Sheldon Cooper Motivational Quotes

Ok so this is different than what I usually do but I'm really excited about the pictures I took and the Sheldon Cooper (from The Big Bang Theory) quotes that I paired them with so I want to share :)

I made these initially for a friend to be part of a calendar :)

Angled French Tip with a Black Bow - Wedding Mani!!

Last month I was in my younger brother's wedding which was such a blast! My bridesmaid dress was this cute knee-length black dress with a ribbon bow around the waist. The colors for the wedding was black, white, dark purple and gun metal gray.
So for my nails, I wanted to keep it relatively simple for the morning wedding, which made me think of doing a French Tip. I tossed around a few different ideas to incorporate some black into the design, and this is what I ended up with::

I did an angled french tip with the white, and then used black polish and a striping brush at the edge. I used a dotting tool to make the bows. I did this by putting a large dot in the middle, and then a dot on either side. Using the dotting tool, I would drag the polish from the side dots into triangle shapes to make the bow. I then used some sparkly silver and a detail brush to outline the bow and add the details. 

I love how it came out! And I was getting compliments the whole weekend :)

Spring French Tip - Blue with Polka Dots and a Daisy

Sorry it's been a while since I've posted. I've been playing with the acrylic paints but have been crazy busy so haven't sat down to upload what I've done!!

What I want to share with you now is my last manicure. I wanted something bright and colorful and fun for the oncoming spring! So I give you my spring polka dot manicure!

Except for my base and top coat, the rest was all done with acrylic paint. The blue is this lovely shimmery color from Artist's Loft called Metallic Cobalt Blue. I used the blue to paint the french tip on all my nails, except I painted my entire ring finger nail. I then used a Bright Pink paint from Craft Smart  for the polka dots. I really like using the acrylic paint for the dots because you have so much more control to make them small! With polish, I have the intent to make small dots and always end up with much bigger ones.

I then used a white paint and a detailer brush to draw my flower petals. I kept it pretty simple. At first I used some yellow paint for the center, and then later decided to put a yellow stone there instead. Top coat, and done! I love the colors!

Butterflies Using the One-Stroke Technique

I recently got a few bottles of acrylic paint to try on my nails. I recreated this design by madamluck using her tutorial. Here was my result...

Not perfect, but I think they still turned out pretty cool :)








So that's why I had gotten a few acrylics, and I really wanted to experiment with the one stroke technique! I've tried it before with just normal polish, and quickly learned why NOT to use normal polish!
After doing some google searches for inspiration, and many many practice flowers, I had decided on a butterfly instead of a flower.
So first I started with a normal french tip. Then, using a small flat brush, I dipped one corner in white paint and the other corner in orange. I dabbed off some of the excess first, and then started painting my wings. I did this by doing kind of a swoosh upwards movement, slight twist and then back down. (You can find a lot of tutorials on the movements of the brush online, but I definitely recommend lots of PRACTICE!!)

It came out pretty messy, but another plus of working with acrylic paint is that you can put on another layer or fill in missing color to help clean it up. After I finished all my swooshes, I went in with black polish and a striper brush to draw in the body and outline the wings.

I purposefully didn't outline the wings exactly, sometimes cutting into the color or extending out from the color, with an occasional detail line inside. 

I finished off the detailing by using a dotting tool to put in black dots on the wing tips as well as out side of the butterfly wings. I put in some dots of white as well, and done!

Valentine's 2013 Medley Nail Design

I hope everyone had a good Valentine's Day full of love with significant others, friends, and/or family!! 

For my own Valentine's nail design, I couldn't quite decide between a few different designs. My boyfriend had the answer:: do all of them!! 

My base colors were::

Sinful Colors in Snow Me White

Glaze in Exceptionally Gifted

Sinful Colors in Slate

Sinful Colors in Out of This World (just a thin coat works since you add more with the gradient) 

Nina in Lilac-ing Discipline

I use my sponge technique for the gradient with Sinful Colors in Out of This World, Dancing Nails, and Under 18.

On the nail with the Snow Me White base, I was inspired by this heart balloon design, but opposite colors. For the hearts, I used China Glaze in Ruby Pumps. I used a very small dotting tool and did two dots right next to each other. I then used the dotting tool to do the bottom of the heart by dragging polish from the two dots down to a point, and then continued straight down to the edge of the nail. 

On the nail with the Exceptionally Gifted base color, I used my dotting tool to make hearts with Sinful Colors in Black on Black. I was hoping to manage making all the hearts the same size but I'm not quite THAT steady with the dotting tool, so my hearts varied in sizes :)

For the nail with the Slate base color, I was inspired by this design with the light gray and pink and white hearts drawn on. I used Black on Black, Kiss Bikini Pink, and Kiss Silver Glitter for my heart outlines. 

On the nail with the gradient, I really didn't know what to add to it. I thought about making a heart outline in black, but that seemed too simple. I ended up using some of the rhinestones that I have to add some bling! I used stones in pink, silver, and red and arranged them in a heart, with the pink in the middle of the pinkish polish, the red stones over the silver polish, and silver stones over the red polish. 

NOTE ON USING THE RHINESTONES::

In the past, I've used the Best Glue Ever since I've seen it recommended on a few different nail blogs. It seems to work ok, but in the past most stones would last a few days and then fall off, so that I'd hafta glue another on. And excess glue can stick out from around the stone and can add up when putting the second or third stone on the same spot. 

This time (mainly because with the heart design I knew I'd need to arrange, rearrange, and move the stones around a lot) I decided to put a top coat on and then place the stones while the polish was still nice and wet. That way I could move the stones around as needed to get the design right. After that was dry, I put an extra 2 layers of top coat (trying to minimize how much goes over on top of the stones). The stones were stuck there for over a week without falling off! I lost two stones, but they BROKE off, leaving the flat bottom behind. The top coat I use is from Beauty Secrets :)

On the nail with Lilac-ing Discipline as the base, I used a nail art pen Sally Hansen in Green on one hand and Bright Blue on the other. The pens made it easy to write out "QT PIE" and "I <3 U" inspired by the candy hearts. 

I definitely had some fun with this! Happy VDay!! <3 <3 <3

Pink and Black Patterned Nail Design

I loved this manicure! It was so pretty and simple!!

First off, I left my right pinky with the sparkly silver left over from my New Years Design::

The rest of my nails, I painted China Glaze in Exceptionally Gifted.

On most of my fingers, I used Black on Black with a fine striping brush to draw diagonal lines from bottom left to top right, and then from bottom right to top left, intersecting each other.

On my ring fingers, I used striping tape going diagonally to mark out a type of checkered pattern.

Then I painted over the tape with Black on Black, waited a minute or two, and took off the tape, leaving the pink showing.

To finish off, I put some of my rhinestones on each nail. Black stones on most nails, with silver stones on the nails with mostly black.

The stones would fall off occasionally and so I would need to reglue some new ones on. I did try setting the gems just in a fresh top coat and that seemed to work about the same.
Anyways, I thought it was real pretty, elegant, and simple!

Super Bowl XLVIII Seahawks Argyle Patterned Nail Design

I know I've fallen behind on these blogs, so I made myself promise not to paint my nails again until I get something written! And so with that, I share the design I did to support the Seattle Seahawks at the Super Bowl this year.

The colors and polishes I used were::

Kiss Beach Green (it comes with a striper brush so getting an even coat was a little tough)
SinfulColors Slate
China Glaze First Mate
Kiss Silver Glitter

I do one nail (my pinky on my left hand) with Broncos colors. The polishes I used for that are:
Sally Hansen Hard to Get
China Glaze First Mate
Sinful Colors Snow Me White

I was inspired to do the argyle pattern from this youtube tutorial by MissJenFABOULOUS and it's super easy!!
The trick was to use scotch tape, cut off the jagged edges to make a straight edge, and then use the squared corner to get the pattern nice and clean!

I painted my nails with the Slate on the half of the nail at the base and the Beach Green on the other half. 

MAKE SURE YOUR NAILS ARE ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY DRY BEFORE YOU PUT THE TAPE ON THEM!!!!! 

I thought they were dry, but the tape ended up taking most of the polish off with it. When I redid them, I waited until the next day before putting the tape on.

Put two squared off corners point-to-point, one over the green half, the other over the gray half. Then I put on a coat of First Mate and pulled off the tape after a minute or two had passed.

For the last step, I used Silver Glitter with its striper brush to put on the finishing touch to make the argyle pattern. As mentioned in the tutorial video, don't have the stripes meet in the middle of the edges of the design, otherwise you end up just making a giant diamond on your nail. 

Then just put on your top coat, and done! A sweet argyle pattern that can be used with a huge variety of colors! And they showed my pride for the Seahawks so well too!! (In the pic above you can kinda see my Broncos nail with the orange and blue, and then I used white with a striper brush to finish the pattern.)

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!