Navy Lace and Roses Nails

Good evening

Tonight my sister Laura and I are off to see Professor Green at a venue on the local University campus. We got the tickets almost a year ago so its been a long time coming but we are looking forward to a cheeky week night out :-).

Just time to show you these pretty but simple nails...

Swatch: Hugh Tides by Fearne

Happy Monday loves

Hope you all had a fabulous weekend? The weather was fantastic here in the UK so we dusted off the BBQ for the first time in 2014 and enjoyed peppered steak, salmon soaked in garlic butter and vegetable kebabs. Yummy!

I just have time to show you this beautiful swatch...

Peacock Nails: Green and Navy

Happy Thursday

So these might be some of my favourite nails... for a long time... maybe even the whole of this year!

I love green, I love feathers and I am a little bit back in love with stamping...

Navy Hearts and Glitter

Whoop whoop... Friday!

I am looking forward to this weekend so very much so what could be better than combining two of my favourite colours into a very pretty nail art look :-)

Here we have navy, pink and glitter all in one... LOVE!

Textured Polish Challenge: Navy and Butterflies

Happy Friday!

Challenge complete! I made it through the full week with the same textured polish on all nails except my middle and ring fingers. It was the perfect week to do this challenge as my personal nail painting time was limited to less than ten minutes a night! I've done 5 sets of gel polish nails, 2 sets of gel pedicures and been out for a lovely meal to Ask Italian. Busy!

My grande finale nails...

Navy, Gold and Orange: Same Accent Nail

Good evening lovelies

Time for a quick manicure change... apart from the accent nail. As mentioned in yesterdays post, I loved this orange studded accent nail so much that I vowed to leave it in place for the rest of the week. see how many looks I can come up with before it chips or the studs come off.. :-)

Navy Lace with Silver Accent nail

Happy Sunday to you all!

Hope you have all had fantastic weekends? We have been very lucky with the weather and experienced the hottest day of the year so far today. We managed to make the most of it by being out in the garden and I certainly feel better for it. Last night us girls went for a meal at a restaurant called Prime where the steak is served on a volcanic rock heated to 360 degree so you cook it yourself to your own liking. It was fantastic fun and the steak was amazing! I had mine with garlic butter and stilton sauce! Yums :-).

Here are the nails I did to go with my all time favourite navy dress and lace jacket combo...

I started with base colours of NYC Ink Stain, the most gorgeous and rich shimmering navy blue that looked extra amazing in the sunshine. My ring and thumb accent nails have a base of Color Club On the Rocks.

Then using a-England Merlin (bottle shot above) I added one truly gorgeous cost of crushed silver sparkles to each of my accent nails. All of the a-England polishes are beautiful but to get coverage like this from such a simple looking polish is amazing (if you ask me!).

Just to really finish off my silver accent nails I then added one thin coat of Orly Holy Holo, it is ridiculously dense with large holo glitter particles and was almost blinding in the sun!

To stamp this beautiful lacy style design I returned to Color Club On the Rocks as its subtle silver shimmery goodness was the perfect finish for this manicure.

I love my new Pueen plates so very much... anything lace and love themed is always going to be a winner for me. This particular pattern can be found on plate Pueen 27.

This final picture was taken in the shade just so you could see the lace pattern a little more clearly.

I really hope your weekends have been as lovely as mine, I'm off to enjoy the evening sunshine and a BBQ with the hubs. Thanks for cooking Mr LiPP ;-).

Lou 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

Navy Lace Nails

Good evening lovelies

What a wonderful four days I have had... nearly all of which have been celebrating my birthday in some way so I feel very lucky to have such amazing family and friends who have done so much to make it special for me.

Tonight I am going to show you the nails I wore for the evening of my birthday. Mr LiPP took me out for a lovely meal at our new favourite restaurant and I decided to paint my nails to match my new dress...

I started with a base of Navy Baby by Sally Hansen. The formula was lovely and the colour very rich but I didn't get on with the brush very well so found it a little hard to get the correct shape around my cuticles.

Below is a picture taken against the material of my new dress so you can see where I took my inspiration from :-).

Next using Au Champagne from Orly I stamped using two different plates. Firstly the fine fishnet style pattern was taken from Konad plate M57 and secondly the filigree swirls were taken from plate B 21. In order to replicate the dress I decided to leave the navy showing on some nails so I laid the stamping designs down at various angles.

I was really pleased with how Au Champagne stamped as I am yet to use this polish as a full base nail colour and it looked a little thin and shimmery in the bottle. It really surprised me and worked so much better than a bright white or shiny silver would have done for this particular design.

How do you like the finished design? For me I love any excuse to wear lace effect nails :-)

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Two Navy Animals

Happy weekend lovelies

I hope you all have lots of lovely plans? This is just a quick post from me tonight with a mani I pulled from the archives. My nails are looking a little poorly at the moment as a result of removing extensions that were put on as part of my nail course. It will be worth it in the end for the qualification but at the moment they are suffering and its making me sad :-(

Quick and easy animal print nails...

I started with a base colour of the very gorgeous Barry M Navy. I cannot get enough of this colour. It has beautiful hidden shimmer that comes alive on your nails when (if) the sun comes out.

Then using Barry M Silver Foil  stamped this animal print from Konad plate M78. Its a cross of leopard and tiger stripes so looks quite effective. This would look lovely with a brightly coloured gradient as the base colour :-)

Unfortunately in my rush to top coat this manicure my Seche Vite streaked it a little but I hope you can forgive that and just enjoy the animal print stamp.

Enjoy your Friday night lovelies :-)

Louise xx

Lovely Jubbly: My first Butter London

Good evening lovelies!

How has the start to your week been? I have been off today on holiday so I only have a four day working week to get through before its the weekend again already :-). I have been on a really exciting course today which I cannot wait to tell you more about over the next few weeks.

Time for some serious sparkles... This gorgeous polish was a Christmas present from Mr LiPP and the doggies.

Lovely Jubbly is a gorgeous mix of fuschia pink, deep indigo blue, shimmery light red with the added touch of gold glitter particles.

This is quite a densely packed glitter but I decided to layer it over two different base colours to see if it made any difference and also to prevent the need for a third coat of this quite expensive polish.

My index and ring fingers have a base coat of Barry M Navy (as seen above) and my middle and little fingers have a base coat of the simply gorgeous Barry M Gelly Pomegranate (as seen below).

I absolutely love this and it sparkled away all day under the harsh lights in my office :-)

Do you have any of the Butter London polishes? I think I will be adding a few more to my wishlist after seeing the quality of this one.

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

BYS Two Blues

Good evening lovelies!

So now it seems the big freeze is going to set it. We have had a week of snow related issues but now with temperatures dropping that will turn to ice related issues. Weather forecasts predict it will be minus 12 degrees over night so I imagine it could be a difficult journey to work tomorrow. The joys of winter!

I decided to try out another of the more geometric design plates and as they are not my most favourite of patterns I thought a skittlette mani would keep the experiment easy

I used two of my new BYS blues to create this look. On my little and index fingers is BYS Love Boat and on my ring and middle fingers is BYS Pastel Kung Fu Blue. Love Boat was by far a better colour and formula which made the decision about which nails to stamp on very easy :-).

Using Barry M Navy I stamped this geometric design from my new Cheeky plates and also painted my thumb nail to tie the stamping back in for a cohesive look.

I couldn't resist adding plenty of sprakly square rhinestones to make the whole manicure geometric.

How do you like the finished look? It is certainly not one of my favourites but it was good to try something a little different and I did get to use two new polishes :-)

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P

Blue and Bronze recreation

TGI Friday lovelies! Whoop whoop!

Tonight I decided to recreate one of my most favourite manicures from last year but using darker colours. The manicure I am referring to is of course the picture I use as my blogger and twitter profile - the coral and white cream slice creation!

I love how this Konad pattern is so easy to stamp but looks like such a detailed marble manicure...

I started with two gorgeous coats of Barry M Navy. One of my absolute favourites and the first polish I purchased a back up bottle of (just in case!).

For the stamping I decided not to turn to my traditional Barry M Foils but to instead try out this little bottle of Bronze foil by Primark. I was so pleased when it turned out to be perfect for stamping so you are bound to see it more in the future :-).

 So what do you think of my wintery darker version of my favourite manicure from last year?

Here is a little reminder of my summer version... LOVE!

I am loving both versions but the coral version has a special place in my heart :-)

What plans do you have this weekend? Lots of fun stuff I hope?!

Louise xx
@L_i_P_P