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CND Vinylux Daring Escape

The lovely photographer who took the photo of me that you see on this site is also a qualified CND technician (CND being the people behind Shellac nails). She also uses CND Vinylux, which is like a normal polish, but which has a special top coat that cures gradually in natural light, a bit like […] Read more

Christmas Challenge 2013 Day 4: Christmas traditions

Today is all about Christmas traditions for the Crumpet’s Nail Tarts Christmas Winter Challenge. There was so much I could have taken as inspiration for this prompt: Christmas trees, decorations, Christmas jumpers, mistletoe, gifts … the list could go on tenfold. I decided to go with holly. I love holly. I love the wonderfully shaped […] Read more

Christmas Challenge 2013 Day 3: Holiday colours

Today’s prompt for the Crumpet’s Nail Tarts Christmas Winter Challenge is holiday colours. So, like everyone else I presume, I thought of red, gold and green. As ever, I wasn’t immediately struck by the inspiration gods, and so asked my husband what he thought I should do. He said a harlequin design, which after a […] Read more

33DC Day 32: shapes

It’s the penultimate day of the Crumpet’s Nail Tarts 33 Day Challenge and today the prompt is shapes. I was looking back over the manicures I’ve done for this challenge and it was very apparent that I’ve hardly used green or yellow in my manicures. I love yellow, so that surprised me; but I don’t […] Read more

33DC Day 30: the same pattern, different colours

I had a lovely manicure planned for Day 30 of the Crumpet’s Nail Tarts 33 Day Challenge. It would have used seventeen different polishes! But, I hadn’t had time to make a start on it until today, so I decided that, on top of all the work I have to do today, my complicated manicure […] Read more

33DC Day 19: Follow Someone’s Tutorial

It’s day 19 and today in the Crumpet’s Nail Tarts 33 Day Challenge we’re following someone’s tutorial. I’ve always wanted to do the flowers that MrCandiipants does using just the polish brushes and decided at the beginning of this challenge that I would do just that when it came to day 19. In the past […] Read more

33DC Day 15: Animals

This was another prompt in the Crumpet’s Nail Tarts 33 Day Challenge that I went back and forth with ideas for. I thought about doing penguins (might leave those until Christmas now), then an animal print like leopard or zebra. I Googled for inspiration but nothing was jumping out at me. I was starting to […] Read more

33DC Day 12: A Pattern in Your Home

So, today for the Crumpet’s Nail Tarts 33 Day Challenge we have to recreate or be inspired by a pattern in our home. There are only three patterns I can think of in my house; everything else is completely plain. My son’s duvet is patterned, we have a wallpapered accent wall, and a patterned vinyl […] Read more

33DC Day 5: Mexican

Oh there really are some prompts in this challenge that I loathe. So far, Mexican nails is the worst and has caused me no end of problems. I started off by trying sugar skulls. I have usually only seen these done on a white or black base, but I had the great idea – or […] Read more