a base of Sinful Colors Glass Pink and then painted across the lower half of each nail with Color Club Earthy Angel. Next I added some fine criss cross detail using Models Own Nude Beige with a fine detail brush and the cone was done. For the ice cream itself, I used Barry M Greenberry (I used the brush straight from the bottle to add it) and added irregular chocolate chips with Color Club Rebel Spirit before finishing with Seche Vite.

Something cute and fun for Friday! The madness of the Easter holiday starts here at midday - Scarlett has over three weeks off so I will be balancing nails with entertaining housefuls of 7 and 8 year olds who want their nails painted! They may even get their own post if I'm running short! In other news I'm looking into doing a course that will allow me to teach nail art/colour theory etc - so exciting! But more about that another day :)

We're in for a lovely warm weekend here in London so maybe I will actually get to eat an ice cream instead of looking longingly at these nails!!!

Sam xx

GOT Polish Challenge Yellow/Peach and NAILS Mag 31DC - Marbling

Hello everyone! Another Thursday and another GOT polish challenge day has come around. The colours for this week are yellow/peach and I can't say I was thrilled with them, especially as I wamted to be able to tie them in with the NAILS Mag prompt "Marbling". Many of you know that I have a love/hate relationship with water matbling (love how it looks, HATE doing it!), so that was a no go from the off. However I have been trying out Robin Moses No Water Marbling technique (tutorial here) with up to now fairly inconsistent results and today it all finally clicked into place - I am so happy! 

The base is LA Colors Illusion. It really is an illusion as I promise I didn't really use purple in a yellow/peach prompt, honest! ;) Then while the polish was still wet, I added blobs of LA Colors  French White and Hottie along with Models Own Lemon Meringue. I used a fine detail brush to drag the wet polish into marble patterns and allowed to dry for a good while before finishing with Seche Vite.

I was so happy to have got this technique right finally that I did two sets, one in the GOT colours (ignore the glaring misuse of purple - but it needed a background colour to make the yellow/peach work, so that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!), and another in coffee and chocolate similar to the ones in Robin's video. Here is a sneaky peak at my yummy "mocha coffee chocolate frappuccino" version:

I'm off to do some more of this, playing around with the vast array of colour combinations alone are enough to keep me going for weeks, so expect to see a few of these. I've also spotted a tutorial on how to do flowers in this style - I am all over that!

Tomorrow's prompt for the 31DC is "Mint" and I have something fun lined up for that one! Until then, follow the Inlinkz for all the other GOT manis :)

Sam xx

An InLinkz Link-up

FingerFood's Theme Buffet - Cute

Hello everyone! I've had this mani ready for a few days but just haven't been able to find a slot for it in the posting schedule! For this week's "Cute" theme, I had already decided to paint bunnies, but decided to go with a landscape style. Its a bit "Watership Down", but the least said about that book/film the better as I'm tearing up just thinking about it now...

I started with a base of Barry M Gelly Blueberry, sponged on some fluffy white clouds with Models Own Snow White and then painted the grass with Ciate Mojito and Sinful Colors Exotic Green. I dotted in a few flowers using LA Colors Moody Red, Rimmel Sunshine and Models Own Lilac Dream. I then painted in the bunnies with Color Club Silver Lake and Sheer DIsguise, and Ciate Vintage. I finished with Seche Vite.

Some of the bunnies are a bit iffy, but I especially love the thumb bunnies (hence the giant photo of that one at the top lol!).

Onwards and upwards to our next theme - Flowers! This one opens at midnight tonight so if you haven't joined in one of our theme weeks before, why not start now? Come visit us here!

Sam xx

An InLinkz Link-up

Tri Polish Tuesdays February #2 and #3

Hello everyone! Its Tuesday again and I'm on a catch up mission with the Tri Polish challenge! I haven't posted the last two weeks so I have two very different manis for you today.

The first also comes with an added bonus - censorship! I cut my finger quite badly last Friday and managed to cut through my cuticle in two places. I have a very attractive flap of skin that I am desperately trying to get reattach to the nail. Not working so far but the teabag technique isn't going to cut it here lol :/ Anyway, I didn't think any of you would be remotely interested in seeing the result of my stupidity, so I censored it :)

Back to the nail art. I started with a base of LA Colors French White and them used a striper to add random sections of LA Colors Electra which I outlined and added to with Ciate Vintage. I finished with Seche Vite.

The second one I painted a week or so ago but never got around to posting, I still haven't decided if I like it or not, but here it is anyway. I started with three coats of Ciate Vintage and then added blobs of Models Own Nude Beige and Nail Essentials Classic Pink. I used a dragging tool to create an unholy mess of the two colours over the top of the grey and then topped with Seche Vite to even it all out.

So that's our Tri Polish selection for February over with. This colour selection really seemed to split opinion, but then again, that's also pretty much why I picked it. Some of the colour combos in this month's manis have been amazing and I've certainly put together colours that I normally wouldn't have considered! Next month we have a combination that's a little more simple to work with - green, blue and purple!

Check out the other Tri Polish manis via the links below :)

Sam xx

An InLinkz Link-up

The NCC presents "Inspired by Summer" #'3

Hello everyone! Today I have my third "Inspired by Summer" mani for the February theme of the Nail Challenge Collaborative. I've gone with some summery colour sponging (sponging is my current obsession in case you hadn't noticed!), for this bright and cheery look.

I started with an LA Colors French White base and then sponged on Models Own Lemon Meringue, LA Colors Pink Bubbles and Color Club East Austin. I topped with Seche Vite and then once dry, added white polka dots with a little more French White.

Its a subtle one for me, but it definitely puts me in the mood for summer! One more to go for this month before we start in with our theme for March, which I will reveal with my fourth mani :)

Put yourself in the mood for summer by looking at everyone else's fab designs in the links below.

Sam xx

An InLinkz Link-up

Week of Love Valentines Challenge - Days 1 and 2

Hello everyone! Sorry for the lack of post yesterday - we are unfortunately caught up right in the middle of the Surrey floods and although I have had the nails painted, photographed and ready for a while, I just didn't have the time (or my brain in the right place!) to blog yesterday. I am determined not to get behind though and this is giving me some distraction, so I promise to try and make at least partial sense ;) 

This challenge is hosted by lovely Jessica from Be Happy and Buy Polish. We have five daily prompts covering all sorts of Valentine's goodies starting yesterday with "Candy Heart Sayings".

I decided to go quite literal, except with the sayings themselves, so my thumb and pinky are painted like the wrappers with French White and Ciate Cupcake Queen. My index finger has Models Own Lilac Dream as the base with freehand hearts painted using Models Own Lemon Meringue, Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau and Nail Essentials Classic Pink. I painted my middle and ring finger in Lemon Meringue and Take Me To Your Chateau and added the hearts and sayings "Love Nails" and "# Me" with a pink Sharpie.

Today's prompt is "Kisses" and I had already done a kissy, lovey mani on Sunday, so I'm cheekily going to use that one again. Only one photo as I already posted about this at the weekend, you can read about it here:

So, I'm caught up with this challenge. Things are changing here fairly quickly and constantly, but I'm doing my best to keep up! I should have some "Roses" for you tomorrow, but for now I need a beer and to disappear into the world of "Real Housewives" (guilty pleasure lol!)

Sam xx

An InLinkz Link-up

Studded Hearts - another Valentines theme mani...

Hello everyone! Today I have another Valentine-ish mani for you. Its super simple, but I think its pretty effective, and as always, I haven't exactly gone down the traditional route.

I started with a single coat of Barry M Gelly Blueberry, which was enough for full coverage, and then added two coats of Models Own Indian Ocean. All the coverage online of the massive Models Own sale made me revisit my stash and I was really happy to rediscover this beauty!

Once dry I added a generous coat of Seche Vite to one nail at a time, and added heart-shaped and round silver studs all over the middle and ring finger, and a more delicate half moon design to the others.

I like how this turned out, I think the metal studs take the edge off the gushy lovey nature of the design just enough for me to be able to cope with it lol!

Hope you're all ready for some swatches coming your way soon, I have received some fab nail mail lately and I am dying to show you some of my new discoveries!

Sam xx