Snowman nails

Another Christmas design! For this one I have a snowman on my over my thumb and ring finger. Head on my ring finger and body on my thumb! I used black on a big dotting tool for the eyes, mouth and buttons. I used an orange nail art pen to draw a triangle for the carrot nose and to draw the scarf. For the scarf I also used a green nail art pen to draw stripes on it.

On my middle and little finger I painted over the white with a gold glitter polish then attached all different sized pearls over them randomly.

Finally on my index finger I used a light blue striper to draw little star/snowflake shapes.

Christmas jumper nails

Cupcakes Halloween Challenge: Bloodbath

My second design for this halloween challenge-

I tried to use the straw technique to create a splatter effect, but it was a lot harder than it seemed. The only nail it worked on was my middle one, so I ended up putting drops of red nail varnish on my nails and blowing them out with a straw and then putting on a topcoat before they were properly dry so as to smear them a bit more. On my ring finger I decided to do it more like drips so I just took a fairly big dotting tool, dotted the red where I wanted the drip to start and then dragged it up my nail whilst reducing the pressure applied. I did this three times starting at different points on my nail then I added some drops below the main drips and connected them at the top. I also smeared these by applying topcoat before they were dry. For this design I chose to use a matte topcoat, but a plain one would work fine too. 

And the make-up to go with these nails-

On my eyes I have just a matte white eyeshadow from an old Ruby and Millie pallette all over my lid and then up to my brow as well, but not as intensely. Then I took the red blush from my Sleek pallette Pumpkin, I used a fluffy eyeshadow brush to apply it quite messily over the outer half of my lid and upto my brow and I also took it quite far under my eye. I took a smaller eyeshadow brush to apply it a bit more heavily on my crease.

I used a pencil gel liner by Avon to line my eyes, top and bottom, I made sure it was a bit messy and smudged and then went over the liner on the top with Super Liner Perfect Slim by L'Oreal to fill in gaps between the liner and lash line. For mascara I used They're Real by benefit to lengthen my lashes then I  used False Lash Telescopic by L'Oreal to make them more spidery. 

I used The Body Shop lip and cheek stain on my lips and cheeks. I then lined my lips with Ruby Rose Lip Lines by Natural Collection, then filled in my lips with Valentine by Collection.

I also contoured using the No. 7 bronzing pearls, but you can't really tell with the lighting.

Yin and yang nails

This manicure is fairly simple to do, but I think looks really effective. It's a yin and yang symbol on the ring fingers and the rest are alternatively painted black and white with a pearl at the bottom.

To begin with I painted both my ring fingers white (easier to layer darker, more opaque colours over lighter colours than the other way round). Then I painted the rest of my nails alternatively black and white. Once I'd done that I painted the black half of the yin and yang. When you paint this make sure you start at the middle and end in the middle of your nail, if you don't it can be very easy to end up with a pretty straight line or the waves in the wrong places. Make sure there is only 2 well defined curves in the wave. 

Then I moved onto my other fingers, I got my black and white pearls and placed them on the bottom of the nails which were the opposite colour to the pearl. 

Everyone has their own method of doing this, but i find the easiest way is to put a blob of clear nail varnish or if your quick you can just put it on the colour before it dries, but that can get a bit messy sometimes. Then use a dotting tool with a drop of the clear nails varnish on the end to pick up and place the pearl. You can put nail glue on the nail instead of the clear polish if you want it to last longer, but I find it messy and I never want to keep my design on long enough for it to matter.

Once that's done use a medium or large dotting tool, depending on how long your nails are to dot white polish on the black side and black polish on the white side. 

Give it a little while while to dry... You don't want your design to smear then put on you top coat. Try to make it quite thick over the pearls to hold them on better!