How to reuse a striper

I normally find that once I use a new brush for my nail art I can never properly clean it and it never works as well after. I've come up with a solution to this problem! Find a polish that comes with a striper, I used Andrea Fullerton's striper, then once you have used or got rid of the majority of the polish in the bottle clean out the remaining polish with nail polish remover. This may take a while. You'll probably have to leave it to soak and shake it alot and use a cotton pad to get in the lid. Once this is done all you have to do is fill the bottle with nail polish remover and screw the brush back on. Make sure you've cleaned the brush as best you can too. Then when ever you need a striper just wipe the remover off the brush and dip into whatever colour you need. Once you've used it wipe the brush and place it back in the remover. This will keep your brush nice and clean and it won't allow nail varnish to dry on your brush making it all crispy and impossible to work with.

Wah daisy nails

Step 1- Paint your nails black (or whatever colour you want).
Step 2- Use a dotting tool or nailart pen to create 5 white dots in a circle. You can just do 1 of these on each nail or a few depending on how long your nails are.
Step 3- Paint a line half way through each dot starting from the inside of the circle (does that make sense? Have a look at the picture). Use a striper to do this.
Step 4- Make a yellow circle using a dotting tool or nailart pen in the middle of the circle of white dots.

My Easter Nails

For these nails I started off painting all my nails different pastel colours. I used monochrome from 17 graffiti collection on my thumb, middle and ring finger to create a speckled effect. On my index and little finger I used stripers and nail art pens to do a tribal/aztec design. On my middle and ring finger I used a yellow striper to draw a zigzag halfway down and filled the top half in and added eyes and a beak to make little chicks hatching out of their eggs.

Easter nail wheel

Here's my Easter nail wheel, but most of these designs could just be spring nails I suppose. Hope you like them!

Daisy nails

This design is very simple and easy to do. I started out painting my nails red then used a dotting tool and yellow polish to do the centre of the flowers then used a dotting tool and white polish to do the centre.

Diagonal glitter tip

Glitter- Barry M Rose Quartz Glitter
White- NYX
Nude- Ciate Bon Bon

Orange green and white nails

Rainbow nails

These are the nails that I had for my birthday! Rainbows, butterflies and a pot of gold on a light blue background with a gold glitter and clouds!

Wah nail design- Bacteria

This design is a Wah design from their second book.
The colours I used are-
Ciate- cha cha cha
17- Wave
Models own- pink blush
Barry M- bright purple
Barry M- key lime
Accessorize- carnival

And I used my Andrea Fullerton black nailart pen to outline the colours.

Valentine's Day Nails

These are my Valentines Day nails. For these nails I used Pinstripe White by NYC and Strawberry Tart by Models Own for the base of my nails. I used Pinstripe White on my thumb, middle and little finger and Strawberry Tart on my index and ring finger.
On my middle three fingers I wrote I <3 you. For the 'I' and 'you' I used my white Barry M nail art pen and for the '<3' I just used the brush that came with the polish and drew a V shape with it and rounded off the tops. I then used my black Barry M nail art pen on these nails to draw a shadow.
For my thumb and little finger I started off by dabbing 3-4 little spots of Strawberry Tart randomly around my nail then added two little spots of Barry M Key Lime to each pink spot to resemble leaves. Once that had dried I used my black Barry M nail art pen to outline around the roses and the leaves. I didn't completely outline them, I used 2-3 little lines around the roses and 2 to outline the leaves then I drew one or two marks on the inside of the roses and finished everything of with a topcoat!

Valentine's Day Nails Love Letter

1) Paint your nails white. I used pinstripe white by NYC.

2) Using a black striper create a V shape on the top half of your nail.

3) Using the black striper again draw two diagonal lines, starting from the bottom half of your nail going up to meet the V.

4) Using a red, or whatever colour you want your heart to be, use a dotting tool create two dots next to each other and drag them down to make a heart shape.

This design will look better on shorter nails I think. You could also do them horizontally, I would've, but it wouldn't have worked very well because my nails are pointy.

Valentine's Day Nails Kiss

I have a pictorial for this design!

1) Paint your nail white. I used Pinstripe White by NYC.

2) Using a black nail art pen or thin brush and black polish draw two half circles on either side of your nail so the almost meet in the middle. Draw two curved lines in the circles, a big one for the smile and a smaller one for the eye. Add eyelashes to one of the eyes to make it girly. I used my Barry m black nail art pen for this.

3) Add hair. For the boy I just used the same black nail art pen as before and drew on a couple of spikes. For the girl I chose to go blonde so I used nails inc. spitalfields and using the brush that came with the polish dabbed it on top of her head.

4) To add a bit of extra detail to the girl's hair I used my nail art pen again and just put some dashes through it. To finish off I used models own pink blush and a dotting tool to add a little heart between them so they look like they're kissing! 

Here's a picture of the rest of my nails I wore for this design. I just decorated them with glitter, caviar beads, pearls and a heart fimo. The glitter polish I used is Essie a cut above.

Accessorize nail foils

These nails were done using the accessorize nail foil kits. On my nails (the blue ones) I used the dreamstate kit, this kit comes with the Soft Jade nail varnish. I used the silver and blue foils on my nails. I focused the glue on the tip of my nails and dragged it down to create a slight drip effect. On my friend's nails (the pink/purple ones) I used the spellbound kit which includes the Sugar Plum polish. For these ones I used the gold and purple foils and just randomly applied the glue all over the nails to get the foil covering the majority of the nail.
I loved experimenting with these kits and found them very easy to use. The only thing was I managed to get the glue all over my hands no matter how careful I tried to be, but it washed off so easily and I think it's a small price to pay for such pretty nails!

Valentines day nail wheel

So, I thought I'd give my nails a little rest from nail varnish, so instead of painting my nails I've done a valentines day nail wheel. I might do a few of these designs on my nails soon, and maybe a few tutorials. Make sure to let me know if there are any of these designs that you would particularly like to see a tutorial of.

Noughts and Crosses nails with outfit

For this design I painted my nails white and then used a black striper to draw a grid on my nails. Then I used a black nail art pen to draw on the noughts and crosses. I arranged them so that on my thumb and ring finger there was a winner so I could use a red striper to draw a line through the winning noughts or crosses. For my toes I did exactly the same thing on my big toe as I did on my thumb and ring finger, for the rest of my toenails I just did the grid. I finished everything off with a matte topcoat.

For my outfit I'm wearing my Ram.ones dress from Forever 21 with fishnet tights from Accessorize. I have long black socks and my heel Doc Martens on my feet.

On my lips I have neon red from maybelline and on my eyes I used my easiest nudes ever pallet and they're real mascara by benefit. I contoured using hoola and highlighted using highbeam. Both of those are also from benefit. My blusher is melba by Mac.

Pink and patchy tiger print

To create this effect I used nail foils. I painted my nails pink first and let that dry completely, then I put on the adhesive and waited for it to almost be dry, but not completely and then placed the foil on my nails, smoothed it over a bit and tore it off! And finished with a topcoat! Make sure not to use a fast drying topcoat with foils!

Rusty gold

I started by painting my nails gold, then using a metallic pink polish and a sponge I started to create a bit of a gradient. I didn't go to heavily with the pink though and built it up in thin layers. Once I'd done that to add a bit of extra detail I took a paisley design from a stamping plate and stamped in over the gold to carry on the gradient right down my nail, but so when you look closely you can see the extra detail. (It doesn't show in the picture :( ) 

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Fuzzy Nails

This design was inspired by a design done by one of my favorite nail artists, kirakira nail. She used the black and white Barry M fuzzy nail effects, but I got the blue and yellow one for Christmas, so I switched up the colours. She did 3 different designs using this polish, so I decided to combine 2 of them. I used the border idea from her second design, (I chose to add a nude polish under the fuzzy polish because my nails are a little stained) and the spots from her third design. If you want to see how to do this design you can have a look on her YouTube channel.

Barry M foil effects

This is another nail varnish that I got for Christmas, it's the Barry M Foil Effects nail varnish in gold. It is a very striking polish and looks very dramatic on the nails. In this picture I have two coats of it on, but you could easily only wear one. I did think this polish was quite tricky to apply, you have to be very neat with it as it does go streaky. I would also recommend buffing your nails before using this polish as it does make any uneven parts of your nail quite noticeable.  I tried to do a design over this nail varnish but apart from adding glitter and rhinestones (which I have done far too much of lately) I couldn't think of anything else that would look good over it. Suggestions? I might try it under some foils, that could work well. 

I do like this polish, although it is a little tricky to apply I think the colour and effect is definitely worth it. Just need to think of a design to use it in.