Flower Power: Ciaté Flower Manicure

By Emily

Oooooh, PRETTY! Flowers on pastel nails! I’m hyperventilating!

So yeah, I’m easily pleased. However, this fabulous ‘Bada Bloom!’ Flower Manicure from the geniuses at Ciaté contains all you need to create a super-summery floral nail. These guys have got manicure innovation nailed (sorry). It IS a bit fiddly, but the end result is worth it, I promise.

The set contains a mini paint pot in a pastel blue called Ferris Wheel. It’s a pretty colour but doesn’t give great coverage. I had to use three coats to get an even finish, which equals A LOT of drying time. Luckily Countryfile was on and it was John Craven’s 25^th anniversary, so I was enthralled and the drying time just flew by.

Once your colour is completely dry add a slick of the topcoat (included in the set) to one nail and with tweezers place the dried flowers onto the wet topcoat. Push down gently (with the tweezers) to get the flower to adhere to the topcoat and lie as flat as possible. Repeat on each nail, placing the flowers irregularly and mixing up the colours, until the flower fairies would be WELL JEL.This would work really well on one or two feature nails, but I decided to go the full hog, because, no reason.

Finally, over the top of the flowers you apply the top-coat to seal them to the nail and add a glossy finish. You can then file off any flower bits around the top of the nail: I used a pair of small nail scissors to take off any larger sections.

It is quite a long process, but totally worth it I think. The mini-pansy flowers lie flatter on the nail but I prefer the effect of the purple flowers, even though they are more 3D.

I don’t imagine this is very long-lasting but for a special summer night this is a super-pretty manicure and great value too. The set includes a mini paint pot, a full-size top coat, two pots of flowers (I’ve got loads left), tweezers and a basic nail file; for just £18. And that equals some serious blooms for your buck.  

The Fine Print: PR Sample

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Geometric Nails featuring Models Own, No7 and Seche Vite

By Emily

I’ve got a bit of thing for bare nails with a splash of colour; often I’ll do a French manicure but with bright coloured or multicolour tips. It’s really quick and high impact. This week I wanted to create something a bit more unusual, so got out my Models Own nail tape and created this Modern geometric design. Here’s how:

First up, make sure your nails are squeaky clean before applying the nail art tape. Using two strips of tape per nail, create a triangle shape at the top of each nail. Make sure you keep the tape a bit longer than your nail so it’s easier to pull off.

Then apply your chosen colour to the triangle area. I chose a No7’s Stay Perfect in Me! Me! Me! Your first coat should be light…try not to gloop too much on. Don’t wait too long before you apply the second coat and again try to keep it light while getting the colour depth you need.

Once your second coat is on, don’t wait long before carefully removing the nail tape, using tweezers. If you wait too long you’ll get a jagged edge to your triangle.

Once all the tape is removed you can tidy up any rough edges with remover on a fine brush before applying a good quality top coat. I use Seche Vite, for its speed-dry amazingness.

And there you have it, hipster nails worthy of a trip to Dalston. Undercut and Fixie bike optional.

This post: Geometric Nails featuring Models Own, No7 and Seche Vite originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

Guest Post - Aztec Inspired Nails

I have neither the time, nor the patience to do nail art, (not to mention my being a total cackhanded muppet) so when the gloriously talented Catherine of Catherine's Loves blog offered to do a tutorial for my readers, I jumped at the opportunity!  Here's hoping you enjoy this as much as I did:

*****
Hello readers of Get Lippie, Louise has kindly let me do a guest post on her blog with my choice of subject, I decided on a nail art post with a little tutorial on how I did it. Nail art is something I really enjoy doing on my blog, so thought it would be the perfect choice of post. I chose Aztec nails, this is my first attempt, I have always loved how they look but never done them myself, here is my interpretation of Aztec nails, and a little step by step guide on how I did them. This is the finished result

One of the most difficult things I found was choosing which colours to use, this involved a rather colourful  piece of A4 paper which I swatched various colour combinations, and in the end I went for yellow, orange, two blues, black and white, these are the polishes I used

L-R Models Own Snow White, Models Own Bloo Bloo, Models Own Feeling Blue,  Barry M Black, Rimmel Lasting Finish Tangerine Queen and Rimmel Lasting Finish Sunshine.
Now you can chose which ever colour combination you want, its entirely up to you, the tools I used the create this look are from my nail art brush set, I also use cuticle sticks.

Here is a quick step by step guide to create this design

1. First I painted my nails in Snow White

2. I then took my Feeling Blue for the stripe at the base of the nail and used a small brush to do this, now this is a design which doesn't have to be really neat and tidy, as a lot of the colours are painted over.

3. I then took my Black nail polish and again used my small brush to draw another block

4. I then used my yellow polish to create the next block of colour, again using my small brush

5. I then took my orange nail polish but wanted to leave a white stripe in between, so I did the block of colour leaving a section of white polish in between

6. I then took the last colour Bloo Bloo to paint on the tip of my nails, then left them to dry, now as you can see they still look quite messy at this stage, until you paint on the details, then it all becomes clear of what they are meant to be.

7.When dry, I took my white polish and little dotting tool to draw on the lines and dots, you can chose your own designs here, this is the look I went for

With a little tidying up this is the finished result

So there you have it my Aztec inspired nails. Hope you enjoyed this post, and have fun recreating your own designs, thank you for reading.

Catherine x

*****

Thank you, Catherine!  Any nail art that doesn't matter if you're messy or not is a-ok with me ...

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