Quick Design

Most of my nail art varnished have dried out :(

Varnish starts to dry out on the lid and it won't close properly causing the varnish to dry out! I often use nail varnish remover to clean out the varnish to allow them to be closed properly, but I haven't done that recently, and when I went to paint my nails my favourite colours were dried out :(

This is similar to my other designs, I am not inventive with fine paint brushes. I am planning to save up a bit of money and buy myself a good set of nail varnishes, and nail art items so I can start creating more elaborate designs! Plus a nail dryer - because it takes forever to dry them properly - and while drying I always manage to hit them into something...

The pain in having to re-done them -_-

1. First I added a base coat to protect my nails. I use a strengthening one since my nails are prone to peeling.

2.I then used a lilac 1 minute dry nail varnish. 

3. Let the varnish dry before you apply the designs.

4. I used a thin brushed black varnish to add the design. On the big finger it is a design similar to \|/; you draw this design twice from each bottom corner.
5. The small finger, you draw a similar design to the previous, but add two extra lines so \\|//. 

6. Then on the same side on each line, you follow the line with a white thin brushed nail varnish to give it a 3D effect.
7. Repeat on the other side, but mirrored.
8. Top it up with a top coat and done!

Cracked Lips?

Ever lost your lip moisturiser when you really needed it, and couldn't find anything to heal the horrible, and let me say painful, cracked lips?

Well I've found the solution! Here's my story;

So I went out with friends, 3 days ago, to the city centre. Having walked around in the cold for more than an hour and continuously licking my lips to keep them "moisturised", I woke up the next day finding myself with horrible cracked lips. I have never had lips looking that bad, and I couldn't even smile because it was painful! Now the thing was, I had lost both my Vaseline and Carmex and have forgotten to go buy a new lip soother and moisturiser.

Having no lip moisturiser and spending a day not lick my lips, hoping that would be the solution, I was fed up with them. I went online to find home made remedies - seeing if I could make something to help my lips, from ingredients I could find at home.

The only solution I could find was the "Beeswax Recipe" which in some websites contained many extra ingredients such as cocoa. Firstly, I didn't have beeswax or honey at home and secondly I wanted something that would relieve my lips as well as make them better over time.

So after reading about adding Honey and Sugar together, I invented my own lip scrub (with a different ingredient) so I could try and remove all the dead skin (this may be somewhere on the Internet, but I could not find anything with just these simple ingredients);

Olive Oil and Sugar Lip Scrub;

Tea Spoon of sugar

Tea Spoon of Olive Oil

1. Mix well 

2. Gently rub your lips in a circular motion

3. Leave for about 5 minutes 

4. Wet a tissue/tea towel

5. Remove the Scrub by patting the towel/tissue on your lips

This actually worked at first. After applying it, I left it on and I was able to smile without my lips hurting. However, when I scrubbed even though it was gentle it still hurt at a few points. Also, when I went to remove it (to see if it had cured my lips) it didn't seem to have done anything with curing the cracked lips, only to have removed some of the dead skin, and I found it painful to smile again. Also, the sugar was so nice that after applying the second time I ended up licking it off...

I would advise anyone to use this scrub, though, as a way to bring life to the lips. I did some research on how frequent to scrub your lips - some have said to use a lip scrub once a month and others 1-2 times a week. I would recommend that you use it whenever your lips start to become flaky/cracked BUT I would also advice you not to use it excessively as it can ruin your lips - and even make them even more cracked and flaky!!!

Carrying on with my story... So after figuring out that a Lip scrub was not the answer and my lips were still sore (and I had work the next day!) I was really hoping for a quick solution to my problem and found nothing that would help. So this is when I figured in using Butter. Yes, that's right Butter that you use on your toast. I never heard of butter being beneficial to your lips, but I thought that it was quiet greasy so it may moisturise my lips - Anyway, it wasn't like it was going to make them worse than they were.

Butter Moisturiser

Tea Spoon of Butter

1. Take a spoon and scoop up a bit of butter

3. Pat your lips with the butter

4. Then rub as if your adding a normal moisturiser

5. Finally pat a bit more butter onto your lips.
6. Leave for 10 minutes

7. Remove with a wet tissue (patting your lips) and repeat until they are cured.

THIS WAS THE ANSWER. After the first use I noticed a difference straight away! The cracking was nearly all gone after three repeats, and let me tell you my lips looked like a jigsaw puzzle before, I was able to smile and soon after the third I was able to feel my lips return to how they used to be. Although they weren't absolutely healed I was very surprised with the results - I found it a better relief than when I used Vaseline or Carmex!

Having found that it worked I repeated it once more, leaving it on overnight, and woke up with amazing lips! I was able to laugh and they wouldn't hurt a bit!! I was so happy considering I had work to go to, and so I decided to share this with you guys! I was especially pleased with how fast it worked!!

This was exactly was I was looking for! I should have thought of this from day one really...

A quick and simple way to cure cracked lips using day to day ingredients!!

Hope this helps in the future and tell me if it has!

No more panicking when you can't find your Lip moisturiser!

Wedding Nail Design

I recently did this design to go to a family WEDDING. It is simple but elegant and will suit almost all outfits. I also a very similar design to this on my sister (she was the flower girl at the wedding) and she was very happy with it!

1. First I added a base coat to protect my nails, as well as making them stronger.

2.I then used a very pale pink colour nail varnish (a similar colour to my nail) as the base colour. 

3. Make sure you let the base colour dry before you add the design.

4. I used a thin brushed varnish to add the design. Adding 3 diagonal lines and then painted on the last two lines. For the ring ringer I only added 2 diagonal lines and one opposite line. 

5. On the other hand the design was the same but the opposite direction so that when you put your thumbs together there is a sort of / \ design.

This is one of the designs I like the most and to be honest it was achieved out of luck!

Nail Art

I will be posting more images soon!

(This picture was taken a few days after painting so it may look a bit chipped)

I accomplished this design by using the technique "Water Marble". You can find various YouTube videos on how to do this.
1. I used a black, white and blue colour, and did not add any effects to the water marble so I could get the layered effect.
2. I then painted the other nails with the same blue varnish I used in the water marble effect. You can see the shades are slightly different - to overcome this you can add more drops of the colour to make it darker.

The Start to the Blog!

This blog is a mash-up of beauty techniques, as well as Nail Art.

I have a variety of things that I enjoy doing and one of these things is Nail Art or commonly known as Painting My Nails. Since 2 summers ago, I went out a bought a whole load of nail varnishes including small tip brushes so I can paint on designs on my nails. Since then I have enjoying coming up with different designs as well as going on you tube and trying out different forms of painting your nails; like Water Marble - which I successfully achieved once so far (out of three tries) :D!

In the Nail Art side of things I will post pictures of Nail Art I have done and how I achieved the design. In the beauty sides of things, I will post any tricks that I have come across to overcome irritating situations like the annoying Spots, that everyone comes across at least once in their life. (But be aware that this techniques were specific to me and my skin and may be different for anyone else, so please make sure that anything used won't damage your skin etc.)

Feel free to try out the Nail designs and tell me what you think :)

ALSO I do have another Blog - http://justtlivinglife.blogspot.co.uk/ - which is regular updates on what I'm up to on a weekly bases!