New Year's Glitter Fest

Sally Hansen Celeb City, Milani Silver, China Glaze Blue Year's Eve

These are my New Year's Eve nails. Of course I had to use China Glaze Blue Year's Eve, none of my other nail polishes are have New Year's specific names so I figured it was a definite. I've always loved glitter accent nails and have recently seen a few reverse sort of accent nails, where the crazy glitter bombs are on all the nails and the accent nail is just a plain colour. So I blinged out all my nails and did a little gradient type thing over Blue Year's Eve. I was trying to go for a glittery gradient like getnail-d's accent nail on her mermaid nails mani but I kind of went a little bit overboard. 

In other news... I'm moving from my little home town in the country to the big bad city! On New Year's day I'm heading off to live in Sydney, which is why I've done my New Year's nails a day early. I'll be too busy packing tomorrow. Of course I'm taking all my polishes, and getting them through the six hour drive meant packing them securely. I had a cardboard box from work and some packing bubbles so I made a little double storey nail polish box to transport them. This photo shows about two thirds of my current collection, all snug in their little box. 

Go Go Teenage Dream

China Glaze Go Go Pink, OPI Teenage Dream

After the craziness of all my Christmas nails I thought I needed a nice simple sort of manicure. I've been looking for the perfect light pink to suit my skin tone. So many pinks look weird on me, but I quite liked this. It was actually a lot pinker in real life, the sun scared it away a bit. And because I haven't had a plain ol' mani in what feels like forever I had to add a glitter accent nail. 

Mermaid Nail Tutorial

China Glaze Custom Kicks, China Glaze Grape Pop, China Glaze Rodeo Diva, Essence You Belong To Me, Face Of Australia White Gold

A few people have been asking how I did the scaley nail on my Sparkly Mermaid Nails mani, so here's a tutorial for it. It's really very simple, all you need to be able to do is to make dots. 

First I start with a base coat, usually using one of the colours I'll be using for the dots. Then, starting from the tip of my nail I make a row of dots using different colours. Sometimes I put a blob of each nail polish on my desk and dip my dotter in there, other times if I don't want to waste any polish I'll just poke the brush of the polish with my dotter. After each dot I wipe the dotter on a cotton ball soaked with nail polish remover so the colours don't get all mixed up. 

The reason I use so many different colours is that it looks better if there aren't any dots of the same colour next to each other, and having lots of colours makes it easy to keep them all separated. 

After the first row, I just keep dotting different coloured dots down the nail, overlapping them like the scales of a fish. 

At the end I use the same colour as the base coat to sort of form a start off point for the scales. In my original mani I started from the bottom, instead of the top, so it was backwards to this, but you can do it either way. And finally, finish it all off with a nice top coat!

This one is a little bit messier looking because I used smaller dots but it's the same process. So, if you can use a dotting tool and have a bit of time then you can do this mani! I hope this made sense. If you're unclear about anything just comment and I'll try to explain it in a better way.

***** a little extra *****

Since I popped this online I've seen a couple of other nail bloggers' designs using this tutorial and they just look so amazing that I wanted to share them here, so you can all see how awesome they look and the great colour schemes and whatnot so check out getnail-d and Delaynee's versions! Now I want to do this mani in a million different colour schemes! Thanks ladies!

Black Glitter Franken

Black Glitter Franken

After googling Butter London Black Knight about a million times I decided to try and franken up something similar. I had a bit of clear and black polish left over from when I created my My Private Jet concoction so I thought I'd add a bit of Ulta3 Confetti to it and see how it went. Confetti is mainly purple and green glitter, with a bit of blue and gold glitter in a clear base. Then I thought, why not add more glitter? I can't exactly remember what I added, but I think there's a bit of OPI Simmer and Shimmer, OPI Glow Up Already, Extra-Va-Vaganza and Sally Hansen Celeb City in there. Perhaps even some Amour Rain Glitter too! 

From far away it just looks like an odd black nail polish, but up close you can see all the different glitter.

So much glitter!!!

Pointy Glitter Tape Manicure

China Glaze Grape Pop, China Glaze Recycle, China Glaze Heli-Yum, Milani Gold

I've been wanting to do a pointy tape manicure for a while now. I'd been waiting to find colours that go together nicely, and were opaque in one coat. In my Christmas haul of nail polish I got a heap of China Glazes, including Grape Pop and Heli-Yum. I was super impressed with how dense the colour was! Grape Pop was better with two coats, but Heli-Yum was a solid one coater! Finally! I had my matching one coaters for tape manis! I did this mani while watching a movie so I could give each coat enough time to dry before putting the sticky tape on it. Then, at the end for a little bit of extra flair I dotted on some glitter from a bottle of Milani Gold, from the Gems FX collection. 

The one thing that confused me with this kind of layering tape mani was the tips of my fingers. Because I have such short nails I never wrap the edges (I think that's what it's called, when you sort of paint the tip edges too) because there just ends up being polish all over my fingers! So when I finished off this manicure I could see each layer of colour on the tips of my nails, and as they wore, the darker colours underneath became really noticeable. Has anyone else had this problem? The only solution I could think of for next time was to remove the polish from the tips of my nails before the last coat, so the last coat would be the only one on the ends, just like a normal mani. I guess I'll just have to do another like this so I can see if that works!

Happy Christmas Everyone!

OPI Black Onyx, piCture pOlish Festival, China Glaze Atlantis, Milani Gold

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!

This was my Christmas Eve/Christmas Day manicure. I couldn't wait to use Festival. It's SO AWESOME!!! So many colours! I have to say... I may not need Cult Nails Clairvoyant now. Then I added a Christmas tree to make give it a bit more festive spirit. Festival was beautiful to apply, this was three coats. One of the things I really love about Festival is that it's in a clear base, so you can put it over any colour and get flakie awesomeness without changing your base colour. Festival is made by an Aussie company called piCture pOlish. The girls at piCture pOlish were just lovely. I received a cute little email along with my order invoice. It makes you feel all nice and special when you get personalised service! While I was on their website I picked up a couple of  Ozotic polishes as well. Prepare yourself for some awesome holo goodness and colour shifting glitter in the not so distant future!

Anyhoo, off to eat my weight in Christmas chocolate now! Have a happy and safe holiday!

Reindeer and Candy Canes!

Orly Au Champagne, China Glaze Love Marilyn, China Glaze Street Chic, China Glaze Ruby Pumps, BYS Black Striper, OPI Black Onyx, OPI Alpine Snow

Inspired by all the reindeer manis going around at the moment, mainly Nailasaurus's reindeer mani which is just adorable! My candy canes bled a bit under the tape which was annoying but oh well. 

Au Champagne is my first Orly nail polish. They're quite robust little bottles, aren't they! Who would've thought a few extra millilitres of polish would make the bottles look so massive! I bought Au Champagne in my quest to find a wearable white, and I think I've now found it! It's so shimmery and lovely but still nice and white.

I can't wait until Christmas!

Nailside Christmas Tree Mani

China Glaze Rodeo Fanatic China Glaze Heli-Yum, Milani Gold, Essence Make It Golden

Nailside is so good at coming up with super easy tape nail art. This Christmas tree came from her Abstract Christmas Tree Tutorial. It's so easy and so cute! I wanted to keep doing Christmas themed nails, but I just received a bunch of new polishes in the post and I wanted to try them out. So this ended up being less Christmasy coloured than my other Christmas manis. My nails are a mess at the moment. My job kind of kills them every day and it's been so busy with the Christmas rush that they're getting a real bang around each day!

And another one!

China Glaze Custom Kicks, China Glaze For Audrey, OPI Jade Is The New Black, Rimmel Red Carpet

Yep, another Christmas themed manicure. I blame working in retail. All the decorations and the music and saying "Have a great Christmas" six billion times a day puts me in a festive kinda mood. This mani is similar to my mermaid/fish dot manicure a while ago, but with rows of the same coloured dots. I was going for a Christmas tree look, not sure if it ended up being all that tree like, but I reckon it's still a pretty Christmasy pattern.

Another Christmas Mani

OPI Jade Is The New Black, Spectraflair Top Coat, Sally Hansen Celeb City, Rimmel Red Carpet

Since there's just over a week to go before Christmas I thought I should do another Christmas manicure. This one was really easy and simple to do, it's just dots. I made little silver dots on my nails and put a green dot inside it to make a little hook/handle thing for my red baubles. I think they look quite cute!

Glitter In The Sandwich

Essence Forget Me Not, Essie Lapis of Luxury, Essence Make It Golden, Milani Silver

This is a bizarre sort of mani. Lots of different layers happening here. I'd spent the whole day before I did this mani lusting over Deborah Lippmann's Glitter In The Air. When I got home I felt like doing a bit of a glitter sandwich and Essie Lapis Of Luxury is usually annoyingly sheer to me so I thought it'd do well as a top colour! The layers here are 1 coat of Forget Me Not, 2 coats of Lapis of Luxury, 1 of Make It Golden, 1 of Silver and another 1 of Lapis of Luxury.

I took this photo the next evening, after a very busy day at work. I think it held up quite well, considering my job is very hands on and they get banged about quite a bit! 

My "My Private Jet" Franken

My "My Private Jet" Franken

The original OPI My Private Jet has become a sort of holy grail of nail polish. I have what I think is considered to be the crappiest version of MPJ, the charcoaley brown version with silvery flecks and not much holo goodness, but I still really love it! It reminds me of like really good potting mix, packed full of nutrients. Having said that, I've always wanted a polish like the original 'good' MPJ with its amazing holo goodness. But where would I get it???

Enter Cathy, the Queen of Holo and fellow Aussie, who has one of my favourite nail blogs, More Nail Polish. I bought some Spectraflair and colour morphing powders from her and they are awesome! When we were emailing I asked if she'd tried adding Spectraflair to a non-awesome MPJ to convert it to an awesome MPJ. She gave me a handy little recipe for frankening up a similar looking polish and I love it! Thanks Cathy!

Essence Swatches

Oh, Essence. I need to stop gushing about you. There was a surprise in Target when I popped in the other day. The little shelf below the row of Colour & Go polishes in the Essence display that I usually use as a sorting/storage area while shopping had been filled with the Vampire's Love collection. It's quite strange being in Australia when we're in the middle of summer to see colours for autumn and winter. My nails always seem to be confused seasonally. In summer I want to wear dark wintery colours because that's what's being released and plastered across the internet, and in winter I want to wear crazy bright colours! We just can't win down here! 

Essence Into The Dark

Into The Dark only needed one coat! That's right, that up there is just one coat. I think out of my bajillion nail polishes I only have about three that only need one coat. Good job Essence!

Essence True Love

True Love is a lovely sort of shimmery polish. I don't have any purple polishes similar to this shade so it was a must have. This was two coats. 

Essence Choose Me

Choose Me (from the regular Colour & Go collection) is apparently a dupe for OPI Catch Me In Your Net, Zoya Charla and Orly Halley's Comet. I don't own any of these (and now apparently don't need to!) so I can't compare them. Choose Me is really beautiful in real life, although while it looks completely opaque in two coats in the shade, in the sun it seemed to become a bit sheer. This was three coats.

Christmas Candy Cane Nails

China Glaze Ruby Pumps, OPI Alpine Snow

My work Christmas party was on over the weekend and I thought the occasion was worthy of special Christmas nails. Candy cane nails seem to be all over the internet at the moment and they're just so cute and easy! I was running a little short on time so I just did a candy cane accent nail. I kinda screwed up the top candy cane nail because I think I didn't have enough topcoat on the brush and it smudged a bit. But I still think they looked awesome!

I need more flakies!

OPI Russian Navy, Kleancolor Chunky Holo Black, Avon Crystal Vision Crystal Nail Topcoat

Like everyone else on the internet who likes nail polish, I was absolutely amazed at the awesomeness of Cult Nails' limited edition flake gem Unicorn Puke. When I read that it was being re-released as Clairvoyant I was so excited! Unfortunately it'd already sold out so I'll have to wait a while to get my Clairvoyant/Unicorn Puke fix. In the meantime, I tried to make a colourful flakie manicure with the few flakie style polishes I have. I used OPI Russian Navy as a base to try and get some blue in the mani, topped with a few coats of Kleancolor Chunky Holo Black and then a few coats of a little gem I found in my nail polish bag from when I was a young'un. Avon Crystal Vision Crystal Nail Topcoat has little blue-green flakies in it, and is the only flakie I own. It was super runny and watery when I found it, but I left the lid off for a day and it thickened up nicely! The result was a crazy colour shifting flakie style manicure. 

For a bit of fun I made a little thumb gif to show the colour changes! 

Forget Me Not & Party Fever

Essence Forget Me Not, Kleancolor Party Fever

Essence is my new favourite brand. I'm really amazed at the quality of these polishes considering their price (compared to the standard $18-20 for other brands). Forget Me Not is a cornflower blue, almost purple polish with a very subtle shimmer. It's applied like a dream and was just a delight! This one came from the Blossoms etc collection and was only $3.50 (I think? Around that price). The one thing I didn't like about it was the shape of the bottle. It's tall and thin, like a nail art bottle and I kept on feeling like I might accidentally tip it over. 

For a bit of fun I did a coat of Kleancolor Party Fever on top. I got a bunch of Kleancolors a few months ago, all of them glitters, and all of them awesome!

Pink Shatter

China Glaze Light As Air, OPI Pink Of Hearts Pink Shatter

I love shatters. It's by far the easiest way to get awesome looking nail art, without needing any special skills or tools. If you can paint your nails, you can rock fab looking shatter! I found with this particular shatter, the thicker your layer was, the more dense the colour ended up as, and of course the bigger the cracks were!

The other reason why I absolutely adore having shatter on my nails is because of all the little things you can discover in the patterns it makes. Like finding animals in the clouds, I always seem to 'see' something in shattered nails. (and food, weird houses, furniture and cars)

So what did I see in these nails? If I list everything you'll think I'm a crazy person! In this particular mani there's lots of things, including an old lady wearing a scary cape, elephants walking in a row and a flailing sea monster!

Blue Addicted

Essence Blue Addicted

Whoa! I was so excited to find Essence in my local Target the other day and the thing that had me the most excited was that they had this polish! Blue Addicted is from the Colour & Go range and is a pretty spot on dupe of Deborah Lippmann's Across the Universe (or so I have been told. I don't have AtU to compare it with sadly). It's just a crazily beautiful polish. It looks like a seaweedy under-sea sparkle-fest on your nails. And for only $2.55 a bottle how can you say no? I even went back to get a second bottle since it is only 5mls.

Look at that glitter! 

As you can also probably tell, I cut my nails. This blog isn't called Little Nails for nothing! Trying out the whole squared shape thing, usually I like them super rounded, but I thought I'd try something different!

Strawberry Stripes

China Glaze Strawberry Fields, BYS Black Nail Striper

In an attempt to do something fabulously bright and summery to celebrate the beginning of summer I ended up with this on my nails. And I reckon it's awesome! I used China Glaze Strawberry Fields, which I got a few weeks ago, but hadn't actually used yet for a full mani. It may just be my favourite pink from my growing collection of nail polish. During my hunt for a 'summery' colour I realised I don't actually have many pinks, reds or purples. I do have about a million 'almost black' polishes though. I think dark colours always look great on shorter nails.

As always, I just can't cope with plain ol' painted nails. I need some glitter, or some shatter, or something awesome, so I jazzed it up with some cool stripes after seeing an awesome mani on a random beauty website, which featured photos from Nail It. You can see Nail It's original post here. It's really simple, just lines, and great for if you're practising using a nail art brush or a striper.

P.S. Since this photo was taken I've cut my nails. This length is the absolute longest I can get my nails to without them driving me crazy or breaking. Prepare yourselves for my little short nails next post. 

Citrusy Tribal/Aztec Mani

OPI Alpine Snow, OPI Hot & Spicy, OPI Fiercely Fiona, China Glaze Custom Kicks, BYS Black Striper

Oh, how I love the whole tribal, aztec thing that's in right now. This mani is quite similar to another I did, just with different colours. It kind of reminds me of oranges and lemons!