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!

Braids Design for Nails

While I was looking over the other entries for the Sally Hansen I Heart Nail Art competition, I noticed a lot of people had done what looks like a braid design, where the colors weave down the nail. So I definitely had to Google it!!
Here is the tutorial I found::
Braided Nail Art

Here are the three colors I used:
Nina Shiny Penny
Finger Paints Bronze Sculpture
China Glaze Exceptionally Gifted

And here are my results!! It was tough to get a picture because the flash kept reflecting back at me, so that's why I took so many!

Color Blocking Nail Design

No, I didn't fall off the face of the Earth! Although, it has felt like that at some times. Life has certainly been crazy as I wrap up my internship and grad program, job search, and generally stress out about graduation and the coming summer!!

I've actually still been painting my nails this whole month, though I've been keeping the same manicure for a week at a time on average which is much longer than usual. So I will do my best to get caught up!!

The first manicure I did this month was a plain, boring French tip for a job/career fair I attended. (Although I still did my trick using China Glaze Fairy Dust underneath the nude color to give it a hint of sparkle hehe). My second manicure was some Color Blocking to enter into the Sally Hansen I Heart Nail Art competition for April, which I uploaded using my instagram account and #iheartnailart

I painted all my nails in a sparkly silver. Then I used Sinful Colors Hazard and Finger Paints Art Dealer Teal-er for the colors. I'd paint one corner of my nail at a time, overlapping with the color previously painted on the adjoining corner. When I got to the last corner, I stopped before overlapping with the first color/corner, to give it a pin-wheel look. I then used the same sparkly silver to stripe the boundary lines between the colors. And that's it! Easy-peasy!

Cherry Blossom Nail Art: Spring Is On My Mind!

I love the winter (although the snow amount was TOTALLY disappointing this year!) but there's something about the days starting to get longer and the days starting to get warmer that energizes me! So I wanted to put my excitement into my manicure.

And so, even though nothing is blooming yet around here, I give you, my cherry tree in bloom!

After my Beauty Secrets base coat, I did my usual sparkly backdrop technique by painting a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust and then Nina French Ivory. I then painted the trunk and branches of the tree with Finger Paints Bronze Sculpture. I then used dotting tools to do the petals. The colors I used for the petals were: Hip-Hip-Hue-Ray! by Finger Paints, and Rich & Famous and Exceptionally Gifted by China Glaze. I dotted all three colors on top or almost on top of one another. 

I liked the idea of the tree reaching out and having the branches arch over across all my nails, with just some falling blossoms left on the pinky.

I was kinda at a loss for what to do on my thumb, so just did another over-arching branch.

I eventually put a matte-finish top coat on it to reduce the glare. That does mean that the sparkle from the Fairy Dust is pretty much hidden, though.

Happy Spring everyone!!

Easter Lilies Nail Art

Alright, I promise I didn't drop off the face of the earth! I was actually on Spring Break and got to have a little fun :)

So, I did my nails for St. Patrick's day but never took any pictures! Which is ok, 'cuz it didn't come out as I had pictured it so they weren't anything exciting. I did a gradient from light green to darker green on the tips. Then I drew some clovers in black with a thin brush.

For Easter, at first I thought I'd paint my nails in pastels and then polkadots or zig-zags, like Easter eggs. Then I decided to go a different direction and did Easter lilies so that it was also a tribute to spring.

After my Beauty Secrets base coat, I did THREE coats of Sally Hansen Frozen Solid. It's a really sparkly light blue and needed an extra coat to make it a solid color. Then I used Finger Paints Hip-Hip-Hue-Ray! which is a white and drew the petals of the lilies. For an example, I just looked up pictures of Easter lilies and did the best I could. I outlined the individual petals with Sinful Colors Slate which is a medium gray so the lines wouldn't be as harsh as they would have been with black. I used Finger Paints Sketch-N-Etch to draw in the stem and leaves, then Sinful Colors Happy Ending and Finger Paints Guggen I'm Lime for the details in the center of the flower. For my ring finger, I painted it with Sinful Colors Out Of This World and then topped it with Finger Paints Sparkle Top Coat to give some contrast to my mani.

So there's my Easter/spring manicure! I will have another update here soon for my current spring-themed nails, too! :)

Happy Easter and Happy Spring time!

Fun With Top Coats!

*Sigh* ... So I already wrote out almost this entire blog (and it's a long one!) before it randomly deleted itself. So this a re-write, which means it will probably miss some of the excitement of the original draft because I'm upset about re-writing lol. Despite the frustration, I will try to still maintain the level of information that was in my original post so that you, my reader, won't miss anything. I do warn you that I may end up adding on to this post in the future if I end up remembering something that I wrote earlier that I forgot to mention this second time... ANYWAYS....!!!

The purpose of this post is top coats!! I had a major exam this morning, so I knew I would need some "me" time afterward. PLUS there was *supposed* to be a blizzard today so I was planning on inside projects to keep me occupied. Anyways, I went to Walgreens and Sinful Colors polishes were one sale, PLUS I found this gem which intrigued me:

I had seen pictures similar to that on the bottom right of the box, and I was interested in trying it for myself! But having all my nails all black (even with subtle shine differences) didn't interest me enough. So, I figured I'd try out a palette and see what effect these top coats have on them. Here is my index card that I used to test them out::

And so here are the base colors for my left hand nails:

(Thumb to pinky) Nina Black; Sinful Colors A Heart For Art; Sinful Colors Slate; Sinful Colors Out Of This World; Finger Paints Hue Left A Message?

Right hand base colors:

(Thumb to pinky) Sinful Colors Out Of This World; Nina Exceptionally Gifted; Nina Black; Finger Paints Hue Left A Message?; Sinful Colors Slate

Then... What to do on each nail? 

Starting with my left hand:::

*On my thumb, I decided that since black shows the matte finish the best, I would do a zigzag design with the Matte top coat! It didn't turn out perfect, but you can certainly see the difference!

*For my pointer finger, I decided to do a gradient. After my Finger Paints A Heart For Art, I painted Sinful Colors Dancing Nails over the outer half, and then painted the tip with Finger Paints Hue Left A Message? I topped it off with the Gloss top coat.

*My middle finger I made stripes with Sinful Colors Hazard and then later did strips with Nina Black. I coated the whole nail in the Gloss top coat. Then when it was dry, I used the Matte top coat in the large Slate square, the tiniest one, and the one in the corner of the nail as well (it went diagonally). So there's some contrast on this nail, it's just not outright noticeable and *really* tough to see in the pics. (I tried to catch the light so you can see where it reflects and where it doesn't...)

*My ring finger I ended up deciding to paint half of it with Sinful Colors Dancing Nails and then part of the outer tip with Nina Black to create a sectioned effect. Then I painted the whole nail with the Gloss top coat and then later went over the Black section with the Matte top coat to add some contrast. So all of it is shiny except for the small black part.

*My pinky finger I left alone with the Finger Paints Hue Left A Message? since it's sparkly enough :)

Here are the pics of my left hand ::

And for my right hand! 

*On my thumb, I did stripes with Sinful Colors Hazard and Nina Black. And then used the Matte top coat over the entire nail. I tried taking pics to show the difference between an entirely matte nail and a glossy nail, but that didn't work out so well.

*On my pointer finger, I did "drips" of Sinful Colors Out Of This World from the tip of my nail. 

*My middle finger is where I first used the Shimmer top coat. I put the Shimmer to coat on in two stripes toward the middle of the nail. Then I put the Gloss top coat over the whole nail. Then I painted the Matte top coat over the outer sections of the nail. This is the toughest to see in the pictures and I don't think you can see at all what it actually looks like, but it's cool in person 'cuz you can see how all three top coats look on one nail.

*On my ring finger, I decided to do another "drip" effect with my Nina Black. After that was dry, I painted the whole nail with the Shimmer top coat. It doesn't do much with my sparkly polish, but it added some color/shimmer to the black "drips". Then, in addition to that, I decided to use the Matte top coat over the black/shimmery "drips" to add to the contrast. Again, this is really tough to see in the pic. 

*For my pinky nail, all I did was add a diagonal section toward the end with Sinful Colors Dancing Nails. I eventually decided to paint the Dancing Nails section with the Matte top coat as well. 

Here are some pics of my right hand:

It's really tough to see the difference the top coats make on some of these nails, but they really do make a huge difference! I'm loving the Matte effect on some of my nails and on some sections of my other nails!! 

I certainly recommend picking up a Matte top coat to play with!

Have Fun!!

Nail Designs Using Shapes From A Ziploc Bag

Today I tried another technique I found through Pinterest from ChitChatNails. This site gives a nice tutorial if you want to check it out. But basically you paint two coats of polish on a ziploc bag and let it dry overnight. Then you use a butter knife to peel it off in one sheet. Then you use scissors to cut out shapes and put them on your nails! Easy-peasy!! I used Sinful Colors Winter Wonder and China Glaze Ruby Pumps :)