Snow days and Snowflakes

**APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE FOR CRAPPY IPHONE PICS!**

It's been snooooowing! Words cannot express how thrilled I was on the weekend when I poked my sleepy little head out of the curtains and saw snow everywhere! I was especially excited because Lola has never seen snow before and I knew she would love it. For the uninitiated, Lola is my incredibly mischievous little Shih Tzu. She’s a fluffy little teddy bear and I adore her, but she is also the bane of my polish fanatic existence. She strongly believes that I leave polishes around purely for her chewing past time, as the lids are just so damn tasty, and that swatch wheels and my £8 Konad stamp are her personal chew toys (FURY doesn’t even begin to express the sheer rage that happened when I found it!)

Anyway I digress- a snowy day needs a snowy mani! I sponged on different blue for gradients, then used my Konad white polish to stamp on various snowflakes, before topping it with a later of glitter polish to make it extra sparkly.

Like I said in the disclaimer, sorry for the bad iphone pics! They don't pic up the sparkly glitter very much which saddens me :(



What I used:

China Glaze First Mate

No. 7 Stand Back

Barry M Blue Moon

Miss Sporty glitter top coat

Bundle Monster plate BM14

Fauxnad plate M59



And just for shits and giggless here's me and Lola enjoying the snow!

snow day!

Hope everyone had a good weekend, even if there was no snow involved!

Tomorrow I've got something cute, yellow and very busy to tempt you with.....see you then hopefully!

Alice (and Lola)

xXx

Holy @?!# it's Pop Art!

These are quite possibly the COOLEST nails I have ever done! Uber chuffed with myself and these bad boys.

I was inspired by the old school comics, like the picture below- all that 'crash bang wallop' jazz in the Batman cartoons.

They took a hell of a long time to do, I'm not gonna lie! And there was no way I was going to do my right hand as well- I'm pretty good at doing designs with my left hand but this was a tad ambitious. They're a tiny bit messier than I would like- a few slightly messy lines (yup I know I have OCD) but at a glance they really stand out.

I used about a bazillion polishes for this mani (well, it feels like it!) On my right hand I switched them round for a bit of variation, and just put polka dots all over rather than do the pop art. It's pretty unusual for me to have non-matching hands- I love me some symmetry- but it actually looked better that way, I think both hands would have been overkill.



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L-R: Seche Vite, Art Deco Black, Clarins Orange Pur, No. 7 Stand Back, Miss Sporty Yellow, Barry M Spring Green, Clarins Golden Red, Art Deco White...and a dotting tool (phew!)



I actually think my nails looks pretty cool with just the white explosions on them, before the polka dots!

I put Nail Envy on as base coat, then painted my main colours over that. Seche Vite on top to speed up the drying process, before I drew on the white spikes with Art Deco. It has to be one of the most annoying polishes to use long term- if you keep the bottle open for more than two minutes it gets so gloopy and unuseable. My thumb is my favourite, and by the time I got to my ring/ pinky finger it as like trying to paint with tippex! Then I used the black Art Deco to line the spikes (again, by the time I got to the ring finger it was so gloopy I was THIS close to throwing it against the wall).
Another Seche Vite layer, before using a Sharpie to write on the exclamations. That was a nightmare- by then my nail was so thick with polish I had to write really, really lightly, and slowly build up the letters as any pressure made the polish dent and drag.

Then I used my dotting tool to paint the white....and you can probably guess what next (yup, another layer of Seche!) I had to wait about an hour to put the final top coat on thought, as any sooner than that and the Sharpie smudged something rotten.

It was all worth it in the end though!




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indoors with flash



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right hand




favourite nail

I did my friend Sarah's nails for her and she loved them- but I always find it so much easier to do art on my own nails rather than someone elses! Definitely need to practise that


Sarah's nails

I'm definitely going to do this again, I really want to practise it and get it perfect. I just got some nail art pens, I might try it with them and see if it makes drawing the exclamation bubbles any easier.

Thanks for reading!

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