Poppy Fields

Hello lovelies, hope you've all had a nice Saturday!

This evening, I did a gorgeous poppy memorial manicure but, silly me fell asleep on the sofa about five minutes after so now it's all smudged :( on the plus side, I had a good dream! 

With it being Remembrance Sunday tomorrow I thought it was important to show my respect for all those who have died fighting for their country. Whilst I hate war and fighting, accepting that in some cases it is necessary and remembering those who have fought is something we all must do. It's terribly sad, but unfortunately that is the world we live in! We can only hope that one day things can be different. Anyway, on to the nails!

I love doing flowers like this in my manicures, they're super easy yet really effective. All you need is polish and a dotting tool! If you don't have a dotting tool you can make one really easily, take a look at Cute Polish's tutorial on how to do so from things you'll find around the house. I applied a base coat, Essie - Grow Stronger, followed by two coats of China Glaze - Exotic Encounters, then dotted on Essie - Fishnet Stockings and O.P.I - Red My Fortune Cookie for the petals with Barry M - Black (I think it was just called black?!) for the center bit. Finished with a coat of Seche Vite.

I'm a bit nervous about taking these off, last time I used Exotic Encounters it stained my nails really badly! And that was even after two coats of a base coat! Grrrr!

I really enjoyed doing this design and it was nice to do something for such an occasion. Hope you enjoyed it too!

Thanks for reading everyone!

Ariana xo

Monochrome Colour Block

Hello all! 

Tonight I decided to go for a little monochrome colour blocking! I learnt a couple of lessons this evening which, in all honesty, I know will be forgotten by the morning. 

• Lesson numero uno - I really, really love the idea of grey and black together but, apart from in bright light, they will without a doubt both merge into one colour! 
• Lesson number two - doing a tape mani in partial lighting will never work out right! Never!

It's not all bad though, lesson number one counteracted lesson number two and therefore my shoddy line work isn't quite so obvious, woohoo! Anywaaay, now we've got the lessons out of the way, let us take a look at the nails!

For this manicure, I used O.P.I - My Boyfriend Scales Walls (my current fave) and 17 - Smoke Signals as a base. I then taped off a V section at the tip and painted on A-England - Jane Eyre. This was all topped off with a coat of my ever faithful Seche Vite!

See what I mean about the merging colours? Oh and don't mind the bit of fluff dried onto my topcoat...

We all know this design didn't go quite as planned. In fact at all as planned! But ever the optimist, I did learn some very important nail lessons so it wasn't a complete nail fail! Score!!

Thanks for reading everyone, goodnight!

Ariana xo

Watercolour Nails

Good afternoon! 

For a while now, I've been wanting to try out a watercolour manicure but sadly have never seemed to get round to it! So last night whilst watching 'Never Been Kissed' I decided to give it a go. It wasn't overly complicated but I was still a little worried about how it would turn out. Here''s the tutorial I followed.

These are the five colours I used.

l-r, O.P.I Red My Fortune Cookie, China Glaze Papaya Punch, Crema De Limon, Maybelline MNY Royal Blue, O.P.I My Boyfriend Scales Walls

For the base I used my boyfriend scales walls and the other four colours for the watercolour. I used a smallish-medium brush to dot the acetone about my nail! 

So here's what I did… Firstly I did two coats of my base coat topped with a coat of Seche Vite (I'm sure any other top coat would work perfectly well too). Then, I put a couple of dots of Red My Fortune Cookie on my nail, dipped my brush in the acetone and dotted it about my nail. 

I then repeated this with the other three colours, using the blue last. Finally, I added another coat of Seche Vite, did a bit of clean up, and viola! Watercolour nails done! My clean up wasn't brilliant and there's still loads of polish in my cuticle, it had all got embedded and stuff! Ugh, annoying!!

I wasn't super keen on this manicure at first, but when I woke up this morning and saw it in its full sunshiny glory, I really loved it! It's super easy and fun to do, I'll be doing it again soon!

Thanks for reading :)

Ariana xo 

I Heart Stripes!

Here's a manicure I recently did which I really loved! I never wanted to take it off :( but alas! I did and it was onto (hopefully) bigger and better things!

O.P.I Don't Pretzel My Buttons and A-England Tristam

Until next time,

Ariana xo

My very first post!

Hello all!

My name is Ariana, and after a lot of deliberation, I have finally plucked up the courage to start my very own blog! I'm writing this blog to share with you my passion for nails and all things nail related! Hopefully I'll be able to get the hang of this sooon and you'll all enjoy my posts! So for now, I shall leave you with todays nails……

I recently acquired a miniature set of O.P.I's Germany fall collection, which was quite aptly named 'Ger-minis' - cool, hey?! I used all four colours for this manicure and 'Don't pretzel my buttons' is definitely my favourite! Without a doubt, I'll be purchasing a full size one asap!

l-r, Nein! Nein! Nein! Ok Fine!, Don't Pretzel My Buttons, Unfor-greta-bly Blue and Suzi and the 7 Dusseldorfs

I really hope you enjoyed my first blog post and and thank you for reading :) 

Ariana xo