CND Shellac Rock Royalty

Wow, I'm on it with the swatches this week!

This is a classic purple that gets requested a lot, Rock Royalty to be precise. And it's just one of those shades that I never get to photograph because it's never really used in nail art - it's just perfect alone.

Rock Royalty is described as a perfect Royal creme purple, personally I think it's too dark to be classed as a 'royal' purple, but it is lovely don't you think?

Disclaimer - All products used for this manicure were bought myself, for more info about myself and CND Shellac please check out my disclaimer page here. Once you Shellac you never go back!

CND Shellac Nail Art - Pink Glitter Chevrons

Tis the season for weddings! Here's another wedding related manicure, this time for Natalie.

She wanted simple art so opted for a bit of glittery goodness with some chevrons and rockstar nails. The pale pink colour is Romantique and the glitter is a mixture of Mother of Pearl and Gosh nail glitter in Rose Quartz (Gosh nail glitters are available in Superdrug stores).

To create the sharp lines of the chevrons I used some striping tape (from eBay) and I did 2-3 coats of the glitter to make sure it was truly opaque.

I find that Romantique can be a bit patchy on only two coats, so most of the nails you see here have had at least 3 thin coats - as you can see they still aren't truly opaque though.

What do you think?

Disclaimer - All products used for this manicure were bought myself, for more info about myself and CND Shellac please check out my disclaimer page here. Once you Shellac you never go back!

CND Shellac Nail Art - Purple Chevrons

You might have spotted my current manicure (above) on my instagram last weekend - this was another inspiration idea taken from a couple of my favourite instagrammers for nail art ideas.

The exact design I found was one of Hannvjk's (below) also known as @polishcandies who took the famous 'chevron' design from Selena at @selenadee_nails

Hannvjk used Essie brooch the subject, a neon pink from Claire's and China Glaze I'm not a lion for this design
(photo courtesy of @polishcandies on instagram)

I love her neon and nude combination, but until Shellac create a good nude, that combination isn't going to work for me. So I went purple and silver instead.

The colours I used were Lilac Longing, Grape Gum, and a Gosh nail glitter in Silver (available from Superdrug stores).

For the glitter on the middle finger and thumb, I mixed the Gosh glitter with Shellac in Mother of Pearl and applied 3 coats so it was truly opaque. For the other fingers, I used a base of Lilac Longing (again 3 coats) and then Grape Gum for the dots and chevron detail.

And yes, those chevrons were handpainted.... bloody difficult to paint my right hand too!

 

What do you think? I'm already thinking how I can mix up the colour combo for next time...

Disclaimer - All products used for this manicure were bought myself, for more info about myself and CND Shellac please check out my disclaimer page here. Once you Shellac you never go back!

CND Shellac Red Baroness

Another quick swatch this week... this time my favourite Shellac red - Red Baroness.

This applies so smoothly, is easily opaque in 2 coats, has a glorious metallic sheen to it and looks amazing with pretty much every skin tone.

I don't think I need to say much else :)

Disclaimer - All products used for this manicure were bought myself, for more info about myself and CND Shellac please check out my disclaimer page here. Once you Shellac you never go back!

CND Shellac Nail Art - Nautical Nails

Aye aye Cap'n! You may have spotted me donning a rather nautical themed outfit and hat a couple of weeks back on my instagram. They were in aid of my friend Rachel's nautical themed hen party, ahead of her impending nuptials at the end of August.

So of course for the hen's nails, she needed something truly appropriate to the theme. And not just one design, she went all out with a mix'n'match red and white theme.

The colours I used to create this were Hollywood, Ruby Ritz, Cream Puff and Water Park.
It's probably easiest if I breakdown what I did on each nail individually:
Thumb - Hollywood with two 1.5mm round gold studs (from eBay)
Index - Hollywood base with Cream Puff polka dots
Middle - Cream Puff base, horizontal stripes in Hollywood and a blue heart in Water Park
Ring - Hollywood base with Ruby Ritz over the top
Little - Cream Puff base and vertical stripes in Hollywood

To create the stripes I cheated a little and used some striping tape (from eBay) as a stencil and the polka dots were just done with a small dotting tool. The heart was free handed using my dotting tool and a small detailer brush.

What do you think?

Disclaimer - All products used for this manicure were bought myself, for more info about myself and CND Shellac please check out my disclaimer page here. Once you Shellac you never go back!

CND Shellac Nail Art - Strawberry Roses

Happy Summer Holidays people! Now that school's out for the Summer I can get on with showing you some of the more recent nail art adventures I've been on. If you follow my instagram (@brushupmakeup) you may have spotted this manicure a couple of weeks back. This is Becca and she likes to challenge me on the odd occasion....

Becca picked out a design she's seen from the lovely chorubim on instagram (@chorubim) - a very talented nail artist and swatcher who has the neatest set of talons I have ever seen! The original design that inspired me was this one (link):

chorubim used Zoya Neely, OPI MVIB and Wet'n'Wild Tickled Pink for this design
(photo courtesy of @chorubim on instagram)

 

 

Becca wanted to change it up slightly and add a little bit of floral, so we swapped a couple of the designs onto different fingers and added a rose pattern too.

The colours we used were all CND Shellac:
white - Cream Puff or Studio White
pink - Gotcha
pale green (base) - mixture of Limeade and Cream Puff
darker green (rose leave, strawberry stems) - Limeade

The floral design was done in Gotcha over the Limeade/Cream Puff base mix and I used Limeade to add little green leaves.

The polka dots were done in Cream Puff over the Limeade/Cream Puff base mix.

The large strawberry was painted over a Studio White base using the Limeade/Cream Puff mix and Gotcha with Cream Puff for the seed detail . And the small strawberries were the same, but I used Limeade for the stalk to make them more defined.

And there you have it, super summery strawberry nails :)

Disclaimer - All products used for this manicure were bought myself, for more info about myself and CND Shellac please check out my disclaimer page here. Once you Shellac you never go back!

CND Shellac Masquerade

A short post this evening for one of my favourite Shellac red shades, in the classic Masquerade.

It actually appears darker in real life and in this picture it looks more like Red Baroness, but this lighting picked out the slight shimmer quite nicely.

You might have spotted this one before in a Stacey manicure - here - but as it's such a great shade that I thought it deserved it's own post.

 

Disclaimer - All products used for this manicure were bought myself, for more info about myself and CND Shellac please check out my disclaimer page here. Once you Shellac you never go back!

CND Shellac Lobster roll

A quick one this evening, to show you a better look at one of my most requested colours this Summer - CND's Shellac in Lobster Roll.

If you saw my post on the full Summer Splash collection the you'd have seen a quick swatch of this one already, but I couldn't leave it at that, I needed a post dedicated to just this gloriously-summery-bright-reddy-orangey goodness!

Lobster Roll is in essence an orangey-red - too red to be orange and too orange to be red. It's not really a coral either as it's too dark for that. Two coats are perfectly opaque and as I mentioned in my other post, I could almost describe this one as a jelly. Whatever you want to call it though, it looks amazing with a tan and is perfect for that matching mani-pedi for your Summer holidays.

The top picture is me, and it appears a little pink under the light, but the second picture of my sister is more true to real life.

Happy holidays!

Disclaimer - All products used for this manicure were bought myself, for more info about myself and CND Shellac please check out my disclaimer page here. Once you Shellac you never go back!

CND Shellac French Manicure Favourites

CND Shellac Beau and Cream Puff

CND Shellac Negligee and Studio White

CND Shellac Grapefruit Sparkle and Cream Puff

If you've seen this post from a couple of months ago then you will have read about the most popular 'barely there' shades in my CND Shellac collection. I just wanted to share with you all how these transfer to (probably) the most asked for manicure that I get these days - the good old French.

A lot of my clients like the neatly manicured look that a French manicure provides, with it's neutral-ness that seems to allow it to work with almost any outfit or look, meaning that some opt for it time and time again. It's rapidly become the sort of design that I often claim I could 'do with my eyes closed'.... well not quite, but you get the picture!

Out of the various possibilities for colours, there are only a few combinations that I find myself using on most manicures. In order of popularity they are as follows:

1 - Base: 1 coat of Negligee or Beau, White tip: 2 coats of Cream Puff (1st picture)

2 - Base: 1 coat of Negligee, White tip: 2 coats of Studio White (2nd picture)

3 - Base: 1 coat of Grapefruit Sparkle, White tip: 2 coats of Cream Puff (3rd picture)

Clients tend to opt for the block white tip with Cream Puff but some, like myself, prefer a subtler white and go for Studio White instead. On odd occasions I have used Romantique but this gives a very very subtle tip which means you don't end up with an obvious French manicure look, so not many people ask for that one.

As to why I use 2 coats for the white tip? Well it's very rare that one is enough to give a smooth finish and not look patchy. But I do have to be careful as it's easy to get a bumpy ridge at the end of the nail if you apply the white in thick coats. Two thin coats work best and is the method I use every time now.

In terms of the base colours, if you read my previous post, then I've talked about which are most popular and why.

I don't often give myself a French manicure, it takes too bloody long for starters and it's just a little too 90's for me if I'm honest. I'd much rather a block colour - simple and chic. But if I do opt for it, I go for option no.2 above and as modelled by my lovely self below....

CND Shellac Negligee and Studio White

What colours do you prefer for your French manicure?

Disclaimer - All products used for this manicure were bought myself, for more info about myself and CND Shellac please check out my disclaimer page here. Once you Shellac you never go back!

CND Shellac Nail Art - Pink Bikini Glitter Fade

Last one for this weekend. A good old glitter fade for Stacey using Pink Bikini. For a newly released colour (see this post) I'm a little surprised that I've not had many requests for this shade yet?!

Stacey wanted a glitter fade like her Autumnal nails from last year (here) but in Summer colours of course! So we had a little play around with my glitters to see which would work best. In the end she opted for Gosh Nail Glitter in Rose Quartz and some pale pink glequins from the Born Pretty Store.

Much like her Autumn nails, this one was quite simple to create - base coat and two coats of colour in the normal Shellac fashion - then a glitter fade using a glitter paste and finished off with top coat. The glitter paste was made from a mixture of CND Shellac in Mother of Pearl, Gosh Nail Glitter in Rose Quartz (available from Superdrug stores) and the pale pink glequins.

Et voilà! Pretty pink nails.

Disclaimer - All products used for this manicure were bought myself, for more info about myself and CND Shellac please check out my disclaimer page here. Once you Shellac you never go back!

CND Shellac Nail Art - Cath Kidston Blue

One of my most liked and commented manicures came earlier this year with some Cath Kidston inspired nail art from the very talented missgoob on instagram (@missgoob).

If you are a regular reader I'm sure you would have seen the post, but if not then check it out here. My friend Kate loved it so much that she wanted the same design but in a pale blue, and what better blue to do the job than Azure Wish from the new Sweetdreams collection.

Everything was used in pretty much the same way as the last post with just the base colour change.
white - Cream Puff
blue - Azure Wish
pink (on rose detail) - Rosebud
pale pink (on rose detail) - mixture of Rosebud and Cream Puff
green (rose leaves) - mixture of Pretty Poison and Hotski to Tchotchke

(For more info on how to do this design yourself and the original design from missgoob please read the original post)

Which do you prefer? The pink or the blue?

Disclaimer - All products used for this manicure were bought myself, for more info about myself and CND Shellac please check out my disclaimer page here. Once you Shellac you never go back!