Valentine's Nails

This is the nail art I did for Valentine's Day this year. I chose 17 Lasting Fix in "Sweet Kisses" for the background and after two coats painted on some v shapes in 17 "Royal Indigo", "Woo Me", "Forever", "Fairy Cake", "Revenge" and MaxFactor's "Boji" (easier to do with my right hand on left) followed by outlining each of the shapes with little hearts in the Andrea Fullerton Dot&Flick pen in black (very difficult to draw small heart shapes with left hand!) and added a few extra heart shapes to fill the gaps. 

voilà!

Nail Art (Post Two)

A fusion of leopard and tiger print in brown, blue and black.
I really enjoyed doing this nail painting (had a lot of time to spare at the beginning of the week and this is the result) I love the Andrea Fulerton pens, both ends are really useful and I hope to sway away from animal prints soon onto more detailed and difficult designs, but for now they look great and I get a lot of compliments for them. I chose the colours because they go with almost anything and I had no idea of outfits for the rest of the week.

Using the base colour "17 Lasting Fix Nail Polish" in "Forever" I covered each nail with two smooth coats (same three swish system as always) and put a few spots of "Barry M Blue Moon" on some nails. Then, I surrounded each spot with a broken circle of black polish using the nib of the Dot&Flick pen and added a few extra details and splodges to cover the empty spaces. I then decided to test out the other part of the pen (the 'flick' side) which is a very thin and long brush. You have to make sure that this end has just the right amount of paint on to 'flick' properly, but after a disaster on my left thumb I got the knack and painted a tiger print by swishing off each edge of the nail alternately, releasing pressure as I went to create the tapered end. After far less effort than the leopard print, I had a great nail art job!

This is just the tiger print on Emily's nails. It looks great on a bolder background as well as on short nails. Thumbs up (if you'll pardon the pun) for this print all round!

Nail Art (Post One)

Grey leopard print:

Instructions:

Starting with Rimmel 60 Seconds in Grey Matter, cover the whole nail with 2 coats. (I start by lining the bottom of the nail, next to the cuticle and getting a nice smooth line, followed by swishing up either side of the nail and a final stroke up the centre to create a smooth finish.) After the base colour has completely dried, put a few spots of; Barry M Blue Moon, Barry M Matt White, and MaxFactor Dazzling Blue on each nail and wait to dry. Then surround each spot with a broken circle, using the nib, in either Andrea Fulerton Dot and Flick "Judy" or "Ruth" to define the pattern and add a few extra markings with the pens to finish. DO NOT use a topcoat as this will smudge the nail art pens no matter how long you leave it. Enjoy! :)

Andrea Fulerton Dot & Flick Nail Art: Black

The Andrea Fulerton Nail Boutique collection exclusively at Superdrug has really caught my attention. I decided to try my hand at a bit of nail art because I wanted to wear some leopard print, but not sure I'd get away with it on a piece of clothing. Answer: NAILS! I ordered the double-ended nail pen off Amazon because I couldn't go into town that week and it arrived in about 3 days. I couldn't wait to get started so I picked out a few colours which went together well (somebody requested pink nails so I chose pink for the background) and got started. I started with some OPI cuticle oil to prepare my nails and then used Boots' 17 Lasting Fix polish in 'Fairy Cake' as the background colour. 2 coats and then onto the next: a few spots on each nail of 17 Lasting Fix in 'Woo Me', some blobs of 17 Lasting Fix 'Mini Skirt' and a few dots of the limited edition MaxFactor Nailfinity polish in 'Boji'. After letting them dry completely, I started outlining each spot with the fine nib of the pen, not full circles, but broken rosettes like on a jaguar's coat. (Jaguar print is different from leopard print and I settled on jaguar.) This became way more difficult when I had to use my left hand to do my right hand, but I think it worked almost as well :) 

When the base coat chipped a few days later I used the pen to fix it up and it lasted about a week before I got bored and picked it all off (I also had to take the colour off because I had CCF the next day) I've loved this product so much, I went and bought the silver version, more news on that soon!