Recently on the nails...

1. My nails for the wedding reception mentioned in my last post. I used Essie 'Blanc', Orly 'Glowstick' and a few random brights.

2. Beach themed nails! I based these on an image I spotted on Tumblr and looking back on them I'm in love with them. The sandy colour is Essie 'Sand Tropez'. How appropriate ;-)

3. I don't necessarily get along with bright, vibrant blues like this, but there's something special about & Other Stories 'Twill Blue'. 

4. Oh, how long I spent on these nails! I used my Rio nail art pens over Essie 'Blanc' and Rimmel 'Double Decker Red'. I think I prefer the white background to the red though.

5. Glitter and ombre, how exciting! I intended to wear this design to the wedding reception but when I compared the colours to my dress, they weren't bright enough. I'm still not in love with plain ombre on my own nails though.

6. Bourjois 'Amande defile' (which I can no longer open after only one use, excellent packaging there Bourjois...) with white striping over the top made for a gorgeous, pastel design that I thoroughly enjoyed wearing. 

7. Orly 'Glowstick' and Nails Inc 'Portobello' with a kind of tribal design... making bright and neon a little bit 'edgier'?

8. Rimmel's 'Tangerine Dream' with white stripes and plain rhinestones. This is another design based on an image I saw (this time on Instagram) though I'm not convinced the rhinestones look brilliant on shorter nails. Not a bad design though. 

Please let me know if you'd like a tutorial on any of these designs! I have plenty of time and polish on my hands at the moment, so I'd love to do some if you guys would like :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachel.soshedances@gmail.com
Tumblr: lookintothestorm.tumblr.com
YouTube: soshedancesxo

OOTD: Summer is Calling

Mint green blazer - New Look (old)
Pastel leopard print scarf - Red Herring @ Debenhams (current)
White t-shirt - H&M (old)
Jeans - New Look (current)
Gold effect bangle - Unknown
Bunting style necklace - Topshop (this year)
Ring - Topshop (this year)
Nails - Converse print, using Max Factor 'Mellow Yellow' and Rimmel 'Sweet as Sugar', 'Tangy Tangerine' and 'Marshmallow Heaven'

What have you been wearing lately? Let me know how you're dressing for the changing weather at the moment in the comments below :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachel.soshedances@gmail.com
Tumblr: lookintothestorm.tumblr.com
YouTube: soshedancesxo

On Trend: Floral & Geometric Nail Art Tutorial

Evening everyone :) I'm sure you all know by now that I'm a bit obsessed with nail art. You're unlikely to see me out and about without some pretty pattern adorning my fingertips and my love for nail art tends to spill over onto this blog. Today is no different as I bring you a totally 'on trend' nail tutorial...

Floral patterns and prints are always 'in' during the spring, but this year it also seems that clear cut shapes and geometry are also 'in' too. It seems like every blogger and their dog are enjoying a good triangle whether it be on their clothes, their jewellery, their accessories or, now, their nails. Creating this nail look is surprisingly easy to do and I'm going to show you how to create that blue nail design on the right. The process of creating the design on the left is exactly the same, just with different colours :)

You will need:

1x base coat
1x light pastel blue (I used Rimmel's Sweet As Sugar)
1x medium pastel blue (I used 17's Heartbeat)
1x white (I used Rio's white nail art pen)
1x medium to dark green (I used Rio's green nail art pen)

Step 1:

Give your nails a base coat and allow it to dry. Then give them one coat of your light pastel blue colour and allow it to dry.

Step 2:

Give your nails a second coat of your light pastel blue and allow to dry. If you feel it necessary, then add a third coat.

Step 3:

Take your white and draw a V shape starting from the top corners of your nail. The easiest way to do this is by drawing two straight lines that meet in the middle. I used a nail art pen with a thin brush, but you could use a cocktail stick/tooth pick or dotting tools if you don't have one. 

Step 4:

Immediately follow this by filling in the V you've created with the same colour (so in this case, white) until you have a fully coloured-in triangle.

Step 5:

When the white has dried sufficiently, take your medium pastel blue colour and roughly create some dots over the white.

Step 6:

Follow this by taking your white and swirling it inside the dots you have just created.

Step 7:

Now go back to your medium pastel blue and swirl it over the white. When doing this, make sure you don't cover up all of the white.

Step 8:

Finally, add the 'petals' of your flowers by creating tiny green lines coming out of the sides of your flowers. Allow the nails to dry before adding a top coat, then you're done!

As you can see from the slightly 'edgier' design that I'm currently wearing, you can also change the position of the triangles to break things up a bit. That is, if triangles and flowers aren't varied enough already ;)

Hope you enjoyed :) Have you ever sported a floral nail design? Do you think you'd like to? Let me know in the comments below :) I'd love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachel.soshedances@gmail.com
Tumblr: lookintothestorm.tumblr.com

NOTD: Geometric & Arty

Let me just preface all of this by saying that this design took hours. Literally. And whilst I love it I'm not entirely sure I'll be trying it again anytime soon. If you have the time though, go for it.

Recently I've been going through a bit of a phase with my nails where everything bores me. I'm not one to buy into the trends (feather nails, concrete nails, leather nails etc) but I do like to keep things fresh by trying out different nail art designs. I had a few spare hours a couple of nights ago and decided to give this a try.

To complete the design, I used a small paintbrush and drew on little triangles. I used one colour at a time, so the patterns built up over time and I wasn't constantly needing to wash my brush. The shapes aren't perfect, but I kind of feel it adds to the design a little and for a first attempt, I'm pleased at how it turned out. 

What's on your nails at the moment? Are you a fan of nail art? Let me know in the comments below :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com
Tumblr: lookintothestorm.tumblr.com

Requested: Nail Tutorial - Art Attack

Hi guys :) Today's post is going to be a requested tutorial of the nail art I posted about most recently. My usual 'hand model' (AKA my mum, haha) was unavailable so I've done it on an acrylic nail, hopefully you'll still be able to follow it though :)

So, you will need:

- 1x base coat (not pictured)
- 1x top coat (I used Sally Hansen Mega Shine)
- 1x white nail polish 
- As many other colours as you want to go in your pattern. I recommend the colours pictured to create the same effect as I did, and will refer to these colours in my tutorial. 
- 1x paintbrush (as cheap as possible, you'll see why later on)
- 1x nail polish remover and cotton pads

Step 1:

Apply your base coat and allow to dry. This is particularly important with a polish such as a white one, as they can often leave yellowing on the nails without a base coat being applied first.

Step 2:
Coat your nails with the white polish until they become opaque. Make sure you allow each coat to dry before re-applying, as you could end up pulling the drying polish and ruining the nails.

Step 3:
Take your paintbrush and yellow polish and lightly dab the end of the paintbrush onto the nail polish brush. You could try dipping the brush into the polish, but chances are you will end up with too much polish and will need to start over. Paint from one corner of the nail outwards and feather the ends out as much as possible.

Step 4:

Now take your orange colour and layer it over the yellow, trying to blend the two colours together as much as possible. Don't worry about it looking messy, this will be covered up later in the design.

Step 5:

Now take your bright pink and do the same as in step 4. In addition to this, you want to try and feather this colour out even more than you have previously. You can do this by pressing the brush against the nail.

Step 6:

Now we're going to introduce a slightly darker colour. Use your blue (I used something in between bright and dark, you don't want to go too dark) in the same way as your previous colours.

Step 7:

You're going to add some black now, just to give the pattern a bit more depth. Try not to feather this out too much, as these nails are mainly supposed to be colourful.

Step 8:

If you saw my original post, you might have noticed that red was the most prominent colour. This is the stage where you need to add the red. Don't be afraid to use a lot of this, however make sure you don't try and make the colour opaque. 

Step 9:

To darken the nails even further, add some green, and finally add some purple.

Step 10:

You're pretty much done with adding the colour now, however if you want to add any more of the colours you've already applied, feel free to do this and allow the nail to dry. In the photo below, I added more blue and yellow

Step 11:

Once the nail is dry, apply your top coat and you're done!

Overall, I don't think this tutorial is complicated to do, but it does take a bit of time and I wouldn't recommend you try doing this when you're in a hurry. I think this design could be mixed up so much for different seasons, occasions etc, and when I come back to it in the future I'll post some more NOTDs for you :)

I hope that was helpful, but if you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment, tweet me or send me an email, the links are all at the end of this post :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

NOTD #3 - Art Attack

Having taken a little break to concentrate on my second semester of university starting, I'm back with a beauty-related post today and I thought I'd share my nails of the day!

I can't really figure out what I think they look like, but I've called the post 'Art Attack' because I basically went mad with different colours and a paintbrush. Sometimes I think they look kind of feathered, sometimes I think the colours look a bit like those of a peacock... I like the fact that they're all completely different and some nails have more of one colour than the others.

What do you think? Would you try this out yourself? Would you like to see any more designs using this technique? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

(New Year's Eve) NOTD #2

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas. Today's post is just a quick NOTD because I've been so busy spending time with family and being ill in bed (booooo!) to blog for a while. 

I went fairly simple for my NYE nails. I started by applying a base coat, then one coat of Nails Inc's South Molton Street. After that, I added white tips as I would for a normal french manicure, but I followed this up by creating the black stripes and adding a gem in the middle (except one finger, where I clearly can't judge distances between things...). I finished this with Sally Hansen's Insta Dri, which is my favourite top coat at the moment.

What do you think? Did you do your nails for NYE? Let me know in the comments below :)

Happy new year and thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

Nordic Christmas Nail Tutorial

God jul, everybody! That's what you'd tell people in Sweden at Christmas, and today I'm bringing you a cute Scandinavian/Nordic inspired nail tutorial that is perfect for this Christmas...

You will need:

1x red nail polish - I used Rimmel's I <3 Lasting Finish in Double Decker Red
1x white nail polish pen/paint - I used my rio nail pen
1x top coat
1x base coat

Step 1:

Apply base coat and allow to dry, then apply your red polish all over the nail and apply as many coats as you feel it needs. Allow this to dry before moving on to the detailing.

Step 2:

OK, now your nails are dry it's time to start adding some of the white detail. If it helps, you can mentally divide your nails into thirds. For the first third, you need to add some dots at the top of the nail...

I alternated between double dots and single dots, purely because I thought it looked better, but you can play about with this and do larger or smaller dots and organise them differently if you like.

Step 3:

Now we're onto the second third of the nail and you'll need to make two 'x' shapes, leaving space in the middle where the four lines would usually join.

As with the first step, you can totally play about with this. You could make lots more smaller dots or you could have the lines joining if you so desired.

Step 4:

This is the last third of the nail, but it's also the most complicated (but only because more than one pattern goes in here). Firstly, you need to draw a straight line up that fills most of the third, then you will need to draw 'branches' coming off it. This is supposed to resemble a Christmas tree. Around both sides of the tree, dot on three dots, with two next to the tree and one in the middle of those two. Finally, draw two straight yet diagonal lines underneath the tree, and you're done!

Of course, you can play around with this part of the design too, however I do think the tree part is kind of crucial for capturing the idea of 'Christmas'. 

Step 5:

Allow the nails to fully dry. Your final step is to apply a top coat and you don't want to smear all of the white detail up your nail, so ensure that you leave the nails for a decent amount of time before applying a top coat. If you can do it an hour or so later, that would be ideal. Finally, apply one layer of your chosen top coat and leave to dry. Now you're all good to go with cute, Nordic, Christmassy nails! :)

Nordic style prints are really 'in' this Christmas (rumour has it that it's partly due to Forbrydelsen and Sarah Lund's jumpers in the show). In fact, most of my Christmas wrapping is themed like this too. 

What do you think? Please let me know if you try this out by either leaving me a comment below or tweeting me (links will be below)! :)

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo

Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti

Instagram: iRachey

Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com

NOTD #1

Hola everybody :) Today's post is just a quick NOTD. I'll be back really soon with a cute Christmas nail tutorial, but here is a quick post about my nails today...

Polishes used (Click for a link):

Orly 'Goth'
Rio nail art pens in silver, white and pink
Rimmel '60 Seconds Clear' 
Sally Hansen 'Insta-Dri Anti Chip Top Coat'

The nail jewels used also came from the Rio nail art set that I linked :)

What are your nails like at the moment? Let me know in the comments! 

Thanks for reading,

Rachel x

Twitter: rachelizabethxo
Personal blog: estoy mejor sin ti
Instagram: iRachey
Email: rachelelizabeth.xo@googlemail.com