CND Shellac Christmas Nail Art - #9 Turquoise Trinkets

Yup. Turquoise was most definitely the colour of choice this month. Much like Kate's manicure here, Stacey was completely taken with the green sparkle and opted for the same glitter but a slightly different design for her Christmas nails.

The lace effect on Stacey's ring fingers and thumbs (not pictured) were a design that I spotted on Lindsey's instagram (@wondrouslypolished) - you can check out her full blog post on her design, plus the more intricate thumb detail she did, here.

photo from @wondrouslypolished on instagram

To recreate this in CND Shellac, I painted all nails with one coat of Hotski to Tchotchke. I then added another two coats to the ring finger and thumb (it's just slightly too sheer in only two coats I think) and added two coats of a turquoise glitter paste to all other fingers. The turquoise glitter paste was made up of Mother of Pearl and Gosh Nail Glitter in 09 Turquoise. I then added top coat to all fingers and cured.

Now for the important bit, to create the lace pattern on the ring finger/thumb, do not remove the tacky layer! Using a brush, buff the CND Additive Pigment Effect in Blush Bronze Frost into the tacky layer, completely covering the nail and don't worry if you make a little mess around the cuticles. Then using top coat and a small detailer brush, paint the lace pattern on top. I used a dotting tool to add the dots, but be very careful to not accidentally scratch off the pigment that's stuck to the tacky layer. Cure the top coat pattern and after this final cure, remove the tacky inhibition layer - this will remove all the excess pigment that's not been sealed into the pattern.

Ta dah! What do you think? The additive is actually a lot more rose gold than bronze as pictured, it worked so well with the turquoise. I love this technique and can't wait try out some more pigments in this way. Take a look at www.chickettes.com for some more inspiration, especially her video here - I can't wait to give rainbow polka dots a go...

Disclaimer - I purchased all the products used for this manicure myself, and if you want more info about myself and CND Shellac then check out my disclaimer page here. What's not to like about nail art that actually lasts?!

CND Shellac Open Road Collection Spring 2014

So I've yet to even purchase the four Intimates or the limited edition Christmas Charmed colours, and the Spring 2014 collection is already hitting the shelves.... today in fact if you're in the UK!

From left to right we have:

Clay Canyon - a nude-beige clay colour
Desert Poppy - cream orange coral with a hint of shimmer
Mint Convertible - pale 'mint choc chip' pastel green
Powder My Nose - a new nude, the perfect foundation colour
Sage Scarf - a neutral sage green
Sun Bleached - a heavenly pale pastel yellow

Photo courtesy of the SweetSquared facebook page here

And can I just say, Hallelujah!! A yellow... finally! Most people seem excited about the yellow and the coral/orange but many have criticised the launch of more greens. Even though I agree we're on a bit of a green overload at the minute, I actually don't mind too much as the Shellac range definitely lacks in this area.


And to tempt us even more, CND are launching another additives set to go with this collection.

The set consists of one glitter - Denim Geode - and four pigment effects - Emerald Mirage, Amethyst Flash, Copper Mine, and Desert Chameleon. I cannot wait to get my hands on that last one, it looks like it might leave a duo-chrome-like finish... oh the possibilities!!

I think the purse strings are going to get a little stretched before I see out 2013...

Disclaimer - Photos are not my own, they are courtesy of CND and the SweetSquared facebook page here

New CND Shellac Christmas Charmed Collection 2013

Ah the holiday season is almost upon us! And what better way to get into the festive spirit than with a suitably seasonal manicure?

Introducing the new CND Shellac Charmed collection:

From Left to Right we have:
Frosted Glen - a metallic sage green
Scarlet Letter - a bright scarlet red
Ice Vapor - a shiny silver glitter
Serene Green - a rich festive green

Photo from Blog Me Beautiful

As for a release date - around late October or early November seems likely. And make sure you stock up as these are rumoured to be limited edition again like last year. Oh, and good news! They are also re-releasing the popular Ruby Ritz from last years limited edition duo (here) in early November - rumour has it this may well end up a permanent member of the colour collection!

Now Christmas wouldn't be complete without some new additives thrown into the mix! So to join the 4 new colours CND are also releasing 4 limited edition additives in Silver Frost, Gilded Gleam, Blush Bronze Frost and Icicles.

For some great swatches check out LiverpoolLashes.blogspot.com - she's done some fab swatches of the additives over Blackpool.

Disclaimer - Photos are not my own, they are courtesy of the CND press release here and www.blog-me-beautiful.com

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 - Blackpool Glitter Edge

Oops! Only a couple of months late but this is Fung-ling's NYE manicure... remember her from her mermaid glitter fade and WAH basketcase manicures?

Well for NYE she wanted something fairly glittery and of course, a little different. So she went for simple chic  Blackpool with a glitter mix around the cuticle edge. I painted the two coats of black first before adding the glitter and to help make the line nice and smooth, I used some of those French manicure tip guide stickers. Just make sure you press them down really well or be prepared for a little leakage!

To create the silver glitter mix I used CND Shellac Mother of Pearl and mixed in some Gosh Nail Glitter in Silver and the CND Additive in Sparkling Silver from the Christmas 2012 Twinkle Collection. I placed the tip guides in reverse on the nail before painting on the glitter edges and made sure I removed the sticker before curing. If there was any slight leak under the sticker, I cleared this up with a brush dipped in acetone, but as long as the sticker was stuck well, the line stayed fairly crisp. I had to add a second glitter coat in places so that the black didn't come through, but this wasn't too difficult to do freehand.

Seal it all with 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 - P-p-p-penguins

Ah, another archive gem! I forgot all about these cute little penguins....

Gemma asked for these late last November following her Granite/Stud manicure here. To say she's obsessed with penguins is quite an understatement, but she had to keep her nail art minimal for work. Hence these little flightless friends adorning just her ring finger because believe me, she would have had them on every nail given the chance!

To create the penguin look, I used a mixture of CND Shellac Blackpool and some Gosh Nail Glitter in Grey Moonstone for the background, then I added two coats of Cream Puff to create the white belly (as one wasn't opaque enough). The eyes were a simple dot of Blackpool and the beak/feet were made using Tinsel Toast mixed with the Yellow Pigment from the CND Additives.

On Gemma's other fingers, she opted for an alternative french manicure using Negligee mixed with a white iridescent glitter that I have and the same glittery black in the penguins, as the tips.

I'd love to try this out with the new Azure Wish when it's released!

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 - Glittery Peacocks

Get a load of this glittery gorgeous-ness! These were one of my favourite designs to date for Stacey but so bloomin' difficult to photograph - trust me they looked way better in real life!

Inspiration came in the form of an instagram photo from @hairandnailfashion (but I can't now find the original photo). Anyway, Stacey wanted a play around with some of the new Autumn 2012 Shellac colours, so that's exactly what we did.

It started of as a base colour of two coats of Midnight Swim. Then in a palette I mixed some of Pretty Poison with my Gosh Nail Glitter in Jade Green and painted the green feather strokes from the bottom outer corner of each nail up to the top inner corner, with a striping brush. I added some further strokes like this but with Sugared Spice. To make the 'eye' of the peacock feather I started with a mixture of Tinsel Toast and the CND Additive pigment in Yellow in a palette and using a detailer brush painted the slightly oval shape over the feather strokes. I then mixed some of the CND Additive pigment effect in Cerulean Blue with Midnight Swim and added a smaller oval that overlapped the edge of the gold one. I used Midnight Swim on its own, to create one last small oval, again overlapping at the edge of the other two and finished the whole look off with top coat.

Phew! That was a lot of steps! But the end result was pretty darn good if I do say so myself :)

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 Additives - Antique Bronze

So the hectic Christmas and New Year period are over and these cold winter nights mean catch up time for some of my Shellac nail art. Here's one I meant to post yonks ago (in fact a lot of the upcoming posts should have been published ages ago... I just never got round to it!).

This is Becca who you may remember from here with her ever popular green and purple glitter fade. Well before our Greek holidays back in September, Becca opted for a glitzy gold number with the Antique Bronze additive from CND.

I applied base coat and two coats of Iced Cappuccino as normal and then brushed the Antique Gold shimmer pigment into the sticky residue layer, before applying topcoat and adding some square gold studs that I got from the Born Pretty Store.

I can't wait to get playing around with some of the other pigments when I get my hands on them!

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 Christmas Nail Art - #4 Iridescent Ice Queen

Iridescent Ice Queen  - glitzy enough for both Christmas and New Year. These are Maddie's, you haven't seen her since here as she is usually favouring the classic French, but for this Winter she wanted to glam it up a little more.

We opted for one of her favourite colours - Moonlight and Roses, but to make it stand out a little more we used some Studio White underneath. If I remember correctly it was one coat of Studio White then two of Moonlight and Roses (curing for 120 seconds after each). I then mixed up a glitter pastes of Mother of Pearl, Gosh Nail Glitter in Silver, some white iridescent nail glitter and CND Additive in Spectrum Shimmer. I placed a piece of striping tape diagonally across each nail - to get a nice crisp line - and painted the glitter paste on the cuticle side of the diagonal. I carefully removed the striping tape and then cured before adding top coat and curing one last time (probably for 180 seconds due to the number of layers).

Apologies for the grow out in these photos, I forgot to take one when I first did them and didn't see Maddie for another week or so after, so these are actually about a week and a half old - still shiny and chip free!!

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 Christmas Nail Art - #3 Blue Glitter Fade & Snowflakes

Blue glitter and Cream Puff can only mean one thing... more snowflakes! Here's another Christmas nail art design for you, in Shellac of course. As modelled by the one and only Stacey (duh??!).

Stacey wanted something much more festive for Christmas but would also carry her through to New Year. So naturally we went straight for the glitters. Now the layers to this are quite complex, so bear with me :)

Firstly I painted a coat of Studio White as a base colour, cured, then added a coat of a glitter paste (made up of Moonlight and Roses mixed with an iridescent white glitter) over the top and cured again.

I then mixed up a different glitter paste of Zillionaire, Gosh Nail glitters in Silver and Blue Sapphire, CND Glitter Additives in Blue and Silver Holographic in my palette. I painted the blue glitter paste in a glitter fade from the cuticles down, so that the white at the tip looked almost like a snowy landscape along the nail, and cured.

Finally, I used a small detailer brush and my Cream Puff to create star like snowflakes and a dotting tool to add the snow. I cured the white, added top coat, cured for one last time (180 seconds though this time due to all the layers) and voila!

Glittery blue Christmas/New Year nails, done.

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 Christmas Nail Art - #2 Red, Green & White

With flash

Finally, a little break today so I can get posting these Christmas manicures! Here's the second one of the season, in Shellac again of course, but this time it's Gemma. You've yet to see Gemma on here but I have some of her ideas to post about soon, she likes to push the boat out with nail art, almost as much as Stacey!

She ummed and ahhhed over different ideas, and as she couldn't decide on just one, we decided to mix it up with something different on each nail. Gemma was set on red, green and white so we then took a little while to decide on what arrangement of colours we'd do the designs in. After much deliberation we came up with red and green as a base and then green and white for nail art detail. 

As you can see below, the first, middle and little fingers got the Wildfire treatment - the perfect Christmas red. The thumb and the ring finger got a glittery Christmas green glitter paste. Now Shellac don't do a classic 'green' so we improvised - in a palette I mixed a couple of drops of Pretty Poison with a couple of drops of Hotski to Tchotchke and added some Gosh Nail glitter in Jade Green - it made the perfect Christmas Tree Shade.

Base colour - before nail art

I then painted the various patterns on top of the base colours pictured above. Gemma decided on the following:

First finger - snowflake and snow design in Cream Puff painted with a detailer brush
Middle finger - present ribbon design using the green glitter paste from before, painted with a detailer brush
Ring finger and thumb - left as the green glitter base
Little finger - candy cane stripes, thick and thin, in Cream Puff painted with a detailer brush

Without flash

These were nowhere near as time consuming as I thought they might be; it gave me the idea to try out more of the mix'n'match WAH nails designs I see on Instagram. 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 - 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 :)