First Attempt at Waterfall Nail Art - Fire Wall.

Hey everyone!

I hope everyone is well!

I tried something new for this week's design. It's something I've wanted to do for a while but just kind of forgot about until now. Usually I just look at my colours, pick out a bunch and wait to see what hits me. 

This time I decided I was going to do this design and just picked colours that worked. 

So, here is my first waterfall nail design, which turned out more like a fire wall. 

Fire Wall 

For this one I used the following colours & tools:

Sally Hansen - Sun Kissed
Sally Hansen - Hot Tamale
Sally Hansen - Cherry Red
Sally Hansen - Mellow Yellow
Thin & Long striping tool.
Sally Hansen - Kwik Dry Top Coat.

Fire Wall with Sun Kissed - Sally Hansen

To do this design I started with two coats of Mellow Yellow on two fingers, and two coats of Sun Kissed on my remaining nails. After drying, I took a sandwich bag and placed a blob each of Cherry Red, Hot Tamale, Sun Kissed & Mellow Yellow. Using my striping brush, I did one colour at a time across each nail, varying between lengths and location. I continued this with all four colours. Once complete & dry, I added the Kwik Dry Top Coat.

Fire Wall

This design was nice and easy. I'm not overly keen on my colour choices, but I still think it looks cool. Next time I might try doing a purple or a blue theme, as I have so many of these colours. I would have liked to have added a glitter or a metallic, but I didn't have one to match this theme. I also think a matte effect would have looked pretty cool on this one. 

What are your thoughts? Have you done something like this?

Thanks for stopping by!

Smoosh Marble Chevron

Hey everyone!

I hope ya'll have been well. 

I decided to try a little more free hand this time around. I'm not the best so I did get some help from my good friend, striping tape. 

This one is a little more complicated than usual, which is good because sometimes we all need a challenge. I tried two different techniques for this one due to a minor mishap, and decided on this one. If I did it again, I'd find another way because this one worked out a little better than the original technique. 

So here we have the Smoosh Marble Chevron design.

Smoosh Marble Chevron with Garden Variety - Essie

What I used:
Sea-ing Stars - Sally Hansen
Garden Variety - Essie
Blossom Dandy - Essie
Blanc - Essie
Lady in Black - OPI
Camo Coat - Celestial
Kwik Dry top coat - Sally Hansen
Striping tape
Striping brush

Smoosh Marble Chevron with Blossom Dandy - Essie

For this design I started with two coats of Blanc. While drying, I applied Camo Coat around the nails to protect from the next step. I dropped blobs of Sea-ing Stars, Garden Variety & Blossom Dandy onto a large stamper, then stamped them onto the nail, making sure to spread all the colours around. I then removed the Camo Coat, allowed the polish to dry and then added a quick dry top coat. For the two white nails, I placed two pieces of striping tape into a chevron shape and painted the top half with Blanc. I used Lady in Black and a thin striping brush to paint black chevron lines & a black line across the free edge. Finally, I finished with a quick dry top coat.  

Smoosh Marble Chevron with Sea-ing Stars - Sally Hansen

There you have it. I know this is not my best work, but I still love the way it looks. I am a little bit in love with smoosh marble nails, they always look amazing! And of course they're so easy!

Whats your opinion on smoosh marbles? Have you done them? Let me know.

Thanks for stopping by!

Summer Sunset Free Hand Nail Art

Hello all and welcome!

As I live in Australia, it is currently summer. It's very warm and sunny, so I thought, why not post some summer nail art?
This is my second attempt at free hand nail art (see my first here) and, although they are not perfect, I still like them. I thought this would be a good thing to share with you all. Everyone has to start somewhere no matter what they're doing, so I'm happy to share this experience with you.

Here we go!

 Summer Sunset Free Hand

As you can see, they are far from perfect, and I have some streaking from my top coat. I am not going to lie, I had a lot of difficulty with this mani, but by the end I was happy. I'd learnt a few things, and I loved them.

I bought these two colours (Hot Tamale - Sally Hansen & Mexican Madness - Australis) from Priceline one day and realized they were the perfect shades for this exact nail art. 

Hot Tamale is an amazing, show stopping red-orange colour which I love more than I thought I would. Mexican Madness is a typical Barbie hot pink. I do love this colour in this nail art, but it is not a colour I would wear on its own. Having said that, this was the first Australis nail polish I bought, and I loved it. The colour is so pigmented, which means it's a one coat. I have since bought more Australis because of this. 

Summer Sunset Free Hand

I started with one coat of Mexican Madness, then used a sponge to create the gradient with Hot Tamale. Here's where the difficulties started. For someone reason, the polish was absorbing and drying on the sponge too quickly, which caused small chunks of the sponge to dispense on my nails. I tried using tweezers to remove them but they were already cemented in. So, I carried on. I used a long, thin striping brush with Lady In Black - OPI to draw the trees, birds & the ground silhouettes. Initially when applying Lady In Black, it looked completely solid. It wasn't until I'd finished that I realized most of it wasn't opaque. I have since learnt that I will need to paint over them next time. Lastly, I added a top coat, which you can see on some nails left behind bubbles & caused streaks in the images. 

This nail art has probably been my biggest learning experience. I've done gradients before, but none quite as intense as this. I have done more free handing since this, and I believe I just need to continue practicing.

Have you done any free handing? What were your experiences like? Leave a comment!

Thanks for stopping by!