Yummy-Looking Nails!!

My nails look like chocolates with icing drizzles over them! I kinda want to eat them :)

So, once again, I was cruising Google images for nail design inspiration. What I came across was a picture from A Polish Addict and thought it looked fun! She called the technique a "string manicure" and includes a link to a youtube tutorial that is pretty helpful as well.

The gist is this:
I painted two coats of Finger Paints Bronze Sculpture. The three different pinks I used were Finger Paints A Heart For Art, China Glaze Exceptionally Gifted, and China Glaze Rich & Famous.
To do the stringy effect (which I wasn't too good at 'cuz I got impatient easily, thus why my nails include thicker blobbies lol), you put a couple drops of polish on whatever palette you have (I used one of my trusty index cards, of course!) and then use a small dotting tool to stir it up. It takes some time, but after a while, the polish will get kinda tacky and you'll have some strings hanging from your tool after you dip it. Then those stringies go over your finger nail!

I certainly plan on trying this again in the future, perhaps with a tad bit more patience! But, still, they're yummy-looking!! ;)

Rainbow French Tips!

Inspiration comes at the most random times! I was at my internship, and the woman sitting next to me had a classic french tip manicure. It reminded me that this whole self-care hobby started with that basic manicure. I would redo it every week to make sure it always looked nice and clean. Of course, since I've branched out I haven't been able to go back to doing something that simple or plain!

But it made me think... I've played around with french tips before, what else can I do to spice it up?? Why not a rainbow gradient in pastel colors?? Sounded good to me!!

After my Beauty Secrets base coat, I did a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust and then topped it with a coat of Nina French Ivory. I've used this in the past to give the majority of my nail that is not colored at the tip a bit of a sparkle.

The colors I used for the rainbow are::
Finger Paints Guggen I'm Lime
China Glaze Tree Hugger
China Glaze For Audrey
Nina Lilac-ing Discipline
China Glaze Exceptionally Gifted

I've mentioned the steps in previous posts how to do the gradient, and I did it no differently this time. The only difference is that I used the side edges of the sponge to apply it just to the tips of my nails. Here's what my sponge looked like:

As you can kinda tell, the center area of the lines of polish are a little thicker and still a bit wet, because my nails never touched that center line. I used just the left and right edges, which is why the colors sometimes go in different directions on different nails. I then used some Kiss sparkly silver and a striping brush to draw the edge to the pastel tips and finished with Beauty Secret top coat. I love how it turned out!

Easy Rose Nail Art Design: Everything's Coming Up Roses!

So, I bought this new purse on-line and I'm totally excited about it! It's by Iron Fist and you can see it here on Amazon. So, in my excitement, I thought I would do my nails to match! And so, here is my tutorial on how to make cute roses, and some not-so-great-but-will-still-work hearts!!

So, hopefully you viewed the link to the purse so that you know what I'm trying to match. I looked up nail designs for roses but didn't find anything to quite fit my skill level or my supplies. So what follows is an easy tutorial on how to create super cute roses! I also tell you how to create my not-so-great hearts, lol!

OK, so before I dive into my tutorial, I want to explain how I go about planning my designs. Some people have fancy palettes... I use regular index cards for my practice! Below is my practice index card for this particular design so you can see what I do.

I tried a few roses on their own, and then tried one on the purposed background color also. After a few practices, I feel OK to try it on my actual nails.

So, after my Beauty Secrets base coat, I did two coats of China Glaze Rich & Famous.

I looked up tutorial on how to do roses online but I didn't really find anything suiting what I wanted. So, I kinda used one or two in combination with my own ideas. What I came up with was this:: (and here is where I wish I had a nice set up to shoot video of my process!!)
*I used Sinful Colors Under 18 for the rose
*I used a small-to-medium sized dotting tool to make four dots of the red color. These dots do not need to be even or the same size... in fact, it looks better if they're all a different size or if you add a random extra fifth dot. I did at least two clusters of red on each nail. Here's what it looked like::

After that, I used my Finger Paints Sketch N Etch (a nice deep green) to draw some leaves onto each rose. Later I ended up using some lighter green to highlight each leaf, but that's not necessary.

After I had that all set up, I used a thin striping brush and my Nina Black to outline my roses. After that, I used my brush and black polish to draw small curves within the flowers to outline the petals. You really don't need that many to make it look nice and rosy!

At this point, you can outline the leaves as well, but I chose not to. So this is a really easy way to do spectacular roses!! 

However, since my purse's handles are a different pattern in black with white hearts, I figured I'd try to recreate that effect. So I cleaned my ring nail fingernails and painted them with my Nina Black and used my Finger Paints Hip Hip Hue-Ray! for the hearts.

This is where I really wished I had a stamping tool... they could've come out so much cleaner and prettier!! But, alas, I do not have those tools so here is how I made the hearts (which was quite easy, at least)::

I used a smallish-medium dotting tool to make two equal-sized dots next to each other, then used a brush to fill in the bottom half of the heart. I did this in a staggered formation on each ring nail, which you can see in the first picture. Despite the fact that my hearts aren't perfect (even tho I'm super happy with my roses! lol), my nails match quite nicely with my purse!!

I hope that you are able to recreate these awesome roses! It really is quite easy! Like I said, I am tempted to make a tutorial video, so if I hear from my readers (if there are any out there lol!) that you want to see a video, I will make one for you!! Until then, hopefully this helps!!

Have fun out there!!

Disappointment, Re-dos, and Tie Dying!

So, today while I was at work, after I chipped a couple nails as well as some of my peacock manicure, I was staring at my nails and trying to decide what I was going to do with them this evening. A couple ideas floated through my mind, including some crazy designs I've seen tutorials on. But since tomorrow is my first day of internship, I thought that perhaps I shouldn't go *too* crazy with the nails!

I finally decided on a gradient using four shades of purple. I painted each nail a different color, lightest to darkest, starting with my thumb and leaving my ring fingernail bare. Then, at the tip of each of those nails, I sponged on the next darkest color so that each nail had a gradient and they would all connect in a way. On the pinky nails which were the darkest purple, I used black for the darker color. For the ring fingers, I used the make-up sponge technique and did the entire gradient: lightest to darkest, base to tip. Here's how it turned out::

My problem was that my two lighter colors were both really light, and my two darker colors were both really dark. I need some colors in-between to make the gradient smoother.
So this actually was really bugging me, and just couldn't stand to keep this on my nails for my first day of term tomorrow!

And so, disappointed, I started again from scratch.

I'm really happy with my re-do! I decided to do a tie-dye technique that I've used a few times in the past, but I don't believe I've shared it yet. Here are some examples of when I've done this in the past:

So you can see that you can use a variety of colors and it tends to always come out looking awesome!! I learned this from a YouTube tutorial by PackAPunchPolish and it is fabulous!! This time around, I decided to document the process myself so I have a series of pics to walk you through what I did this evening!

After my Beauty Secrets base coat, I painted a one thick coat of China Glaze Exceptionally Gifted.

The colors I picked to use in my tie-dy were: Finger Paints Bronze Sculpture; Finger Paints A Heart For Art; China Glaze Rich & Famous; and I added China Glaze Exceptionally Gifted as well to help it blend better. Then, I cut myself a smallish square of plastic wrap.

Then, drip drops of each color spread out in the center of the plastic wrap piece...

... fold the plastic wrap in half so that the polish is folded on top of itself...

... use your finger to squish all the drops together...

... unfold the plastic wrap...

... then place a section of the plastic wrap over a nail and press down lightly. Then pick a different spot on the plastic wrap and press that onto the second nail. For tonight's project, I used one square of plastic wrap for each hand.

As you can see, it makes quite a mess on your fingers! You can easily use tape around your nail to make clean-up so much easier. I just didn't think about it beforehand.

I'm quite happy with this color combination! Pinks and browns are classic and actually work quite well for me as a redhead! BONUS: I can match my outfit and/or make up to this color scheme for my first day tomorrow if I so choose! 

UPDATE:

They coordinated so well with my outfit today! :)

Pretty as a Peacock

So normally I browse google results for inspiration as to my next nail design. This time, inspiration came from my new cell phone case: Peacock feathers! 

 

So, I did look up some tutorials and pictures of peacock feather designs. The one I took the most tips from was a video tutorial by SimpleNailArtDesigns and I'm envious of the brush she used 'cuz it draws such a fine line!! 

Anyways, to do this design, I used a base color of Sally Hansen HD Resolution. After using a striping brush with my Nina Black to draw the base of the feather, I added in lines of Nina Shiny Penny and Finger Paints Sketch N Etch. I then used 4 different sized dotting tools to do the eye of the feather. I did the largest dot in Sketch N Etch, the next in Shiny Penny, the next in Nina Caribbean Blue and the smallest center dot in Finger Paints Cerulean Seascape. Then I went back with the black and outlined the eye. Add topcoat and DONE! I think next time I may do the eyes bigger like how they were done in the tutorial above.

Funky French

Once again I felt like doing something on the simple side. While browsing Google pics, I found one picture of a black french tip manicure with two stripes of blue going diagonal across the nail. (I can't seem to find the picture now, but it's out there!)

Anyways, so what I did was Beauty Secrets base coat, and then a coat of Nina French Ivory. I then did a diagonal french tip in Nina Black, except on my ring fingers. Then I used Nina Caribbean Blue to draw a stripe along the edge of the black and some flourishes along the tip. Then I used the black to draw mirrored flourishes on the clear half of the nail. Then to add a little extra, I put some small dots in the blue near the black flourishes. On my ring fingers I did the opposite colors.

And there ya go!

Double Dots!!

My New Years mani started chipping, so I figured I'd do something else! I thought I'd do polka dots, but with a little extra something.

After my Beauty Secrets base coat, I put on 2 coats of a nice sparkly gray, Sinful Colors Winter Wonder. Then I picked out a bunch of different color pairs that I thought would work together.

The pairs were: 

*China Glaze Spontaneous & Finger Paints Be A Pal-Ette

*Sinful Colors Slate & Finger Paints Hue Left A Message? (originally I had an OPI color instead of the Finger Paints, but it was sealed shut and couldn't get it open :P)

*China Glaze For Audrey & China Glaze Exceptionally Gifted

*Nina Caribbean Blue & Finger Paints Cerulean Seascape

So I picked out two dotting tools, one about half the size of the other. That way I could do a large dot of one color, and then once that was try, I'd do a smaller dot of a different color within the larger one.

(The large dots with one color of smaller dots)

And then my Beauty Secrets top coat! Basic, but real fun looking!!