Ladybugs or Ladybirds?

Today I wanted to do a mani to brighten up my day. It's been so grey in London for so long is getting depressing. I wanted something Spring-like and to add my cure for grey days - a bit of sparkly! I love ladybugs/ ladybirds, they make me smile and I associate them with spring, so decided to do a ladybug inspired mani.

I saw this look a little while ago on Pinterest (here) and wanted to duplicate it. Now I personally think this look is super cute as a pedicure. In fact I like it better on toenails than on fingernails, but I know a lot of people have a thing against adult womens toes. Cute baby toes are fine but not grown ups. Eew! Right?

I'm fine with toes and pedicures adult or otherwise, but for people who don't like them my pedicure pics are all linked and not part of this main post. You must click on the links, at the bottom of this post, to see them....therefore only click if you want to!

I started off with one coat of the red polish from Beauty UKs "Wild Child" collection/set. It's a bright primary red colour. If you're in the UK it's definitely a set of polishes worth having for summer. The set costs just £4.99 for 6 bright colourful polishes and is available from Superdrug and the Beauty UK website here. In fact I think some of them are dupes for the NARS Thankoon collection. That's a near future dupe mission of mine and I hope to update you with a post soon!

On my monitor this looks more orange than it is. It's a bright post-box red in real life.

I wanted my mani-pedi to be different from the lady bug looks I've seen before so I added glitter! Two coats of Barry M Red Glitter. Love this, it's a very dense bright red glitter polish, and I know I'll be wearing this polish again on my toes and fingers. It's very Wizard of Oz ruby slippers, don't you think?

Next for the black details of the lady bugs I used MUA Extreme felt eyeliner. It's a liquid eyeliner but I use it as a nail art pen. Kudos to Enigmatic Rambles, she came up with the idea!

The extreme felt eyeliners retail for only £2.00 and are available at Superdrug here and the Makeup Academy online shop here. The great thing about this eyeliner is that it's got great staying power even though it's not waterproof. It took about a weeks worth of swimming sessions before it started to fade. Impressive!

Lastly for the white dots I used my Sally Hansen white polish and a tooth pick. I decided not to use a topcoat as I wanted the black colour to stay matte. Hrmm, though now that I think about it lady bugs are pretty glossy...oops.

I think this design suits really short and round nails rather than my long rectangular shaped nails (compare my index finger with the others). Still had fun painting my lady bugs and will be sporting glittery lady bug nails again for sure this summer!

Hope you liked this mani, and for those of you without pedicure issues you can see the "foot shots" here.