Guest post! My lovely friend Lizzy :)

Hello again! Surprise! Haha I realised I'd have no posts for this week so I called on someone who I knew I could rely on and who deserves more readers! Lizzy is a lovely lady from Texas and she fast became my online friend :) her blog has loads of personality and humour and y'all should head over to her blog after reading this obviously ;). So here you go, enjoy! 


A hearty "Hello" dear readers of AbbieNail! I'm Lizzy, the blogstress behind Lizzy's Place. OMG
 How excited was I when Abbie asked me to guest post while she's away?!  I hope I don't disappoint. I agonized for almost half an hour over what I should do. Should I blast her readers with some fabulous crackle? Naw. Display the last of the polishes she swapped to me? Good idea, but naw. OH! I know! One of my absolute favorite designs of Abbie's is her insanely cute Banana Mani! Now, I'm no Abbie and trying to attempt anything even close to this (with, say, mangos) would result in certain defeat and shame. So I decided to go another way with some banana-inspired monkeys!

What do you think? Cute? Maybe?! Yeah, I need some practice.  Still, if you like the idea or colors I'll share how I did it. Starting with a base of Ulta: Chocolate Kiss 

Now that looks just like how chocolate should taste. So yummy. I used my largest balled dotting tool to kind of spread on the mouth part with essence: Nude It!

Then I used a medium sized dotter to dot-and-drag on some eyeballs with Sinful Colors: Snow Me White

 I think that was my favorite stage. Then I used a nail polish pen to draw on the eyes, mouth and outline the head. I think my index finger turned out the best.

I finished up with a generous layer of topcoat to bring it all together and then topped that with the matte topcoat. For those of you thinking "Those look like brown frogs. You should have added noses."... My husband said the same thing. LOL Actually he said they look like monkeys, I said they look like frogs, he said I should have given them noses.  Oops. Hope you enjoyed it anyway. Thanks for humoring me and thank you, Abbie, for allowing me to ramble all over your blog. Hope you're having a fantastic time in Cornwall!! Also hope the rest of you are having a fabulous week as well. 


How cuuute! Maybe a little frog ish ;) just kidding, you did good Lizzy! Matte is your all time favourite and it looks good here! I hope everyone enjoyed this guest post as much as I did and now go check out Lizzy's blog :D 

My guide to nail art, Part Two: Dotting Tools

Hi! I've been thinking of making this into a series of posts and if this one goes down well then I will :). I didn't even realise that today's Artsy Wedenesday challenge was dotting tools until I'd done all the designs haha. 


So todays post is all about the humble dotting tools, as with the last post this is all my own opinions and methods that I've figured out. If you don't have any dotting tools, why not? They are a couple of pounds off ebay and are easy to fix should they break like mine did. One of mine arrived broken so I simply fixed it with some blu tac, wrap it around the base of the dotter and simply push it back into the body and it will stay, et voila you can now use your once broken dotting tool :D 


There are three main sizes that I use almost every time 

You can see the blu tac sticking out of the yellow one :P. The smallest, a medium sized and the largest. The good thing about dotting tools is that you can get at least three different sized circles out of each dotter, depending on how much polish you use and how much pressure you apply. 


A method that I use when using dotting tools is the dip and drag method, you dip into a deep pool of polish and then put it to your nail and instead of dotting and pulling up, you dot and drag it along the nail. This can be used to fill in gaps of designs or draw lines (with the slimmest tool).   

This is my attempt to demonstrate the dip and drag, it'd be better as a video but I'm not ready to do a video :P. Like I explained earlier you dip in the pool of polish that you can see in the top of the paper, then you just put the dotter to paper and drag it until the polish runs out. 


I'm going to show you 8 mini tutorials, different ways to use a dotting tool, it doesn't just make circles ;). Under each of the steps with polish I've added an illustration to make it easier to see what I've done with the polish. 
First up is how to draw a moustache and panda eyes 

I hope these are pretty self explanatory, I used the largest tool for the big circles, the smallest for the lines and joining up the two different sized dots, using the dip and drag method. 

Next are flowers

Again I used the largest for the big circles on the first two flowers and the medium for smaller dots on the tulip shape, dragged the polish in a slight banana in between the two smaller dots. I prefer to do my flowers like the version two but it depends what look you're going for I guess :).

Leopard print and Butterflies

a-england Galahad, Kiko Melon, Nails Inc Chester Terrace, Kiko Dark Violet

Leopard print is one of the easiest designs to do with dotting tools as you literally can't go wrong, all you do it load your tool with polish and dot and drag around the splodge until you're happy but don't go all the way around. 

The butterfly is something I just thought of and I kind of like it, again it's simple but looks good, you don't have to leave it plain you can decorate the butterfly however you want, you don't have to do two colours either, I did to show the different shapes. 

Finally drips and hearts 

On the drip design the line of polish goes at either the tip or the base of the nail. I feel the first heart needs a little explanation, it's easy but you need to be quick. Dip and then drag in a v. If the polish runs out simply dip and drag again from the bottom of the v and that should sort it out. The second version takes a bit more effort but it looks quite cute ;). 

The thing to think about regarding dotting is to think of the circles as a means to an end, they don't have to be the final product, use the dots as a skeleton for other shapes and the possibilities are almost endless. It reminds me of when I was younger and I'd watch art attack and he'd use circles and sausage shapes to be the framework for his drawings and it's exactly the same principle with dotting tools. So get inventive! 

I hope you find this useful and maybe it inspires you to give nail art a go! If you do try any of my methods let me know, I'd love to check them out :) 

Nail Fail! Mary Katrantzou inspired floral print

Yep you read that right, my first public nail fail, obviously I've had them in the past but I've just kept them to myself and swiftly removed them but I felt I should be brave and show you all. After all I did promise nail art today. 


This was meant to be my interpretation of Mary Katrantzou's spring 2012 floral print suits and dresses but it went wrong. This took me hours to do just the one hand and so I was really disappointed when it didn't look as good as I'd hoped. I created the flowers with a small dotting tool and the stems too. I first did all the flowers in white to ensure  all the colours showed up and then I did the green stems. Then I went over the white with the colours and then I did the darker colours over that. Finished with Seche Vite and decided that I really didn't like it. 

Can you see why I don't like it? They don't look like flowers and there's too much black, there should be more colour and the flowers should be more floral shaped and more green. 
So there you have it my first nail fail (on this blog at least) what do you think? 


Lastly here are my naked nails so beware!!

So I cheated a bit, but they are too stained to be seen without light coverage ;) the first picture is from earlier this year and the bottom is today! My nails look so creepy without polish on, they look on the wrong side of long! Especially my little finger nail. Would you believe I've never broke a nail in my whole life! Lol 

Hope you enjoyed.