Wednesday 26 December 2012

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Second year in a row of advent calendar nails! Enjoyed the success of painting them last year so this year I wanted to pick a theme for them. With the help and ideas of a couple of my closest friends I chose the theme of toys so that each day would be like opening a little present on my nail.

To start with I painted each nail to look like a present with a bow and the numbers for each day. I decided to paint them with bright Christmassy colours with a layer of glitter colour over the top for extra sparkle.


Then I've re-painted a nail every evening up to Christmas eve to uncover a toy for each day.

15th:

The first nail is a spinning top. Unfortunately I broke this nail recently so I had to choose a small design for this one.

16th:

The 16th is my mum's birthday so I decided to do a teddy bear as it was her favourite toy when she was little. It's also holding a pink birthday balloon.

17th:

A tiny wind up mouse.

18th:

A roller skate.

19th:

A jack-in-the-box. Took me a few tries to do this one as it only just fit on my nail.

20th:


Ball in a cup.

21st:

A toy train.

22nd:

A doll. I based this doll on the one from Toy Story who gets her head swapped over with a pterodactyl.

23rd:

A rocking horse with festive patterns.

24th:

A Nutcracker soldier with festive glitter. The glitter varnish is the Barry M Yellow Topaz Glitter which I discovered recently. Have been looking for an excuse to use it in my nail art and it makes my Christmas eve nail look very festive.


Here are my final Christmas nails.

The colours used here are all Barry M base colours with a layer of glitter colour over each one. All of the detail is painted using a variety of nail art pens, which were a Christmas present last year.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Friday 7 December 2012

Mi Chico Latino

 I created these especially for our lovely Spanish holiday over the summer. Stayed for a week in Calella near Barcelona, which was a perfect way to wind down after finishing my final project at uni.
Originally these were a mixture of Spanish flags and Catalonia flags but after being told by a local that they're not so friendly with the Spanish in those parts I decided to add a yellow stripe to all my nails. This was also the time of the UEFA European Footbal Cup I added an English flag to support the team when we went to watch the matches at our local bar.


A couple of days into the holiday I decided to spend one of our evenings creating some holiday nail art whilst watching films dubbed into Spanish, the best was The Lost Boys.
I painted a sunset over the sea, a cocktail, a palm tree, an ice cream and a beach ball on one hand. A sandcastle, a watermelon, a bucket and spade, a parasol and a sailboat on the other. These were some of my first nails which I created without having any reference images in front of me as we didn't have internet access in our apartment.


This picture was taken from the top balcony of our lovely apartment at sunrise. Hope we get to go back someday...