the nail art update: roses, organisation & geometrics

I have a couple of really cute designs to show you from this week. I started the week with a messy & girly vibe and ended it on a neat & edgy note. I'd love to tutorials for both these designs at some point as they are both fairly basic once you break them down and easy once you have had a bit of practice, but I still got asked 'You did them yourself? How?' I'll get a few pointers and show you the tools I used (If you are someone who dabbles and has the tools these designs should be fairly easy).

pretty ugly freehand roses

Tools: A medium and small dotting tool, black nail art pen, GOSH Cosmetics Special Edition 009 Bright Idea, Spring shade 626 Kind of Pink, 012 Splish Splash and Cheeky 1813 Purplexed.

This design actually inspired my new logo (which I hope you like, designed and done by me! I am very proud of it). I've done a few roses designs in the past couple of years, this has to be my favourite though. A design I have actually seen a lot of nail artists do variations of. This is my turn on it, a shimmery gold background with deep pink roses - very messy style with simple black lines to make them look more like roses as appose to splodges! 

To do this design - you literally have to, on top of your base coat, dab a couple of random sized dots of a few different polishes (stick to pale pinks/deep pinks/bright reds for roses) in clusters. then use your nail art pen to create random out lines, creating petals then using a brush I brushed on little green leaves! - top coat and done!

random retro geometrics

Tools: Long thin brush, black nail art pen, a rainbow of bright polishes of your choice

This design is totally random - I wanted to do something completely new and as I had just gone through all my nail polishes to organise them I couldn't pick one feature colour to concentrate on or inspire me - so I picked a whole bunch and just went with it.. this is the result!

I used the brush to paint on the shapes (this took some patience and a very dry undercoat of white) It is important to have a reall dry undercoat with this as if you create a bump in your straight line you can use a small thin brush dipped in varnish remover to neaten it up. If you have a thick base (made up of several thing layers to avoid chipping) that is super dry you won't remove an obvious amount of the base colour! I created random shapes and added black lines with my pens thinner brush - and done :)

I decided to ransack my messy Soap & Glory bag this week and throw out any dried up old polishes - this I should do regularly really - in the process I came up with a new organisation plan :) 

I hope it stays this neat..

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

flower power

simple but no so easy.. see what you can do and instagram me the results  @pawsandclaws101

The art of dotting.

When I first discovered my love of nail art, I was obsessed with the amazing Ebay buys you can get to improve your tool set. I discovered brushes, foils, 3D Fimo sticks and my favourite, dotting tools.

A great example here.

At 99p I couldn't say no, and I am so glad I didn't. I use them all the time as dotting is an easy way to jazz up a design and give it a more intricate look. Here are some designs I have done in the past few years with my favourite nail art tool.

The floral look - done completely by using tools to create a simple design.

The rainbow - using the colours of the rainbow to create a dotting illusion effect

The retro wallpaper - simple striping and dotting to give you an instant sixties look

The gradient - going from one colour to another with a spotty effect.

The tutti - frutti effect - simple marbling technique (a quick how to in yesterdays post) with added dotting.

I hope you like my designs and are inspired to try them yourself. And if you aren't sure how I did them.. just ask and I will post a quick and easy how to.

Check out more designs on my instagram:
http://instagram.com/abigaiilll1

Marble Tutorial

Step by step guide to a really easy way to marble.. no water.. no mess.

What you will need:

• A small dotting tool/A needle
• Clear base and top coat
• Two colours of nail polish

1. Apply a light base coat to a clean & filed nail, then apply a generous coat of either colour of polish.

2. Quickly dip the needle/dotting tool end into the other colour of polish and dab into the centre of the nail while the first colour is still wet. Start to swirl the needle/dotting tool around making a pattern like below:

3. Complete the design by making as many swirls as you like. Then allow to dry and clean around the nail. finally apply a shiny top coat and you have your finished design.

And tah dah!

You have gorgeous nails. Good luck :)

TIP: Be as quick as possible but make sure your hand stays steady.

Check out my instagram for more designs:
http://instagram.com/abigaiilll1

Start date

This is the first ever post on my new nail blog. I have been posting my nail art on Instagram for a while now through my personal profile but would love to see if people really like the art I do. So here I go ...

This is some marble nail art I did yesterday.. I am going to post a tutorial later so you can do it yourself.