Vintage floral pattern nail art

 

Hello! This weeks nail art is inspired by vintage style floral prints. The base is Essie blanc, and the details are hand painted in acrylic paints, like normal. This was actually quite an easy design to do, and didn't take as long as I thought it would. As a result, I even painted my right hand! I usually just paint my right hand with a plain colour because it would be nearly impossible to recreate some of my other nail art using my left hand to paint. (I'm looking at you Starry Night...) So here it is below!

My Cinderella Hand!

As you can see, I was very lazy with the clean up of my other hand, haha. I always find doing the clean up such a chore, but messy cuticles are not nice to look at!

Field of tulips nail art

 

I decided to paint a field of flowers today. We've got some red tulips with some random yellow flowers thrown in to mix up the colours. Everything was done with acrylic paint with a top coat. To be honest, I'm not too sure how I feel about this one. From a distance it really looks nice because of the colours. However, I didn't do a very good job with the details. I tried to do some shading, but it didn't really work out, especially on the largest tulip. Hmm... oh well. They're still really colourful and make me think summery thoughts!

Van Gogh Starry Night Nails!

I'm back! Exams have been over for a couple of weeks now, but I've been so tired and uncreative, I haven't touched a bottle of polish in so long. But I'm back now, and (hopefully) better than ever! It's the summer holidays, and no school means more time for my nails.

So my nails today are inspired by Van Gogh's Starry Night. I can't quite say how long they took me to do in total, but I would say about a couple of hours, maybe three.

I tried to recreate the piece as faithfully as I could, but it was kinda hard stretching it out to fill all four fingers. Of course, the main difficulty was trying to get all of the detail, which is always the case when you're using a canvas as small as your nails. That was why I chose to do a Van Gogh, his impressionist style means that it isn't too detailed, you just have to follow the lines of the brush strokes. However, as tough as it was, I don't think I did too bad a job trying to recreate it.

My thumb was a bit of a fail - oh well!

I think I'd like to do some more nail art similar to this, trying to recreate the works of various artists. What painting do you think I should try next? Leave me a comment if you have any suggestions!

Purple Swirl Nail Art

Not too sure what to call this design, swirls? Simple filigree? Anyway, I think it's pretty. Polish is Barry M Gelly in Prickly Pear, with the pattern having been done in white acrylic paint.

I still have plenty of exams to do, so I am still unsure on when I will next have some time to do any nail art. :( I just keep holding on to the idea that the summer holidays are going to be amazing and that I'm going to have plenty of time to do my nails...

Simple Geometric Nail Art

Today's nail art is inspired by a design posted by The Nailasaurus recently. I really liked how simple and elegant the design was. Unfortunately, I forgot how difficult I always find striping tape, and I wasn't able to get the clean lines I wanted!

The colours here are Barry M's Gelly Mango, and the white is from Essie. It's the first Essie polish I've ever bought! They are so expensive, but I figured at least with a white I'll get full use of it. However, I was kind of expecting for the price I payed for it to be a lot better quality, rather than just regular polish, which is what I found it to be.

Also, exam season is upon us, so I don't know whether I'm going to have time to update this blog over the next few weeks! But hopefully, once all of my exams are over, I'll be able to come back and post far more frequently than I do at the moment. :)

Cute Animal Nail Art

I've been feeling a bit bleugh recently, so I thought to cheer myself up, I should do some cute animal nail art!

So, from left to right, we have a pig, a cat, a panda, and a little dog! I was inspired by random photos off of Google for the designs. Thinking about it now, it might have been more effective to do only one animal instead of four, but oh well. :) Which is your favourite?

Simple floral nail art

I've been a bit low on inspiration this week, so I just did something simple.

The polish is Sinful Colors Winterberry, and the flowers are in acrylic paint. It didn't really turn out quite how I imagined, mainly because I was painting quite late last night, and I didn't realise how yellow the yellow really was, until this morning! So, fried eggs or flowers, it depends on how you look at it!

Togepi Pokemon Nail Art!

So originally, my line of thought was it's Easter, let's do Easter egg nails. However, I ended up going from Easter eggs, to Pokemon eggs! So here's Togepi, an egg pokemon, and one of my favourite pokemons ever, hence why I have the toy that you can see I'm holding here!

The white polish I used for the background is from Natural Collection, and the pattern and detail is done in acrylic paint.

Hand painted water lilies!

 

I am so in love with my nails this week! I spent absolutely ages on them, but I think I can definitely say it was worth it. Water lilies are one of my favourite flowers, and now I can wear them on my nails too.

 

I did this design using acrylic paints and some nail art brushes that I bought recently from Born Pretty. They were perfect for getting all of the detail I needed.

I think it's fair to say that these are my best nails yet, and I won't be taking them off any time soon!

Gold Half Chevrons

 

Did some simple half chevrons this week. I still haven't managed to get a hang of using striping tape yet, so the edges are a bit off on some nails, but oh well.

I used 17 Fast Finish in Nightshade and Barry M Foil Effects 320.

Easter holidays are coming up, so hopefully I'll be able to do a lot more and more detailed nail art to keep posting over my exam period! I have my AS exams in a few weeks, and I'm not looking forward to them at all...

Pink Glitter Gradient

I'm feeling like a fairy princess with my nails today! I did a simple glitter gradient using Barry M 349 Rose Quartz. It's this beautiful rose pink glitter with little holographic bits. The white I used is from Natural Collection - dirt cheap, and not that great quality, but does the job.

I always find that whenever I'm wearing glitter polish and am standing in the sunshine, I get distracted just looking at my nails and how sparkly they are...

Nude blossom

This week's nail art is inspired by some of the amazing designs by kimiko7878 on instagram. She has done so many beautiful hand painted floral manis which I absolutely adore, so I decided to try and do something similar. The base is Rimmel London 60 seconds Caramel Cupcake 500, and the rest is hand painted using acrylic paints. Unfortunately, my brushes were quite thick, so it was very difficult to get the delicacy I was after. Will need to buy some proper nail art brushes soon!

Spring florals inspired by OOTD!

Hello! So this week's nails are inspired by this cute skirt that I bought from Asos a couple of weeks ago. I absolutely fell in love with the pattern, and decided to recreate it on my nails! Here's the original pattern:

It's really put me in the mood for spring! I used acrylic paints and an old paintbrush that I had trimmed. This is the most detailed nail art I've ever done, so I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, even if it is a bit messy. I should probably buy some proper brushes, but till then I will make the best of what I've already got lying around the house.

Blue Skies

 So there's finally been some sunshine here in the UK! Which meant that I was able to take some photos outside. I was inspired by the nice weather to paint my nails a sky blue, and add some cute little fluffy clouds to the tips. I did this mani using Rimmel London Too Cool to Tango, and Natural Collection's white.

I had initially tried to use a dotting tool to make the clouds even, but because the polish is quite thin, it really didn't look good like that, so I just used the end of the brush and pressed it lightly against the tip of each brush several times. It does mean it looks a little bit uneven, but then again, so are real clouds!

Feeling Pink

 I used three different Nails Inc polishes for this: Havana, Pink Fizz, and Heather Grey (this last one was a limited edition colour that you could only get if you bought some Diet Coca-Cola).

I still haven't quite got the hang of using striping tape- in video tutorials it looks so easy, but I always end up not being able to get it to go where I want it to go, or be able to cut it to the right length. Needless to say, this is very frustrating, so if anyone has any tips on how to make using striping tape any easier, please do tell!

Spray Water Marble in Gold

Did some spray water marbling today. In case you're unfamiliar with the technique, it's very similar to normal water marbling, but you use hairspray to make the polish shrink into interesting shapes. Unfortunately one of my nails went wrong, and I didn't have time to redo it, hence the accent nail! The turquoise is Peacock by 17, and the gold is the gold foil effect by Barry M. You can't quite see it here, but I used the Collection 2000 Sparkle Top Coat, which adds a bit off glittery shimmer on top.

Blue Ribbon

Decided to try my hand at using acrylic paints on my nails! So I dug up my old tool box full of paints from GCSE art, and came up with this! (I must apologise for the lighting, all the daylight had gone by the time I finished.)

So, I know it isn't great, I had quite a few moments of accidentally pressing the brush down too hard and making the lines too thick. But, I'm still pretty pleased with it for a first time using actual paint on my nails.

Also, I had a bit of trouble removing the glequins that I used in my last post. Does anyone have any tips? Or do I just need to attack my nails with remover?

Sci Fi Silver

 

This is my first time using striping tape or doing glitter placement, and I think it went pretty well! However, when I've seen other people use striping tape, it always seemed so easy, whereas I found it rather fiddly, especially trying to cut it to the right length for my nails.

I used W.I.P polish in Barely There as the base. I bought this polish only last week in the sale at Urban Outfitters, where it was reduced from £6 to £1.50 a bottle. Bargain! However, it's not that great quality, needing three fairly thick layers before I got even coverage, so it would definitely not be worth the original price, but at £1.50, I'm not complaining.

Hello there, how do you do?

Hi there!
I'm Emily, a 17 year old student from the UK. After seeing so many great nail art blogs, I've decided to try blogging my own nail art. I'm not very experienced at all of this, but this should be fun!