Nautical Striped Nails..

Well these nails were pretty simple to do and I managed to do them free hand! Basically, all you need is 1 blue nail polish, 1 white nail polish, 1 clear nail polish and one thin, long brush for the lines (you could use a liquid eye liner brush for this.) The method is pretty simple to do as are most of my nail arts....

1. Paint the base coat blue (in any shade of blue you have), some may need two coats to make sure you achieve a more solid colour.

2. Then dip your thin brush into the white polish after the base coats have dried, and try as neatly as possibly to create a long thin line on your nails with your thin brush

*TIP* Have a cotton pad with nail polish remover near you, so you can wipe excess nail polish and clean your thin brush to make painting straight lines easier

3. Once the stripes have dried, top them with clear nail varnish to limit chipping and therefore getting longer out of your design.

Tuxedo Nail Art..

These looked much better in person than they do in the picture, but I'll give you a quick idea of how to do them...


1. Using white nail polish paint a base coat onto your nails

2. Once the base coat has dried, using a black polish paint the tips of your nails with a thin brush

3. To do the bow tie, paint an X on to your nails and then fill in the gaps of the X to create a bow shape

4. Using either a dotting tool or the end of a hair pin, dot 3 small dots under the bow tie for the buttons on the shirt

So there we have it, it's very simple and easy and would look much better on longer nails but they are growingg slowly! I copied the design off Zooey Deschanel, because she is my style crush! I have also done another nail art inspired by her for you to have a go at.

Love love loving the tuxedo inspired nails as they are so quirky and individual, why don't you have a go?!

Star Cupcakes!

I've been baking again now I have some free time ! They were so easy and simple to make and the recipe was by far the best cupcake recipe I have found:

Ingredients:

• 100g butter or margarine
• 150g caster sugar
• 150g self raising flour
• 2 large eggs
• 3 tbsp milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/Gas 4. Line a muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Mix all the ingredients together into a smooth, even batter.
3. Divide the mixture between the cake cases, filling each one to about 2/3 full.
4. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden and firm to the touch.
5. Cool on a wire rack before icing.

The decoration of the cakes was so easy !  I bought so ready to roll white icing from my local ASDA, so you could find it in any supermarket. I also bought some lilac ready to roll icing from my local cake craft shop, you may also need some pink and blue food colouring.
1) Spread a thin layer of jam on the top of your cupcake to act as a glue for the icing,
2) Roll the icing out on a surface sprinkled lightly with icing sugar to stop it from sticking to the surface. Roll it until about 0.3cm thickness
3) Using a cookie cutter around the same size as the top of the cupcake and smooth it over with your fingers until no cake can be seen
4) Add food colouring to a section of the ready to roll icing and mix well until the whole icing is the same colour to limit marbling.
5) When the icing is at 0.3cm thickness using a small cookie cutter of any shape you wish
6) Repeat cutting these shapes out and spreading a tiny bit of jam on the back again to act as a glue, and place them randomly on top of the cake

They taste exactly like birthday cake! It's great, and they look very pretty as well, they're also practise for if you want to make a larger fondant iced cake as they use the same techniques. You can buy cookie cutters off eBay or amazon in various different shapes and sizes to perfect the design on your cake.

Flower Print Nails....

At this point, my nails had grown slightly, plus I was going to a party and thought I'd do my nails funky to be slightly more individual. My dress was black and my shoes purple, so I painted my nails red and this is the reason for the red dots on the flowers (plus I don't have a yellow).

For the base coat I used a lovely peachy orange colour as I thought this would allow the flowers to pop and again I didn't have a vast enough nail polish collection to own a natural colour.


1. Apply a neutral shade under coat
2. Wait for this to dry then apply a second layer if necessary
3. After this layer has dried, using a small paint brush a white nail polish attempt the paint flowers onto your nails by placing a blob of polish and then spreading it with the brush.
4. Repeat this in a random pattern along your nails if the flowers are different sizes it doesn't matter they'll look good in the end
5.On each flower either using a dotting tool or the end of a hair pin, dab a blob of nail polish in any colour or in red like mine
6. Then use a a top coat to seil the design onto the nail

TIP: have a cotton pad with nail polish remover on it to clean your brush and stop it from becoming clogged up making it difficult to create the design

I like to do simple designs for people to create who have only just got into nail art,
similar to me but don't know how to start.Any questions, don't hesitate to ask,
Happy Nail Arting!

Easy Polka Dot Nail Art (My first ever!)

So, here on the right--------------------------------------------------->
are the nail polishes I used to create my polka dot nail design. I used a mint green Barry M base coat, and then a Barry M pink for the dots. I'm also very short on ALL nail polishes so the only clear I had contained glitter :( But it helps to give a funky look but needs some elbow grease to get off!! I'll give you a step by step guide on how to create these nails below:

1. First apply your chosen base coat (in my case, this is MINT green), put about two coats of this on to make sure you create a bold base colour..... 2. Then I bent a clip like this here: -------------> and dabbed it into the pink nail polish (enough to coat the tip that isn't bent without is looking too empty, but not too much, or your polka dots will come out huge and mishaped) also at this point make sure you have a cotton pad to hand with nail polish remover on it to remove any excess polish on the tip of the hair pin.             

3. Dab random dots across the entire nail until you are happy with the design
4. Wait until the nails are dry and apply a top coat of clear nail polish (with or without glitter)


Your nails should be complete! These are so quick and easy I do them everynow and again as a quick design when I'm feeling lazy and don't want to spend hours on one design!

As you guys can tell my nails are back to their natural length, so this design is useful for short nails as they do not need a large nail to do polka dot designs. I'll be posting some more nail designs that I've done over the last couple of weeks soon as I've got the blogging bug againnn!


If you do have a go at polka dot print nails please send me a picture of yours or if you have any queries don't hesitate to ask me anything ! :-)

Chocolate Chip Cookies!

So I made these chocolate chip cookies yesterday, they have white and milk chocolate chips in them..

They're not too difficult to make and the mixture made about 20 cookies

INGREDIENTS:

125g of SR Flour

125g of Plain Flour

1 Full Egg

1 Egg Yolk

1 tbsp Vanilla Essence

170g Melted Butter/Margarine

100g Caster Sugar

200g Brown Sugar/Demerara Sugar

You're own amount of chocolate chips, I'd recommend anything from 150g to 325g

METHOD:

1. Pre-heat oven to 170c/gas mark 3, grease baking trays with butter or line them with baking parchment

2. Sift the 2 separate flours out into a separate bowl to the one you are mixing in

3. Melt the butter/margarine with the two sugars until well blended

4. Then add the vanilla essence, egg and egg yolks...until light and creamy

5. Then mix in the flour until the mixture is well blended together then stir in your selected amount of chocolate chips

6. Drop about a heaped tablespoon of cookie mixture onto the baking tray around 8cm apart (doesn't really matter if they blend together, they're supposed to look rustic)

7. Do not flatten the dough! Bake them in the oven for 15-17minutes or until the edges are lightly toasted

8. Leave to cool on the tray until relatively cool and transfer them to a wire rack or any other surface to allow them to cool

They should keep for about a week, but are best ate sooner rather than later ! :D

Hope you have a go at making these cookies and let me know what you think of the recipe. They don't have baking powder/soda because I didn't have any in the cupboard, but the SR flour added to the plain flour helps to counteract the absence of the baking powder so isn't missed.



Being all patriotic for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and made a cake...

I know it's a little late, but I still thought I'd post my Union Jack cake for you all to have a go at next time there is a Royal/British/Olympic occasion. It's basically a Victoria sponge cake (carrying on with the monarchy theme), I'll write the recipe and method below, but it's pretty simple really.


INGREDIENTS:
250g - Caster sugar
250g - SR Flour
250g - Butter/Margarine
1 tbsp - Vanilla essence
4 - large eggs


METHOD for making the cake: pre-heat the oven to 180c

1. Cream the caster sugar and margarine together until fluffy
2. Add the vanilla essence and half the eggs and sieve in half of the flour and then mix together
3. Add the remaining eggs and flour into the mixing bowl, until the mixture is creamy with no lumps
4. Grease the tins with margarine and tin foil or line your tins with grease proof paper
5. If you have 2 circular baking tins then pour an equal amount of the mixture into each tin. If you don't have 2, fill one half way and then once cooked re-fill with the remaining mixture
5. Place the baking tins into the oven and cook at 18c for 20ish minutes or until golden brown
6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before decorating

It's a pretty simple cake to make really and it should be nice and light and fluffy when you come to eat it later. I'm now going to tell you how I decorated the cake.

INGREDIENTS:
Raspberry Jam
Raspberries
Blueberries
Butter cream:
1 tbsp of milk
115g margarine/butter
50g icing sugar


METHOD: decorating the cake
1. Once the cakes come out of the oven, they may have a slightly raised top, trip the excess off the top of the cake to allow the cake to balance properly.
2. For the bottom layer keep the trimmed side of the cake facing upwards and spread a layer of raspberry jam onto it
3. For the top layer, spread a layer of jam onto the trimmed side of the cake and then place this side of the cake downwards (so the top of the cake should be the bottom of the cake when it comes out of the cake tin). This might seem confusing but it should make the cake look prettier
4. Then mix the milk, margarine and icing sugar together until the butter cream is well mixed and relatively thin with no lumps of icing sugar
5. Using a palette knife (or any other flat kitchen utencil) smooth the buttercream onto the top of the cake (you should have just enough to cover the whole top of the cake with a thick layer)
6. Then cut the raspberries in half to make it easier to place on the cake
7. The rest is pretty self explanatory, try using your blueberries and raspberries to create a Uninon Jack pattern (basically a cross with two diagonal lines for the raspberries, and fill the gaps with triangles of blueberries).

Hope all you people who read the blog that are from Britain had a great Jubilee weekend but also, if you are reading from another country, have a go at this cake anyway but use various different fruits to create your countries flag! :-) If you have a go at making this cake or have any questions about how to achieve it, don't hesitate to ask me a question !