daisy matte mani tutorial

This post is to quickly show how you can do a twist on the classic French manicure with some cite white daisies.

Your toolkit needs to consist of..

Your favourite strengthening base coat - mine is Sally Hansen Diamond Strength polish

Your best white polish - mine is currently my Andrea Fullerton White polish

A pretty pink polish - I picked my Nails Inca Gel Effect in Mayfair Lane
The ideal polish for seeds - I used my Max Factor

A small brush

Smallest dotting tool or needle

Start by giving your self a lovely base coat to keep your nails strong (if you apply nail polish often or always keep your talons painted like me then you should apply a strengthen and protecting base coat before applying your next colour or design. Try Sally Hansen Diamond Strength, I've found my nails to be really brittle in the past but now that I use this base coat they are long and tough!).

Once your base coat is dry use your small brush (if you don't have nail brushes use a lipstick or eye shadow brush like the one below) to paint your white petals. Don't worry if you need to do two coats to get them perfect your top coat with smooth out any lumps and bumps.

Once your petals are just the way you want them and the polish is dry, you can start to add some texture. Do this by using your brush again to pat some pink polish over the white lightly. You can also do this with yellow or purple (the first time I did this mani I used yellow and it looked a little like eggs, don't worry if you don't like how they look at this stage the dots will make them perfect!) Then use the dotting tool to create the dots in the centre of your flower, big and small, whatever size or shape, it doesn't matter it all works when it comes to flowers!

Then once your daisies are totally dry you can apply a matte top coat to finish them off and keep them perfect. And you should get something like the below:

Good luck ladies xxxx

Remember my insta and twitter tag has changed to @curiousitybty! :D

how to create a funky flower nail bed

Spring is here! It must be given all this lovely sun. I love this time of year when the sun is out and warm but it is still breezy and cool.. The time of year I don't have to wear suncream!

So in hope that this summer will last, I rejigged my previous floral design (see it here in the original post) and have done a little tutorial, a wee step by step for you to kick start your summer!

What you need:

NYC In a Minute

Nails Inc Gel Effect in Mayfair Lane

Gosh in Splish Splash and Misty Mauve

Models Own in Pukka Purple

Rio Professional Nail Pen in Bright Pink

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Top Coat

Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Base Coat

Dotting Tool

1. Apply your base coat , then on top give yourself a nice generous coat of your base colour (I used my NYC shade of blue). 

2. Use the larger end of your dotting tool to create the base of your flower (or the petals if you will) dotting in a circle and then filling the centre (you can use as many colours as you like here but make sure you have a lighter shade in them for the next step), like below:

3. Use the smaller end of your dotting tool (the smallest you can find) and put little dots on your flowers to create a more textured/3D effect in lighter shades, like below:

4. Now, again with your smallest dotting tool, ad some little green leaves. by placing your tool down as though creating a dot, but dragging to the side slightly as you pull away (don't worry about it being perfect, not all leaves are the same!), like below:

5. Apply your top coat et voila! TIP: Always use a base coat when applying nail art/design/dots of any kind as a good top coat smoothes out everything!

Hope you like and find it as easy as it is!

@pawsandclaws101 - Always Instagramming

@pawsnclaws101 - And Tweeting

xxx

gelly on a plate

Finally decided to give this gel effect varnish craze a go as the idea seemed interesting. And even though I've never had the real thing .. My friends and mum get them regularly and recommend them for their long lasting quality and no chip policy. However appealing this sounded I was never keen to invest due to fact I have a tendency to change my nails 2-3 times a week (I've even had those rare quiet weeks where I've had time to redo them every day)...

So, this alternate polish sounded really quite perfect. I picked the Mayfair Lane shade by Nails Inc and gave it a glitter tip and even added, on researching, a non chip coat of my all time love, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Top Coat.

The result?

I loved the result, I was expecting a really thick consistency but it went on and felt like a regular polish. Once it had dried it just looked and felt the same as a good polish... no different really.

The chipperness?

I don't really have a job that means I am prone to chipping my nail varnish however I always manage to somehow. So, I was bound to chip them .. and so I did today.. I applied the nail varnish 3 days ago and honestly this is 2 days over my average wait to chip a nail. So I was impressed with the wait.. I think on anyone else it would have been a week!

The aftermath?
The only thing I am not very impressed with this polish is that my nails now feel really brittle and they were just starting to feel strong.. especially the tips where I've been chipping away the nail polish on the tube ride home, which means I have broken two of my nails ahhh!

I think despite the aftermath, if I treat my nails with something, the polish is successful in it's mission and I do think I'll invest in some more gel effect polishes. Will you?

Inspired by Armani

After flicking through my Catwalk Edit by Vogue for Spring/Summer, very late in the month I might add, I thought about the inspiration I could get from all the fabulous designers and their amazing designs. One that stood out big time was Giorgio Armani - I took the below design and gave it some balanced bright colours so make a little inspired simple nail art. All it took was some sponging and splodging and dotting and dipping... oh and some silver foils.

I used a base coat of Models Own Feeling Blue and Sophie's Pink for the large flowers, I sponged on smaller flowers with B. Complete Mulberry and topped it off with Sally Hansen's Insta-Dry top coat.

And here are the results :)

See yah soon x

@pawsandclaws101 GRAM

@pawsnclaws101 TWEET