Dabbling in Nail Art

These are two designs I was absolutely dying to try out. Please excuse the messiness and the dry hands. Time wasn't on my side!

The first is zebra print, and I think I need some extra practise! It's pretty difficult doing it on your own nails as opposed to fake ones, so they're a bit rough and ready. To get this effect, I applied two coats of white for the base colour. I think the polish was from an old manicure set that I don't use any more, nothing spectacular but it does the job! Then I used a black nail art pen by Giles (from New Look) to paint on the stripes. I think this would have worked better if I had a picture of a zebra in front of me to work from. This could have made the manicure look a lot more realistic. As it was though, everyone loved them, ad I look forward to doing more animal print soon.

The next manicure is a little bit art-inspired. Monet-style impressionist roses and sparkly gold to go with a very pretty dress in a similar style. I love this manicure, but it took ages to do, and only on two nails! First, I applied a coat of Front Cover gold sparkle polish on each nail. Then I focused on the ring fingers. With a paint brush, I dabbed red polish on the nail to make a circle.. ish. It doesn't need to be exact, thank God. Then I highlighted using a white polish and that same brush when the first colour was dry. With the previous red paint still on it, it creates a little bit of pink that looks quite nice. Then, after cleaning the brush, I painted some light green on for the leaves, in a 'V' shape if I could. To finish off the manicure, I put some more of the sparkly gold coat on the tips of my other nails and used Gold by Giles nail art pen in gold to create a half moon.

What do you think?
Kyra

Front Cover Nail Polish Review

I had a Front Cover nail polish set for Christmas (click here for more details), and I've only just got to trying out a couple of the colours. It is, quite frankly, unbelievable. But that's what the final year of Uni does to you I suppose.

The colours are stunning. I got the Finger Print metallic nail collection, which has the following colours in it: Gold glitter top coat, moonrock, sloe berry, palevioletred, cupric, beetroot and cadet blue. I tend to have favourites when it comes to collections of polishes, but here all the colours are so beautiful that I simply can't say which one is the best.

Anyway, the one I actually have on is Sloe Berry, and it is a royal purple colour with a slightly blue sheen. Unfortunately, the colour doesn't come up well on camera, hence the description. Strangely, it comes out much more blue than it really is, and I didn't even use the flash!

Here are a couple of examples of what it looks like:

The polishes are rather thin, so I needed 2 or 3 coats to get the colour up to the royal purple you see when you look at the bottle. They also chip easily, so I recommend a good top coat to keep it in check. Make sure to pull the top coat over the edge of the nail to seal, because it chips that easily. However, the colour is great. I've had a couple of comments from people saying they loved it. The only big problem is that the nail polish is very difficult to apply due to the packaging design; The lids are large and the brushes are small, meaning that you can see what you're doing... but only just.

The guide price is £14, which means that each polish is less than two pounds as there are also two file/buffers included. I think this is pretty reasonable given the quality of the product is not the best. However, many people have reviewed this item badly, so maybe it is a little overpriced.

I used a glittery top coat on my ring fingers and I have to say that it has lasted very well. And it looks really good. I think I will probably reapply to the chipped parts of my nails and then put the same glitter coat on all of them.
Here it is; just a simple £1.99 pot from Claire's Accessories:

Have you guys tried Front Cover polish? What do you think?