Nail art with tape!

I've been seeing a few of these cool manis online but didn't think I could do it as I don't have special nail tape.
TURNS OUT, you don't need special nail tape, sellotape works fine, so I used just that.
It's a bit finicky because you have to cut the tape up and try and get them roughly the same width, and when the tape is that thin it gets stuck to stuff and you can't find it. And the worst thing was when the sellotape took off part of the silver base, so I had to use a blunt toothpick to fill it back in, so it looks a bit messy.
All in all though, I love it, looks so simple and pretty, I also decided to just put glitter on the ring finger to break it up a bit.

The colours I used were Barry M Nail Effects in Silver Foil, Barry M Indigo and for the sparkle it's OPI's Servin' Up Sparkle.
Also I don't know why the picture isn't upright the way I took it... weird.

Blue sparkle!

I love glittery nail polishes and I barely have any, so I got a pretty blue topshop one and couldn't wait to try it.
The glitter in this isn't just like the fine little flecks in my Barry M ones, there are slightly larger hexagons in there which are super sparkly when they catch the light.
I included a blurry photo too because I like how the light hits the glitter.

My base colour is the Barry M retro collection in blue, and the glitter is a Topshop nail polish by Louise Gray called Junkyard.

Penguin nail art!

I haven't had much time to sit and do my nails recently, so now I've got a bit of down time back I decided to do some sweet ass nail art.
This is definitely one of my favourites because it's penguins!
It was pretty tough without nail art tools, I need a dotting tool, that would have been easier to do the eyes rather than using a toothpick, which sucked!

Anywho, here it is. Like I said, I used a toothpick so it's a bit messy.

Hope you like it :D

I apologise for my absence!

I've had some big stuff going on and haven't had time to do many fun things.
I'll try and get more stuff up as soon as possible, need to get a few more ideas too!
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated :)

Galaxy Nails

So I've seen gradient and galaxy nails a lot and thought that the galaxy nails looked amazing.
They look so arty and impressive but it's incredibly easy to do, there are tutorials everywhere which like gazillions of different colour combos. I actually have a pair of cosmo print leggings from New Look so I drew inspiration from them.

The colours I used was a Barry M black base, and then I just randomly sponged on Retro Blue, White, Berry Ice Cream and Cyan Blue from Barry M and also a shimmery turquoise with no name by Miss Sporty and then just a coat of Servin' Up Sparkle by OPI.

My favourite marble nails!

This was the third time I'd had a crack at marble nails and they just turned out so awesome. Thought I'd go for a blue theme as I have an assortment, but then the silver jumped out at me and thought that'd make it sweet.

The colours are all Barry M. Foil Effects Silver, Indigo, Cobalt Blue and Cyan.
 

Leopard print nails.

I just looooove leopard print, and I've seen many leopard print stickers and stencils, so I thought I'd try it without any of that.

It was a bit tricky, as I don't have anything like dotting tools so I just used the end of a kirby grip for this, and my black was really dried up so it was hard to dot on.

The colour I used for the base was an old gold I have floating about, the name has been rubbed off, I think it's possibly my mums. And for the spots I used Barry M in Mushroom and an NYC nail varnish in black.

I said it was tricky, but it wasn't really, only because of my crap nail varnish, but I'd recommend trying it because it looks so cool. 

 

Sparkle!

Recently I bought a sparkly Barry M Magenta number and it's such a cool colour.
I already have a red sparkly one and have also acquired a blue Topshop one which I haven't tried out yet, but here's the red and magenta.

The red had chipped off a bit before I took the picture. I painted that on top of a white base just to make it stand out more, but it doesn't make much of a difference without it to be honest.
I had to do quite a lot of coats as the glitter is tiny and it is quite runny but it turns out lovely.

Can't wait to try my blue one, the glitter is a bit bigger in that so I'm intrigued as to how that'll come out.
 

Matte nails.

I bought a matte top coat a while back and used to use it over everything I did. 
Haven't used it in a while and after doing the yellow I thought I might as well go for it.

The topcoat I have is 17 from Boots and it works really well. It works really quickly, but you need to make sure and let it dry for aaaaages, cos I did this about 10 minutes ago and as I was typing, I accidentally hit my nail off the edge of my laptop and I've made an indent on my nail, craaaap, BUT the picture was taken before that ordeal so this is it. Wow, that was a really long sentence.

As crap as it sounds, the picture doesn't really catch the mattiness of it. Don't think that's a word mind you. 
 

Purple crackle!

So I was in the mood to do another crackle yesterday after I did the yellow nails. But unfortunately my black crackle has gone weird and dry and powdery.
Then I remembered I had my purple and yellow looks awesome with it.

Reminds me of giraffe. If giraffes had purple patches.

My second water marble.

After the success of my first water marble I decided to try it again, it's just so much fun.
Only thing about water marbling is how much effort is required, but it's sooo worth it in the end.

I really liked how this turned out, proper summery colours.
The colours I used for this, were all once again Barry M, there's Cyan Blue, Yellow, Fuchsia and Coral.

 

My first crackle.

I stumbled upon the crackle nail paint by accident, was looking for new nail varnished in the Barry M section of course and it caught my eye.

It had the little tag attached to it showing what it does and I just though AYE ALRIGHT!

Decided to use it with a light bright colour, obviously. So cyan blue it was!

I really love the effect. Just a random scattering but it's so eye catching.

The sad thing is though, I went to use it the other day but it's gone all weird and dry and formed into powdery clumps. GOD DAMN.

So I'm now using my purple crackle!

 

Barry M Peach Melba

This is one of my favourite colours I have. It's just so pretty and simple.

Need to get some more nude and pastel colours because they really are just super pretty.

Once again, I apologise for the mess, I usually just pick it off after a bit but never think to clean up for photos. Which would be wise.

 

T in the Park nail art!

So this one was just a bit of fun. 
I went to T in the Park in the summer and my boyfriend suggested doing the T logo on my nails for it. 
So I gave it a go. It was kinda tricky as I don't have any nail art tools, I tried using a toothpick at first, but the just scraped off the yellow and left a thin crap line so I just ended up kinda flattening the brush against the nail to make a straight line. 

The yellow was Barry M Yellow, the red was an old one of Andrews mums, and the fact it was old made it hard to manage as it was kinda thick. I also used Barry M Spring Green for the wee bush thing and then used the toothpick to spread it out a bit.

Not the greatest attempt, especially not up close, but I got a lot of people taking pictures and commenting on them so I ain't even mad.

Yellow Barry M Nail Paint

The majority of my nail varnishes are Barry M Nail Paints. I got 3 in a deal ages ago and since then just always picked up Barry M if I was looking for anything.
The best way to describe them is cheap and cheerful, not at all expensive and they have quite a good selection of colours, only thing is they do chip after a few days, although I hardly use a topcoat so I imagine that could be counteracted if I did.

So here is my most recent, did this just tonight. It's Barry M Yellow, and this is one of the original 3 I bought years ago, in fact I have a feeling I bought this in 2007 for an Enter Shikari gig. Wow.

It's bright anyways but I decided to paint my nails white first just to make it pop. It's just so pretty and summery, brightened up today after the crazy hailstorm.

I do apologise for the messiness and uneven lengths, I can't bear to cut or file down my thumb or ring finger.

 

My first ever water marble.

So just over a year ago I stumbled across a photo of water marbled nails on Tumblr and it intrigued me. I went to google to try and find some tutorials and found pages and pages and also tons of youtube videos on how to do them, so I thought why not?

So here is my first ever attempt. I started off with the index finger, and as you can see it's pretty faint and crap looking, but after that they all turned out beautifully.

Sorry about my face, not sure why I got in the picture rather than just taking a picture of both my hands. And because it was my first attempt at nail art, the pictures aren't a great quality.

The colours I used for this were all Barry M. They were Cyan Blue, Indigo and Fuchsia.

Enjoy!

 

Hey guys.

My name is Sophie and I like to try my hand at nail art. To be quite honest, I'm a novice and it's just something I've only really started doing but it's lots of fun and I hope you guys like it.

Thanks :)