CND Shellac Nail Art - Super Chevrons

Following my first trial with striping tape and Shellac - here - I was keen to try it out again with other designs. So of course in steps Stacey, offering me a blank canvas for a little experimentation - we called this one "Super Chevrons"...

Inspiration came from Jane at nailside.blogspot.co.uk - her designs are always so neat and striking and especially brilliant to recreate in Shellac. In particular we liked the look of her South Africa? post but changed the colours up a little bit.

I started of with two white coats (cured between each) of Cream Puff as a base colour. I then added a vertical strip of the beautiful blood-red Decadence to the left half of each nail. After curing the red, I added two strips of thin striping tape to each nail, in a chevron style, near the tip. I mixed some Gosh Nail Glitter in Gold with some Shellac Mother of Pearl to make a glitter paste and painted it into the chevron 'V' area. I removed the striping tape and cured the glitter tip. To create the blue accent, I mixed some of my Cerulean Blue Additive with Cream Puff and painted a border along the 'V' edge of the chevrons, with a small detailer brush, and cured. I sealed it all in with top coat and then Stacey decided to add some studs to her ring fingers as a little extra. So I pressed those into the tacky layer of the top coat and added another coat, before curing for the last time.

And there you have it, Super Chevron nails, 'super' because there's just something very superhero about them 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. I might not be a professional, but I sure love me some Shellac nail art :)

CND Shellac Nail Art - Additives and WAH inspiration

Now this is my best friend Fung-ling (twitter: @fungling_y), you've yet to be introduced to her so here you go - blog readers meet Fudge! My gorgeous and oh so fashion forward friend has been the only person that I have known CND Shellac to last 4 or even 5 weeks on! But, yes, the grow out is a little extreme :)

She used to have acrylic extensions, overlays and 3D nail art but has recently been testing my nail art capabilities with Shellac. This is the first real nail art I did with her and she'd picked out a classic design by WAH nails (wah-nails.com, twitter: @wahnails, instagram: @wahnails) - the basketcase and candy stripe manicure.

Fudge was really keen on having a pastel toned base, so I played around by mixing Cream Puff with my Cerulean Blue Additive pigment to create the pale, baby blue colour. I mixed the white and blue in a ceramic mixing palette and applied two coats, curing between each. It applied a little grainy, but once topcoat was applied later, you would never know. To create the vertical candy stripes and the basketcase pattern, I used a small striper brush and Rosebud.

I absolutely LOVE the colour combination and the design was a little painstaking but very effective once complete. Check out @wahnails on instagram for loads of exciting and inspiring designs from their Dalston and Topshop salons in London.

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. I might not be a professional, but I sure love me some Shellac nail art :)

CND Nail Art - Additives and Animal Print

Well we haven't seen Nat on here for a little while now, so thought I better post one of my CND additives experiments that she let me try out on her. This is actually a manicure I did for her back in September... oops, I am getting very behind aren't I??!

I had just received my starter kit of CND Additives, and it included this gorgeous bronze pigment called Antique Bronze. Nat had her eye on a design by the talented Bedizzle (twitter: @bbedizzle, instagram: bedizzle) - you can check out her fab nail art blog here bedizzlenails.blogspot.co.uk - so we decided it was a match made in heaven that had to be trialled. And I think it turned out pretty well!

You can check out Bedizzle's design that we got out inspiration from here on web.stagram and she also posted a tutorial here.

To create the look above with CND Shellac, we used Cream Puff as a base on all of Nat's nails and Blackpool on the ring fingers.

On the Cream Puff nails I created a gradient effect with additives and animal print. I used one of the brushes from the CND Additives kit to stipple on the Antique Bronze in a gradient up each of the nails. With a small detailer brush, I then painted a leopard print design over the top, using a gradient of Blackpool then a mixture of Blackpool and Iced Cappuccino and then just Iced Cappuccino. If you look carefully, the leopard print gradient goes diagonally across the nail from bottom right near the nail tip to the top left near the cuticle.

I topped it all off with CND Shellac Top Coat and voila! 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. I might not be a professional, but I sure love me some Shellac nail art :)

CND Shellac Nail Art - Beau Glitter Fade & Diamanté Flowers

Oh look, Stacey again :)

This is one of her Summer manicures that I've been meaning to show you for a while now. She wanted something natural on the base so that regrowth wouldn't be as obvious, so Beau was a natural choice. But Stacey being Stacey couldn't settle there, she needed more!

After browsing my liked photos on instagram, we came across one by Kiki (@kiki_nailcandi is her instagram account) seen here through web.stagram - a web viewer for instagram.

We changed it up a little, Shellac style of course! Beau was used for the base as I mentioned earlier, then I made a glitter paste with Mother of Pearl and some Gosh Nail Glitter in Rose Quartz and painted on a glitter fade. Then using a dotting tool I created the flowers in three different colours - Tutti Frutti, Hot Chilis and Gotcha - and placed a diamanté in the centre of each.

Very girly indeed :)

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. I might not be a professional, but I sure love me some Shellac nail art :)

CND Shellac Nail Art - Gradient Dots

This is one of my all time favourite manicures I've done on a friend. Do you remember the moons mani that I did for my friend Jene here back in May? Well, this is her again and as always, she likes to be the first to try out a new design.

These were inspired by the amazing Sarah (twitter: @chalkboardnails, instagram: @chalkboardnails) at Chalkboard Nails - the exact post is here - I'm more than a little bit in love with her nail art and the great thing is that they are so good to replicate with Shellac for a longer lasting design on your talons.

For the above look I used CND Shellac Cocoa as the base colour, then using a dotting tool I applied dots in Rock Royalty, Tropix and Gotcha. To create the gradient effect - use the large end of the dotting tool at the tip of the nail and then use the smaller end towards the cuticle. Actually, Sarah does a great tutorial on her blog - link - much better than my description!

Very simple, yet very effective. I love it!

 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. I might not be a professional, but I sure love me some Shellac nail art :)