Fall Aspen Trees Nail Design

I *LOVE* fall! The slight chill in the air. The pumpkin patches and corn mazes. The lovely colors! So, while surrounding areas are flooding and shut down, for this rainy day inside the house I decided to do a tribute to fall.

I did a search for aspen-themed nail designs, but couldn't find any! And so, I did my best.

After my Beauty Secrets base coat, I applied two thin coats of SinfulShine Rendezvous (from SinfulColors). Once again, I love this polish! Beautiful color and shine!

Then, using a striping brush with Finger Paints Hip Hip Hue-Ray, I did a vertical stripe, flicking it slightly at the end/top. I then used a very fine brush with SinfulColors Winter Wonder to add in some small lines/dots up the trunks of the trees.

I then used a small dotting tool and Orly Hook Up to put some leaves on the trees. I also did a mix of the Hook Up with China Glaze Starboard to give some leaves a hint of green. In the pic below, the two fingers on the left have the leaves with a slight green, the ones on the right have not had those leaves added yet. You can kinda tell in the pic how much it gives the tree more dimension.

Then, with some of the trees, I decided to add a bit of orange. I used Nina Burnished Bronze and mixed it in with some Hook Up and added a few hints to the occasional tree. Add in a shiny top coat, and voila! Beautiful fall aspens!!

Sunflower Nail Design

So I apologize it's been FOREVER since I've written a post! Mostly because it's been forever since I've really done anything creative with my nails. It's been a busy summer! Vacations, family visiting, moves, new jobs, and so forth! But this past weekend I finally sat down and did my nails to share with you!

Sunflower nails!!!

So, after my Beauty Secrets base coat, I painted my nails a couple coats of SinfulShine Rendezvous. I love this color! I was out of my China Glaze For Audrey, but this Rendezvous is so similar! Then I used a large dotting tool with Finger Paints Bronze Sculpture for the center of the flowers. 

Then, using a small brush, I painted on the petals with Orly Hook Up. I was planning on using a fine brush and outline all the petals with black, but they overlapped so much I was worried about them looking too crowded. So instead I went over the petals of some flowers with Orly Glitz.

To finish, I went back over the centers with the dotting tool and Bronze Sculpture to clean them up. End with Beauty Secrets top coat, and done! Sunflowers for September!!

Street Style, Bricks and Graffiti Nail Art Design

So I shared my April entry for the Sally Hansen I Heart Nail Art contest which was the color blocking. Now to share my May entry!! The theme for May was "Street Art"... And I really wasn't sure what to do for it. I've lived in small towns all my life, what do I know about city and street art?? My boyfriend had the idea:: do  a brick wall with graffiti on it. Brilliant!!

So, after my Beauty Secrets base coat, I did a couple coats of Sinful Colors Slate, which is a nice gray that would be the mortar or cement or whatever between my bricks. I then used striping tape and did pretty much a checkered pattern with the striping tape. Then I painted over the tape with Sinful Colors Under 18, which was my brick color. After peeling off the tape, I used a small brush to fill in one vertical line in each row with Under 18 in order to make the brick pattern. After my bricks were dry, I used two Sally Hansen Nail Art Pens (Green and Bright Blue) to do my graffiti on every other nail. I did my initials (LR) and Nail Diaries, and a heart. It was certainly tough to do on my right hand while writing with my left, but I love how it turned out!! I then used my Matte finish top coat (since brick walls usually aren't sparkly and shiny) and done!! 

I LOVE how it turned out!! I'm hoping I get enough votes for the contest to move forward, but even if not, it was super fun!! :)

Mother's Day Bouquet of Tulips Nail Design

Since my mother was up visiting for my graduation this past weekend, I was lucky enough to see her on Mother's Day this year! So to pay tribute to my wonderful mother that has always been a huge source of support, I painted some Mother's Day Tulips on my nails!!

After my Beauty Secrets base coat, I did two coats of China Glaze For Audrey. I had no clue how to paint tulips, so I just kinda winged it. They didn't come out perfectly, but they still worked! The colors I used for the flowers were:: Nina Lilac-ing Discipline, China Glaze Exceptionally Gifted, and Orly Hook Up. To paint them, I used a dotting tool and put one big dot of color on my nail. Then, after dipping my dotting tool in the paint again, I kinda dragged it up one side of the dot, then on the other side of the dot, kinda making a half-moon shape. I then dragged up one more time in the center to that it made three petals. Again, not perfect, but I could at least still tell they were tulips!

I then finished it off with Sinful Colors Happy Ending for the stems and leaves and my Beauty Secrets top coat. I also threw on some Finger Paints Sparkle Top Coat for my ring fingers to add a celebratory touch! :)

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there!!

Newspaper Transferred to Your Nails: Garfield Is On My Thumb!!

Ok, I've wanted to try transferring images/words/etc onto my nail for several months now. What I see most often in tutorials is using newspaper to transfer the print to your nail. I found this video tutorial from cutepolish to be the most direct and helpful.

However, I didn't want to just do boring ol' words, I wanted to transfer the funny pages!! So, after a base coat of white polish, I attempted to transfer the faces of some beloved characters, as well as some of the funny words they say.

Needless to say, my nails didn't come out nearly as clean and orderly as those in the tutorial, and I'm missing some of the details of the characters. I don't know if this is because I started out with white instead of a thinner coat of a light gray, or if it's just generally tougher to transfer over detailed designs/drawings. But some of them came out great!! I have one little guy from Dilbert (I don't know his name) looking all pissy on my pinky nail, and Blondie looks great on my thumb! I'm thinking I will try this again in the future, but maybe with the sudoku or crossword puzzle :)

Nail Dress by Kiss Trial

**NOTE** When I wrote this post, I named the Nail Dress as being by Sally Hansen. It is actually by Kiss. Oops!! Sorry!! **

So, as I was skimming through the new issue of Cosmo for some pages full of colorful patterns to use when I try out the transferring technique, I stumbled across a coupon to try out the Nail Dress stick-on design polish from Kiss. I figured... why not?? So I decided to get them a try!
Here's the coupon I found in the magazine:

So, you can see there were only four different singles to try. Not really enough for a full manicure. So I painted all my nails except for my ring finger nails and left those ones with just a base coat in preparation for these fun sparkly options. 

 What I did for the colors on my other nails was used a nice dark, sparkly purple from Finger Paints (the name of which escapes me at the moment... I'll hafta check back on it later) and then mixed in a drop or two of my Sally Hansen Black Out to make it even darker. In the following pics, my flash on my phone camera makes the color out to be a on the bluish side, but it's purple, I promise! I also used the Shimmer Top Coat that I have to add a little extra bit of rosy sparkle to it.

For the Nail Dresses, You just peel and place on your nail, and then you need to trim the edges. I used a small pair of hygiene scissors you usually find in a little travel kit or whatever. This was the toughest part, not just getting it trimmed right at the tip of your nail, but also along the sides. The jewels on these designs made the task harder than it probably usually is. (**NOTE** On the actual packages you can get in the store, they supply a small emory board and you file the edge to get rid of the excess and can file it close to the edge of your nail... this actually caused me some more problems with the edges peeling back than when I used the small hygiene scissors, even tho those weren't as precise.**)

But here are my results!!

I really liked these fun designs and they certainly added a bit of glam and sparkle to my nails! The down side that I found was, although they don't "chip" exactly, the edges along the tip of the nail did start peeling up a little and I had a couple small tears, especially where there was a jewel that happened to be sitting on the edge. You can kinda see this in the following pics (which were taken a couple days later) where you can start to see the white tips of my nail at the edges in some spots.

All-in-all I don't know if I would use them for a full manicure, but I really liked them as an accent nail! Nice and sparkly!

Hand Sanitizer Nail Art: Not Just For Killing Germs!!

Ok, I found this technique from cutepolish when I was randomly Googling/searching for new ideas, and just had to try it!! There is also another tutorial from SimpleLittlePleasures which is really helpful, and I have used several of her tutorials in the past also. She had helpful hints for if you can't find a spray hand sanitizer (which I couldn't).

Anyways, it comes out looking really cool!!

So, here's the run down of what you do::

I chose 4 fun, bright colors: Nina Caribbean Blue, Sinful Colors Happy Ending, Sally Hansen Hard to Get, and China Glaze Rich & Famous. I painted my nails white first so the colors would show up extra bright, and then painted in blocks of these fun colors, and ended up with this:

Then, you need a cup filled with room-temperature water, some black nail polish (I used Sally Hansen Black Out) and a bottle of spray hand sanitizer. I didn't find spray hand sanitizer, so I followed the tips from SimpleLittlePleasures and cut some regular hand sanitizer with some rubbing alcohol in one of those small, travel spritzers. 

The tutorials state to use 3 or 4 drops of black on the surface of the water, but that didn't come out dark enough for me, so I used closer to 8 or 9 drops. Then, once the color has spread out on the surface of the water, you spritz it with your sanitizer, and that will form spots where the black color has parted. I wrapped my fingers with tape and dipped my fingers in the water. The black polish will transfer to your nail, leaving open the spots the hand sanitizer opened up, letting the bright neon colors show through. It's super messy and I needed to redo my first few nails, not really getting the hang of it till my fourth try or so, but it turned out super fun!