Office-Appropriate Nails and Reliving my Teen Years

Office-appropriate nails are always a dilemma of mine and I have spent many an evening going through my drawers of nail polishes trying to find a colour or shade that is suitable for an office environment.

In general, I tend to opt for subtle, natural shades such as nudes, beiges, greys, pale pinks - nothing that is too 'in-your-face'.  However, sometimes this all just gets, well, pretty boring, especially for a nail art obsessive like myself.  So, this evening I tried to come up with a compromise: I would stick with this subtle nail polish palette but I would incorporate it into a nail art design.


The key with my chosen nail art look was to stick to the subtle theme and keep it fairly understated which meant no neon colours and clumpy glitters (my heart just broke a little bit from writing that!).  This resulted in selecting only two simple nail polish colours, a grey-based nail polish by Topshop and a shimmery (well, I needed a little bit of glitter, I'm only human!) sheer nude-based nail polish by Maybelline (this is the same one that I used for my nail art looks in the posts Nail Update: Summer, glitter and sparkles! and Black Gloopy Nails, just in case you were wondering......were you actually wondering or have I overstepped the mark here?). 



Office ombre nails!


I went for an ombre nail design as it's a quite soft nail art look and a fairly easy process which doesn't take too long to achieve.  To start off with, I used my standard base coat which is OPI's Original Nail Envy Nail Strengthener followed by one coat of Maybelline's Color Show nail polish in Sugar Crystals.  Once this was dry, doing one nail at a time, I used a Topshop nail polish in the shade Hopscotch and painted the top third of my nail so that it looked like this (this bit does not need to be too neat):







A little messiness is just fine by me!

Once I'd applied the polish to the top third of my nail, I grabbed some tin foil and dropped a few blobs of the Topshop nail polish onto it.  I then grabbed my cosmetic sponge and dabbed it into the nail polish and lightly blotted it on the foil a couple of times before dabbing the nail polish onto my nail using the sponge.  I carefully brought the colour about halfway down, so that the colour faded out as it approached the bottom half of the nail.  I then finished this nail art look off with a coating of Seche Vite's Dry Fast Top Coat to blend the nail polishes together and soften the look even further.  The reason why I did one nail at a time was because I needed my Topshop nail polish to not be completely dry when adding my top coat otherwise it would not have blended as nicely.

Items used from left to right: Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat, OPI Original Nail Envy Nail Strengthener, Topshop nail polish in the shade Hopscotch, Maybelline Color Show nail polish in the shade Sugar Crystals and a cosmetic sponge.

I'm really happy with this look as I think that it is subtle enough to be acceptable for an office job but it's still slightly quirky and unique which is very much a good thing in my opinion. 

The irony of this whole nail art look was that whilst I was trying to achieve this 'mature' nail art design, I was reliving my teenage years and listening to 'The Best of Hilary Duff' on Spotify, I'm not even ashamed about it though.......and I'm definitely not ashamed about the fact that I still know all the words to 'So Yesterday'.  Not even a lit bit of shame here, only Hilary Duff-lyric-knowing pride - turns out my teenage years weren't wasted after all!




No shame here!

Feel free to let me know what you think of this look, or Hilary Duff, I'm not fussy!

Nail Update: Summer, glitter and sparkles!

So last week I was working the black gloopy nail art look which I absolutely loved, in fact I loved the gloopy factor so much so that this week I decided to update this nail art design and give it a more summery twist by swapping black for pink, glitter and sparkles!

Check it out my lovelies:

I can't help but smile when I look at these - is that a bit weird?

 



This design is not only cute but also pretty damn easy to do so it ticks all those pesky nail art boxes!

If you're interested (and I'm naively assuming you are seeing as you've read this far!), here's everything that I used for this look (minus the nail glue which I threw away because I used it all up):

(Top to bottom, left to right: nail diamante pin wheel (purchased from New Look but there are loads of these available on eBay), cosmetic sponge. Nail polishes (left to right): OPI Original Nail Envy Nail Strengthener, Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat, Maybelline Color Show Nail Polish (shade - Sugar Crystals), Models Own Nail Polish (shade - Snowflakes NP145), Bourjois So Laque! Ultra Shine Nail Polish (shade - Rosé Merveille 45), Barry M Nail Paint (shade - Matt White 66). Nail art brushes both purchased via eBay).



To create this look start off with a base coat, I used OPI's Original Nail Envy Nail Strengthener  which is my standard base coat because it keeps my nails nice and strong.  Then for all the nails except your ring fingers, apply one coat of Maybelline's Color Show Nail Polish in the shade Sugar Crystals followed by two coats of Model's Own Nail Polish in the shade Snowflakes NP145.  While your nails are drying move onto your ring fingers and apply two coats of the Bourjois So Laque! Ultra Shine Nail Polish in the shade Rosé Merveille 45 and leave to dry whilst going back to the rest of your nails you painted earlier.

Using a thin nail art brush, apply the same Bourjois nail polish used on your ring fingers along the tips of your nails creating French tips.  Once done, use an even thinner nail art brush (you'll want this for the precision of your 'gloops') and paint in your 'gloops' and connect them to the French tips you just painted on. 

Going back to your ring fingers, make sure that they are completely dry and if so, grab a cosmetic sponge and dab a little bit of Barry M's Nail Polish in the shade Matt White 66 onto the sponge and then blot it onto some kitchen roll, tissue or tin foil and carefully dab it onto the tips of your nails working down to create a subtle ombre/dip dye effect.  Once your happy with your ombre effect, then apply Seche Vite's Dry Fast Top Coat to blend the white and pink nail polish together even more so.  Then apply the same top coat to the rest of your nails.

To finish off, grab a selection of diamantes for your two ring fingers and using some nail glue apply the diamantes to your ring finger nails.  Finish off with a final application of your top coat and you're all done! 

I hope my explanation made sense, I'm one of those people that has a tendency to waffle on a bit so it can be a real mission for me to explain something relatively simple without making it sound incredibly complicated and daunting.

Well, there you have it, a simple guide to some super summery and sparkly nail art - let me know what you think!

I could stare at these all day!

Elephants, Chunky Necklaces and Acrylics

The sun is out and I'm feeling pretty happy right now.............mostly because of this elephant necklace which is my new favourite statement necklace:

 

 

It's about time the sun sorted itself out and made a bit of warmth here in the UK, especially as I'm still dealing with my post holiday blues - it was never going to be easy coming back from a 30 degree Qatar to a somewhat chilly England.  Also there are no camels which makes me just as blue as the lack of heat.  BUT at least there are elephants in my life thanks to my new necklace, which in case you were wondering is from New Look.  OBVIOUSLY.  New Look basically do the best chunky necklaces around at the moment, don't believe me?  Then check out my chunky New Look necklace horde:




Ok, so maybe I'm a little bit addicted to chunky necklaces, but that's fine, I'm ok with that.

 



I'm already feeling the need to add a 9th and maybe even a 10th necklace to the collection!  I just love how statement necklaces can completely transform an outfit and bring it to life.  But, hey, that's just my opinion!

I came so very, very dangerously close to getting acrylic nails done today and THANK GOODNESS I didn't because there is no way that I'd be able to type this post with as much ease if I had.  Honestly, it would have been the slowest typing session ever if I'd got those pesky (yet so alluring) acrylics done.  I've only ever had acrylics once and not only did they make typing and writing a mission in their own rights but they completely destroyed my nails and after a long 6 months they're only just getting back to normal.  As a treat I might crack out some nail art on my 100% natural and 0% acrylic nails tonight because it's Friday which means tomorrow's the weekend and that's all I need to know in life.  Done.