More shatter/crackle!

I'm starting to think that we're going a bit overboard on the crackle/shatter polishes, Barry M have released some new colours!
http://www.barrym.com/products/product.asp?id=155
Still the cheapest of the bunch, and if the black is anything to go by, it's great quality!

I'm reading: More shatter/crackle!

Theme: DC Comics - Wonder Woman

This is the design I have created for Wonder Woman based on her original costume in the comic books and the TV series, not the new covered-up look she’s been sporting recently.

Wonder Woman’s origin has been rewritten many times, one popular origin being that she was made from clay and blessed by the deities to receive beauty, strength, power, hunting instincts, speed and flight.

Her costume is red on the top with a gold design across, a gold belt and blue shorts with white stars on them.

I started with a base colour of Barry M’s Bright Red. I then taped off the upper half of my nail and painted the bottom with Orly’s Royal Navy. In my opinion this colour was a little too dark over the red. It would have looked great if I had laid down some white first.

For the gold, I used a medium length nail painting brush and stroked on China Glaze’s GR8 in stripes until I achieved the thickness I wanted. I made a large bubble of white on the gold belt and used the tip of a pin to flick out five points to create that star.

My nails didn’t provide enough room to draw multiple stars on for the blue shorts, so I used a dotting tool and added white dots instead.

I topped the whole thing off with Seche Vite and the design was complete!

I'm reading: Theme: DC Comics - Wonder Woman

Theme: DC Comics - Superman

Finally, a DC Hero rather than a villain, and he isn't even from Gotham!

A background on Superman

Just before the impending destruction of their home planet, Krypton, Jor-El and Lara lovingly place their baby son into a space ship and send him to a far away planet where he will grow up to a great destiny.

Kal-El crash lands in a small town called Smallville and the infant is discovered by a human couple, Jonathon and Martha Kent.  The couple decide to keep the child as if he were their own. Giving him the human name, Clark Kent, they raise him with great love and great kindness, but they soon discover he is not like normal children.  Clark, powered by Earth’s yellow sun, has superhuman speed, strength, hearing, super breath, heat and x-ray vision, the ability to fly and is invulnerable, except to radioactive pieces of his home planet, Kryptonite.

Clark faces his destiny, helped out by the wisdom of his birth father living on through the fortress of solitude,  and puts on a blue suit with a red cape and proudly wears the House of El crest on his chest, the S shape prompts Lois Lane to give him his title “Superman”.

The House of El crest has also been worn by Supergirl, Superboy and Krypto.

Onto the nails!! 

For this nail design, I painted my nails with Orly’s Royal blue.

Using a short nail art brush, I painted the yellow diamond shape with China Glaze’s Solar Power and allowed to dry. Next I painted an outline for the diamond shape and a small S with Barry M’s Bright Red.

Not bad for my first ever free-hand design!

I'm reading: Theme: DC Comics - Superman

Theme: DC Comics - Posion Ivy

This is the next part of my DC Characters manicures. I’ve gone for another Gotham villain here, Poison Ivy.

Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley was a botanist and cared deeply about plants and the environment. A colleague attempted to murder Pamela using rare and deadly herbs from Egypt, but Pamela survived the attempt only to be transformed into Poison Ivy.

Poison Ivy is just that, Poison. She has toxins in her bloodstream and one kiss can be deadly. She can speak to and control any plant and she considers them her babies.

I based this manicure on her toxicity and love for plants.

I used OPI’s Here Today Aragon Tomorrow, a deep moss green, as a base. I used Barry M 287 Emerald Green, a metallic green, to stamp a vine design onto my nails using a fauxnad plate. I then painted the tips red (OPI’s Not Really A Waitress), to make them look a little more feminine.

The dark green base coat made the red I used look a lot darker than it is, this worked at my advantage as it looked a little more toxic and poisonous.

I'm reading: Theme: DC Comics - Posion Ivy

A cutesy, girly, pink Valentine's look

This is a very pink and pretty look for all those girly-girls for Valentine’s Day.

It’s 2 coats of Barry M 279 Bright Pink topped with Eyeko’s Chi Chi polish, which is a clear top coat with pink glitter within. I topped that off with No. 7’s matte top coat, then used sticky tape as a guideline and painted tips with OPI’s That’s Hot! Pink which is a darker pink than the Barry M and I left the tips shiny.

Pretty short blog post really, I can’t say anything more about this manicure because I hate pink. I didn’t realise that I hated pink until I started this manicure. It came out exactly as I imagined it would, but I just do not like it. Unfortunately, I seem to have a fair few bottles of pink polish. Time to ditch them?

I'm reading: A cutesy, girly, pink Valentine's look

Theme: DC Comics - Harley Quinn

I have decided to set myself a challenge: Come up with manicures to represent members of the DC Comics Universe. I love comic books, mainly DC comics and a little Vertigo, and some Tank Girl.. But anyway, this is going to be a really fun theme for me! 

Here's Part 1: Harley Quinn, The Joker's Moll

I was in town the other day and I decided to treat myself to a new graphic novel. I got Gotham City Sirens: Songs of the Sirens because Harley Quinn is one of my favourite comic book characters ever. I also picked up some standard red nail polish because I had a nail idea that I wanted to create.

Harley Quinn's costume is black and red and usually has sets of three diamonds, either red on black, or black on red. Of course, that depends on the artist, and that's only in the comic books, she had a new costume for the game Arkham Asylum and yet another costume for the new game Arkham City.

I painted my nails with a base colour, red on my thumb and ring finger and black on the rest. On my ring finger, I cut very thin strips of tape and laid them out on my nails to create the diamond shapes and went over the top with black, then immediately removed the tape. Cutting the tape so thin and then laying the tape down was incredibly difficult, and I was having a really bad nail day as I kept making the simplest mistakes, like smudging the base coat and painting my cuticles!!

I'm pretty impressed with the result.

The black I used is Eyeko Cosmic polish, it has fine pieces of different coloured glitter in it, and in hindsight, I really should have used just a plain black polish as Harley isn't glittery, but her personality sure sparkles! The red is from Barry M. My base coat is OPI's Chip Skip and OPI's Nail envy, and the top coat is Seche Vite dry fast.

In general, I love this manicure and I love Harley.

I'm reading: Theme: DC Comics - Harley Quinn

First post!

Hi there and welcome to my blog!

This is a place where I can share my passion and my hobby of nail polishes and nail art with you. I'm a UK blogger and everything is from my own personal collection and was bought by me.

I'm going to show swatches, do reviews and show some great nail art techniques that I have picked up all over the internet, from magazines and from friends.

Here's some celebratory first-post nails!

This is GOSH's Peachy with Barry M Nail Effects over the top. There is no top coat as I really like the suede look of the polish over the shiny colour coat.

I'm reading: First post!