CND Shellac Nail Art - Monarch Butterfly in pink

Oh I do love a challenge and this is one of my favourite nail art designs that I'm asked to recreate. Laura, a friend of a friend, saw my last Monarch Butterfly design and asked if I could do this for her but in pink.

So we swapped the green for pink and voila! The colours we used for this one were CND Shellac Tutti Frutti, Blackpool and Cream Puff. If you check out my last post on this design, there's plenty of details on how to do this look yourself along with a handy link to a youtube tutorial video.

But credit really must go to Michèle from her old blog Lacquerized for her original manicure design. Although she doesn't blog much nowadays, you can find her on twitter under @MicheleNL

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!

TOPSHOP Sisters of the New Moon Nail Tattoos

Sisters of the New Moon Nail Tattoos - Topshop - £7

Let me introduce the Nail Tattoos from the Topshop Sisters of the New Moon range. I first spotted these on Lily's blog a year ago and instantly needed them in my nail art collection. Funny that it's taken me this long to use them! I hunted high and low to get my mitts on them and in the end it was a online jobby as my local Topshop never seemed to stock much in the way of special edition items.

Anywho, who better to be my nail tattoo guinea pig than good ol' Stacey. She went simple (for once) with CND Shellac in Cityscape and then the swallow tattoo on her ring finger as an accent.

You can no longer find these in Topshop and I've even checked eBay with no luck... but the good news is that these came from a company called bigRuby - check out their website here - who specialise in nail tattoos. So although you can't buy this exact pack anymore, you can get your fill of the same, similar and a whole load of other designs in various other packs that they stock.

Happy tattooing!

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 - Black and Gold Glitter

Oh I have missed a good ol' glitter fade! Say hello to Gemma who last sported some Christmas nail art (here) and penguins (here) on her fingers.

She wanted glitz and glam all rolled into one, so out came the glossy Blackpool which we teamed with Gosh Nail Glitter in 01 Gold. I painted two coats of the black and then painted on a glitter paste in a fade up the nail. The glitter paste was made up of Mother of Pearl and the gold Gosh glitter. I sealed it all with top coat and voila!

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 - Purple Polka Dot

So it seems everyone has gone dotty for polka dots! This is Jess, you've yet to meet her, but she fancied a little shellacing that wasn't quite as bright as the rainbow dots from my last post.

She opted for a simple contrast of grey and purple which worked really well. We used a base colour of CND Shellac in Cityscape and then I used my dotting tool to add polka dots in Rock Royalty. On the ring finger we swapped the colours round to add an accent nail.

Totally dot-tastic 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 - Rainbow Polka Dots

Maddie went polka dot crazy last month and what better way to go all dotty than in a rainbow showcase of Shellac! You last saw Maddie with her Iridescent Ice Queen nails so she's firmly bucking her normal French trend at the moment.

To create this look we used a base colour of CND Shellac in Studio White - not quite as harsh as Cream Puff which mostly just looks like you've 'tippex-ed' your nails (or 'wite-out' if your from across the pond). Then using my CND dotting tool, I added polkas dots to each nail and we kept the colours matching on each hand.

Thumb - Silver Chrome, Index Finger - Hotski to Tchotchke, Middle finger - Purple Purple, Ring finger - Red Baroness, Little finger - Tutti Frutti.

The hardest colours to 'polka dot' were the metallics (silver and green) as the metallic sheen collected together so the dots appeared less smooth - but the easiest was the red, in general I think Red Baroness is a dream to work with.

It was sealed in with a bit of top coat and there you have it - colour crazy dots. It seems that everyone is going a bit polka dot crazy as I've already repeated this design in other colour variations - so stay posted!

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 Rockstar Nails - Green and Blue

It's been a while since we've seen some full on Rockstar nails, not just an accent finger. And Tyra is a bit of a Rockstar fiend. This was one of her semi-regular manicures from early last month and she'd decided on glitter before she even looked at my swatch sticks.

She picked out the Gosh Nail Glitter in 12 Jade Green and the CND Additive Glitter in Winter Blue. As a base colour we used CND Shellac in Pretty Poison and Midnight Swim.

To add the glitter I mixed each coloured glitter, separately, in a ceramic dish with a little CND Shellac in Mother of Pearl. With a brush I then painted the glitter paste to the nail - two coats were necessary to get full on glitter - and sealed it all in with top coat.

It's a pity that glitter never photographs as well as it looks in real life!

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 - Princess nails

Ah look, Stacey, taking more inspiration for instagram again I see. This was a design by a Japanese nail art salon in California, Atlas Nail, that caught her eye.

Atlas nail (@atlas_nail on instagram) have loads of designs for inspiration, by the looks of it they are mostly done in gel too, but it was this exact one (link) that got Stacey's attention:

(photo courtesy of @atlas_nail on instagram)

 

To recreate this in CND Shellac we used a variety of colours and details:

nude/clear base - one coat of Negligee layered with one coat of VIP Gold Status over the top
soft pink/white - Romantique painted on in an inverted 'V' chevron
gold glitter detail - a mixture of Tinsel Toast and Gosh nail glitter in Gold painted in a line with a detailer brush along the 'V' edge
diamanté detail - silver and gold diamantés on all fingers except just silver on the first and little fingers



I got my diamantés from eBay (similar to these) and Gosh nail glitter from Superdrug. Of course the whole design was sealed with top coat and there you have it - nails a princess would be proud of.

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 - A French Alternative

At the end of January, Fudge (@fungling_y on instagram and twitter) was off on her hols to Hong Kong (lucky cow) and wanted to update her NYE nails. So she showed me a picture that she found on google somewhere and we reworked the design with CND Shellac. The original was a deep red shimmer from memory but we changed it up to use a dark grey instead.

For the base colour she went for an almost invisible layer of Negligee and the dark grey was the sleek Overtly Onyx. From memory it was one coat of the pink and two of the grey.

I then used some Tinsel Toast mixed with a little extra Gosh nail glitter in Gold to paint the glittery lines and added a diamanté to the thumb and ring fingers, before sealing it all in with top coat.

I quite like the edgier take on the classic French manicure, don't you?

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 - Cath Kidston Cuteness

Hello and happy Sunday people! The weather has been so un-Spring like that I thought it about time I got round to some very Spring suitable nails to cheer us up. The kind hand model for the occasion is (obviously) Stacey and after the popularity of her black bow French manicure on my instagram (@brushupmakeup), she decided to beat her record with these babies.

The design came from missgoob on instagram (@missgoob) - a very talented nail artist and cupcake extraordinaire! The original design that inspired me was this one (link):

missgoob used OPI Mermaid Tears for this design
(photo courtesy of @missgoob on instagram)

Stacey loved the Cath Kidston style of this but of course, CND Shellac is limited in it's greens, so we went pink instead and changed up which design went on which fingers.

The colours we used were all CND Shellac:
white - Cream Puff
pink - Rosebud
pale pink (on rose detail) - mixture of Rosebud and Cream Puff
green (rose leaves) - mixture of Pretty Poison and Hotski to Tchotchke

The floral design consisted of two coats of Cream Puff for an opaque white base (curing after each), then rough 'blobs' of Rosebud for the roses which I added pale pink detail to before curing, then the green leaves came last and were cured before topcoat.

The polka dots were done over two coats of Rosebud (curing after each) and made from a dotting tool and Cream Puff, cured, and finished off with topcoat.

The middle finger was simply two coats of Rosebud (curing after each) and two placed diamantés - one 1.5mm round and one 2mm square (from Viva la Nails) turned on its side - before adding topcoat.

And there you have it, nails Cath Kidston would be proud of and last an amazing two weeks :)

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 - French Manicure with Black Bows

Oh look! Stacey again, last seen here, here, here...this list goes on!

This time she went a little more classic, she's not one for the simple french-y manicure so we jazzed it up with some inspiration from I love Pink Nails instagram page - a nail salon in Las Vegas.

We used Negligee for the base, Cream Puff (two coats) for the tips and Blackpool for the black line and bow. I added a little 1mm or 1.5mm diamanté before sealing it all in top coat. And yes, the black detail was all done completely freehand - no striping tape in sight!

I have to say, she chose well, this is one of my most popular photos on instagram and I have a lot of people asking me to recreate 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 :)

CND Shellac Nail Art - Tutti Frutti Glitter

So I've FINALLY caught up with the last few manicures of 2012 and I can finally move into this year... Thank God!

To start us of we have Rachel again (last seen here with the Hot Pop Pink diamantés). In keeping with her love of pink, she decided to try out a new colour in the collection, Tutti Frutti, a beautiful opalescent pink that just screamed for something extra. So we added a bit of purple glitter to pick out the shimmer in the base colour.

To recreate this mani just follow these steps:
Apply base coat, cure, then two coats of Tutti Frutti making sure to cure between each. Then mix a glitter paste of Mother of Pearl and Gosh Nail Glitter in Topaz Lavender in a palette. Take some striping tape/foil and mark off the diagonal on each nail. Then use a nail art brush to paint the chosen half of your nail in the glitter mix - make sure you carefully remove the tape/foil before you cure. After curing, add more glitter freehand where needed, then cure again, finally add top coat and cure for one last time.

Voila! Perfect pinky-purple.

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 :)