Cake, Nails & Glitter!

OPI Black Onyx, Ozotic 528, Ozotic 529

I was in a glittery Ozotic mood on Friday, mainly becasue my Friday afternoon was spent looking through swatches of Ozotic nail polish and Picture Polish nail polishes. The lovely ladies from Picture Polish were having a great little sale on a bundle of Ozotics and PPs and I was trying to figure out which colours to get. 

Ozotic 528 and 529 are both multichrome glitters and they are just amazing! It's so hard to get a photo that shows the real life awesomeness of these glitters! 

Over the weekend I caught up with my friend Julia, who is getting into nail art and wanted to have a little nail art, nail polish play around afternoon. We got out a rainbow selection of nail polishes out and played around. While Julia mastered the dotter, I painted my  housemate Lucy's (AKA The Giver Of Chanel Peridot) nails. I liked the colours she picked so much I thought I'd do my nails the exact same!

Also over the weekend, we celebrated Lucy's birthday with a lovely pie and an epic cake (my other housemate Anna is a genius baker!) Lucy's nails (OPI Panda-Monium Pink & OPI Pirouette My Whistle) matched her cake so well I insisted on a photo! 

Silver Chevrons

Essie Marshmallow, China Glaze Devotion, Bundle Monster BM-201

I'd been thinking about getting Essie Marshmallow for quite some time. I'd read a lot about it, good reviews and bad reviews about it, how it was a lovely colour, but could be quite troublesome to apply.  I'd read some reviews that all it needed was a bit of thinner and a bit of patience and it was all good. I finally gave in and bought it. 

Why didn't I listen to everyone when they said Marshmallow was the ultimate problem child of white/pale jelly nail polishes??? My experience was the usual Marshmallow disaster - a super streaky, too many coats, thick, disaster. This mani had something ridiculous, like 4 or 5 coats. I wish I'd gone with the new OPI Don't Touch My Tutu! which according to Jen from The PolishAholic reminds her of Marshmallow but is much more user friendly. Why didn't I trust you Jen? 

Marshmallow ended up looking more stark white than I wanted, so I decided to stamp over. And that is the whole sad story of this manicure.

Afternoon Picnic Glitter Bomb

China Glaze Rodeo Fanatic, Kleancolor Afternoon Picnic

This began as a a plain ol' one colour manicure. Rodeo Fanatic is one of my all time favourite colours. I thought I'd jazz it up a little and add some glitter to one nail, just one coat of Afternoon Picnic to just one nail. Somehow this was what I ended up with. 

I kind of dabbed on the glitter and used the little end of my dotter to move them around and place them so I had good coverage. Two coats of Seche Vite later and I had the bling-iest nails of my life! 

Brittney Inspired Blue & Orange Arrows

China Glaze Electric Beat, China Glaze Peachy Keen, BYS Black Nail Art Striper

Here's my second Brittney inspired mani. Check out her original manicure here. The best thing about this mani is that it was relatively easy to do. If you can do a straight line with a striper brush then you're set! You don't even need to worry too much about doing the coloured stripe neatly because the black stripe will cover the edges. 

Brittney did a super handy video tutorial which includes this pattern. The only thing I did differently, mainly because I was a bit lazy, was that I didn't start with a black base, I just really carefully did a stripe along the edge of my nails. 

New Skirt Nails

OPI Skull & Glossbones, OPI Bronzed To Perfection, BYS Black Nail Art Striper

A while ago I came across this manicure by the amazing Brittney from Precious Polish. She is just the greatest at lines and patterns! I originally wanted to do it on all my nails, but for some reason my brain just couldn't quite get the way the zig zaggy stripes were meant to go, so I limited that pattern to two nails on each hand and did some simpler liney patterns on the other nails. 

This mani also matched my new skirt that I wore to work today. It was almost the same colour as Bronzed To Perfection, and I've never actually worn BTP so I figured it was a good time to try it out! 

I think that my favourite design from this mani was the one on my middle finger in the top photo and my thumb in the bottom. It's another Brittney inspired pattern. (That girl! Line genius she is!) My next mani is going to be line madness! 

You may also have noticed that Little Nails is blue/green now! I was getting a bit sick of the purple layout, but now I think I might miss it! Perhaps I'll change it back.

China Glaze Prism

China Glaze Prism

It's so sparkly! This is one of the nail polishes that I bought after my self imposed ban ended. It was really hard to photograph actually, you can already see how different it looks just from the sun to the shade. Anyway, I think I'll leave the swatching of colours to the more professional peeps. 

I also just wanted to show why I have  to change my nail polish so often. The first photo in this post was taken this morning, just before I left for work. This photo here however, I snapped on my phone just as I got home this evening. Glitter DESTRUCTION! I am quite the fidgeter/picker of nail polish, and with glitter being so thick I just can't stop scratching it off. At least I have less glitter to remove at the end of the day!

Another Easter Egg Mani

OPI I Vant To Be A-Lone Star, China Glaze Light As Air, Sally Hansen Celeb City, Milani Silver

Easter only comes once a year, so I've got to get all the Easter egg inspired manis out of my system! I was playing around with my new nail art tape, this time just using it instead of normal sticky tape. It is quite handy! 

I hope you all had a lovely relaxing Easter and the Easter Bunny was good to everyone! I have to go put a Lindt gold bunny out of its half eaten misery now. Yum!

Easter Eggs!

OPI Sparrow Me The Drama, Essie Mint Candy Apple, China Glaze Electric Beat, China Glaze Peachy Keen

After all the fun I had with my Christmas manis I decided that this week my nails should all look like little easter eggs! 

I also wanted to play around with the nail art striping tape I bought a little while ago. Before this I'd just been using it instead of cutting up sticky tape for tape manis, and taking it all off. This is my first time using it and leaving it on! It looked awesome, but about an hour after I took this photo one of the lines of tape had peeled off, and by the end of the day the topcoat was peeling off it and it was looking a bit shabby. It was still pretty cool and shiny though!

Glittery Jelly Goodness

OPI Dating A Royal, OPI Rainbow Connection, OPI Houston We Have A Purple

Lately I have been a little bit uninspired (coughlazycough) when it comes to nail art and doing manicures I've seen online, or tutorials I've come across, and even just having plain ol' regularly painted nails using only one colour (the horror!). In my defence, there has been so much epic nail art around lately that I just haven't needed to think about what to do on my nails, because I've always seen something amazing that I want to try. 

This manicure was inspired by the AMAZING glitter jelly mani by Eugenia from Ommorphia Beauty Bar which was a guest post over at Fashion Polish. After seeing so many pastel pale pretty glitter jelly sandwich combinations I was amazed by Eugenia's version of it. One of the few jelly polishes I own is a lovely purple colour, so of course I had to try out a similar manicure! 

I definitely recommend checking hers out, she does the tricky glitter at the cuticle end glitter gradient and she even mattified the whole thing, which is just great! 

Perhaps I should try one of those challenge things, so I have a nice tidy nail art to do list for when I can't think of stuff to do!

P.S. My nail polish ban is over!!! Am going to try and keep it under control, but there may already be a package of 9 polishes on its way to me...oops (C'mon, I can't not have any Hunger Games nail polishes, or miss out on the Prismatic glitters, or the New York Ballet glitter. Plus, they're not all for me, a few are for my housemate!)