Botanical Gardens: Rio de Janerio

As you probably know by now, I am in Rio De Janerio at the moment, on the first leg of my travels. Yesterday we went to Rio's large botanical gardens in the centre of the city. I love Rio because the city was built AROUND the forest, and has hardly been developed on. Carioca people are very respectful and thankful for the rainforest ,as it means minimal pollution. As a great lover of natural skincare, I took great delight at stumbling across the Botanical Gardens 'Medicinal Plant Collection' where they store and harvest plants. 

Having worked with natural skincare for nearly two and a half years, I instantly recognised a lot of the plants they were harvesting, and found it really interesting!

I have never seen a natural Aloe Vera plant grow this big, and as the soothing sap that comes from the plant is in a majority of our skincare, it was really good to see one thriving.

Patchouli again, is in a lot of skincare products I use, and I have never actually seen it in its natural form, like a lot of the other plants I saw. The names under each plant were all written in Portugese, but I could vaguely translate some into the ingredients I used to see every day at work.

This little hut had more information about the way they use the plants and transform the ingredients into medicines and skin care. It was really interesting to see, I wish I could have read the Portugese to get a better insight.

I didn't intentionally go in a flowery dress

Whilst we were there, the staff were actually harvesting some of the crops to be used! 

There was also a Rose garden which is another plant that is great for skincare, however it was looking a little worse for wear so I didn't take any pictures. The park was stunning though, and was a really interesting insight into the Brazilian wild life and natural world!

If you want to read more about my travels, my boyfriend and I are writing a travel blog. 

you will find it at

blogrigado.blogspot.com.

Day 20: Holly

I did actually publish this yesterday but forgot to add the pictures which was very clever of me, but now you can see the main event now. We are so close to Christmas now, and I am really enjoying this nail art challenge as it has pushed me to embrace christmas nail art which I never usually find very inspiring!

Today's prompt is Holly, so I went for a plain background and some mini holly leaves. I used Barry M 'Lychee' for my base colour, and then nail art pens for the Holly. It's a very simple design but I think it looks quite sweet!

I only have a few prompts left for Christmas now, but keep your eyes peeled because I have some good ones coming up!

December Nail Art Challenge

I am sure you are FULLY aware that is is nearly Christmas. As a nail art lover, you'd think I would be doing Christmas themed nail art left right and centre. The truth is, I actually really struggle to come up with Christmas ideas that aren't to obvious or overdone. Cue the Californails nail art challenge. I find nail art challenges really makes me think outside the box and pushes me to do designs I've been putting off or forgotten about. I always do the Californails nail art challenge as they're realistic and don't prompt for a new design everyday. As I'm sure everyone finds, December is a very busy time of year so a nail art design every day gets a bit tedious and takes out the fun of it!

I was a little late seeing this post, but coincidentally, I think the two Christmas nail designs I have done have fallen into the first prompts pretty spot on! 

1. Nature

2. Sparkles

It was meant to be. We are now on the day 8 animal prompt, and if I'm honest, this one had me a little stumped. I'd already done penguins, and I think the Reindeer is a little overdone, so that left me to think outside the box. I decided that I hadn't done a simple Leopard print design in a while, and it is always so effective looking. As it is December, I thought I'd go with more of a Snow Leopard theme, to add some chilly vibes to this winter time.

These are quite simple but I do think they look cool! I'm excited for the next few prompts coming up so keep you eyes peeled!

Monty The Penguin Nails

I don't know whether it is because its exactly one month till Christmas eve, but today is the first day I have actually felt Christmassy this year. Although Christmas lights and TV adverts have been slowly becoming more concentrated, I haven't given Christmas a second thought. Due to this, these nails are probably a little out dated by 2 weeks, but my favourite animals are penguins, so I felt I had to do a tribute to the John Lewis Christmas advert somehow.

Here is Monty and his little Christmas Girlfriend!

I started with this white by colour club which I wasn't keen on at first, as it had a pearly finish to it. But actually when it was on I quite liked it, and I even got a few compliments on it as I wore it by itself for a few days before adding the penguins.

The actual penguins are quite different for me, as they're more realistic to my usual cartoony nails. I was inspired by a picture I saw on Instagram and thought they looked so cute and fluffy looking, so gave this technique a try. I used my black nail art pen and just really really lightly drew the shapes of the penguins. The light touch is what gave the penguins their fluffier appearance, as harder lines are more cartoony. I have to admit it took me a good few times to practice, the first one being this awful attempt on the right haha

They still aren't as perfect as I would have liked them to be, but for my first attempt at a more realistic nail art its not too bad, at least you can tell (I hope) that they're penguins! For the other nails, I just used the distressed nail technique with my cool blue MAC colour, and added some glitter on the top for an icey finish.

Lightning Nails

The last few days in England have been very stormy indeed. It has been the hot topic of the moment as we are not used to these kind of climatic dramas. Storms are the only weather that will make you switch off everything your doing, lay down, and stare absent mindedly out of the window anticipating a rumble of thunder or a flash of lightning... at least I do anyway.

I was babysitting on Friday night so had a lot of extra time to enjoy the storm, and managed to get a few snaps of the lightning. This one is my favourite that I got, I am no photographer but I was pretty impressed with this one!

This reminded me that I have been meaning to do some lightning nails for a while now. I have a list on my phone of nails I want to do, for when I get a sudden inspiration or reminder when I'm out and about. Lightning has certainly been on the list for a while, and this gave me the occasion to do it.

For this nail art, I used Barry M 'Indigo' as my base colour. The first coat was really watery but the second coat gave the perfect deep blue night sky I wanted. I then sponged on the purple colour, -creatively named 'Bright Purple'- into forks of where I wanted the lightning to go. I then sponged white at the cuticle to create the source of lightning, and then used the nip to create the jagged blots of lightning down the nail.

From far away I think these nails look better, when up close they potentially look like nail art gone wrong! I think the thinner the lines, the more effective the look will be. Let me know what you think!

Jaws Nail Art

Hello there readers! Today is going to be a slightly different post from my normal reviews or nail art posts, because I am going to shed a bit of light on my personal life. ooooeerrrrr. In my last post I explained that I hadn't got round to doing any Easter nail art because I had had a very busy weekend. Well this post will explain why! For my boyfriends birthday, I paid for us to going swimming in the shark tank at London Aquarium. Sharks have been my biggest fear since I can remember so this was quite a big deal for me!

So here are some pictures of our day for you to see!

Sand Tiger Shark

Brown Shark

The shark tank with the net in the back ground

The look of relief afterwards!

I have to admit that as terrifying as it was, it was really interesting and I learned a lot about sharks! I think I have cured my fear slightly as I would do it again in a heartbeat! Sharks are very misunderstood creatures, and it got me thinking as to where my deep rooted fear of sharks came from, after all, its not like you see them everyday! I think it stems down to when I watched Jaws as a child, as I spent most of the film perched on the back of the sofa with a cushion over my eyes.

As Jaws is such an iconic and classic film, I decided to pay homage to it, and do some Jaws inspired nail art.

I saw this design online by a girl called Kayleigh, who goes the extra mile when it comes to nail art, and actually uses extensions for shapes.  Here is a link to her Facebook page so you can see what I mean! KayleighOCNailArt

To make this nail art, this is all the equipment I used. It looks like quite a lot so I'll break it down into manageable chunks.

I started by painting each nail white, as the poster has a white background, and it meant the blue sea colours would be more vivid. I used scotch tape over half of the nail so the horizon would be really clean. I used two shades of blue so the water appeared to be getting deeper, and then when the tape is peeled of, you have a really straight line. I made sure the level was the same on each nail so it really gave the illusion of sea.

For the thumb where the shark will emerge from, I added another darker shade of blue to make the water look even deeper.

For Jaws himself, I was originally going to use  grey, but on the poster he is lighter, so I went for baby blue instead. The mouth and eyes were done with a black nail art pen, and the outline and terrifying teeth were done with a white pen.

For my poor victim, I used a gold nail art pen from Topshop which I have never used before. It is literally a pen so perfect if your haven't used nail art pens before. The swimsuit and hair were done with pink and yellow nail pens.

For the other hand, I just outlined the letters in pink to make sure they were ok, then went over them in the red to give them the bloodied effect.

I got a little lazy at the clean up around these!

So these are my gory Jaws nails, let me know what you think!