I am not the girliest of girls. I don’t wear make up, skirts and dresses are reserved for weddings or when my Gran comes to visit, and I live in trainers and jeans. However the one girly thing I love is nail polish. Any sort of nail art is so much fun. One of my problems with makeup (besides laziness, and a general lack of skill) is that I am allergic to most of it! An evening spent with eyeshadow on results in a week of itchy swollen eyelids. A day of foundation is followed by days and days of dry, itchy skin. The joy of nail polish is that its pretty hard to be allergic to it! Yay!
Its only been the past year or 2 that I have really got into nail polish, and I am not hugely skilled in nail art (although I do try, I aint no cutepolish – http://www.youtube.com/user/cutepolish). I thought I would put together a wee picture post of some of my favourite nails I have had in the past year.
Who doesnt love a bit of pink sparkle?!?! ( This picture was actually taken to show off the ring. It is my maternal Grans wedding ring and I had just got it back from the jewellers after it got repaired and resized)
One look I loved this year was the Effie Trinket from Hunger Games style nails. This is the only cutepolish design I have ever pulled off. It started a massive love of glitter nails for me and despite how difficult glitter nail polish is to remove, I cant help but try this look out with every glitter polish I have!
I also really like nail wraps, or nail foils. Minimal effort, easy to put on yourself and can last anything up to 10 days (though cheaper sets, in my experience, only last a day or 2). The only down side to nail wraps is that they are fairly expensive for a single use item. Between £4 and £7 for a reasonable set. Compared to the price of a bottle of nail polish, it’s quite steep. Still, that hasn’t stopped me indulging.
Finally the most recent nail art trend I have tried is the caviar/glass bead manicure. I was given a set for Christmas and tried it out on Christmas day. I loved the way it looked, and it was really simple to do. Just put on a coat of nail polish, pour the beads onto the nail and press them down. You have to do it one nail at a time, because the nail polish still has to be wet for the beads to stick but it doesn’t take much longer than doing a normal 2 coat manicure.
It is a completely impractical manicure though. I had to wear rubber gloves to dry my hair as it kept getting caught on the beads, and I had beads inside my tights after putting them on (yes I wore a dress….it was Christmas Day). I had to take it off that night. Next time I would wait until I was all ready and dressed before I did it. And perhaps I’ll hire a servant man to open doors and lift my knife and fork for me. It’ll last longer than a day then 🙂
Anyway, that’s enough close ups of my left hand so I’ll leave it there. There’s lots of other manicures and nail art things I want to try. Next on the list is the velvet manicure, and I may do a little experimentation with rhinestones. For now I’m trying out OPI Nail Envy as my nails are half dead. I have heard good things so I have high hopes.
Ciao
Jennifer
It's Only Jennifer 