We're All Stars!

So I promised a wee tutorial on how I did my starry nails and here it is!

First things first, if you are using a base colour apply it as you usually would. You can topcoat it now with a quick drying topcoat - can you say seche vite? - if you want to but it's not totally necessary.

Leave your basecoat to dry as long as possible, there is going to be tape involved and you want to minimise any chances of the base colour lifting.

I got this nifty little gadget from TKMaxx in their crafty section in the home department.  I was on the search for pretty much this exact size of star but had no joy in hobbycraft, all the punches there were too big.  

I found a UK based website which stocks the Knockout Punch Starter Kit for £8.06 + £3.50 Uk delivery, £7 international delivery.  A bit more than my £4.99 at TKmaxx, so please try there first!

That website has a selection of the Border Punch inserts, here, so you can get lots of different designs, they would be quite cute for maybe a scalloped edged french - I may investigate further! 

Get some Scotch Tape and place it on some baking paper, this makes it much easier to punch the shapes into the tape.  Punch the holes into the tape and when you are ready to use it, left the tape gently off the baking paper.

Place the tape over the nail, pop your polish over the top, give it a few minutes to dry and very gently peel the tape up.  The corners, or points, of the stars are inclined to lift - this is where a cocktail stick can come in handy if you need to do any small 'pinpoint' repairs. 

Hoorah!  I was chuffed with this! It is so simple to do and the tape on the baking paper trick was a revelation!

If you give this, or any nail art a go, I'd love to see it on instagram.  Find me @jodisayswhat 

Hugs,

Jodi
xxx

Weekend (ish) Mani #18 and a How To!

Merry Day After Boxing Day!

Have you had a look at the boxing day sales yet? I've ordered a few bits and bobs and so will post about them very soon!

My Christmas Day Mani was a bit of a quickie one, we were doing the cooking and prep etc for 11 or so people and so it was very, very busy!

I have made this into a wee tutorial type post too, since it's Christmas and all that jazz!

I have a multitude of different pictures too as my iPhone storage is kinda full and I still haven't figured out how to work my coolpix that I got for my birthday in July!

This mani was pretty simple, I was rather rushed and this was the only thing I could think of that didn't require too much effort (or thought!) on Christmas Day.

Here's the tools I went for: a selection of polishes, a topcoat, thread, scissors, dotting tool and a plastic tray thing for splodging my polish into.

After I applied my basecoat, I applied two coats of OPI 'I vant to be a-lone star, I love this for this particular mani as it is a frosty pale blue with a silver shimmer.  Some of my nails needed a third coat as there were some patchy bits.

Before adding the second coat, I cut the thread to size in preparation for the next step.

After adding the second (and third) coats of polish, I applied the thread to my nails before the polish was dry.  you can apply it in anyway you want, I quite like the loop on my pointer finger!

Use tweezers or the scissors to gently push the thread into the polish so that it adheres to the nail. 

I then applied a coat of topcoat just to seal it all in.

One thing I did forget which would have been really handy for while doing my dots would have been a cotton pad with nail polish remover on it to wipe my dotting tool on after each colour.

I then splodged my polish into the plastic tray, I started with yellow and did all the yellow dots on every finger before moving onto all the blue dots, then all the red dots and then all the green. 

The yellow I used was the Barry M Limited Edition Yellow I posted about here.

The blue I used was Nails Inc. 'Baker Street' quite possibly the bestest blue colour in the world ever!! I posted about it here too.

The red I used was the Mavala Rouge Rubis one I used last week, here, is a lovely little red.  I can't believe I have owned this for a whole year before using this, it really is a lovely, sparkly red and perfect for Christmas!

The green was a cheeky little poundland purchase but I really like the metallic effect.  It is a Sally Hansen Ultra HD in shade 'Resolution'. I have only ever worn this on my toes and although the colour is pretty lovely, the formula is quite thin and needs quite a few coats for opacity. 

I waited (not so) patiently for the polish to dry, trimmed the thread and then topcoated again just to keep it looking nice and shiny throughout christmas dinner!

This design could have so many variations, you could do a darker base or a glittery base, switch up the colour of the thread and silver and gold dots would make awesome fairy lights! 

Let me know if you give these a try, these would work well for New Years Nails too!

Hugs,

Jodi

P...p...paint on a Penguin!!

Okay, totally lame title but hey, it's Monday!

Here's a quick guide to how I did my penguin nail at the weekend...

I used a Catherine Arley Black Holo, I had never used it before and thought the holo would be quite fun but in actuality (is that a word?!) it wasn't very holo! Its a good enough polish but not very easy to get hold of and personally, I wouldn't bother.  Sidenote: If you are really keen on a holographic polish then could I recommend you check out iconic effect as they have a superb holo topcoat and you can pick the intensity, all the swatches I have seen look amazing and it means you can holo all your fav colours you already own! Squeeeee!!

Back to the nails, once you have painted your base colour, which doesn't have to be black btw, if you want a pastel pink penguin, you go ahead and paint that pastel base right on!  Get yourself a dotting tool or kirby grip and dab it in the colour you have chosen for your eyes and tummy.  I'm using the plastic top off of a Whiskas Dentabits container to splodge my polish into, pringles lids are also excellent.  I have a bundle monster set which contains quite a few tools but I only really use the dotters.  You can pick up dotting tools on Amazon and eBay really cheaply and Bourjois also do one although I am not quite so sure how widely available that is.  For my little guy's bits, I'm using the old faithful, Barry M Matte White. 

Do two relatively big eye splodges, you can be as symmetrical or asymmetrical as you like here, asymmetry just adds character...right...I find it is best to put fresh polish on the dotter for every dot or dab.

Draw on your little dudes tummy, again, it's upto you if you want a fatty penguin or not.  I did a kinda fatty one purely because that is the best of my artistic abilities.

Next, get your black and splodge a bit on your polish receptacle i.e. plastic lid and, using the smaller end of the dotter or kirby, apply a dot into the centre of your white eye 'splodges'.

I have yet to get this bit symmetrical and it always reminds me of those googly eyes you used to get on cards as a kid! Like I say, character!! 

Next up, we need to give this badboy some features.  I used an orange Revlon polish called 'Siren' for the first time, seemed pretty good although it was a bit runnier than the other two.  If you had your heart set on penguins of this colour scheme, best thing to do would be to go to Boots or Superdrug and take advantage of the 3 for 2 offers running on the likes of Barry M and Sinful Colours. 

I digress... Using the bigger end of the dotting tool, I used one dot of the Revlon Polish for each 'foot' or is it flipper? and then used the smaller end to dot a wee (kinda) triangle for his beak.

ét Voila!! 

It's now upto you if you want to get really arty and draw on scarves and what not, just bear in mind that you will need to also paint the same on your dominant hand with your non-dominant hand. 

Make sure you let each coat dry a little and DO NOT put topcoat over until it is completely dry as it will inevitably smudge your little guys eyes and the orange from his beak will be on his tummy and you will be sad!!! 

Hope you give this a go!

Hugs,

Jodi

xxx

Weekend Mani #17

I have power!! Laptop cable has arrived, thank you Amazon and now hopefully normal service can resume!

My nails this weekend were all about Christmas as we had our work night out yesterday, although it was a lunch that lasted into the night! 

Ah, my smudgy penguin! my first attempt ever at a penguin and I literally had 13 minutes to do my nails so I think he turned out pretty good

The red is a Mavala number called 'Rouge Rubis' and it is rather lovely! I received this last year in my latest in beauty, you beauty advent calender (which I got for half price in January). It's packaged really cutely as a Christmas decoration so a nice wee surprise for a nail fanatic at Christmas time.  Topshop are doing similar individually packaged polishes too.  

I smudged his tummy several times although I am happy that his eyes were ok, they would have been harder to redo. I will post a tutorial this week on how I did the penguin, there are loads of tutorials on youtube or you can just google some images for inspriation.

I have used Mavala polishes before and I really like them.  They have a special formulation that apparently allows your natural nails to breathe and therefore reduce damage caused by polish (pretty sure you would have to use a Mavala Base Coat to achieve this result though?!).  Several other great things about Mavala polishes is that they are in 5ml pots therefore less likely to dry out, they are less than £5, come in a fabulous range of colours, are nasty chemical free (in your face formaldehyde!!) and they are opaque in two coats.

I tried to capture the shimmer in this polish but it is much more shimmery in real life.  It has a ruby red 'jelly' type base with these red glassfleck type particles throughout, these pictures are without topcoat by the way. It kinda reminds me of Essie's 'Leading lady' seen here, Essie's 'Ruby Slippers' here, China Glaze's 'Ruby Pumps' here or Zoya's 'Carrie Ann' seen here. Off the top of my head, I would say the closest OPI I could think of that would be even slightly like this would be 'Love is a Racket, here, but I think that is more pink with blue through it. I always thought it was weird that OPI didn't release some version of red polish with their 'Oz: The Great and Powerful' collection but it was a soft shades collection so I'll let them off!! 

It has chipped a wee bit and there is some tip wear but I was pretty tough on my nails last night, I dropped my bag alot and so was picking many a thing up off the ground, tsk tsk!!

Latest in Beauty are currently offering this Mavala polish as a 'luxury sample' and so for £2 this could be yours, its free to sign up to their website and they often have great collections. 

The Youbeauty advent calender is available here, and if you use the code YBD10 you can get £10 off.  I really liked my one last year as the samples are good sizes to try out. 

Have you tried Mavala polishes before?

Are you going to attempt some Christmas nail art?

Hugs,

Jodi

xxx

Weekend Mani #2

The Sun has made an appearance this weekend and so I fancied a nice, cheery nail to celebrate! 

You may remember that very recently I made some Barry M purchases, I posted about them here.  I have used the matte white as a base on my accent fingers, O.P.I Shorts Story (please do shop around for this!) for the other nails and some polka dots and the Ltd Edition yellow by Barry M for some extra dots.  I do like polka dots! 

Application was easy breezy, I used Sally Hansen 'hard as nails' as a base coat and two coats of the base colour on each nail.  I'm not really too fussy about base coats etc at the moment as my nails only have to last two days at the weekend, I like the Sally Hansen one as it's actually really easy to pick off, tut tut! 

To jazz things up a bit, I decided to try a matte finish.  This is just a cheapie I got from George at Asda. It's not great and if the polish is applied too thickly, it doesn't really go particularly matte.  As I say, I only wear this for two days and so can't really comment on durability.  I would also imagine it is harder to wrap the tip of the nail with a matte polish.  That's maybe an idea for a future post! 

Are you doing anything nice this weekend?

What is your 'go-to' nail art? 

Hugs,

Jodi

xxx

P.s. please excuse the cut on my thumb, whoever thought a double edged serrated bread knife was a good idea has a lot to answer for!