Rio Lace Nails Review

Hi, Girls!

Just a quick little post. I know I featured the Rio Lace Nails in my Black & White challenge, but I wanted to play again!

As you can see it comes in a cute little case, which I love, purely because I am NO good at keeping things tidy & together. Whilst it does come with the red polish, you can use your own, & we did.

For the base colour, we used OPI - If You Moust You Moust. I have become a HUGE fan of OPIs. & Fragrance Direct have a large selection for the bargain price of £3.99! Yay for Birthday pennies.

As you can see, this was before the clean up. The lovely Megan let me play with her nails. We did this before football, so it was a bit of a rush. This only took two coats. We could have gotten away with one coat, but it does smell quite nice.

The instructions say to leave the base coat to dry for 30 minutes. When this is done, you put a layer of adhesive on each of the nails, as I'll explain, we ended up doing on the accent nails. The adhesive smells JUST like the glue you used to use at primary school. I could easy take up a glue sniffing habit! You leave the adhesive for ten minutes,

Next was putting the foil on. We did have trouble with this. It says cut out enough for all the fingers, so we cut the foil in to ten little squares, as we were going to do every finger. Bad idea. Seriously, unless there is an easy way to tell which way down the foil has to go, you can easily bugger it up (which we did) You put it on the wrong way, when you take it off, you get no design, & you lift up have the base coat too!

We decided to just do the accent nails, & cut off as we needed it. You place it on the nail with the adhesive on, then it needs pressing down. They supply you with the same cuticle pusher you get in the Rio UV Gel Extensions kit, but honestly, I like causing Megan pain, so I just you my hands to push it down & make sure it's all smooth,

Then, you carefully peel it off, leaving behind pretties!

With a bit more practice I will definitely do all the fingers, & I do have some ideas of some colour combinations.

I will also sort out getting batteries for my camera so I can take some better quality photos, these were done with Megs iPhone, so not the best, but you get the idea.

I do have some exciting news. For the next challenge, I have a guest post! Is that cheating? I don't know  & I don't care. She is a fantastic nail artist, I can't wait for you to see her design.

Love you all!

Challenge 15 - Black & White nails

Hi!

I didn't realise how far behind I am on the challenge. Bollocks! Going to take a while to catch up.

This is just a quickie, something to try & get me back into the habit of doing my nails.

My Birthday was on the 16th & a friend bought me Rio Lace Nail Foils. I tried them how on her on Monday but couldn't get it right. I figured I'd just stick with an accent nail when I tried it on myself, which I managed to get right.

The annoying thing about this, is there is no clear indication which side down you're meant to stick the foil, or if there is, I'm blind to it. Still, it's pretty, & the adhesive reminds me of primary school!

There is only one photo as my camera has run out of batteries so I had to see what I could do with my phone.

I actually painted my nails black at the weekend, so there is a little bit of wear

Hopefully the next mani will have a bit more oompf!

Kiss Me On The Tulips!

Hi, Girls!

Todays OPI swatch is Kiss Me On The Tulips. Now, this is my kind of shade. It's bright, fun & a little bit sexy.

These photos were taken Sunday evening, so as it got colder, it seemed to affect the smoothness of the polish on the nail. That's my excuse anyway. I know my hands were shaking. We have no heating, so brrr.
Still, it's a charming shade. Whilst I love the colour, I'd already done two plain manicures, so I wanted to add a little something else. I'd found this Maybelline polish in the 99p shop a while back, so used that on my accent nail, it has teeny tiny bits of glitter in, which you can only see when you move your nail. This still cheers me up. Both Polishes have such a shiny finish, that the photos don't do them justice, You can even see my reflection in a couple of the pics. It's not a flaw in the nail, it's ME!

As expected for 99p, the Maybelline isn't the best to apply. It's very thick & clumpy, you either have to much on the brush, or not enough. I do adore the colour though.

The OPI, like the previous swatches went on lovely. This was only two coats, which meant it took a matter of minutes, which is fantastic to know!

Another Swatch tomorrow, so look out for that.

Challenge 8 - Green Nails.

Hi, Girls!

Better late than never, I haven't been in the mood to sit down & do my nails, hence the late post, Thank God it's a week between challenges.

This week is GREEN! I will be the first to admit I have a pretty immature sense of humour. The first thing I said to the boyfriend was "Green? DRUGS!" I meant it as a joke, but he told me to give it a go.

I was quite excited, but as it turns out, impossible for me to do free hand & make pretty. It looked pretty dull just having a green marijuana leaf, so I wanted to put glitter on it. Made a mess, looked awful. Eventually, I gave up & went for the rhinestone effect on the accent nail.

I promised you before that I would still post manis that go wrong, & this one is definitely included in that. Whilst it looks nothing like a marijuana leaf, it's still green. I am quite impressed with myself regarding the taping on the other nails. I have a love hate relationship with tape, I never get smooth lines, but this time it hasn't gone bad at all.

I really wish I had a polish that was the same colour as the rhinestones, so it didn't look even more odd. Still, you live & learn, & I've had enough of green now.

Just a final note...Don't do drugs, kids.

Sunday Morning Laziness.

When I say Sunday morning, I mean ridiculously early Sunday morning. It's chilly, so I came out to the living room, Boyfriend put on Doctor Who & I played with my nails.

As I've said before, I really want to perfect the Gradient technique, so what better time than the very early hours of the morning.

I'm very bad at choosing colours which work well together. I've looked at other blogs & so many colour seem to work, but when I try it, it never goes to plan. Still, My Mother taught me never to give up, so on I plod.

This time I went with an unbranded Pink, Rimmels Grey Matter, & an unbranded Black. I didn't know if they would work, but I don't think it went too bad considering.

I was given the advice to make my photos bigger, which I think looks amazing, sadly it shows even more I need to work on my cleaning up. I'm also looking at making a lightbox after another suggestion given to me.You guys have honestly been amazing. 

I still need a lot of work, but I'm quite proud of these. I don't think the colours look too bad. Where I used a White base colour, it almost looks like I used four colours.  My actually technique is a bit crap. I dislike how you can see the sponge-y marks still, but I'm guessing over time I will figure it out, (Unless some lovely people can give me some tips?)

I definitely need to sort out my extensions. They need infilling, plus the ones that have lasted the longest are the ones I did first. You can tell this in the photo above where I still hadn't figured it all out, & the extension is actually too big for that specific nail. Oops!

Of course, I was on a roll, so I thought What the Hell, Let's play with my stamper too. I've only used it a couple of times, as to be honest, I'm not great at it. I can't get the placement right, which is quite annoying, especially seeing other girls using it with amazing results.Again, practice, practice, practice:

I think I may have ruined he manicure doing this, but it was still fun to play. I'm in a total nail playing mood, which is bad for 0400hrs. Must go to bed, not clean off & star more playing! Naughty Kay!

Catch you laters,

X

Painting the town Pink & Black.

I've had itchy fingers! I've really wanted to do a blog post that wasn't entirely to do with the year challenge.

So what does any self respecting twenty five year old girl do on a Friday evening? She puts on her jim jams & paints her nails of course.

To tell the truth, I actually started last night, but nothing was going right. I'd figured out a design whilst washing up, I even drew it on a piece of paper, but would it go right? Bollocks would it. I had a little play around this afternoon, & still nothing was working. I googled, I nearly growled at friends putting up photos of their newly painted nails, wondering why I couldn't figure anything out. This of course led to a grown woman having a bit of a tantrum of sulking.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I have a sulk, I do everything a bit half arsed. A friend has left all her nail polishes at mine, as I do her nails for her anyway, so I was just playing around with her Christmas ones, and I discovered the most beautiful pink. I now know how Columbus must have felt.

I'm a big fan of pink & black, and since getting into nail art, I find a plain manicure a bit boring, so there will always be two colours.
Ten minutes later, I ended up with this:

Granted it's not great,  like I said, it only took me ten minutes. Isn't it the most beautiful shade of pink you've ever seen? 

If I had pennies, I know the perfect outfit I would wear with these nails, were I to go out. However, I shall not solely depend on cleavage power to ensure I'd actually get a drink.

These will of course be coming off this weekend, & I shall be posting my nail challenge! Exciting. I've already done one, as I had two different ideas. The one I'm going to attempt tomorrow, will most likely end with me in tears, as I've lost the photo I had, so will be trying to do it from memory. Trust me when I tell you I couldn't work out how it was done when I had the bloody pic in front of me, let alone from memory.

I promise, that regardless how big a cock up I make, I'll post a pic. I always feel a little downhearted at seeing perfect nail blogs. I'm still learning, & want to know that even amazing artists go wrong a few times. 

Catch you at the weekend.x