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 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!