Hi :) I wanted to talk about where my nail art ideas come from. I'm sure lots of you are thinking it's hard to come up with something week after week that's different to what you've done before. I'm not going to lie, there are some weeks where I get really frustrated when I can't make a design I like and there are weeks where the design I end up doing, I don't actually like that much!
Inspiration comes from anywhere. Let's look at some examples I've done.
Firstly, excuse the poor quality picture, this is an older design. I was in a homeware store when I saw a broom that had this rainbow leopard print design on it. That's right, I got inspiration from a broom! I told you it can come from anywhere!
Here is a more recent design. For this one it was an exact copy of a design by another youtuber. If I'm not coming up with my own design that week, then I will copy anothers work that I really like. Credit for this design goes to mydesigns4you. I would be humbled if another person choose to recreate my designs on themselves so copying anothers work is fine as long as you remember to give the original artist credit :)
The next option is to work on a theme. These were the nails I came up with for my birthday. I knew I wanted bling and I love how black and silver go together so this was my starting point. Next I look in my nail art kit and found all my black and silver items. From there I started to doodle on some paper and came out with the five designs.
Social media is another great tool. I look at lots of videos and pictures of others work. Sometimes you can take an idea they did but turn it into your own! this could be learning a new technique you haven't seen before.
This is a recent example for me. I seen pictures of people doing acid wash nails and decided to try the technique out. I ended up not being keen on the end result but I enjoyed learning something new and would look to trying it out again in the future.
I hope this was helpful for you. Thanks for reading! Lyn
So it's been a looooong time since I wrote in this blog. It's time to stop neglecting it and make a comeback! I'm still going to be talking (well... typing) nail related things here for the majority of the time but you might get the odd post of something related to my pets.
For this blog I want to talk to you about nailboxuk. I had this company come up in my news feed on social media so clicked the link to learn more about it.
This is the first UK only nail subscription service. You have probably heard of something similar before in relation to beauty or gaming products. You pay a fee per month and will be sent a box containing items related to the topic. I contacted the company back in the start of May asking if they would be willing to send me a box to do a product review on and they kindly agreed.
Here is the items that came in May 2015 box. 4 quality brand nail polishes (full sizes) and one nail tool. The products left to right: Orly Color Blast "Fiery Orange" Nicole by OPI "Alex By The books" Essie "Status Symbol" Rimmel London ""Lucky Lilac" Elegant Touch cuticle pusher
You can find my video review here;
After being so impressed with the quality of items received and the price tag of £15 per month (you can get down to £13.50 per month if you do the yearly sub option) I decided to subscribe. Each month the money will come out your account on the 1st and all boxes are sent out on the 21st.
The June box was just as amazing as May's. Yet again 4 good quality brand named polishes and another high quality nail tool. Let me share the swatches with you.
NailsInc "Colville Mews"a beautiful beige shade with a good coverage after 1 coat but I done a second to have it perfectly opaque.
Essie "Roarrrrange" this name is fantastic! Its a darker orange shade that also had good coverage after 1 coat but I applied 2 for the picture. Essie is not a brand that I have that much of (to be exact... I've got 1 Essie I've bought and now the 2 that came with these boxes). It is a brand that I would say is on the higher side in terms of pricing; around £9 or more.
Tanya Burr "Mischief Managed" a brand I had not heard of. Once again I was impressed with the quality of application. I am not personally a fan of red polish on its on but this one was a good blood red shade.
So you might be thinking, only 3 polishes, you said you get 4 a month! Well this month they included a bottle of my all time favorite top coat "Seche Vite". All the swatches had this top coat applied. This is the only top coat I personally use, I love it and will rave all day long about it if you let me! If you haven't tried this out yet, you must go buy it! The last item in the box was an Elegant Touch cuticle nipper. Check out my video review here:
Very excited to see what this months box will contain! No details are being given out about this one so it's going to be a complete surprise. If the last 2 boxes are anything to go by, I certainly won't be disappointed!
Hello everyone! Well here we are again with another blog post. I think I left it too long (yet again) but I just never seem to find the time to sit down and get this done. So we are about to hit April, 4th month of the year, yet another year where the time is flying in! Perhaps it's because I'm fully qualified in June and that's why it's going so quick.
So on Monday 24th, me and the college girls had a trip out to the Scottish Beauty Show. I have to say I was disappointed with the lack of nail stalls compared to last year. Notably absent was NSI which was quite surprising. However I did of course manage to find things to buy (you aren't surprised by that, are you?)
Nail polish.... more polish .... yup! So the bargain of my day was the duo China Glaze set with shot glass. £2. No typo, honestly it was £2. The colours are a beautiful foil like silver and gold. I picked up 2 packs of small spikes, one gold, one silver. They are much smaller than the spikes I used for my Rihanna nail art and I really wished I had these back when I did it. Theres also a wheel of multi coloured glitter studs and the 4 little pots are 3 bar glitters and 1 tub of flowers. You will notice the 3 stripers of the same colour. I found these last year and I only got 1. I used it so much it was all dried up and done and I had been trying to find it on Ebay or anywhere to order more and had no luck. So when I saw the stall there again this year, I bought 3! Well stocked up now haha! Also picked up the China Glaze City Flourish Collection, Peonies & Park Avenue, which I am loving the shades! I'm wearing a design using some of them right now.
This design ended up being done with all China Glaze bar the yellow dot. I have to say that CG is beyond a doubt my favourite brand with OPI coming second. There will be a haul video tomorrow (Saturday) showing off my Beauty Show items, be sure to check it out.
I done some gels last night on a clients natural nails. It's a really pretty pale pink with glitter on the tip area. It's just the perfect subtle shade!
I need to get a better camera so that it actually picks up the true shades! I've been thinking long and hard this past month trying to decide which brand of gel polish I want to start stocking and using. I'm just so indecisive it's really taken me this long to work it out. I've decided to go with gelish. It's a well known brand, good reviews and I think my clients will be happy to have a brand that is well known. Once I get some colours I will put out on my Facebook page a post letting everyone know!
Keeping on the topic of gels; I done my sculpted french gel assessment at college! I hadn't been planning to do it Monday but due to be forgetting we had Easter Holidays coming up and the College being closed, I couldn't have the client come back in for the infill assessment like I had planned! Thankfully I had done some good practice on these and the lecturer was happy to let me go ahead with the assessment.
Of course me being me, I couldn't let her leave without some kind of nail art! Dots were requested and dots were done! Pleased to say I passed :) Time to share with you my most recent nail art videos. This one just went live today.
I'm not sure how I managed it but I actually forgot to take pictures using my camera for this design so I had to improvise with the practice nail I do! I always try out my design ideas on a tip until I find something I'm happy with. Once I'm happy I redo the design onto my nail wheels which I have for clients to look at.
Here is officially my longest nail art video! I spent a lot of time editing this one but even with speeding up and cutting bits where I could, it was still over 12 mins! I hope this doesn't put people off but because I was showing 5 different designs it made it hard to get the video any shorter. At least you can skip to a certain nail to see how to do it if you wish!
This little slideshow was more made for people who only follow my Youtube channel. I only ever post art done on myself there but I am actually fully capable of more! I hope this vid let people see that.
A toe nail art! Yup! Not sure what put me in the mood for doing my toes considering how cold it is still, but it might of had something to do with how far up my glitter gel design had got and the fact I had lost the design on 3 nails. This design didn't quite turn out as I was expecting, I was hoping the foil would of attached slightly better as it was a little patchy in some places. However, with this being on my toes, when you look down they look great so it worked out in the end!
Last video, honest! I really do wonder everytime I update this how the hell I get so backlogged on my videos. This was a quick design using 2 Sinful Colors I had picked up and was dying to use together.
This video tutorial will be up tomorrow! I was requested to do some work showing the Naio powders I got so I manged to find the time to film these 3. I want to get some gel tutorials done next. I think I have rambled on long enough in this post. I've not put everything here that's been on my other social media so be sure to stay fully up to date by following me on one of them! Thanks for reading :) Facebook www.facebook,com/lynsnailart Twitter @nailsbylyn Instagram @lynsnailart Youtube Nala Nails
*Hides face in shame* I did it again! I swear I feel like I just update this and next thing its 2 weeks later and I have so much to catch up on. If you do happen to follow me on my other social media you won't have missed anything cos I post on those a lot of pics! This blog however allows me to go more into detail about my thoughts and feelings on my work and related things so I still find it beneficial to do.
So where do I begin this week..... let's do my videos first!
Now this design here didn't turn out exactly as I had hoped. Although I managed to get the mylar pretty flat and not sticking out, something about it was getting to me and I ended up only wearing this design for a day. Its not often that I end up disliking a mani, but it does happen! The reason I keep a prototype for showing clients and the reason I still shared the video is because just cos I ended up not liking it greatly, that doesn't mean others will not be in love with this mani. I feel this would of worked better embedded in acrylic or gel and would certainly love to try it out on someone in the future.
Ah so many goodies in this video. I am in LOVE with banggood.com. Honestly the way I go on about it you'd think I was sponsored by them but I assure you I paid for everything myself and I genuinely like their nail products. Some items I got for use with my college nail project I'm working on. I will eventually have a video for this BUT it won't be until May as the nails will be done on a person on May 1st. I can't wait to be able to show it to you!
Here was a cute gold and silver combo I did not too long ago. The gold was OPI Goldeneye and it is an amazing shade! I have been trying to use some of my less common colours I own as I want to get use out of all my polishes! I should count them one day... but I'm a bit scared too haha!
My second "How to celeb nail art" went up too! This was a really simple Rihanna design. I want to do more celeb art but finding close up/clear pics is harder than you would think! This was a mani that didn't stay on too long either, I couldn't cope with the spikes. I would poke myself with them when I was getting dressed! Spikes aren't for me.
The last of my catch up vids in this Naio acrylic powder. I've been wanting to try them for a while and never got round to buying any but I was craving some new colours so figured why not use this time to try them! I filmed a vid the other day of me doing nail art using some of these. Compared to NSI colours I found these ones a bit more runny in consistency but not so much that it was in an unworkable manner. This actually made them really good for use as blending and the pigment of colour was still strong too. I only had NSI liquid to use so perhaps using there own brand liquid would of affected the consistency.
So thats all the Youtube stuff caught up on! Now there is the matter of pictures... this could be long! So I've been getting lots of practice in at college so let me pop those pics altogether!
This was an infill back fill assessment which I then added some quick nail art to.
This was my first full hand try at sculpted acrylics. This sculpting thing is tricky but I can't wait to get better at it.
I had another go at sculpted acrylics here.
This was done today, full set of sculpted gel. It wasn't too bad for a first try but plenty room to improve. My structure was off on some of the nails and the room was a bit hot and messing with the gels didn't help me out either! Its all about practicing though and I'm confident I will get there!
On to other things I've been messing around with in class is some nail art. This was a technique I saw done by Absolute Nails on youtube and I wanted to give it a try. My downside - I had no drill so had to hand file this down! I know the shape isn't perfect but if you go check out her vid and see what you need to do, you will understand why I got fed up filing! It is definitely a fun technique and I would love to do it some more after I get a drill.
After sharing some amazing 3D sculpted work on Facebook I tried some out. Now my butterfly turned out nothing like the superb, lifelike one in the picture, but for a first try it was ok! You can't just get it right on the first try now can you? :) The mouse/rat was just a spur of the moment try since I was doing other 3D but this is something I would like to try out again!
Lastly I will share with you the art I have worn recently!
My jumper even matched when I took this! I love the studs but I had one gripe! The pink coating on them came away (a lot on some, small parts on others) so the only way I see around this would be embedding them under gel or acrylic. If I was to wear them again on myself, I would pick silver ones only so that I wouldn't have to worry abour the colo9ur chipping .
I loved these! The glitter on the tip I had just picked up and was dying to use, combined with the stud wheel that was also crying out to be used I came up with this! the stars stayed on really well until I got one caught on my clothes and it pinged off, but that was after 5 days wear.
This was the design I just took off my nails. I like using striping tape but it can get a bit annoying when you can't get it to sit exactly how you want it too!
I did my toes again! It's been a while but I wanted to do something and I wanted to do that something with foil! so here are my gel foil toes. I'm finalising the video and it will be up this weekend to watch. Also on my "to do" list is a slideshow video showing off my work in acrylic and gels. Since I don't wear those myself (outwith some gel on my toes occasionally) I wanted to find a way to share my other work with those who follow me on youtube only.
I feel like this has been one big epic update! I will say it again... I will try write these more regularly!! Thanks for reading if you got this far :)
Facebook www.facebook.com/lynsnailart Twitter @nailsbylyn Instgram lynsnailart Youtube Nala Nails
Hello everyone! Yet again it's been quite a while since I wrote a new post here *slaps wrist* So what have I been up to? If you've been following me on Facebook you'll see most up to date pics there! Yesterday we started doing sculpted gels! It was actually really good fun and I'm looking forward to trying it with acrylic too.
These were my first 3 tries and I did ok! Practice makes perfect right?
I attended a ladies night at my local Golf club to do some nail art. I had loads of interest which was great and manged to fit in quite a few people on the night. Those pics can all be found on my Facebook also. The lightning wasn't that great combined with my rubbish camera phone but you can still get an idea of what I did!
I did a set of french acrylic on a hairdresser at the college and ended up adding some nail art!
Cute right? :) There is silver zebra striped lines over the french tip which might be hard to see in the pic.
I also had my mum come in to college to help me pass my gel marble assessment.
Here is the result and then the nails when I removed it the following week. If hard gel is removed correctly there is no harm done to the nails underneath! I have been trying to marble with nail polish, which you can do, but it's more fiddly and I'm not getting exactly what I want! I've done water marbles in the past too but I have to be in the mood to get messy when I do those!
This is the design I was wearing for the past week. It was really fun and got loads of compliments! I had those little diamonds for years (so many infact that I could not tell you where I got them from!) and I wanted to use them in a design somehow so this is what I came up with! I have been shopping at banggood again so lots of goodies arrived! Part 1 of the haul is up and I am just finishing rendering part 2 which I think will be posted on Saturday.
These glitters are SO amazing! I just love the prices on there too. Also in the shopping theme.....
Yep! Matching new zebra trolley and brush case! So excited to finally have these. I have the trolley nicely packed with my art goodies now :) I also did a video on it showing it off for those curious about getting one themselves.
In terms of other nail related videos I've posted since my last blog, check these out!
A mini haul from Claire's Accessories
Some funky black and white nails!
A striping tape star tutorial!
*phew* Think thats the videos caught up now! I had good fun creating this next nail art which I was inspired by an eeyore tshirt!
Cure right?! You know, sometimes I think before I start writing out these blogs that I don't have much to talk about. Then I go through all my facebook pictures and realise I actually have far too much to talk about!! I am going to end it here for now, thanks for reading if you got this far! Until next time~
Find me on my other social media! www.facebook.com/lynsnailart Twitter @nailsbylyn Instagram @lynsnailart youtube: Nala Nails
Where does the time go to so fast? Here we are into February already! Soon enough it will be June and I will be fully qualified! So I have been doing a few assessments recently trying to work my way through what I need to cover for my portfolio. Yesterday I did this set of acrylics on a nail biter so it was a technique calleda dropped smile line.
I also added some art to the ring fingers. I painted 4 lines coming from the side of the nail, then a series of dots and to complete it; a silver rhinestone :)
I was playing around with some acrylic colours too trying to find a nice pair to make a blended set and I think I found a winner! These are NSI It's a boy! and Lilac and I think they go really well together! I'm looking for someone to come in and have a full set of these done for another assessment :)
This was an acrylic overlay and then painted french finish on top. The client has weak nails but wanted to avoid having tips on so we did the overlay instead. I actually still have an acrylic overlay on my thumb which has been holding together a split I got at the side weeks ago that was halfway down my nail. My nails grow so slowly it's gonna be a few weeks yet until I can stop wearing the acrylic!
I was playing around with some gel last week and came up with these designs. Top down we have: 3 colour marble with painted design, two tone glitter with painted design and rhinestone and lastly 3 colour drag marble. I'm using the middle one as one of my three designs for a college project. My main design is going to be masquerade though! I'm on hold working on that for now as I ordered some items from Banggood that I want to use so can't really do anything until that arrives!
These polishes were a good find! I always check out the polish selection in the local Poundland (UK shop for those reading my blog outwith) and this is the first time I've seen them stock Sinful Colors. There was a few different colours but I had to behave and not go too crazy so I walked away with these two and then had to make a design with them!
Everytime I come to update this blog I realise how far behind I have fallen! I find a zillion things on my facebook I haven't yet shared here and takes me longer than I expect to update! Video wise I have these for you guys:
This is a small haul of some items I got from Sally's and ebay. As mentioned earlier there will be another haul soon when I get my banggood items and I also am going to film a quick haul I got at Claire's!
This is my Rita Ora vid that I had shown you a picture of in my last blog! It turned out really good and I got told it was a perfect recreation! I am looking for more celeb art to copy but it's very hard finding decent pictures. I have also recorded a Rihanna one (you can see the design in that haul video above).
More videos?! How do I get so far behind?! I'm really bad at this stuff! This was my funky bright, in your face, leopard print design! The camera doesn't do the colours justice, they are sooooooo bright!
Last one I promise! Here is a valentines design for you guys! I LOVED wearing this! So much so I almost considered keeping it on for a second week but then I ended up doing something else :)
Thanks for reading/following/supporting me! My youtube channel just passed 400 subscribers and I am so happy and thankful to each of you who are supporting and enjoying my work! I try to update this blog as best as I can weekly but I seem to be averaging 10-14 days xD. For more regular updates on my work you might wanna consider checking me out on instagram, twitter or facebook as I post my work as I do it on there.
So last week when I did my nails I made a start on my "How to: Celeb nail art". I'm quite excited for this series! I started out with a set worn by Rita Ora and this was probably my most bling design I've ever worn!
The original picture I found of these I was struggling to come across again when it came time to do these (cos bright spark me didn't save the page like she thought she had!) and it had only 1 hand on show. I had assumed the other hand was the same and would of done them like that had I not then found this! So in a way I am glad I did lose the original picture since I found the nails in full as shown here! I am going to upload this video tomorrow as I have it edited and ready to go! I am going to also try and have a small haul vid up of a few things I have purchased recently. I am going to show off these 2 new polishes also:
I am so excited to find these in Sally's! I have heard of this brand before but it seemed to be an American product so I was really surprised to see it. It was a one off shipment I was told so I picked up a couple to try out! They were from a cupcake style range and not only do they change colour but they are scented and omg the strawberry cheescake smells so yummy! The other is chocolate mousse.
Working wise I did my cousin nails for a Wedding she was attending!
Sparkly purple glitter acrylics anyone?! She's a bit of a nail biter so very short nails to work with especially on the ring finger! It's really only my second time doing a nail biter so there is room for improvement but I was happy with the end result still. It's one thing to learn HOW to deal with bitten nails, its another to ACTUALLY do them!
I had a mother and daughter duo come over for what was to be glitter gel toes only, turned into gel toes, paraffin wax and some fingernail art!
The art was just done on the thumb and ringfinger to keep it nice and simple :) Sometimes simple is all you need!
Nail art related: I have been working on my creative nail unit design at college and have decided on a masquerade theme! This is the start of it:
I'm really proud of this so far! The black nail is full acrylic with sculpted 3D flower and shapes and then I took a silver striper to highlight it as I felt there was something missing! The other nail has embedded silver holographic glitter and then I sculpted the mask on it, added white detail and a feather finishing touch! I need to come up with the other 3 nails now. I think 1 shall be embedded lace, the others I'm not sure yet.
This is the nail art I had on last week. Perhaps not the best picture to show it off but the gold and silver combo was really amazing together!
Lastly here is the vid I put up recently!
And since I am terrible at keeping up to date... here is the other one!
I hope you guys enjoy this post, thanks for reading! Feel free to join me on any of my social media or become a subscriber on youtube!
