Spring Floral

This was originally done the first week of September 2013.

I know it's not even close to spring, but I figured I should post this one now, since we could all do with something bright, cheerful and flowery. I don't know about you but I'm sick of all the snow.

Flowers are handpainted, they were pretty easy, just very time consuming.

Colours:

"Pastel Yellow" by Kleancolor
"Matte Top Coat" by Me (add cornstarch to clear top coat)

Valentine's Day Design #2

As the title states, this is the second design I have for Valentine's Day 2015. More of a mix n' match this time around.

Colours used:

"Sheer Pink" by Kleancolor
"Love is in the Air" by Kleancolor

"Don't Touch My Tutu!" by O.P.I.

Cotton Candy

This manicure reminds me a lot of the cotton candy clouds you get at fairs and such.

May/26/2013 to May/31/2013

 So a did a simple ombre using "Tickled Pink" by Wet n' Wild and "Pastel Blue" from Kleancolor. I topped it off with Kleancolor's Aurora because it's just too pretty not to use on these pastel manicures.

Pastel Teal; Swatch

This is "Pastel Teal" by Kleancolor. It took about 3 thickish coats to get it even and streak free. The drying time on it wasn't so bad though. It's not as pastel as I would like it to be, but it's a nice shade. In the photo it looks a lot like Color Club's "Blue-Ming" but this shade is darker and has more green in it. It wears well as I only have a few chips toward the tips of my nails only on my right hand. At about $1/bottle I'd say they're not bad. They do however contain Formaldehyde, DBP, and Toluene.

Water Spotted

Have you seen that water spotted effect going around? I thought it was pretty cool looking so I figured I'd give it a shot for myself.

The base here is "Pastel Teal" by Kleancolor, I did the spotted effect in "Inky" by O.C.C. and used some acetone to get it to look more like I wanted. I like the end results, although the actual water spotting didn't quite come out like Simple Little Pleasure's on youtube. I guess I will have to try spraying the alcohol closer to get larger spots. All in all, I like the way this turned out.

Also, my index finger doesn't have any polish on it because I recently managed to slice it open on a dust jacket (book cover), and since it's pretty deep I'd like to avoid getting acetone in it.

Little Mermaid

This one is really nice and clean, and simple.

I also wanted another excuse to draw scales. So these remind me of mermaid tails with the pastel shades sponged randomly onto the accent nails. I like the cute scalloped french tips on the other nails too. It's a very clean, and simple looking manicure.

I sponged "Pastel Teal", and  "Pastel Blue" (by Kleancolor) and "Lacey Lilac" (Sally Hansen) onto the ring finger, and went over top of it with "Age of Aquarius" (Color Club) for the scales. The base I used was "French White Creme" by Wet n' Wild. This one was really cute and easy to do.

House Baratheon

If you're one of my peeps on Facebook, you may have already heard that I'm dedicating this months manicures to Game of Thrones, in honour of Season 3 (airing March 31st, 2013).

The first house up is Baratheon!

Whole Hand.

The house sigil for Baratheon is the deer, so antlers were a definite must, as you can see the french on my index and ring fingers are outlined by black antlers, while I have the main deer in the center, even though it's just a close up of the head. 

Main Four.

The deer was done using, believe it or not, regular India ink by Speedball and a nib pen. You can see little crackle marks which appeared after I top-coated, but I love the way it did that. I found that it was a lot easier getting the fine details in using this method than using a brush and paint/polish.

Thumb detail.

I originally wanted to do another deer head on the thumb, but I came across an alternate symbol when I searched Baratheon on Google, it was an image of symmetrical antlers on a yellow-gold background; although my antlers are not symmetrical, I think I came as close as I'm going to.

So now on to the polishes, the base colour I used for my thumb and middle finger is "Fast Track" by China Glaze, from their Hunger Games collection. On the other nails is "Expresso 58" by Kleancolor, a nice rich metallic chocolate brown.

If you would like a set of these, be it false nails or nail decals, feel free to contact me at my email: ayeshaskhan27@yahoo.ca. Please put a subject in, so that I don't accidentally mistake it for spam.

Have an awesome week!

Kleancolor "Pastel Blue"; Swatch

The colour I have for you today is "Pastel Blue" by Kleancolor.

Indoors.

 So, for those of you familiar with Kleancolor, you already know they are not Big 3 Free, so they do contain Fromaldehyde, Toluene and  DBP. Personally, as much as I like to avoid toxins, for a wide variety of shades at roughly $1-$2 per bottle, I do quite like them.

Natural Sunlight.

On to the actual colour now. "Pastel Blue" is just that, a nice pastel blue, very much like baby blue. It's a very clean looking shade, and is great for Easter manicures, if you do those. This was with 2 coats, and you can see it's quite opaque, I did not have any trouble with streaking with this colour which was really nice. The wear on these are nice too, I find that they don't chip very often, unless the base coat I use sucks. It also dries with a nice gloss to it, you can see it better in the first photo, so you don't need top coat with this unless you want to. A thing to keep in mind though, I notice these tend to dry slower than other polishes, so try to use thin coats and give them plenty of drying time. So to end off, this is a nice fairly inexpensive polish if you don't mind it containing the Big 3. 

Coffee Candy Cane

Have you ever had/seen those gourmet candy canes? You know, the coffee, cappuccino  or espresso flavoured ones? Well, this mani reminds me very strongly of those ones.

Nov/14/2012

I used a striping brush and regular nail polish to make these. The lines are a touch wobbly as I was a bit wobbly the other day. Also, I must apologize for the dents, my hair lately seems to be attracted to wet nail polish :(.  The colours I used for this mani are "Copper", "Expresso" by Kleancolor, and "Saturday Night Fever" by Sally Hansen.

Unicorn Barf

Somewhat low-key today. It was a toss up between this and some red-gold filigree. But C was excited when I mentioned Unicorn Barf, so that seemed like the better choice.

So I tried that PVA-glue basecoat idea for the glitter accent nail. We'll see how easy it is to remove after a few days. And I'm sorry for the blurred pinky, this was the best photo out of the bunch.


"Pastel Teal" Kleancolor
"Aurora" Kleancolor
"Pastel Yellow" Kleancolor
"Tickled Pink" Wet n' Wild
"Syngergy" L.A. Girl Glitters
"French White Creme" Wet n' Wild

Enjoy! And have a Happy Monday!

Flashback Friday - Blue Roses

Another Flashback Friday for you all!
This was an experiment with different nail tip shapes and one-stroke flower painting.

Square tips: Whole hand.

 So, to start you off, here are the more common square nail tips, that I personally prefer. They aren't squoval, much to them looking like it in the photo.

Square tips: main four.

 You can see the square-ness a touch better here, along with clearer nail art. This ring and thumb fingers have the one-stroke painted roses on them. They just look like blobs to me though.

Square tips: close up of thumb.

Almond Tips: Whole hand.

 Here are the almond tips. Remember its the exact same mani, the only thing that has changed is the shape of my nail tips. I like the almond shape, but on certain nails it doesn't look to flattering to me, for example my ring finger looks to oval (I tried to make it pointier but it's too short).

Almond tips: main four.

 A better shot of the tips alone. You can see what I meant about the ring finger being more oval than almond.

 Now for the colours I used: the white was done using Kleancolor's "White", with an overlay of Miss Pro Nail Sation in "Cotton Candy" a beautiful pink sheer opalescent shimmer.

One more photo for you guys:

Top: Almond Shape.
Bottom: Square Shape.

Here is where I'd like your input, which nail tip shape do you think looks better on my hand. The almond? or the Square?

Flashback Friday: Simple French

June/10/2011

A basic french manicure. Used "Sheer Peach" and "White" from Kleancolor. The glitter on my index finger was from a sad attempt at making my own glitter polish. You can see it a little in the Rimmel London bottle in hand.

Flashback Friday: Chevron French

Sept/03/2011 to Sept/05/2011

Simple white roses on a black chevron french. Base colour is "Sheer Pastel Nude" by Kleancolor with "Liquid Vinyl" by Orly for the tips.

KleanColor Sheer Red

Just a blah kind of day, have a swatch for you.

This is "Sheer Red" by Kleancolor. This brand does not make their polishes Formaldehyde, Toluene or DBP free, you have now been informed. Anyway my nails each have 2 coats of Sheer Red. Overall, I like it, it's nice to have on when I don't know what to do.

Aurora

Oct/12/2011 to Oct/15/2011

Several coats of "Sheer Pastel Pink" by Kleancolor with 2 coats of "Aurora" by Kleancolor on top.

Minted by Revlon

August/17/2011 to Aug/22/2011

Simple french manicure. Base colour is "Sheer Nude" by Kleancolor, the tips done in "Minted" by Revlon. The swirls were done using white and black acrylic paint.

China Plates

More stamping, used the BM-221 plate because it's just so damn pretty. But I am a sucker for florals, as for the title, this combination just reminds me of those gorgeous fine china plates I see in my Nanni Amma's dish cupboard.

Colours Used:

"04 White" by Klean Colour

"948 First Mate" by China Glaze

Water Marble Testing

Testing out the nail polishes in my box to see which one are best for water marbling.

Nail Polishes:

"Lime Lights" Sally Hansen eXtreme Wear

"Wet Cement" Sally Hansen eXtreme Wear

"Poinsettia" China Glaze

"Holly Day" China Glaze

"Hey Sailor" China Glaze

"First Mate" China Glaze

"Frostbite" China Glaze

"Temptation Carnation" China Glaze

"Purple Panic (Neon)" China Glaze

"Pink Voltage (Neon)" China Glaze

"Seduce Me" China Glaze

"Turned up Turquoise" China Glaze

"Black Creme" Wet n' Wild

"Jazz Olive" Kleancolor

"Copper" Kleancolor

"Expresso" Kleancolor

Dec/04/2011 Nail Fail

With out Flash

With Flash

 Tried a different type of french. It's similar to a fishtail braid idea I saw on Tumblr, if I can find it again I'll post a link to the original photo. Colours used are all by Kleancolor. I took it off same day, and am now just wearing "Holly-Day" from China Glaze on my paws.

Colours:

"45 Copper"

"58 Expresso"

"118 Jazz Olive"

Nov/28/2011 Golden Snow

Base colour is "946 Hey Sailor" by China Glaze, with snowflakes from BM14 and Konad's M59 plates.

Stamped in "653 Solar Power" by China Glaze and "162 Metallic Yellow" from Kleancolor.

I like how subtle these babies are, and since it's nearly December, it's time to get festive.

Sorry, they're still kinda messy :p