A Glitzy Trio

I was feeling a little down and thought I'd lighten things up a little, with a glitzy trio of nail art glamor.

It's super quick and easy to do!

Here's what you'll need:

• A light base coat
• 3 different colours of nail varnish varying in shade from light to dark
• A glittery nail varnish
• A small sponge
• A piece of tinfoil or plastic

Here's what you have to do:

• Apply the light base coat and wait for it to dry
• Paint three lines of different colour onto the piece of plastic or tinfoil, (make sure that the colours increase from light to dark)
• Dab a sponge onto the painted lines on the plastic
• Carefully roll the sponge across your finger nail
• Paint over the lines on the tinfoil, dab with a sponge and repeat on your next nail.
• Once all nails are completed, paint over them with a glittery nail varnish to blend the colours more and finish the look.
• Once you're finished clean around the edge of your fingers where there may be some excess paint, ( an earbud coated in nail varnish remover should do the trick!)

And voila! You're finished

Get this cool photoshop action here from mis-etikate

A fantastic way to spoil yourself: Alice Nail in Seosan

Every girl deserves a bit of pampering every now and again. One of my favourite ways to pamper myself is to go and have a good manicure. Since coming to Korea, a good friend of mine and I regularly go to a magical little nail shop in Seosan, that goes by the name of Alice Nails. It’s a great way to treat yourself and have a girly catch-up at the same time.

The shop is run by two lovely sisters who do the best mani/pedi I’ve ever come across. A regular manicure will set you back about 15 000won- which includes the whole shebang- from a hand mask, to nail filing, cuticle treatment, a base coat and top coat, and a spash of colour. It always fascinates me how a coat of colour can change the way I feel.

So if you’ve got some time on your hands and a little change to spare why not go check it out for yourself- maybe even take a friend along with you. I promise, if your experience is anything like mine have been, you won’t be disappointed.

Alice nails is open from 10am-9pm Monday to Friday, and every second and fourth Saturday of the month.

They also offer a wide variety of nail art and nail extensions, plus waxing, although I’ve never tried that out personally.

The sisters don’t speak the best English but are very friendly and have the patience of saints. It might be a good idea to get your co-teacher or a Korean-speaking friend to help you make the appointment, they are pretty popular so it’s a good idea to make a booking.

• How you can reach them: 010 7399 1448 or 668 5949
• How you can find them: If your facing the lotte cinema/old CNB cinema walk right, at the first crossroads turn right. It’s on your left.

Halloween inspired nail art

I had a little spare time on my hands last night, and was feeling a bit festive so thought I'd get into the halloween spirit by painting my nails. Here are the results, I used a Konad M64 stamp for the pattern.

To read more about Konad nail art and stamps, or how to create a look similar to this go here.
To make a cute little Jack-O lantern similar to the one I used in the first frame, follow this fun and easy Illustrator tutorial here.

Zebra nail art tutorial (Konad)

I was visiting a friend of mine last year and I couldn't help but notice how amazing her nails looked. As we live in a really little town in Korea I was interested to find out where she had her nails done. It was then that she told me that she had done them herself, the results looked so professional that I couldn't believe it. So she let me in on her little secret...Konad. Konad is a company that specializes in nail art products, I managed to find my stuff on a local shopping website Gmarket, but for those not in Korea there are outlets all over the place, check out the listings here to see if there's one near you. 

My nails thank you Megan for opening my eyes to the amazingness that is Konad, my bank balance however, does not.

You will need:

• Any regular base coat
• Colour coat ( use any colour of your choice, I used white in this example)
• Top coat (to prevent chipping and longer lasting results)
• Special nail polish for the stamp, these come in a wide variety of colors and are available here.
• An Image plate, (I used M57) but again there are a wide variety to chose from here
• The stamp itself
• A scraper to remove the excess paint from the image plate (this can be substituted with an old debit card or something smilar)
• O.P.I  or other rapid dry spray of your choice ( this can be substituted with time and patience)
• A corrector pen (this can be substituded with an ear bud and some nail varnish remover)
• A sponge to clean your stamp with before reapplying

Top left: Apply a clear base coat

Top right: Paint two coats of your colour layer

Bottom left: Apply a clear top coat

Bottom right: Spray a rapid drying agent or wait for your nails to dry. It is very important that your nails  are completely dry before moving on to the next step.

Top left: Once your nails are completely dry and look something along the lines of what you can see in

the picture, move onto the next step.

Top middle: Apply the special nail polish to the image plate.

Top right: Using a scraper, or an old debit card you no longer use, scrape the excess paint off of the

image plate.

Bottom left: Using your stamp roll the stamp over the image plate pressing down firmly.

Bottom right: If your satisfied with the way the polish transferred onto the stamp, position the stamp to 

ensure it will cover your whole nail, and then roll the stamp across your finger nail.

Left:Once you have repeated the above step for all of your fingers your nails should look similar to the image on the left. As you can see there is a lot of excess stamp around the finger nail. Using a corrector pen or earbud and nail varnish remover carefully rub the excess away.

Right: And thats it your done :)

More thanks goes to Chris for helping me take these pics:) and Inferlogic for the cool zebra background used in my picture frames.