New Years 2013 Nail Design

For my New Years celebration this year, I wanted to try some different things on each nail, and to keep it sparkly!!

Firstly, I want to apologize for the pictures. Most of them I took just this morning so they're not as clean as they were when they were freshly done.

SO, after my base coat, on each hand I painted two nails with Finger Paints in Cerulean Seascape, one with Orly in Glitz, and then the last with Sinful Colors in Out Of This World (on my left hand I didn't paint my thumb, so on my right I painted two with this color).

On the two nails painted with Cerulean Seascape, I wanted confetti. For one of them I just used a coat of Finger Paints Sparkle Top Coat. For the other I used Nicole by O.P.I. in Pick Of The Glitter. I did a thin coat over the whole nail, and with every additional coat I only went over the lower half or just the tip of the nail, so that the glitter was more concentrated at the tip. I also did one with just a coat of Nina Dime Piece for the confetti.

On the nails with Orly Glitz as the base coat, I then went over with with a few coats of Orly Too Fab to add some gold glitter. I did the similar thing with the Out Of This World base coat: I did coats of both the Sparkle Top Coat and Nina in Dime Piece.

I left alone one of the silver nails, but for the other silver and gold nails, I used striping tape to make designs.

I then went over the nails and tape with Cerulean Seascape. On my right hand, I left the entire tip of the nail gold.

I recently acquired some little rhinestones in a variety of colors, so I just had to add a little more bling!

My 2013 Christmas Design - Foggy Night

So, I know I've been MIA lately... but that doesn't mean I haven't been doing my nails! I have a lot to catch up on, but I thought I'd start with what I did for the recent holidays first. Last year, I did strings of lights as well as some themed designs including a New Mexico Christmas. My inspiration this year was actually a Christmas card my future sister-in-law sent to me, which was a snowy, foggy gray night with a winding fence and a few lamp posts down the path in the snow.

After my base coat, I did a light coat of Sinful Colors in Snow Me White. To do the design, I used a make-up sponge to do the gradient. I go into the technique more in my Snow Day post. At the tip of the sponge, I put a thick strip of Sinful Colors in Slate, and then a thick strip of Sinful Colors in Snow Me White. I then put a strip of Sinful Colors in Out Of This World in the middle, where the two other colors meet. 

At this time, I want to share a trick I recently learned about! When doing a messy technique like this, I usually end up forgetting to put tape around my nail and wind up with polish all over the place and needing to go back with remover and a qtip to clean it up. This time, I used Elmer's Glue. As a kid, did you ever put Elmer's Glue all over your hand, wait for it to dry, and then peel it off in a big layer? Same principle! Put the glue on your skin around your nail, but be careful not to get any on the nail itself or it will take the polish off your nail in that spot also. Wait for the glue to dry (which took some time but I was waiting for the coat of polish to dry too, so it was no biggie), and then continue with your messy tricks! After you're done, just peel the glue off and it's nice and clean!

To make the lamp posts, I used Finger Paints in Ch-Art-Coal Black with a thin striping brush and after wiping off most of the polish. I used a dotting tool with Orly in Glitz at the top and then a little detail of black on top to finish the lamp posts. Once everything was dry, I did a coat of China Glaze in Fairy Dust to give it some sparkle and the impression of a light snow. 

Doctor Who Themed Nail Design

I am kind of a Whovian, and since the 50th Anniversary episode is only *glances at clock* 17 hours or so away, I thought I'd share my Doctor Who inspired nail design!!

(don't worry, I was parked in the parking lot when I took this... not driving the interstate!)

When deciding what to do on my nails, I did a Goggle search for Doctor Who themed nails and found a pretty good amount of pictures to give me ideas!

For the bowtie, I painted my nail with Sinful Colors in Snow Me White for the background. To do the bow itself, I used Nina in Love Struck and a dotting tool. 

1. I started by making two triangles with their corners touching, like this:: |><| 

2. and then I put a big dot in the middle, where the triangles meet, and that gives you the shape of the bowtie! 

3. I then went in with Finger Paints in Ch-Art-Coal Black, which is the bottle that comes with a striping brush. I used the striping brush to draw the outlines around the middle knot, and the outsides of the triangle, and put in some little lines as accents, radiating from the center out into the triangles.

For my Dalek nail, I painted my nail in Nina Shiny Penny. For the Dalek hemispheres, I used Orly in Glitz with a large dotting tool. I put the dots on very lightly, not wanting to flatten them. Of course, they still flatted over time, but not nearly as much. 

For the TARDIS, I was lucky to have a perfect TARDIS blue already on hand! I used Finger Paints in Cerulean Seascape, which is a deep but brilliant blue! I then used a dotting tool again with Snow Me White to do the three squares for the windows and the sign. Using Ch-Art-Coal Black, I outlined the windows, including stripes through the middles of the windows to make the squares. After outlining the sign, I wiped off as much polish from the brush as possible, and made little dash marks to give the impression that there's writing on the sign. 

The Bad Wolf was simple. I painted my nail Sinful Colors Black on Black. Then I used Snow Me White with a small brush to write the words. I dipped the tip of the brush very VERY lightly in the polish so that the lines wouldn't be too think. It was *super* tough to write using my left hand onto a nail on my right hand! Afterwards, I used a matte finish top coat which gave it a cool effect.

The galaxy design is similar to one that I've done before and written about here in the entry about sponges. The tutorial I used specifically for my inspiration this time around is from Polish and Pearls. She even has a video tutorial on YouTube that was very helpful. I wanted to recreate it exactly, but my local store had NONE of the colors that she used! Her post was over a year ago, so maybe they have been discontinued. ANYWAYS, I just ended up using what colors I already have. After a base coat of Ch-Art-Coal Black, the colors I used on my sponges were::

Finger Paints in Cerulean Seascape

China Glaze in Rich & Famous

Sinful Colors in Slate

Since Cerulean Seascape is so dark on top of the black, I also used just a tad of Nina Caribbean Blue to give a hint of a lighter blue, but only a tiny bit. In the future I might try and find a slightly lighter pink or a good bright blue, that's not too light or that has a slight green undertone (like the Caribbean Blue does).
Anyways, I followed the advice from Polish and Pearls to use just the edge of a wedge sponge to dab on the color. In the past, I've used a piece of the sponge and held it using tweezers, which I would then dip in the polish and dab onto the nail. Both techniques give you the same result. I started with the Cerulean Seascape, then overlapped it a bit with Slate, and then some Rich & Famous. It doesn't hafta be perfect or exact. Then I used two different glitter polishes:: China Glaze in Fairy Dust, which has real fine glitter, and Nina in Dime Piece which has the larger glitter pieces. 

I love the combination of these colors and the dimension the two different glitters give to the design! I might hafta do this design on all of my nails!

And that's my Doctor Who manicure!! Once I was done, I couldn't stop looking at them! I'm so happy with them and I'm looking forward to the 50th tomorrow!! Allons-y!!

Trying New Polishes - Matte Finishes and Glitter

I found a new line from Sinful Colors that have a matte finish. I picked up two, once of which is called Leather Loose. It's a real deep, shimmery brown. On it's own, it looks kinda interesting as a matte finish, I'm not quite sure how I feel about it.
I also found some fun glitter from Nicole by OPI called Pick Of The Glitter, which has flecks of copper and an aquamarine-like blue. I thought this would go perfectly with a dark, shimmery brown! The colors matched perfectly! I paired it with a matte finish top coat from Kiss to dull down the shine of the glitter a bit, and it came out real nice!!

 (Natural light)

(with flash)

Trying New Polishes - Fuzzy Coat by Sally Hansen

I was in Target and spotted some polishes that looked like they were mimicking yarn and sweaters, called Fuzzy Coat by Sally Hansen. And since it's been getting cold, and plus I've been on a crocheting kick to make presents for the holidays, I felt like it'd be cute for my nails to look like they're enjoying sweater season too!! I picked up All Yarned Up

Then I found a super pretty blue by Sinful Colors called Aquamarine that matched the flecks of blue in the All Yarned Up pretty well. I needed about 3 coats of All Yarned Up to cover up my whole nail but I thought it looked really cool!

(I forgot to get a pic after I got them cleaned up... oh well!)

I finished them off with a shimmer top coat from Kiss. I considered trying a coat or two of All Yarned Up over the top of the Aquamarine, but that'll be for next time I guess. :) It did have some texture to it, but not so much that it was distracting. I'll have fun experimenting with it more in the future!

Fall Gradient Nail Art

I decided to do a simple gradient for fall.

(with the flash)

I used Orly Glitz for the gold, then Nina Shiny Penny as the middle/transition color. For the tips I couldn't decide between Nina Candi Apple or Nina Burnished Bronze. So... I did a few of each! I used the sponge technique I've blogged about in the past. Seriously, this is one of my favorite, easiest tricks! 

After my nails dried, I used some black polish with a striping brush to draw a couple leaves on my ring finger nails. Then some glossy top coat, and done! 

(without the flash)

Purple Fall Nail Art

I think the beginning of fall has put me in a purple mood! I just can't seem to get enough of purple! This is the design I did last week:

I found this design idea from Kimiko's Nail Art. I don't have acrylic paints, so I just used regular polish and it seemed to work pretty well. I used Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Pat On The Black which is this beautiful, rick, deep purple that I just picked up and I love! To do the dots, I mixed the Pat On The Back with Sinful Colors in Snow Me White, slowly adding more and more of the white to make the dots gradually lighter. This worked really well and was super simple! The only downside is that I ended up using A LOT of white polish, especially toward the end, in order to lighten it up so much!

But I love this simple "dotticure" and it got me a lot of compliments at work!

This weekend, I still had purple on the brain, but wanted to do something different for each nail.

 (Please don't mind my ugly thumb nail... I had to break up a fight btwn our dogs and my nail got cracked in the process :( )

So, after my Beauty Secrets base coat, I painted each nail a different color. The thumb's color is the same Sally Hansen Pat On The Black. Then my fingers pointer to pinky are: Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Trouble Maker; China Glaze in Exceptionally Gifted; Sinful Colors in Out Of This World; and Finger Paints in Be A Pal-ette.

For the nails with Pat On The Black as the base, I used this picture as an inspiration. For the dots, I used Finger Paints in Be A Pal-ette, Sally Hansen in Trouble Maker, China Glaze in Spontaneous, Nina in Lilac-ing Discipline, and China Glaze in Exceptionally Gifted. I did larger dots for the darker purples, and tried to go smaller the lighter the color. I also put in some dots of China Glaze in Fairy Dust to put in a little sparkle. Here's the result::

 For my fingers with Sally Hansen in Trouble Maker as the base, I used striping tape to tape some designs and then put the Pat On The Black over it to make a slight contrast.

 For my fingers with the China Glaze in Exceptionally Gifted as the base, I used the Tie-Dye technique that I've already written about. I used Be A Pal-ette, Sally Hansen Diamond Strength in Save The Date, Sinful Colors in Dancing Nails, and a drop or two of each China Glaze in Rich & Famous and in VIII. I then later went in with Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme wear in Golden-I to draw in gold swirls over the marble design. I used this picture for inspiration, although I do not have that cool foil that they used (but I wish I did!).

(I forgot to tape up around the nail, so I made a mess!! Oops!)

For the nails with the Sinful Colors in Out Of This World as a base, I did a gradient inspired by the third nail of this picture. On the sponge, I painted Out Of This World at the top, then a strip of Sinful Colors in Dancing Nails, and then Sally Hansen in Save The Date. I love the combination of these colors!! I'll need to do this again!!

And then for the last fingers, with Be A Pal-ette for the base, I used Orly in Too Fab to put some gold glitter toward the base.

And that rounds out all my nails! I love the variety in this manicure! It sure took a lot of different colors, but it was totally worth it!