Neon Coral and Leopard Print Nails

Good evening lovelies

Happy Friday! Just to add to my excitement its a bank holiday weekend so I have a whole three days off to enjoy the company of my loved ones, catch up on some serious swatching and of course write some blogs! Tonight I am having a mini Orly Gel FX nail party with little sis and her bestie Suzi. We are going to be naughty and have a takeaway Chinese first and then I will get into the serious business of nail painting!

Here are my nails of the day...

This is the most amazingly hard to capture on camera polish I have ever had in my collection. In real life it is a super pretty neon coral orange. On all my pictures it just looks like tangerine :-(. I still love this colour so very much.. it is called Pool Party and is from the China Glaze 2010 summer collection.

On my index and ring fingers I used two coats of I Herd That which is from the China Glaze Safari 2012 collection. I cannot tell you how much I love this gold, bronze, red and orange glitter. It applies perfectly and looked as good in the shade as it did in the sun. I am definitely treating myself to I'm Not Lion from the same collection now I know how good this one is :-).

Using small 'blobs' of Pool Party over the top of I Herd That I then used my brand new Barry M Black Nail Art Pen to create leopard print accent nails :-). The Nail Art pen was beyond easy to use and I am glad I also picked up the white and silver versions.

Finally using my Orly dotting tool I added a couple of small dots of I Herd That to each Pool Party nail.

I hope you all have something lovely planned for the weekend :-)

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Beautiful Stormy Skies with Gold Accents

Good evening lovelies

How are we all doing? I am just back from a few days away with work. I have to say I will be glad when this need for travel is over as I hate being away from home, hubby, pups and of my course my blog :-). All the time away leaves me so short on time to paint my nails and enjoy putting posts together and it makes me sad that I only post two or three times a week. Hopefully in the not too distant future I can get back into a blogging routine that makes me happy.

I am in love with this MUA shade called Stormy Skies. It looks charcoal grey in most of this pictures but its actually grey/brown/khaki depending on the light you catch it in. The formula is amazing and they could not be better value at only £1 a bottle for these super cute Essie style minis.

For my accent nail I decided to try out my new Rimmel Metal Rush polish called Gold Save the Queen. Again this polish has a great formula and a really pretty golden shimmer that makes it more of a glitter polish than a metallic foil.

In my usual style I could not just leave it at that so I then added one beautiful coat of a-England She Walks in Beauty. This polish is a pale gold shimmer with the perfect addition of rose gold glitters.

Finally to highlight the beautiful gold shimmers found deep within all of the polishes I used for this manicure I added some square gold studs from Born Pretty.

I love this simple look and I loved the added benefit of being able to take these pictures outside whilst the sun was shining :-)

Friday tomorrow...!

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Pink nails with Navy and Butterflies: All in One

Good evening lovelies

Did you have a fantastic weekend? I most certainly did :-). I had a lovely day with Mr LiPP on Saturday, we shopped a little, drunk a little and ate a lot. The perfect combination. On Sunday little sis and I travelled to Birmingham for the Beauty UK 2013 show. We shopped until we dropped and really enjoyed the day. For those of you following me on Instagram you may have seen a few pics of my Konad goodies. Without doubt it was my favourite stand of the day.

These are the nails I wore...

I started with a base of the stunning Orly Miss Conduct. Absolutely an all time favourite of mine and as my latest favourite colour combination is raspberry and navy, Miss Conduct was the perfect base for this manicure.

Using Barry M Navy (another all time favourite of mine!) I stamped the zebra style stripes found on plate BM 223. I was tempted to leave it at that but as we were off to an event full of professionals I could not resist adding a little more...

Using Barry M Silver Foil I stamped my favourite butterflies from Konad plate M 78. On each nail I placed the butterflies slightly differently to avoid that uniformed nail wrap look.

Lastly I could not resist adding a quick top coat of Northern Lights Hologram in Silver. I love the holo sparkle in this top coat so much, not to mention its almost as quick drying as my trusty Seche Vite and never smudges my stamped designs :-).

How do you like my NOTD look? I am even more in love with this raspberry pink and navy combo than I was before!

It's Blue Monday so I am off to Yo Sushi with the girls - I hope you all have fantastic evenings

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Striping Tape Mani: Green and Navy

Good evening lovelies

Here is the manicure I mentioned in yesterdays post which uses the beautiful Orly Au Champagne as the base. This tape manicure is a first for me and I found it a little harder than I thought but still I am pleased with the result and love the bold contrast of green and navy :-).

As you know I started with a base of pearly white Au Champagne by Orly. Then using lots of short lengths of striping tape purchased from Amazon I laid down a geometric design that created sections I could fill with colour.

Working on only one nail at a time I started to carefully paint each square with either Barry M Spring Green or Barry M Navy. I absolutely love both of these colours but this is the first time I have paired them together.

As soon as I had finished painting each nail I very carefully removed each length of striping tape using tweezers. It is important you do not allow the polish to dry so you need to work relatively quickly.

Finally once I finished all 10 nails (proof below!) I allowed them to fully dry before adding two layers of top coat to fully smooth everything over.

Not my neatest work but still I love the results and will definitley attempt another full tape manicure in the future.

How do you like blue and green together? Are you a fan of this bold colour blocking style manicure?

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Swatch post: Orly Au Champagne

Good evening lovelies

This is going to be a super quick post tonight as I am away with work :-(. Unusually for me and actually this might be a blog first for me... this post is a swatch of just one polish. Pure and simple... no nail art, no stamping and no other polish!

Behold the beauty of Orly Au Champagne...

These pictures show two coats of Au Champagne with no top coat. As you can see this polish dries to a pearly finish with a lovely subtle shimmer that looked beautiful under my LED lamp.

Below picture with the flash on...

Isn't it beautiful? It dries very quickly and was also beautiful when I used it to stamp a delicate lace style print as seen in this post. I really didnt imagine that this pale shimmer could be so versatile.

Check back tomorrow to see how I turned this into a bright and bold manicure of a very different style :-)

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Roses with Stormy Skies

Good evening lovelies

I hope your Monday went quickly and peacefully at work? I am currently recruiting for a new role in my team so spent most of the day going through CV's and writing response letters. At least it kept me busy :-). Tonight I am going food shopping as it is my turn to host our girls meal tomorrow night... My current thinking is I will cook using a recipe card I picked up recently for Jersey Royals & asparagus creamy Lancashire melt. Yum!

My regular readers may notice that my freehand rose accent nail is indeed 'leftover' from my weekend manicure. As it had no chips and was a labour of love I couldn't stand to remove it so I thought why not mix it up?

On all nails except my ring finger I used two super easy coats of MUA Stormy Skies. This pretty polish was a birthday present that I could not wait to try out. I was really impressed with the formula and I love these recently redesigned mini bottles.

Stormy Skies is quite unusual colour that goes from brown to khaki to grey depending on the light. However what really makes this polish special is the gorgeous gold shimmer that translates really well from bottle to nail. I couldn't resist adding these simple gold studs to really bring out the gold shimmer.

How do you like my 'recycled' accent nail? I really liked this manicure both as the original girly Cath Kidston style (see previous post) and also with this above edgier look, I can't resist a gold stud or two :-).

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Freehand Roses and Pastel Polka Dots

Good evening lovelies

How has your weekend been? Lovely, I hope!

We had a lovely lunch out on Saturday and then spent the afternoon visiting family. We then celebrated with my Dad as he finally told us about his new business venture two years after he started planning and creating! Good Luck :-).

I have seen lots of beautiful pictures of freehand roses all over the blogosphere so decided I would try this pretty little look for myself...

I love these mini MUA polishes. The bottles have been completely redesigned and now look like miniature Essie's! At only £1 each you can afford to buy the whole collection :-). For my base colours I used Lush Lilac which actually dried quite pink and Pistachio Ice Cream (mint green).

I added nice simple white polka dots to each of the Lush Lilac nails using a large dotting tool.

On the Pistachio Ice Cream nails I firstly added a large blob of Strawberry Crush (bottle in the below picture). I didn't worry about being too neat for this step as I didn't want each rose to be perfectly round.

Then using a small amount of Fever Red on a the thin end of a dotting tool I started to add some definition to each rose in a similar way as I would for creating a leopard print design. Again I wasn't too neat but really must master how to use small nail art brushes rather than dotting tools for a sharper finish.

Lastly I added a few highlight lines using Lush Lilac and some small green leaves using Barry M Bright Green (bottle not shown).

These remind me of a real Cath Kidston look :-). I was really pleased with how they turned out and will certainly try free hand roses again in a different colour combination.

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P