Principality of Sealand Nail Art

I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but I went to see Art Brut this weekend! :P It’s not like I mentioned it several times or anything and was all excitable. It was the album launch gig and it was awesome, the new album sounds great. I like getting new albums, but I find it takes me a few listens to get into it. Maybe it was because it was live, but it sounded great from the first listen. Art Brut then performed a second set of all the classics, it was a great night! I loved the Buffalo Bar too, I wish there were decent bars where I live, it’s just scummy student bars, no indie bars in sight, bah! Also, how cute is the hand stamp?! :)

Now the title of this post says what is on my nails, but it doesn’t make much sense why I would paint the flag for the Principality of Sealand on my nails to go to a gig. I shall explain! One of the new Art Brut songs is about Sealand and apparently the Prince and Princess of Sealand were at the gig on Saturday. Sealand is a former World War II sea fort, 6 miles off the coast of Suffolk and it was claimed as an independent sovereign state, you can read more on the SealandGov website or Wikipedia page.

Principality of Sealand Flag

So there you go and here are my nails! I first painted my nails with 17 Knockout Red, a great one coat red. Then due to my lack of quick drying topcoat I waved my hands around for awhile. I left it about 30 minutes to make sure it was dry. I didn’t want to tape off the ends and then to rip the tape off and take the base polish with it! It was fine luckily :) so I taped off the nails at an angle and painted the tips with Models Own Snow White, which could have done with another coat as the red does show through a little, but because it such a small section I left it. Again, there was more waiting and hand flapping. Finally I taped off a smaller chunk for the black tips for which I used Nails Inc London Nights. More flapping…than before bed I throw on a quick topcoat to make it shiny because the 3 polishes had slightly different finishes and it looked a little bit strange. At last I was done!

I did this all in the evening and I cannot take pictures without daylight due to a cheap and nasty phone camera, so theres no step by step shots unfortunately. When I have a job in the summer the first thing I intend to buy is a nice camera so I can actually take pictures at other times rather than a couple of hours around midday! :) Also, I realised I can’t take picture outside in the sunshine. All my outside pictures of London are all bleached out. A camera is definitely high on the want list!

This is possibly the most time I have ever spent on one manicure! I really like it though, it came out better than I thought it would. I must invest in another quick drying topcoat to speed up the drying time so I can do this kind of thing more often :) I’m getting better at placing the tape so I don’t get any polish bleeding under it, my last attempt at a tape manicure resulted in me having to paint over the join between the colours, so this is a great improvement! :)

I had a lovely time in London, it was just a shame I couldn’t stay for longer. I stayed in a hotel I like in Regents Park so spent the day after the gig floating around the park in the sunshine, it was lovely, I didn’t want to leave! I did get rather toasted though, so my skin is now a normal skin colour compared to the blueish tinge I normal have going on. Should have packed suncream instead of 4 pairs of socks! :P

Hope you are all enjoying this lovely weather, now to catch up on the many blog posts I’ve missed! Have a lovely week! xxxx