Lavender Lemon Nails

OPI Can't Find My Czechbook, Kester Black French Lavender, Seed Lemon, BYS Black Striper

I saw a manicure on Pinterest recently and tracked it back to SuPa Nails (while we're on the subject of Pinterest, I hate it when people pin without links back to the source. So annoying!) Susanne is a nail art wizard and the second I saw this manicure I knew I had to have it on my nails. Can't Find My Czechbook and French Lavender were already sitting out on my desk and all of a sudden my nails were like this! Well, a good while later they looked like this. Seriously, this was super tricky and it just goes to show how talented someone like Susanne is! First I tried creating the diamonds with tape, but with four colours and not ever waiting long enough for the polish to dry it did not go well. I ended up (painstakingly) hand painting the diamonds with a nail art brush. I definitely need to practice my brush skills, so I'm sure this kind of mani will be popping up on my nails a lot over the next couple of months. 

Kester Black - Winter Garden

I love Kester Black's Winter Garden collection. As I mentioned in my previous post, I started playing around with the polishes and all of a sudden I'd swatched most of them (and I never swatch! It was quite fun!) Application was great and most of these were two coaters. I'm a dedicated three coat kind of gal, and I surprised myself by happily leaving a lot of these at only two coats. Snowdrop was the only one that gave me a bit of grief, but that's more due to the fact that it's a frosty kind of finish and all frosty polishes are notoriously tricky.

This whole collection has a lovely wintery dustiness to it.  I especially love Moss, Silver Birch, Snapdragon and Periwinkle. In the two weeks since Anna sent me the polishes I have not worn another brand of nail polish. 

You can purchase Kester Black nail polish online (shipping is to Australia and New Zealand only) and in stores. 

They are five free (no Toluene, no DBP, no Camphor, no Formaldehyde, no Formaldehyde Resin), made in Australia, cruelty free, CCF accredited (Choose Cruelty Free) and vegan!

Kester Black Black Rose

Kester Black Periwinkle

Kester Black Snapdragon

Kester Black Poppy

Kester Black Deep Violet

Kester Black Peony

Kester Black French Lavender

Kester Black Forget Me Not

Kester Black Moss

Kester Black Silver Birch

Kester Black Starflower

Kester Black Snowdrop

These polishes were provided to me for review.

Deep Violet x French Lavender Gradient

Kester Black French Lavender, Kester Black Deep Violet

I feel like I should do gradient nails more often. They're surprisingly easy if you don't mind the clean up and they always look fab! 

Anna from Kester Black sent me some of her polishes a couple of weeks ago and I couldn't resist starting with a gradient. French Lavender and Deep Violet are both from Kester Black's Winter Garden collection (which you can buy online and in store around Australia and New Zealand) and match each other perfectly. Winter Garden is full of polish gems but I'll flail over the collection as a whole shortly. It deserves its own post. I was so excited that I went from 'playing around with a few' to swatching the entire collection. I couldn't help myself! 

These polishes were sent to me for review.

piCture pOlish Blog Fest 2013 - Celebrating the Year of the Blogger

piCture pOlish Ocean, piCture pOlish White Wedding, piCture pOlish Dorothy

Welcome to the most epic post in the history of Little Nails! This is my 2013 piCutre pOlish Blog Fest post. piCture pOlish is an Australian brand with the greatest tradition. Every year they have The piCture pOlish Blog Fest and invite bloggers to review their nail polishes. 

This year's Blog Fest theme is Celebrating the Year of the Blogger and has an emphasis on nail art.

As soon as I heard which shades I was getting and the whole nail art side of it I knew exactly what I was going to do. It's not new news that I'm obsessed with making nail art sticker/decal stripe things, usually with a chevron pattern and over the past few months I've found that piCture pOlish shades (and Ozotic shades, also sold by PP) are fantastic for this kind of nail art. They seem to be more flexible than other brands and the strips never crack when you handle them. 

This time I thought I'd branch out from the chevron pattern. I played around with stripes and triangles and ended up with a red, white and blue mixed manicure. 

And just in case you want to try this kind of mani out yourself, I've whipped up tutorials for the decals which are at the end of this post (warning, I may have gone slightly overboard! The general concept of each tutorial is the same but it's always fun to try different patterns)

Dorothy is a red glitter polish. It's actually tiny silver glitter in a red jelly base and doesn't need many coats to get the great red colour. 

Ocean has piCture pOlish's amazing little shards of rainbow goodness, what I've previously described as "particles of magic". They're suspended in a blue jelly base. I wouldn't call this kind of polish a glitter, but it has a lovely sparkle and glimmer to it. 

White Wedding also has "particles of magic" in it. It's absolutely impossible to capture on camera the rainbow hidden inside this colour. It's definitely a wearable white and was great to apply. Three coats was more than enough. 

All shades can be purchased online at www.picturepolish.com.au and if you don't live in Australia don't fret, you can purchase piCture pOlish all over the world through their network partners. They also have everyday deals to take advantage of.

You can find piCture pOlish all over the internet including Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

Once you get the hang of sticking down the polish pieces it's really easy to make cool geometric patterns and the possibilities are endless. This is all the same method, just with different shapes. I use tweezers and a dotting tool (or a pen or pencil if you lose your dotting tool like I did) to apply the polish pieces. Sometimes I'll dampen the dotting tool with clear polish or even remover to make it easier for the polish pieces to stick to the dotter. 

 

These polishes were provided to me for review

Check out all the other amazing Blog Fest participants:

I Know What Pandas Like

Deborah Lippmann I Know What Boys Like, OPI Panda-monium Pink

I've been a little obsessed with the 'solid colour pointer finger accent nail' recently. I couldn't help but add some stripes to this mani also, which are unfortunately a bit streaky. I was too keen on the topcoat!

Navy & Gold Madeline Poole Nails

Orly Glitz, OPI My Vampire is Buff, China Glaze First Mate

I've been eyeing off this Madeline Poole mani for what feels like forever. I finally got around to recreating it!

It's been so dreary in Sydney and it's been raining for what feels like forever (seriously, there was something on the news about only having had 7 hours of sunshine in the past week). There was some kind of miracle after I finished this mani and the sun was out for about 15 minutes. Just enough time to take some photos!

Pink and Navy Flowers

OPI Ate Berries In The Canaries, OPI My Vampire Is Buff, China Glaze First Mate

It's been a while since I've had any kind of freehand nail art on my fingers and I was in the mood for sitting in front of a trashy TV show and playing around with a nail art brush. This is what I ended up with at the end of it.  

And can I just say how much I love My Vampire is Buff? I've really been developing a taste for off white polishes over the past year or so. Every time I get a new one I think it's the be all and end all of off white polish then a new one comes along that seems to be even better. I think I've worked my way through a good chunk of OPI Skull & Glossbones, My Boyfriend Scales walls got quite the workout, and now I seem to be reaching for MVIB every time I sit down to paint my nails.