Simplistic Geometric Nail Art

Hello all!


We have had a couple of rainy days here lately and I'm loving it, bring on winter! I can't wait for all the winter colours to get some good use! I'll have to start planning ahead and working on some designs. If you'd like to see me do something specific, leave a comment below.

I'm really not sure what to call these nails today... I had these two awesome colours that were very similar, so I had do something with them together... and this is what I came up with.

Simplistic Geometric Nail Art

As I said, I have no idea what to call them. But I do like them. They were quick and still have an awesome impact.

Simplistic Geometric Nail Art with Green - BYS

So for these nails I used Zebra Turquoise - BYS from the Zebra nail polish kit, which is a metallic blue with blue and silver shimmer/fine glitters, Wham Bam - BYS, which is a metallic green with green and silver shimmer/fine glitters, and striping tape. 

I am also currently using UNT - Ready for Take Off base coat & Sally Hansen - Big Kwik Dry top coats. This is what I use for most manis at the moment.  

The technique was fairly simple. I used two coats of blue as a base, applied a quick dry top coat and allowed to dry. I used two pieces of striping tape to create a triangle in different areas of each nail then carefully painted inside the triangles with Green. The tape was then removed before allowing it to dry and then I finished with a quick dry top coat. That's all there is to it.

Simplistic Geometric Nail Art with Blue - BYS

This one is great for a quick nail art when you're in a bit of a rush. Aside from drying time, it doesn't take long at all. Plus, this is one of those designs you can do with any number of colour combinations. I have actually done something a little similar in this post. 

Simplistic Geometric Nail Art

What colours would you use? Leave me a comment below!

Thanks for stopping by.

80's Retro Vinyls Nail Art

Hey hey everybody! 

I hope everyone has been well.

I took a little inspiration from my "brother-in-law" for today's design. He and some really cool Canadians do an awesome podcast about synth wave & 80's styled music. You can check them out here. 

80's Retro Vinyl Nail Art

For this design I used Bundle Monster stamping plate 601, BYS - Cotton Candy (a very soft purple pastel scented polish), BYS - Applause (a very soft pink pastel) & Born Pretty Black Stamping Polish. 

Starting with two coats of Cotton Candy as a base, I used Cotton Candy & Applause to make a gradient (which doesn't show up very well in the photos because they're very similar colours). After applying a top coat and letting it dry I painted the black stamping polish onto the BM - 601 plate, scraped and then stamped on the nail. I used two different design patterns for this one. Once dry I applied a top coat. 

80's Retro Vinyl Nails

As you can see, I had a little smearing from the stamping polish which is always a bit disappointing. There always seems to be one! *sigh*... All in all I think it's a pretty cool design and I'm happy with it. I'm glad I bought this particular plate. 

80's Retro Vinyl Nail Art

80's Retro Vinyl Nails with Stamping Polish

I originally wanted to do this with 80's pop colours, but changed my mind to a more pastel look. I think if I was to do them again it would be with a hot pink or something like that. What colours would you use?


Thanks for stopping by!

Candy Stripe Nail Art

Howdy Howdy!

Today I've got some cute nails to share with you. I am calling them Candy Stripe Nails. I happened to buy these two colours around the same time and decided they would look really awesome together, so I came up with these!

Candy Stripe Nails 

These were pretty simple to do, which is awesome because some times I'm just lazy. Haha. 

I used two colours, Pink Parrot - Essence & Red Carpet - BYS.

I started out with two coats of Pink Parrot for the base. After adding a top coat & allowing it to dry, I placed a few pieces of striping tape down each nail. Making sure they were all secure, I painted one coat of Red Carpet over the nail & tape. Removing the tape quickly and carefully, I allowed it to dry and finished with a top coat. I did this for all my nails. 

Quick, easy and fun! They reminded me of those little hard candies you buy in little glass jars which are totally delicious... hence the name, Candy Stripe nails!

Candy Stripe Nails

What colours would you use to create this look? 

Thanks for stopping by!

Summer Mermaid Nails

Hello, hello! 

How are we all? I hope you're all keeping cool. It's been insanely hot in Victoria this week.

I have got some lovely summery nails to share today. As you may know, I am in love with all things mermaid! So when I got a stamping plate with a scale pattern, I just had to do it! Originally I was going to do a pink & purple gradient with silver scales but I was having a little difficulty with that and decided to do it this way instead, and I'm really glad I did. 

Mermaid Scales

I think they turned out amazing, despite a few little mishaps here and there. After all, nothing is perfect. This colour combo is pretty wicked, the silver really brings it together for me. 

Colours used:

Matte Violet Frosting - BYS, which is a beautiful soft violet with a matte finish.

Mexican Madness - Australis, one of my faviorte hot pinks (see more here)

Celeb City - Sally Hansen, a metallic silver I use frequently (see more here & here)

Stamping plate used:

Born Pretty 109

Born Pretty plate 109

I applied two coats of Matte Violet Frosting. Using my Born Pretty 109 stamping plate I painted Mexican Madness onto the plate, then scraped and stamped on each nail. Once dry I used Celeb City and repeated the stamping on all nails, trying to stay as close to the pink as possible, and then finished with a top coat. Even though the silver is slightly removed from the pink, I'm happy with the out come because it adds a little depth. 

Mermaid Scales

Mermaid Scales with plate BP - 109

Simple as that, I have an awesome, summery, mermaid nail art. I intend to create many more looks with this pattern. The possibility are endless and exciting. 

Do you like this pattern? Have you done something like this? Feel free to share them with me!

Thanks for stopping by!

Australia Day Skittle Nail Art

G'day everyone!

If you're Australian, you'll know that it's coming up to Australia Day, where we celebrate being bogans by getting wasted while cooking a good barbecue. So, I've created some green and "gold" pride nail art. I decided to do some more skittle nails (more here) just to mix things up.

I chose to do green & "gold" because the typical red white and blue of our flag is too common with other countries' flags. 

Here's the full set on display.

Australian Skittle Nails

As always, they were really simple. I did take my time and did each nail individually before moving on to the next one, so they were a little time consuming. Not that I mind. 

For these nails I used two colours: Mellow Yellow - Sally Hansen & Fatal Attraction - BYS. 

The break down:

Australian Blobbicure

This is my first attempt at a blobbicure. I was a little scared about doing this because I have a horrible habit of wrecking my nails whilst waiting for them to dry. Fortunately, I didn't this time. I applied two coats of Mellow Yellow as my base. Once it was dry I added a third coat and dropped blobs of Fatal Attraction down the center and let them disperse for a second before continuing to add more to fill in the rest of the nail. I tried to keep them all separate and varying in size. Once the nail was full I allowed them to dry for about half an hour because of the extra amount of polish.

Union Jack in Green & "Gold"

I decided to do the Union Jack, which is prominent on the Australian Flag. To do this, I painted two coats of Fatal Attraction and added a quick dry top coat. Using striping tape I created the larger cross with two strips going down the middle of the nail and two running across. I then used one piece diagonally over the center on both sides. Then I applied two coats of Mellow Yellow and removed the tape. Because the yellow was a little thinner than I expected, I had to leave the tape on until I could paint the second layer. Luckily, there were no sticky messy lines. After removing the tape, I added a top coat.

Southern Cross Dotticure

This is the Southern Cross, which is a constellation found in the Australian night sky and also features on our flag. I did this as a dotticure because I had no faith in myself trying to do small stars, haha. I used two coats of Fatal Attraction which, looking back now, I wish I'd used a third. Once dry I used a dotting tool and Mellow Yellow to create the pattern of the Southern Cross, then added a quick dry top coat. 

I also did an Aboriginal inspired dot art on my thumb using Mellow Yellow as a base, Fatal Attraction and white for the dots, but the photos didn't work out. I painted my pinky with Mellow Yellow.

Australia Day Skittle Nails

That's it. All done and ready to celebrate. I hope all you Aussies have a wonderful and safe day of celebrating. 

Are you doing Australian themed nails? Share them with me!

Thanks for stopping by!

Christmas Wrapped Present Nail Art!

Hello all!

Welcome back! I have once again decided to do some Christmas nails. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had so many different ideas, so I thought "Why not do one more?"

Today's design is a simple one. I was going to do more skittle nails, but I'm not sure I'm a fan. These ones are "Wrapped Presents". They look like little perfectly wrapped Christmas boxes, which I think is really cute. This design can be worn for various occasions, just change your colours!

Wrapped Present Nails.

I used three colours for this one:
220 Celeb City - Sally Hensen Hard as Nails Xtream wear, metallic silver.
Rebel Red - BYS, simple red crelly.
Fatal Attraction - BYS, lime green jelly.

Simple simple for this one. I started with two coats of Celeb City. Using two pieces of striping tape, I crossed them over each other in a different place for each nail to form a cross. Once the tape was secure, I applied one coat of Rebel Red to three of my nails, and quickly removed the tape. For my accent nail, I used two coats of Fatal Attraction due to the sheerness of it. I waited about 10 minutes for the first coat to dry, added the second and removed the tape. Then once all nails were totally dry, I used a sandwich bag to hold a blob of Celeb city and used my dotting tool to make the bows. I made two small teardrops on either side of one line, then drew two small diagonal lines leading away from the tears. Once the tear drops were relatively dry, I went back to my dotting tool with the Rebel Red and Fatal Attraction, and added one small dot inside the teardrops. Lastly, I used my fave Big Shiny Top Coat to seal it all and I was done!


Fabulous, quick and festive! 

Close up, so you can see more of the details. 

Another, just for fun.

Close up of the Rebel Red.

I like the way this looks with the crelly/jellies. The glitters from Celeb City poke through just enough to add some depth to it. I would love to try this out with some pastels for a birthday. 

What do you think? Would you try this? What colours would you use?

Let me know!

Thanks for stopping by!

Christmas Nail Art Design - Skittles!

Hello Lovelies!

As you all know, the holiday season is upon us! Therefore, I have decided to do some Christmas inspired nails. I didn't want to do just one simple design, so I decided to do skittle nails.

I'm not much for the traditional Christmas stuff and we don't usually get snow here in Australia, so I tried my best to do something that was Christmas like without being too crazy.

I tried out a couple of new things today to achieve this. I did some dry marbling and used nail vinyls for the very first time, which is really cool because I see so many people doing both of these and I've been wanting to try them out. 

Behold, the Christmas Skittle nail art:

Okay, so this is the set on the whole. I also did my thumb nail in the same gold featured on my ring finger.

These are the feature nails. I used the same three colours throughout the design. We have:

Hidden Treasure - BYS gold shimmer.
Roller Coaster - BYS green creme
Red Carpet - BYS red shimmer

I love these colours together. The green being a creme, I think adds to the depth of this mani.

Now for the breakdown:

Three coloured dry marble.

This is, as I mentioned earlier, the first time I tried this technique... and you know what? I love it! I love the way the colours melt into each other. To me it gives the appearance of an intricate stone, like an opal. I'm very happy with this nail and I will be doing more of these! 

I used Red Carpet as my base colour. Sally Henson's Big Peel Off Base Coat was used around my nail to protect my skin (as you can see from the small chunk missing, it got onto my nail and picked some of it up during the clean up process). I grabbed my stamper and added about three varying sized blobs of each colour polish in the center and quickly dabbed it onto my nail. I continued to dab a few more times so the colours would mix, as well as making sure the nail was covered. Finished off with Sally Henson's Big Shiny Top Coat, and there you have it! A unique Christmas nail art that took about 30 seconds. 

Reindeer nail vinyls.

This is a really easy design, all I had to do was pick my colours! I purchased some nail vinyls online recently and I got them last week, which was perfect because I've been thinking about these nails for the last week or two. I used two coats of Roller Coaster for the base, added Sally Henson's Big Shiny Top Coat so the vinyl wouldn't pull up what was underneath. I used my tweezers to remove the vinyl from the sheet and place it on the nail. I pressed it down lightly as to not rip up the rest of the nail with it. I used a heavy amount of Hidden Treasure to cover the design and quickly removed the vinyl. Once the design was dry I added another layer of top coat, and did the last two steps twice more. I did re-use the same vinyl. I've heard some people say it can be done and others say it can't be done, so I decided to try it out for myself. I would probably only use them once in future. I am very happy with the first one I did (center)... the others, not so much. I used a dotting tool to fix up some mistakes and then finished off with my shiny top coat.

And last but not least:

Tinsel & baubles.

This one is pretty basic, I used two coats of Hidden Treasure for my base. I used a small dotting tool to make the tinsel lines using Roller Coaster, which added a little more texture then a striping brush. I took the same dotting tool with Red Carpet to make the baubles, and finished off with a shiny top coat. 

And that's it! All in all this was a pretty quick mani. The longest part was waiting for the top coat to dry, which is expected because I don't have a quick dry yet. I may even do another set... I have so many ideas, I've got to let them out! 

Have you done Christmas nails? Feel free to leave a link in the comments so I can check them out!

Thanks for stopping by! 

Light Galaxy Nail Art With BYS Cosmetics Nail Polish

Hey hey, people!

What have we got today? Why, its nail art, of course!

This design is something fun and oh so easy! Literally anyone can do it! I like to call it "The Light Galaxy". It's a not-so-typical galaxy nail art. I love the galaxy look, but I wanted to use some lighter colours (almost like the center of a supermassive black hole) and make it a little more my own. I have so many blue polishes so I thought this would be a really good way to use them. Plus, how often do you see a galaxy nail that's not black, purple and white? 

So, here it is:

Light Galaxy Nail Art pictured with Glam Glitter - Silver Moon by BYS

Look at that HOLO! 

This was my very first attempt at galaxy anything. My nails were still rather short at this point and I wasn't sure how this was going to turn out, but I'm actually really happy with them. I could not stop admiring them! I'd definitely do this again. 
A variety of different polishes were used for this.
We have...

Sky's the Limit - BYS: the base colour, a soft, pastel blue creme. 
French White - BYS: a white creme used as the focus point of the design.
Fools Paradise - BYS: a blue creme used over parts of the white.
Hocus Pocus - BYS: an amazing teal shimmer creme used over the majority of the nail.
Glam Glitter - Silver Moon - BYS: a holographic glitter polish with various sized glitters, and a clear base used to replicate stars. 

Now, for most of the other galaxy nails I've seen, people tend to draw stars with white polish or paint. I don't have a steady hand though, so I skipped this and just used the holo glitter instead...Which I am totally cool with because I think the holo adds just a bit more detail... and who doesn't love rainbows?

Firstly, I applied two coats of Sky's the Limit. Once this was dry, I painted some French White onto a small piece of make up sponge and then dabbed it onto my nails in continuous, uneven lines of varying direction. I then used a different side of the same piece of sponge and dabbed some Fools Paradise sporadically alongside the white polish. The same was done with Hocus Pocus, although spanning a larger area, while taking care not to cover too much of the colours underneath. Once all the dabbing was done and dry, I brushed on two coats of Silver Moon and rearranged some of the larger glitter pieces with an orange wood stick, so as to not have them so clustered together. Finally, a generous coat of shiny top coat and we're done! Now, we just sit back and admire our creative work! 

I love the idea of galaxy nails because they're so simple, but look so complex. With this, I can pretend I'm actually seriously talented. The best part is, there are so many different combinations with this and no two nails will ever be the same!

I'd love to see some other not-so-typical galaxy designs. Leave me a comment with your awesome nail art! 

Thanks for stopping by!

Golden Chevron

Howdy y'all & welcome back!

Today's design is super cute and easy. I love this one for so many reasons! Firstly, I love the colour combo. This beautiful peachy-pink "Isn't She Lovely" from BYS is just adorable, and the metallic gold "Hidden Treasure" (also from BYS) just adds a bit of a high-end feel, in my opinion.

I'm calling it Golden Chevron. Super creative, I know, I know, thank you. Haha.

This one was a little tricky with the actual chevron pattern as I don't have any chevron vinyls, so I had to use multiple pieces of striping tape. Hence the less than even lines. If you're familiar with striping tape, you probably feel my pain here. Sorry 'bout it!

But still, not a bad effort, I think. I didn't notice that they were uneven until I got to editing my photos a few hours later. If you aren't looking at them too closely, you probably wouldn't even notice.

I really enjoyed wearing this design. I could not stop looking at them. The soft creamy peach paired with the sparkling gold is just amazing. I will definitely be using these colours together again! I think they'd be great for a more formal event, or possibly as a spring accessory. 

For this design I used a peel off base coat. I did two coats of my base colour Hidden Treasure, just to make sure it was opaque. I applied a top coat to stop the tape from removing the polish underneath, then added the striping tape in a chevron pattern. With the tape pressed down firmly and as neatly as I could get them, I painted a really thick layer of Isn't She Lovely over the entire nail. Quickly and carefully I removed the striping tape and continued with the rest of my nails. Once they were all dry I added a top coat to seal everything. 

It was rather easy and quick. I only wanted the gold to come through in the chevron so I had to use a thicker coat of peach as it's a very thin polish, and a standard coat would have been a little too sheer. I used 4 x 1mm pieces of striping tape for the middle finger with the larger space between. Another 4 pieces directly on top of each other for the index finger and I'm pretty sure I used 3 pieces for the pinkie. I didn't want them all to be the same. Sometimes I hate working with striping tape because it can be so difficult to get it right. I plan on finding a better way of doing this, as nail vinyls are not always easy for me to get.

Oh and if you happen to notice the cracks that I tried to cover up, I was testing out a peel off base coat. It didn't dry quite enough before I applied my base colour, which led to the slight cracking. I may even do a review of that one later on. 

What do you think? Will you give this one a go? Have you done something like this? 
Feel free to share them with me(:

Thanks for stopping by!

G'Day y'all & Welcome to the AustraNAILian!

My name's Sophie and as you can probably tell from my blog name, I'm Australian and I love nail art.

I'm forever researching nail related things online, only to find they're either American or Canadian, which makes it bloody hard to get my hands on some of the things I want. So I decided to make my own blog, with products that are available to Australian's that are not going to take 6 weeks in shipping or cost my first born child.

Now, bare with me children, as I have not long been doing nail art, despite always loving it, I've only recently decided to do all the really intricate designs that I've seen before. So to get started, let me chuck in some older nail art that I somehow managed to pull off.

This was my first attempt at the dry brush technique. I actually really loved these nails and got so many compliments. Heaps of women thought they were Frozen inspired. They were not. I just happened to like these colours. (Spoiler alert, these colours will be featured a lot).

These are one my first intricate designs. As you can see, I tried a sponge gradient, but because I used an actual sponge, like the kind you'd do the dishes with, they ended up being very spacey and not opaque enough. Sad face. They also took me 3 day! As you can probably tell from the wear on the tips. But all in all, I loved them!

Now here is one of my favorite techniques so far! This is a wicked splatter technique created by using a straw. I obviously didn't bother cleaning up properly before taking this shot, but I believe it was a lot worse before this. It is a very messy technique, but its very worth it. I loved the results of this and the best part is, they will NEVER look the same!

Unfortunately at this time I didn't know much about nail art. But, there is hope! Looking back on these images, I actually get frustrated with myself because of things I know now. So you've got some nice designs to look forward to. Or at least, I think they're nice.

That's all I've got for you today. I have a few back logged images of my designs, so hang in there my friend, more nail magic coming soon!

Thanks for stopping by!