Purple and Orange Halloween Nails!

Muahahaha-uh, I mean Hello! Today I thought I'd share my nail art for Halloween, which I only realised the other day is the first time I've done Halloween nail art since 2012 I believe?! To be fair, I usually had a lot of essays to do around this time so that's probably why.
I'm actually not that bothered about Halloween, but I do like pumpkins (well, carving them anyway) so I decided to do some purple and orange nails with pumpkins (and bats!) this year.

I'd like to say this didn't take me a long, long time to do but that would be lying. I used my silicone mat to paint the pumpkins to create 'nail polish stickers' for the thumb and ring finger. If I had been just doing one hand, I would have just painted them directly on the nails but as I was doing this on both hands and I am not ambidextrous, this was the best option! I also used this method for the black triangles and bats, using cuticle scissors to cut once dry so that I had nice sharp edges.
I think I'll stop there for now because I've got a cold and I am struggling to concentrate on anything! Bye!

I'm now (finally) on Instagram!

Hello!

Just a quick message to say that I've finally made an Instagram for the blog for the times when I want to share my nail designs but without having to write a full blog post about them. If you are reading this and you happen to be on Instagram, please follow me at thenailnoodle, it would be much appreciated!

Thank you!

[SPECIAL] Four Year Blogiversary!

Hello! Even though I haven't posted on here in quite a while *cough* 6 months *cough*, I couldn't forget my blogiversary, and I had to follow my tradition of posting a poorly constructed cake and some pictures of nails, which I think is the theme of this blog? ;)

Yes, marvel at the cake you see here. As I'm writing this I was going to reference the upcoming series of Great British Bake Off (excited!) and I felt a sense of déjà vu so I decided to look at last year's post and apparently I was thinking the same thing then, so at least I'm consistent!

In terms of actual nail art, I still have been doing nail art all the time, and trying out new techniques I see online - some with success, some without!
Instead of making themed blogiversary nails, I decided to just post some of the pictures of nail art I've done while not blogging but as I did them quite a while back, I can't remember the polishes I used, only the method. This geometric one to the right was done by painting my nails white, placing striping tape at different angles, filling in the sections with different colours and then removing the tape. Finished with a subtle glitter topcoat.

 This next one was done in admittedly a really awkward way. I painted my nails white and on a silicone nail mat, I used a sponge to create a long strip of glitter gradient of pink-purple-blue-green and then cut it up into triangles. These polishes are more of a gelly type so I had to do quite a lot of layers when making the gradient strip so it ended up quite thick which meant that when I stuck them to my nails, there were ledges along the sides which were fairly annoying. Putting tape on my nails in a v-shape would have been easier, but with the polishes being rather transparent, I would have had to have done a lot of layers anyway to really see a gradient.

This last picture was just me trying out something a bit more simple, but I liked it and thought I'd add it in here. Also, I love the polish on the middle finger - HOLO there! (SimplyNailogical anyone?)

Well, thanks if you're here and still reading. I'm away to watch more of the Olympics - one of the few times I have any interest in sport!

Bye for now!

Rosy Pink Nails

Ah, where to begin with this one!

Doing this set of nails was laborious to say the least. You know when you start doing your nails and you have a fairly simple image in your head, but as you start to paint them and whatnot, you think 'hmm, that looks a bit plain, I'll add something there' and 'oh, what about doing this topcoat on it' et cetera, and before you know it, you're suffering from hand cramp and eye strain thinking 'why, WHY did I start this?' at 1 o'clock in the morning? Heh... yeah.

Well, lucky for you, I'm not going to go through all the stages of thought I had while doing this because a) I wouldn't want to bore you, and b) honestly, I can't even remember at this point... such a blur.

Anyway! I found some leftover bits of my favourite water decals, also used in this post from 3 and a half years ago (wow, time flies!) and used them initially on my ring finger but then, during my never ending 'ideas' I cut bits up and put them on my index finger and thumb too. The index finger and middle finger both have gradients from white to pink (from lightest to darkest pink, the polishes used were Barry M - Rose Hip, Nails Inc - Kensington Square, and Rimmel Pro - Show Off), and I went over them with a coat of Barry M - Crystal Glaze. I added a little pearl stud to the thumb and middle finger... for some reason. My pinky had the easiest time here, with just a coat of Nails Inc - Kensington Square (like what was used as the main colour on the thumb) and 2 coats of glittery GOSH - Girls on Film.

Well I think I covered everything while avoiding all the boring stages between one layer and another! It's obviously far more tiring when you're doing nails you actually want to go out in public with because you have to do both hands, and ambidextrous I am not! It's strange though - even though doing my nails can start feeling a bit tedious after spending hours on them, I still really enjoy it!

Bye for now!

White and Purple Glitter Look

Hi! Another short post from me today! This is actually a more recent photo this time.

I know it's fairly simple but thought I'd share it as it's a style I don't normally do, and by that I mean painting my index and pinky the same and the rest being a different colour. Recently, I bought the glitter (No7 Nail Effects 'Party Pearls') which I liked because it has a mix of purple, blue and pink so I painted all my nails white, painted the glitter on the index and pinky (in hindsight, I wish I had made it more concentrated) and then used purple and blue gems to match the glitter colours, but used Rimmel Glitter Bomb 'Disco Fever' on the middle finger (I like that the glitter in this are square shaped). I think I only did one coat of this.

Oh, just remembered! The other reason I wanted to do some glittery nails was to test out a peelable base coat - OPI's Glitter Off - which, like most other peelable base coats, is much like PVA glue in both smell and consistency, only I find that the OPI stuff dries quicker. I cannot believe I haven't looked into peelable base coats sooner, really. Amazing! I've avoided doing a lot of glitter lately because I HATE the removal process but with this, it's so much easier! I must add that I bought the OPI base coat for £3.99 in TK Maxx which I think is great but I doubt I'd pay the RRP for it - PVA glue will probably be my replacement, who knows! I'm already using PVA glue in an old nail polish bottle and applying it around my nail before doing gradients, works great (I'm keeping the OPI stuff just for the nails!).

Sorry for the bad quality photo - I decided to take this on a day that offered no natural light whatsoever.

In a bit of a rush so bye for now!

Geometric Style Nails

Hi again! Here's another design with triangles which I found in my backlog of nail photos! However, unlike the last post, I don't have any list to tell me what exact nail polishes I used - sorry about that! I used a purple, pink and teal though apparently!

I pretty much painted my nails white and then used regular tape on my index and ring fingers, and used nail striping tape on the others. Using the edge of a make-up sponge (or by ripping off pieces of one, I can't remember) I applied the three colours randomly over the nails and then removed all the bits of tape with a pair of tweezers.

Probably the trickiest one was the middle finger nail because I had to actually cut the tape down to smaller bits to make the diamond shape whereas I didn't have to bother so much with the others. Also, it's easier if you do the big X in the middle first, then add the 4 smaller pieces of tape on top as that makes it a lot easier to remove all the tape without ruining the design. Seal with a topcoat and you're done!

Bye for now!

Edgy Gradient Nails

I'm well over a month late, but Happy 'New' Year 2016! I had planned to post this last year when I did it but I wasn't really in a mood to blog or anything so I just took a photo and left it until now.

Due to the fact that it's been such a long time since I did this, I honestly cannot remember the specific colours I used --- wait! I just found a list I wrote when I did this, thanks 2015 me! Alright, so I painted my nails white and then did a gradient from dark purple 'Revlon - Impulsive', to a lighter purple 'NYC - Jam & Nap' to dark pink 'Rimmel Pro - Show Off' to a paler pink 'Nails Inc - Kensington Square' to white.

After that dried, I put two pieces of tape on each nail in a 'V-shape' and painted the exposed part of the nails white and then used Avon Colortrend - 'Silver Plated' topcoat before removing the tape and sealing it all in with Seche Vite topcoat.
I ended up really liking this design, especially considering that I only did the white triangles so that I'd hide some of the purple --- after the gradient stage, which was my intended final look, I thought my nails looked like they were bruised or something so I thought 'I must save this!'. Hopefully I did!

Well, that's all for today, thanks!