Halloween nails now and then

Hi, yes I'm still here.....I have literally no time at the moment to blog as by the time I get home from uni it's dark!
I made the effort for today though, I love halloween but I'm not doing anything this year, can't really afford it seeing as I'M GOING TO NEW YORK IN FEBRUARY!!!!!!! I cannot waittttttttttttttt, I look forward to doing some serious shopping and checking out galleries of course but woooohoooooooooooo.

These are my nails this year complete with bandaged nail which has started to rip near the start of my finger!! So it was necessary to save it, no way I was going to file it that short!! But I decided to leave it un polished as it looks kind of creepy ahaha. My index is a fang of course with blood smeared on it.

My thumbs are my favourite though

Got those beauties from a craft store for 10p each! Bargain, they're so cute! I was going for vampire lady nails this year ;).

For a laugh here are my nails this time last year, taken on my mobile at night with short nails ewwww

That's it for now but we don't have a brief this week so I plan on changing my nails a couple of times, you know make the most of my free time :P have a happy and safe halloween!

 



 





China Glaze Westside Warrior with half moons

Hi, I'm sorry I haven't blogged in like a week! I've only just repainted my nails! I've been so busy this week and unfortunately it isn't going to get any quieter, we are now getting a weekly project for which we have to research, get an idea, shoot, edit and then present all in one week plus a weekly brief from professional practice and the weekly reading and questions, plus making our own work for our portfolios and soon to be websites :( it's a big shock compared to last years work load. I'm sure I'll get into the swing of it soon but it'll take a lot of getting used too!

Anyway I've been stuck in a nail rut at the moment I can't decide what to do on my nails so I just went for something quick and easy. I freehanded Barry M Gold Foil over my natural moons then I painted round with Westside warrior. Easy. Looks good too ;) I really love WW, it's green without being in your face green, and it went on so smooth, only took one coat to opacity too!

 I got my Astrowifey teeshirt! I love it, it's so cute and it lets people know I'm a nail freak ;)

 Hope this one doesn't scare anyone! I just like how pointy my nails are and they look smoooth.
Okay I have never broke a nail in my whole life........what happened today.....I broke the tip off my right ring finger nail!!! I didn't even notice, I was just running my finger over my nails like I normally do and I felt that it was flat....omg I cannot believe how short it is :( here's what it looked like before I spent a good 15 minutes filing it into a point.

Here it is now :( all short and horrible, I'm not making my other nails short, I'm simply going to pimp that nail out tomorrow until it grows back hahahah it's going to over compensate for it's lack of height :P.

I'll probably post on tuesday? If not then wednesday!
Stick with me people :)

Blue swirly galaxy nail art tutorial

Hello :)
Here is the tutorial that a few of you said you'd like to see, I have made a video as it was quite hard to try to explain with just photos so it'll go photo, explaination, photo etc then a video then photos again. Quite weird but it might work ;) I didn't even realise my camera even had video capabilities! Hahah.

For my galaxy I only needed four colours; black, white, dark blue and light blue but you can use more colours if you like.

Nails Inc Chelsea, 17 Mini Skirt, Nails Inc Baker Street, Barry M Blueberry Icecream and Sally Hansen Double Duty and medium length nail art brush/paint brush a dotting tool will be needed too.  

 For each step you'll need a blob of the colour and topcoat (not fast drying!)

Step One - Paint your nails black or a suitably dark colour.

 

Step Two - Using the paint brush blob the darker colour onto your nail and spread it out using long brush strokes, don't be neat. Whilst it's still wet with the same brush dip into the topcoat and smudge the edges out.

In the video I show you the smudging method for the lighter colour which goes on top of the darker colour whilst it's still wet.

 

Step Three - blob on the lighter colour (in this case in the middle of the darker but it can be towards one side) and immediately dip into the topcoat and push the polish outwards in wispy strokes to blend into the darker colour. If you need to add some more dark and blend into the lighter colour.

Step Four - Repeat the above step with the white polish, the star is going to go over the smudged white circle.

Step Five - Add a white circle for a star once the other colours have dried.

Step Six - Finally add more smaller stars and then a top coat!

 

So that's it! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and I hope it was clear and usefull, don't laugh at the video too much :P. Let me know if you try this out :D

 

 

Blue galaxies nail art

Hey, I've been good this week (in terms of posting) haven't I? Here I am again as promised haha so I've caved and created a galaxy manicure, how could I not, they're so cooool looking. I didn't want to use a sponging method though as I wanted a more wispy, swirly look rather than a patchy effect. And I only wanted blue rather than lots of colours, I know I'm quite picky ;). I'll explain how I acheived this look after the many photos!

 Right hand

 My index is my favourite! It looks so coooooooool, if I say so myself ;)

After my black/dark maroon had dried I added the darker blue which is nails inc Baker Street using a small brush then whilst it was still wet I used some topcoat on the small brush to smudge the blue to give it that wispy effect. I just repeated that with the light blue, Barry M Blueberry Icecream and with the white. Then I dotted big white circles and smaller ones, I added some purple which you can't see as it's purple :P.
I'm happy with them, they look pretty cool and I've gotten many compliments on them today which is always nice.
I bought some new wah pens which means I am SOOOOO doing houndstooth as my next mani :D I can't wait wooooo

If anyone wishes I will happily do a tutorial on the smudgey method :)

China Glaze Riveting swatches

I have a old swatch for you today as I've been at uni longer than I anticipated and haven't had time to finish doing my nails, I've just had to run to tesco with half painted nails, streaky and patchy! :O lol ahhhh anyway I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to bring out Riveting but I think it totally works for autumn as it's all glowy and orange :P. I know you've all seen it loads of times, a long time ago now though hahha so just bear with me ;).

 I think this would make a good pumpkin colour right? ;) spoilers?? hahaha it's a really lovely colour, it's my only true orange would you believe! I decided to do a red gradient over the top,  it was quite nice as the red was a jelly so the glass flecks from riveting showed through, so it was a subtle gradient to me it looked like lucazade hahah.

/My nails are looking a bit scary here, the shape is all wrong but nothing I can do about it now :P. I'll be back on friday with some nail art, that's something to look forward to right ;)?

Have a good tomorrow :)

Nude embellished claws!

Hello my lovelies!
Thanks for sticking with me despite my flakey posting! I'm going to try to post on mondays and thursdays every week for definate and then if I change my nails before the posting dates then I'll do a post, it's pretty much what I used to do but with a bit more structure haha.

Anyways onto tonights nails, these came about as I wanted (and still do) to do baroque nails using a lot of embellishment over nail art but I don't have the correct colours with me at the moment so I did these instead. I wanted a nude base as I didn't want them to be too over the top ;). I started with Illamasqua Monogamous which you've all seen before on my blog, if not click here :). Then I added a topcoat, which I thought wasn't fast drying but apparenty it is.....and then I simply placed the gold leaf (imitation gold ;)) and pushed and pulled the leaf until it looked right. After that had dried I did another layer of topcoat then added the studs.
Then finished with a third layer of topcoat, phew.

I love the way the gold leaf looks! It's so easy and so cool, it looks really shiny and fun hehe. I like these nails too much, they are quite subtle but they still make an impression. What annoys me about having nice nails is the fact that muggles assume that I do no housework because my nails are always neat and long, they just have never discovered a good topcoat! It's a good topcoat that will make these embellishments stick around ;) they nearly got caught in my hair in the shower this morning though hahahaa.

All the little studs were from ebay for about a pound and the pearls and gold leaf were from a local craft shop for a couple of quid!

I'm not sure if you've noticed but I now have my instagram feed on the right hand side, so if any of you are on instagram my username is the same as my blog name: abbienail  :)

My Urban Outfitters style aztec nails

Finallllly. I've been trying to write this post since 3pm but blogger was being soooo bad and not letting me type :(. I'm excited about this post as I really like the photos I took, and I really like this nail art. My boyfriend has this tee shirt from Urban Outfitters with this aztec-y style print, I'd been staring at it for ages thinking hmmmm that would make good nail art, like you do ;) here's the shirt

The colours are too garish for autumn nails so I chose three deeper colours; Max Factor Intense Plum, Kiko 332 and Kiko 346 Olive Drab. I loooove Intense Plum, it's a real sexy colour, especially after I'd just filed my nails into lovely points ;) I couldn't take a picture as it was nighttime as I was doing these nails. I simply painted on a triangle of each using a small nail art brush then using a nail art pen I drew the rest on. Simpleeee! I changed the design slightly so that it would work as nail art. I hope you all like thee pictures, they are very different from my usual ones.....

Right hand, not quite as neat as my left but passable ;) 

Left hand - I really like this look, it's a bit different from the usual aztec nail and more colourful too :).

I'm being a bit self indulgent with this last photo, I took it as a tester and I loved it! Lol it's as close to a self portrait as you'll ever get from me, my hair looks alright at this level hahaha I like the way my nails look too, again gives you a better impression of how they look in real life :)

What do you think to the photos, like or dislike? Would you like to see more like this in future......?