NOTW(E) - Peacock Gradient

Hi Everyone,

I hope you all had a lovely weekend! I mentioned on Friday that I was going to visit a friend, and I had a lot of fun there. A couple of friends were celebrating their birthdays and there was a fancy dress theme: Ibiza Zoo Project. If you haven't heard of Zoo Project, it's a club night in Ibiza that involves animal fancy dress which is generally just face and body paint! 

Now face painting, makeup, etc are not my thing. I can do nails, but anything involving my face is really not my forte! Luckily, one of my mummy friends is a professional makeup artist and she jumped at the chance to do my makeup. We settled on peacock makeup and had a trial on Friday. Then Saturday morning she did the real thing, sealed it with fixing spray and off I went!

But I couldn't NOT do my nails to match! I wanted to try another gradient, so I chose Rimmel Sky High, which is a bright turquoise colour, and Models Own Gold Rush, which is a gold foil with a glass fleck appearance. I used my normal method (the Nailasaurus method) and I was really happy with the result! Cleanup was a nightmare for this, it took me about two hours to clean up and I still wasn't happy with it, but it was 2:30am and I needed sleep before going out!

One of my followers on Instagram suggested putting Vaseline on my fingers before doing my gradient to minimise how much polish goes onto my fingers. She also suggested taping them beforehand. Has anybody else used these methods? Do they work?

Here it is! After I did the gradient I had to dab on a bit of extra gold because the two polishes I used weren't equal in terms of coverage. I also put on two very thick layers of Seche Vite to even out the texture. Please mind the messy cuticles!

Beautiful gradient!

Just in case you were wondering, here's what my makeup looked like all finished! Kellie did an amazing job! After my trial I got complimented in Superdrug by the sales assistant, and then on Saturday a lady stopped and told me how nice it looked! A lot of people stared though, I guess it's not every day they see a girl walking around with a huge peacock feather drawn on her face!

Me! Look how well my nails match!

If you're thinking that my outfit looks familiar, that's the playsuit I featured in my £100 ASOS Blogger Challenge post. I have a lot of time for ASOS, and this playsuit only cost £18, how could I turn it down?!

I hope you liked my latest gradient. They're making me so happy at the moment, all I can think of is what colours I can put together next!

Don't forget about my giveaway! If you haven't entered already, you can do so here. You still have 18 days to enter, by which time I think the Olympics will be finished (I have no idea...!) but I want to make sure people have enough time to enter!

See you back here tomorrow, when it'll be time for my second edition of Five Favourites! 

Gradient Nails and Guest Posting

Hi everyone,

Did you all have a good weekend? I spent most of mine with my brother, we went shopping, out for lunch and just hung out at my house, so it was nice. Also, the weather got better yesterday at last! It's been raining every day for weeks now so to have a bit of sun has been amazing. 

Today was so hot and sunny, while my son was asleep I laid out and actually had some pretty decent tan lines after an hour. During the winter I always hate the fact that I have olive skin because it looks awful without a tan... I look at everyone else with their pale pink skin and hate my washed out yellowy face! But in the summer I love my half-Arabic genes, I can be out in the sun for 10 minutes and catch the sun. Don't get me wrong, it has its downfalls... If I'm wearing a vest and forget to tuck the straps in, I have strap marks forever until they even out!

Anyway, onto the polish! I have a gradient manicure to show you. I actually did this for my guest post over at Island Girl Insights (you can see that here) but I love it so much I have to post it here too!

I used MUA Shades 12, Wet'n'Wild White, Revlon Girly, along with a sponge. It's the normal big yellow one I use for everything, it's a car washing sponge from ASDA and I bought it for 50p.

The method I used for the gradient was the one that The Nailasaurus posted here, but I started with a white base. Mainly because the polishes I used had different finishes, so I wanted to make sure they both popped, rather than painting my whole nail with one colour first, in case I could see it underneath, if that makes sense!

Here is the result, I used two coats of Seche Vite on top!

I was so in love with this mani that I wore it for four days. The only reason I took it off was because I had to finish the other half of my guest post. I do two manicures for under £5 and this was the first one I did.

I hope you liked my gradient mani! Over the past couple of months I've had some unsuccessful gradient attempts but I think this was a real success! 

See you tomorrow!