Needle dragging tutorial

So as promised, a tutorial of needle dragging nail art. :D

You'll need two (or more if you like) nail polishes that are 1-coaters. Here I've used two colors that are far from each other so that you'll see the effect more clearly. You'll need something pointy, like a needle or dotting tool with a small end. When I use the needle I use the sharp end of it.

Below you can see a long picture describing the basics of the needle dragging. First you just paint one side and then the other without letting it dry, so it's good to be quick. Use thicker coats than you usually does otherwise it will dry too quick. Then it's just to use your dotting tool or needle making swirly moves over the nails as you can see from the pictures. And remember to make ONE nail at the time!

A tip is not to press down the dotting tool or needle too much on the nails. You don't want to drag away the polish leaving the natural nail visible like below:

The picture above is exaggerated but you see my point! What you want to do is to gently sweep the dotting tool or needle over the nail just gently mixing the polish from one side to the other.

With some practice you're pretty much done. Below is some proposal of how to variate your needle dragging:

a. = soft swirls made with a needle.
b. = soft large swirls made with a dotting tool.
c. = random dragging from one side to the other made with needle.
d. = zig-zag swirls made with needle.

Polishes used:
Kleancolor - Beach Blue
Kleancolor - Pastel Blue

For more inspiration check out my other needle dragging nail art posts. Just click on the picture to get to the post.

  
If you got any questions or requests, just shoot! :D

Some nail related purchases..

For next year I'm prepared.I've bought Halloween fimos and water decals. I knew that my Halloween stuff wouldn't get here in time but the latest Halloween I've wanted to have them but I've always realized it too late.

This picture belongs to the seller I bought them from; 1theland-fr

And as a recap; my Halloween contribution for this year. (pictures are "clickable"):

I actually got some more fimos on it's way to me as well. Some more Halloween fimos and also some winter/Christmas fimos. For this year I'm prepared for a lots of fun nail art! :D

For tomorrow I've prepped a tutorial of needle dragging nail art that I hope you'll enjoy! :D

BMX nail art

It' Sunday nail art with a theme organized by the lovely Lelack. The theme of this Sunday is "Boyfriend/Partner". For this theme I was quite sure what to do, one of my boyfriend's largest interest is BMX. The short version for those of you who doesn't know what it is, it is the usage of small low-weight bikes which men(and some women) preform tricks with. My boyfriend is quite talented since he's been doing it the last ten years, he has also got a company where he design bicycle parts. Well, what I want to say, the choice was simple for me.

I wanted to make it graphic so I choose to use a sprocket and text (A sprocket is the thing with cogs allowing the chain to transmit movements from the pedals to the wheel).  I first painted my nails white and then I stamped a diagonal with two purple colors starting with the lighter one.

An accent nail was unintentionally created when I tried making a bike. However that came out the ugliest thing I've ever seen so well, it disappeared.

 The nail art in black and white are made with a nail art pen to be able to create round lines.

Polishes used:
Kleancolor - White
Kleancolor - Pastel Purple
Kleancolor - Neon Purple
Sure Promise (Black)
Sure Promise (White)

So there you have it! Hope you liked it and now I'll wait to see what you others have done with this!

HM Mint Madness Tribal nail art

This is my first tribal nail art which has been trendy in the nail art community for awhile now. I've feared them for a while because they have looked hard to make, but on the other hand I've got a patience of steel so I figured I try it out. I've seen combinations with some light teal that I've really liked so I thought that Mint Madness which I bought awhile ago would be excellent!

Left hand

Right hand

Left hand

Right hand

As you can see my left and right hand are made differently. At first I was thinking about having some nails bare just in green but then I went on with all of them.

I started with 2 coats of Mint Madness over the whole nail and then 1 coat of Kleancolor - White over the places I wanted to. I then used Jordana Pop Art - Black making the lines.

As you can see I've included two sets of pictures to describe the color of Mint Madness, I guess that it's something in between the two leaning towards the upper pictures in color. What I want to say with this is that I don't find the color to be minty, more like pear ice cream in the color if that made sense to anyone. :)

Polishes used:
HM Nail Polish - Mint Madness
Kleancolor - White
Jordana Pop Art - Black

Have you tried out some tribal print nail art?

Blue shimmer by Tiger Nail Polish

I was looking trough my archive and found this. This is three bottles I bought in Denmark, ehm, I think -07/08? They are from a brand called Tiger, and I bought them in the Tiger store. And not the clothing brand Tiger that's rather expensive, the shop I was in had lot of small things, like Panduro in Sweden (But with even more stuff, like lotions, makeup and pearls, crafting materials and I think some small candies).

Can you imagine that I've only tried the blue one? I'd totally forgotten about the other two. Hm, maybe I'll try it out soon, because polishes can't be untried for that long, can they?!

 I think they look beautiful. Or well, the blue and the teal aren't extraordinary or that original but the middle one I think is awesome. It is in some dark brown/purple base and filled with green/teal shimmer.

 Swatches of the blue one then:

And yes, I've yet only told you the brand of the polish because that's the only thing I know. This buggers have no name and no number.

What's the longest time you've let's a polish be untried? Or are you the type that immediately try your polishes as soon as they arrive/or you get home from the store?

No h8

Bullying can never be justified and therefor I joining this campaign. My fellow bloggers have all written fabulous text about this and I agree with them. I'm also glad that we in the nail blogging community have a friendly spirit amongst everyone and I hope that will continue and spread because to day there are so many forms of bullying, especially now with the internet. And in some ways it's almost worse now than before, now it's so simple to write a text, or even anonymous write something hurtful to someone over the internet. Never considering how the person in the other end will feel.

Here's my purple contribution:

The purple polish is one from Paris Memories and the silver lines creating the net pattern is made with L.A. Colors Art Deco - Silver.

Hope you like it! :)

My entry to the Two Bottle Challenge

Hi! As the title says, this is my entry to the two bottle challenge made by Nailed it. The the two bottle challenge has simple rules, basically making nail art with only two bottles of polish. For all the rules, entry and also to check out all the other talented girls, check out THIS post.

I've used the blue Kleancolor - Catch Me and Kleancolor - Pastel Pink.

As you can see it is needle dragging nail art. Nothing new there, but to make it funnier I painted my two polishes diagonal to be able to get two places where I could drag my needle. I also tried to make my swirls large and making the result look a bit more bold. I hope you like it, I really did and I enjoyed making it! :D

More pictures to come. ;) I really like the wet effect the needle dragging create and I feel so inspired to make some more needle dragging nail arts. But maybe with some more colors even though I liked the challenge ONLY picking two polish bottles from the stack, and also choosing the two colors were a pain! :D haha

I think that Catch Me, even though it is clearly blue have some green in it. I had troubles photographing it since it always looked more turquoise, almost green on my pictures. But with some trixing I think I managed to capture it correct.

 I really like the above picture and the bottom picture because they emphasize the colors differently. In the above picture I see the pink more clear and in the bottom picture I see the blue more clear.

So I hoped you liked it!
If you like needle dragging nail art you can look at my other posts with it.

Needle dragging nail art in white and black

Needle nail art funky french with rhinestones

Blue shimmer funky french

For today I have a simple and quick nail art I made some time ago. It's not my favorite one, I had an idea of making the smiley very straight but afterwards I've learned that I like the more smiling smiley more. ;)

A bit crappy pictures as well. One is with flash and one is in more darkness.

Polishes used:
Sure Promise (light blue)
Sure Promise (blue)

Do you out there have any opinions about smilies? Should the edge be rounded or square? Should the line be straight, natural or exaggerated? :)

The fake duochrome nail art with flower stickers

Well, the title isn't 100% true, but the reason for the title is that a friend of mine of the second day I wore this said that she thought that is was duochrome. And I can't blame her since the colors are really tone in tone. The green one is Gussied Up Green by China Glaze, if you hadn't already figured that out. ;)

It is a very simple nail art. First I alternated between green and the brown and then made small sloping tips at the smiley. At the end I attached some flower stickers on my accent nails.

And I will also show you a sloppy picture.. haha. I guess that one was taken is artificial yellow light so the colors aren't perhaps 100% correct but the shimmer in the polish came out so nicely so I figured that I'll show it to you. And also you will see how it looked with out the clean up and stickers. ;)

Polishes used:

China Glaze - Gussied Up Green
Paris Memories (brown shimmer)

My new favorite black and white one-coater brand!

Today I will talk about something very important in the world of nail art, namely black and white nail polish and their qualities. I think that the most important thing is that they are one-coater. This is important when making dots with a dotting tool or making sections colored. Especially when making precise and delicate work, one wouldn’t want to paint the area twice just because it isn’t opaque enough. And I also hate being forced to start with a certain color just because another one isn’t opaque. Another important issue which comes with the benefit of being one-coater is that they dry quickly and if you’re going to make something advanced it will take some time, and it’s unnecessary to increase that time making it doing many coats just achieving full opaqueness, giving longer drying time.

Of cause it is important that all colors are as opaque as possible, but for me I’ve found that white and black has been the most important one. It is also they, except base coat/top coat that I use the most and must consume the most. And for that reason I don’t mind them being cheap as well.

I’ve tried several of black and whites, and I’ve actually found my favorite. Black are mostly easier, some of the ones I’ve used has just demanded two coats. White has been more of a mess, more like four never drying thick coats mostly.

So for the brand I’m about to haul a bunch of in black and white:

Kleancolor – Black
Kleancolor – White

They are both one-coaters and has worked fine for me. When I apply I don’t use the thinnest coat but not the thickest either, just normal ones.

Hope this helps someone because I’ve searched for this for quite some time before I came across of Kleancolor.

I buy all my Kleancolor from ebay-seller: joy017.
The polishes are cheaper there than at for example beautyjoint. Shipping has been fast and everything has worked fine when I’ve bought things there. And also, a free gift in each package. ;)

An advantage purchasing from an ebay buyer is that they work hard for their feedback ratio, for me it feels safer buying from them since I would get my money back if the package wouldn’t arrive. :)

Random rambling about polish..

You know the feeling when you've been occupied with a lot of things and it has been months since your last purchase of nail polish and during that time you've been stocking up with polishes on your wish list. Literally, so instead of buying a small amount lets say each month or something like that you end up buying them all, like in one single day. I also went for the mistake of first placing my order and after it was done I realized that I'd forgot about top coat, and my favorite at the moment is almost out. And then I kinda had to fill the basket again to be able to get the most out of the shipping fee..

Oh well, a lot of gorgeous polishes are soon on it's way home to me, including color clubs holo-collection, the rest of China Glaze's neon collection, some old favorites that of some unexplainable reason always slipped away, like China Glaze - Lubu Heels and Stella.. And high hopes on China Glaze - Sensuous, which I hope will work fine as a sheer base for french manicures. And thanks to Little Miss Nail Polish and Claws in Colors I got the urge to get the pink Hello Gorgeous from China Glaze Breast Cancer awareness collection (=great cause). :)

Do I need to say that I can't wait to get them home?! :)

Green and silver zebra nails with flower rhinestones

Hi!
Today I'll show you a sloping funky french with zebra pattern. I was almost sure that I'd posted this one already and searched my blog, however it was this one I remembered. Almost the same..kinda ;)

I think I've said it before but I really like the color of China Glaze- Gussied up green, and I can't help my self from using it in several nail arts, so this is one, and I've got more in my archive. So let us look at the nail art

 As you can see I've also placed pink flower rhinestones on the top of the sloping funky french.

 Below you can see my rhinestone wheel with flowers. I think that they are 3MM wide but only as "high" as a 1MM rhinestone and could therefor be a good alternative to you out there who like rhinestones but think that the 3MM's are too large and that they stick up too much.

Polishes used:

China Glaze - Gussied Up Green
L.A. Colors Art Deco - Silver
L.A. Colors Art Deco - Green Glitter
Pink Flower rhinestones

Abstract nail art in silver, black and blue

I'm back from my little blog pause and I'll start up simple.
For today I have an simple archive nail art in silver, black and blue. When I think about it, it feels a bit winter like. However here all snow is gone and the sun is almost shining with 6 degrees +C.

Polishes used:
China Glaze - Platinum Silver
Color club Art Club - Electric universe (blue)
L.A. Colors Art Deco - Black