NOTD - Sweetpeas and Stripes

Hello there lovely readers!

Oooh its been a while! These past few weeks have been all manners of manic with work, life & everything in between. Thankfully I managed to squeeze in a brief holiday to the Poldark lands aka Cornwall to visit one of my lovely friends plus catch some much needed time out. I could happily have stayed there forever as I adore it there muchly....who knows maybe one day.

As we seem to have been rather cheated of a summer this year (seriously Mother Nature, whats the dealio, I thought you & I had a special arrangement?) I've been resorted to creating summer vibes via other means, mostly my favourite way of course, on my nails.

It really uplifts my mood greatly when I'm wearing a pretty patterned mani & I'm an absolute sucker for florals, they soothe me so much so whenever I get a chance you can be sure I'll be rocking a floral manicure a lot of the time! My wish one day is to recreate stunning floral mani's like Follow That Way...seriously this girls skills are insane, her floral mani's are like works of art!

Here is a quick look I threw together using pretty pastel creme shades, this was literally a case of pulling one of my polish drawers out & just going to town with a handful of polishes within its confines. I find myself neglecting a lot of my polishes lately, often reaching for the same ones so I hope to change that & give my other babies some loving!

I started off with a pastel blue base, this one is No7 Duck Egg Blue which is exactly that! Such a lovely soft blue, this I applied two coats for a smooth opaque finish.

Next I was in the mood for some vertical lines also, for these I used a thin nail art brush & Essie Lady Like which is a gorgeous mauve nude shade, With the thin brush I just freehanded three vertical lines straight down the nail.

Now for our sweetpea florals, I'm not even certain if these bare any resemblance at all to the actual flower but that's what I've called them so I'm going with it. To create these you just need to grab two to three different polishes that are of a similar colour family, here I've gone for the pinky tones.

Starting with the lightest, Barry M Berry Ice Cream which okay is actually more lilac than pink but hey, minor details. Using the brush from the polish, apply a blob of colour wherever you want your blooms to be. I decided to apply a few around my cuticle area.

Then going in with the darker shades, so I've used Sally Hansen Pinch of Punch & a neon pink from W7, use a thin nail art brush & your darker shades to apply tiny swirls within your blob to resemble the petals. The beauty of this kind of design is it doesn't have to be neat, in fact the more rustic the better.

Finally a bit of greenery was needed for my leaves so I used a random NK pastel lime green cream polish that I must've picked up on my travels at some point. Again using a fine nail art brush just place a few leaves around the blooms.

Finish with topcoat & you're done! I couldn't resist adding a pic of my little munchkin attempting to help out, this is literally how it is now when I'm doing my nails but heck I wouldn't change a damn thing, just look at that face! <3

Thanks as always for reading!

Lotsa love to ya!