Born Pretty Store and my First Freehand Nail Art

I received a few items from Born Pretty Store a few weeks ago to review. You've already seen some of the Bullion put to use and I'll cracking out the rest of the amazing nail art supplies in good time. Here are the goodies that I got....

I've wanted some of these tiny brushes for ages. I did buy a pack of nail art brushes on eBay but there are very few that are suitably teeny for painting designs like this on your nails and I'm actually using one of them to apply my eyeliner!!

This pack of 4 brushes is perfect for drawing anything you can imagine on your nails. They're small but easy to grip and each one is a different size so you can use the smallest ones for lining and the larger ones for filling in colours.

I decided to try my hand at roses, which are heavily inspired by (read: copied from) Marina at Forever The Ugly Duckling who does some really cute and imaginative, yet simple, freehand nail art which is what actually inspired me to have a go myself.

I started out drawing the outlines of the flowers then filling them in with the blue. Then I went over the outlines again to emphasise them since the blue kind of covered them over. Then I decided to add the leaves by doing the  same thing - outline, colour, outline again!

I'm really pleased with how it turned out and I'll definitely be doing more freehand nail art in the future if I can come up with any ideas! If that's something you guys would like to see?

I used:

Brushes from Born Pretty Store

Barry M Berry Ice Cream as a the base colour

Rimmel Black Satin to outline the flowers

Beauty UK Neon Blue to fill the flowers

BYS Fern for the leaves

Top coat of NYC

Disclaimer: The nail art brushes were sent to me by Born Pretty Store for review. Everything you read here is my honest opinion.

Nailympics you say?

I'm moving out tomorrow... properly... for good! Well, for the year anyway. I have a birthday party to go to with Disney dress up tomorrow night and I'm going as one of the Dalmatians so I'm gonna go for spotty nails which I will post as soon as I can.

I think some of you might enjoy reading this. It's a story about the 'Nailympics' which were held here in the UK last weekend and has some piccys of amazing, you could call it novelty, nail art. Although it's admittedly not the kind I would try myself, it's still very good. I'm sure you could find more pictures somewhere else too.

Konad Plate: M60
Base Colour: Beauty UK Neon Blue
Konad Colour: Stargazer White
Top Coat of Essie Matte About You

Beauty UK or Beauty No-K?

I have a few Beauty UK polishes. They are only cheap - but some if the colours are nice - so they chip easily and are not amazing.

Since I am running out of my beloved NYC Top Coat, I need a new one that's not too expensive since I only ever wear it for a day and get through it really fast.

So, I bought Beauty UK's '2 in 1 Top Coat' which is fine as a base coat but rubbish as a top coat.

Last night, I finished my nails, with top coat, at least 30 minutes before bed but when I woke up, they were all scratched and dented. Since then, I've painted on the blue and added a coat of NYC.

You can see on the thumb where the polish has basically 'stretched' because the top coat didn't do its job and dry the polish underneath :(

So, basically, don't buy Beauty UK top coats :D

Konad Plate: M57
Base Colour: Beauty UK - 36 Neon Blue
Konad Colour: NYC Glossies - 243B
Top Coat of Beauty UK
Blue: NYC Glossies 243B
Top Coat of NYC