April Showers Challenge - The Paper Gal

Hello everyone :)
Today I have the last but one post of the April Showers Challenge. Today's post is The Paper Gal, which is based on newspaper nails :) Now I tried this once before here and it didn't turn out too well. So I'm glad this has come up so that I can improve on the last attempt :P
So here's how I did...

Onto the polish! I used two coats of Essence Twins Chuck. I could have gotten away with one if I was more careful when applying it. This colour is beautiful but my camera never picks it up properly :( My camera picks it up as a royal blue but it's definitely blue/purple, there are some accurate swatches hanging around online if you want to check the actual colour. 

As you can see from the photo I got the print to stand out more this time! This is a great improvement on my last attempt :P So instead of dipping the newspaper into the Vodka like last time, I dipped my nail in and then pressed the newspaper onto the wet nail and this seems to work better! :)

However, I also had some problems with the newspaper leaving little bits of itself behind on my nails as you can see on my little finger :( Also, some nails have marks because my polish hadn't comepletly dried and I was pushing quite hard :( So I know this for next time now :P

Overall, I'm really pleased with how these nails turned out and now that I know how to do them properly I think I'll be playing around with them some more :)

Keep an eye out for my last challenge post tomorrow ;P
Thanks for reading :)
Charlotte xxx

52 Week Challenge - Week 5

Hello everyone :)
It's week 5 of the 52 week challenge! It's going so quickly! But I'm really enjoying this challenge. This week we had to do a newspaper manicure. I've wanted to try this out since I first saw it a couple of months back but never had the time so I'm so glad it came up in the challenge, so here's how I did...

I really loved the whole idea of this weeks mani and was so excited to try it out, however I was rather disappointed :( The print on my nails was so faint you could barely see it unless you got really close to it, which most people don't :P

I used 3 coats of OPI Mermaids Tears, which I have been lemming for a while and finally got my hands on! :) I then dipped my finger in vodka (maybe this is why it didn't work so well? You're supposed to use rubbing alcohol) and covered my nail with a strip of newspaper for about 15-30 seconds depending on how long I could wait :P 

This picture is more an accurate representation of the colour of Mermaids Tears, it's a beautiful muted green :)

I'm really glad I got to try out a newspaper mani finally :P But I wanted a very bold print on my nails compared to this :( Have any of you done a successful newspaper mani? If so let me know what you did in the comments, I really want to try this again until I get the results I want :)
Also don't forget to enter my 50 and 100 follower giveaways :D

Thanks for reading :)
Charlotte xxx