Easy Nail Art - Easy tape design with dot pattern

Just a quickie update on a recent easy nail design guys, enjoy :)

And here's what I used:

Instructions:

1. Paint you nails with a white or any other light base colour. Wait till completely dry.
2. Place some masking tape diagonally on your nails press them down firmly and then use the darker colour the paint the rest of the nail down to the tips. Wait till completely dry.
3. Take a you silver nail varnish and blob a few drops on a spare surface. Dip a large ended dotting tool and place a dot on the line each nail, and repeat this step until you reach the end of the line with different sized dotting tools. I chose to use dotting tools that would make the dots smaller as I went on, but you can choose anything.
4. Wait till dry, and apply a fast drying top coat.

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Easy Nail Art - And sorry, it's been a while...

School work has been plaguing me guys, but I have found some time to finally get round to using my nails art brushes!

They're meant to be cherry blossom trees, not the best work in the world but for a first attempt I'm pretty happy! (You should see my other hand lol)

I did experiment a little with the brushes, but I found that using a long striper brush is the best for such designs.

Products used:

- Revlon Dark Pleasures in Midnight Affair
- White acrylic paint
- Red acrylic paint
- long striper brush (from the 13 piece set I bought on ebay)
- Sally Hansen Insta Dri Top Coat

Well, that's all from me today, see you all soon! xxx

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Easy Nail Art - Super easy polka dot nails (ALL CREDIT to Small Good Things.com!)

Hey guys - since I paint my nails quite often I might as well start posting about them right? I'm no nail guru, I always sticks to easy design but maybe one day I'll start doing more difficult designs. I often browse the web for nice and easy tutorials and this one is credit to Small Good Things, check it out! (I understand that I've posted the same design before, just I've vastly improved with the tutorial help.)

http://www.small-good-things.com/archives/1542

And here's my attempt! Not too bad for a first try using a toothpick right?

Small Good Things is a great site, some nice and easy designs mixed in with some more difficult ones. Pretty please with this first attempt though, a thing to note is that when using a toothpick you might want to cut the end off to make it blunt for slightly bigger dots. Poke the dots gently, and never EVER rush. I messed up more than once on one nail because I didn't space the dots properly. A few extra seconds to consider the placement makes a MASSIVE difference!

Here's the stuff I used by the way, with a mini review next to each one in case you're thinking of buying them.

 2 Revlon nail varnishes, one in a very light blue and one in a bright silver. Neither are dark, but all you need are 2 contrasting colours.

The nail polishes are both from the Revlon's older collection, but you can still get them online I'm sure for much cheaper than drugstore price!

710 Cloud is a thin nail polish, but is in the "top speed" range, so dries really quick. 2 or 3 coats don't take long on each nail. I think with lighter colours you tend to find them to be thinner.

918 Silver Screen is a thick nail polish, a nice bright solid silver. 1 coat is enough of this stuff, so it's nice for doing dots.

Best top coat ever. Not cheap here in the UK, but Ebay is my best friend! I reccommend after painting your nails wait till they are DEFINITELY DRY then add a coat or to of this. Be very patient, even though it says insta-dri it's something that should be left along for a few minutes to be safe. 5 minutes is what I tend to wait - just watch a Youtube video while it's drying. Oh, when they said anti-chip they're not joking. A good week of wear will always lead to the tip of the nail wearing away, but with this it's very minimal, I could probably keep a manicure decent for 2 weeks if I was good with this.

And finally, the wonderful toothpick. A strong pointed toothpick is good, I cut the end off mine and filed it down with a nail file to get it even. Worked pretty well, but be patient with the actual dotting and don't start until the nail is decently dry.

 Well, that's all from me for today ^^ see you all later! 

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DIY - How to dye suede shoes black

I bought some  booties a while ago, but the shade of blue/dark teal was lighter than I thought so I couldn't really combine it with anything.  I decided to dye them black, because black goes with ANYTHING.

So for anyone interested, here's how to do it!


HOW TO DYE SUEDE SHOES:

Stuff you need:

 Tons of newspaper/ plastic mat/ something to cover the floor
Or you could do it outside.

The shoes
Brush out any bits with a suede brush/hard tooth brush. Make sure shoes are clean/dry.

Suede spray/dye 
I used spray "suede restorer" but it worked.

Gloves 
                                              
Masking tape

For clean up/ removing dye stains:
My shoes had plastic and metal studs on them, so this if for cleaning those areas which accidentally got stained.

Nail polish remover

tissue

cotton swabs

How to:

•  Masking tape off any areas of the shoes you don't want dyed. 

• Make sure to use many small pieces to cover up any curved areas of the shoe.This takes a lot of time, but trust me it's worth taking extra care when doing this.

•  Place the shoes on the flat surface you have heavily covered as the spray may drip/splatter.    I actually stained my carpet doing this, so be careful.

• Spray the shoes in quick strokes, spray about 15cm away from the shoe. 

• The spray I used recommended to wait one hour after each application. Once I covered both shoes, I left them to dry for about an hour and came back later to do a another layer and waited another hour e.t.c. Do as many layers as you want. 

•  Leave the shoes to dry for a couple of hours, better yet, a day. 

I ended up using the whole can on one pair of shoes - I'm sure if the shoes were a lighter colour I could have used less layers of spray. 

All the things I ended up using.

Timpson Suede & Nubuck Restorer

As you can see, I used loads small pieces of tape to layer up.

The zip is still blue, but it's dark enough so it doesn't stick out.

Final product! 

Without flash
(You can see how I cleaned the stained buttons underneath)

With flash

Weirdly, when I used flash I found that the shoes looked as if they hadn't been dyed at all! 

How to remove dye stains:

Using some nail varnish remover I managed to clean off the stains of the dye.

Cotton swab dipped in nail varnish remover. Do this step very gently! I did it too rough and  I ended up removing a layer of the plastic. It's better to surround the area as I ended up removing a layer and tiny flecks of plastic were going onto the shoe.

 Change cotton swabs whenever you need to!

They were a little bit patchy but it wasn't too noticeable until you got really close to the shoe. 

Without flash

 Slightly patchy

 With flash

Make sure the wipe the studs/buttons with a damp tissue afterwards to wipe off any excess remover!

Thanks for reading guys! 

:D

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