Charlotte Olympia kitty nails, as seen at moveSlightly

I'm a big fan of the blog moveSlightly. And I'm also a big fan of cats. And you know what else I like? Very expensive shoes that I cannot afford. So when Elizabeth (moveSlightly) did the Charlotte Olympia kitty nails inspired by the cute slippers that EVERYONE has but NO-ONE can afford, I knew I would have to give it a go.

Crazy expensive beautiful shoes

Following the fab instructional post that made it seem oh-so-easy (warning: it's not) I then spent the next two or so hours painting tiny kitty faces on my nails. The black heads were easy peasy, it was all the small details that near enough killed me. As you might have gathered from looking at my previous posts, I have short nails partly because that's the look that I like and partly because I wear contacts and would rather keep what little vision I have. So the area that I have to work with is always pretty small, although this doesn't deter some people from doing some amazing things with small canvases. I also have a problem with nail art pens with the metal nibs - they always seem to come out too much when I squeeze them so generally I prefer to use brushes to do all the small details, which is what I did for the kitty faces. I think had I mastered the art of the nib it would probably have been a lot easier! Anyway, I can't delay the result much longer, here's what they turned out looking like:

Black kitty heads: Barry M Black

Black kitty ears: Andrea Fulerton Stripe & Sparkle Pattie

White kitty faces: Andrea Fulerton Stripe & Sparkle Kathleen

Meadham Kirchhoff SS12 inspired Valentine's nails

I loved the cute, kitschy prints and bright colours of Meadham Kirchhoff's Spring/Summer 2012 collection. You also might remember that I loved the nails, crowning them the best nails of London Fashion Week (although I have to say I was a little letdown to find out that they were wraps as I don't have the best relationship with them to be completely honest). I've long been meaning to do my own Meadham mani but never got round to it. Luckily for me, I think that Valentine's is just the perfect time to be sporting happy, smiley, frilly hearts on my nails.

The thumb and the ring finger hearts were done using different methods. I did the thumb first (since it's the largest surface area/canvas) and used Andrea Fulerton's "Gloria" nail art brush to first draw a heart shape and then do the frills around it. It took quite some times, especially those small frills (drawing anything that small that's curved is HARD) and I think I went over it just a couple of times. After doing this I figured out maybe now was the time to buy one of those Topshop nail art pens (which are actual pens and not brushes or metallically nibbed), which is what I did. My ring finger heart is the result of that. Let's have a closer look, shall we?

This is my thumb, done with a brush.

Here is my ring finger (and slightly blurred thumb). The ring was done with the Topshop nail art pen.

Although fricking hard to do, I much prefer the look of the heart created with the brush. The pen was great for my right hand (I'm right handed) as I don't think I could've coped with the stress of using a brush in my left hand to make tiny frilly hearts on my right hand. But if I was incredibly talented and ambidextrous it would be brush everytime. I'm not sure if it comes across it in the photos but the pen heart was a little fuzzy. I had to go over the lines MANY times compared to a couple times I did it with the brush - I think that contributed to said fuzziness.

So yeah, in conclusion - Topshop Nail Art Pen: great for curved lines and free-hand work but requires some going over and I hope you won't mind fuzziness. Andrea Fulerton Nail Art Brush: bloody hard work but a much better finish.

Red: Ciaté "Cocktail Dress"

White Nail Art Brush: Andrea Fulerton "Gloria"

White Nail Art Pen: Topshop

Black: WAH Nails/Models Own

Snowflakes

Just a quick one... need to catch up on my recent nails but here's what I've currently got on:

Blue: Leighton Denny "Inkjet"

White: Models Own/WAH nails white nail art pen

Chanel SS12 Nails

I was excited to see the photos from the Chanel SS12 show a couple of weeks back and an idea for some nails came to me when I saw this pic:

Mmm pearls and pretty pastels and golds on those jewels. It had to be done. Here's my Chanel SS12 manicure:

To do this manicure I first painted two coats of Revlon's "Coconut Crush" before water-marbling pastel colour polishes (see below for list). Next I applied pink and white pearls on the half moons of my nails and then added a gold Chanel decal onto the center of each nail before sealing the whole design with some Seche Vite.

Gold: NARS "Kismet"
Purple: Barry M Boots Limited Edition
Teal: China Glaze "For Audrey"
Blue: Barry M "Blueberry Ice Cream:
Pink: Barry M 119
Decals: eBay
Pearls: Poundland

I quite like these nails although I was going for a more subtle, not quite so bright look. I think my favourite nail is my left thumbnail (last photo) and I wish that all of them had come out more like that but water-marbling is so unpredictable (hard if you're a control freak like me!)

I also really enjoyed the Louis Vuitton SS12 collection so watch out for those nails coming up!

Born Pretty Store's Colour Changing Polish

This is something I've been meaning to get up for a while now (lack of internet and working shitloads will make you fall behind with blogs, so I've been told..)

Holographic nails were a go-to look for me over summer due in part to the bright summer sun working their magic on those beautiful glitter particles but now I have another go-to summer nail polish! Using the sun again to work its magic, this polish goes from milky white to bright, hot magenta pink depending on how bright the sun is.

I totally marvelled over my nails for a good few days, as did all the people I showed them to (yep, people, not just girls but boys also!) Here's a video which doesn't quite justify the super amazingness of it all:

That video doesn't quite show you just how bright the polish can turn. Here's a pic of my scraggly nails standing on the platform waiting for the tube to go to work one particularly sunny morning:

Pretty amazing, huh?

It's not all great news though. I have to be honest and say that the formula was a bit weird. And by weird I mean gloopy and taking quite some time to dry. Once dry the polish had a rather matte finish. And it chipped a lot and really easily too (hence that massive hunk that came off on my index finger in the picture). You can put a topcoat on this, it won't affect the final finish or the colour changing properties of the polish but it didn't seem to help! You'd think that because it chipped easily that it would be quite easy to remove, right? Well, no. Not at all! See, I ended up with half nails of polish, bits here, bits there. It drove me mad. So I tried to take it off. Nope, not budging. I had to get out my cheapie Boots nail polish remover which contains acetone (I found out that night that my regular remover doesn't contain acetone), soak cotton wool pads in this and then wrap my fingers in tin foil for at least five minutes before it would turn gloopy again and peel-off-able. Here's my futuristic robot fingers:

Despite all the negatives, I do think I'll be using this again albeit not for a while (what's up with these darker evenings, super depressing). At only $6-something it works out to about £4, plus there's free worldwide shipping and I think for £4 you're not going to find anything else quite like it on the highstreet! (I did see that H&M I think had some UV colour changing polishes but as I'm not a regular frequenter of clubs it's not something for me personally.)

I also feel obliged to say that I bought this polish with my own money as part of a bigger order I placed with BPS. Also in my order were the acrylic mixing system and 3d molds so look out for a review on those in the somewhat near future!

Colour changing nail polish from Born Pretty Store, $6.14.

Best Nails of LFW: Meadham Kirchhoff SS12

I loved the Topshop nails. I loved the glossy gorgeous red at Antonio Berardi too (coincidentally spotted a similar shade on someone a few days earlier and mentally noted to add this to my collection). But my favourite nails of all of London Fashion Week had to be those from the Meadham Kirchhoff show.

(Image from @styledotcom)

OMG. I die. These nails are just incredible and cute and incredibly cute. I love the kitschy ridiculousness of it all and after hours and hours of Googling and waiting, it seems these nails were created by Nail Rock (of nail wraps fame). Here's a link to all the purty designs on their Facebook account.

These are most definitely going to be my next nails. Let's see if I can pull this one off! Stay tuned kids!

Getting Topshop's SS12 Hieroglyphic Nails

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been snowed under and then now it's Fashion Week and... yeah. Anyway, here's a piece I wrote for Grazia Daily on Sophy Robson's hieroglyphic nails that she did for Topshop's Spring/Summer 2011 show. More updates soon, I promise!

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Those who know me know that I'm a fan of many things and one of those things in particular is nails. I love pretty colours, wacky designs and amazing artwork - all of which Sophy Robson does so well. I've been eagerly awaiting all of her London Fashion Week updates and yesterday's Topshop hieroglyphic nails caught my eye. The bright colours! The simple but super impressive designs! I had to have them on my nails - now!

Apologies to Toppers for not using their polishes but I didn't have any of the right colours to hand (no pun intended). Instead I used Revlon's "Gold Coin" for the gold (middle finger and thumb), OPI's "Monsooner or Later" for the red (index and pinky) and OPI's "Teal The Cows Come Home" for the blue (ring finger). I also used WAH nails/Model's Own nail art pen in black, Andrea Fulerton's Stripe and Sparkle in Kathleen (aka white) and Andrea Fulerton's Stripe and Sparkle in Gloria (blue) to do the detailing.

After painting two coats of colour I then did the designs by freehand using nail art pens to draw eyes onto my nails. Two curves, a couple of lines, a dot of blue and a dot of black somehow made a passable eye. A horizontal stripe of "Gold Coin" and two thin-ish black lines completed the index whilst a thick white line, two black vertical lines and some zigzags finished off my pinky. The triangle on the ring finger was easy enough to do freehand and I'm rather impressed with my clean lines, if I do say so myself! A good coating of Seche Vite and I'm done, I've got the Egyptian look! What do you think? On the left is a pic from Sophy Robson's Twitter and on the right is my attempts at getting Egyptian nails...