1000 Views and A Guest Star

I've hit the 1,000 views mark! This may not be huge for some bloggers, hitting 1,000+ every day, but I've had several blogs over the years, and never got this high. This is BIG for little ol' me! I want to give a huge THANK YOU to everyone who visits and/or promotes my blog. I love you all from the bottom of my heart ♥

To celebrate, I did acrylics on my friend's fingers, and did some really pretty "Peppermint" watermarbling and stamps!

She wanted really short nails, as she types all day.

I'm still having an issue cleaning cuticles.... buuut it was 1am and we were both ready to pass out.

No, I'm not trained in acrylics, and I used the cheap Kiss set from Walmart. I learned watching my mom get manicures by her friend, and these aren't great as I haven't had a lot of practice yet, but they're still hanging on.

Heaven, the nail model/guest, writes: "I absolutely love my nails! The pride you took on making them perfect and being sure I was happy with them was amazing. The water coloring you did on them is absolutely beautiful and the way you cut them to a perfect length so I can work in my every day life was perfect. I love my nails they are awesome."

Santa Nails

The Doctor (or Santa, whichever you prefer to believe) is gearing up to make his trip around the world, and I'm SO not ready! No tree, no decorations, presents still unwrapped, and I've had ONE glass of eggnog (and it wasn't even spiked *sadface*).

BUT my hands are ready! Red coat, gold buckle, black belt comin' atcha!

Tried to get the white to look fluffy... I don't think I did very well :/

Ho, ho, ho!

Macro is NOT cooperating today :/

I'm starting to feel festive already :D

I used Sinful Colors' Ruby Ruby, Maybellene's Color Show in Bold Gold, Pure Ice's Black Rage and Superstar!, and NYC's Matte Me Crazy for the topcoat.

So are they festive enough, or is it missing green?

I'M BACK, BABY!!!

I have finally, after too long a time, gotten internet!

Took me long enough!

After soul-searching for what I wanted for my birthday, I finally decided on internet. So I decided on a budget and went shopping and here I am!

I know. Less me, more nails!

Unfortunately, being without internet leaves me without all the inspiration I'm used to, so my manis have been few and far-between. But I do have a few to show you!

I'm not sure what to call these, beyond pretty!

I normally would not put these colors together. I do not like gold, and for the most part, and coral and seafoam aren't my favorite colors. But put them together and holy cow! These are GORGEOUS!

I can't figure out how the other blogs get their cuticles so clean... :/

To get this look, I used Sally Hansen's Extreme Wear in Mint Sorbet, L. A. Colors' Dizzy, Sinful Colors' Timbleberry, and Maybelline Color Show Bold Gold. 

To get the pattern on the pinkie, I painted the nail gold and let it dry completely, put a topcoat over that, and let it dry completely, and then painted the Timbleberry and the Mint Sorbet. Before that dried, I took a stamp that I got at a scrapbooking sale and pressed it, removing the Mint and the Timbleberry and exposing the gold underneath.

I'm not happy with the way the thumbs turned out. I'm thinking I should have just done a gold tip instead of attempting (and failing) at a gradient.

What say you?

Doctor Who FAIL

A LOT of my friends (and some family!) are Doctor Who fans/nerds (also known as Whovians), and my cousin sent me this, asking if I could do them, to which I replied that I wanted to, I was just scared I was going to mess them up.... And I did. :'(

My first one turned out REALLY well. The ones after them... not so much.

I really, really thought his one turned out well!

And then the rest happened -_- (The one next to the TARDIS is the first one. The one with the blue splotch in the middle fell over when it was still wet)

Can you even tell that's the TARDIS?

So yeah, I f*cked up. The TARDIS doesn't look like the TARDIS, the Sonic Screwdriver doesn't look like a Sonic Screwdriver, and most of my Universe nails just look like pink blobs. Ah well, next time! Just gotta keep working on freehanding.

If you want to know what/who the Doctor is, go on Netflix. It's the most awesome show ever, just another amazing gem by the British :)

Do you have any suggestions, tips, or techniques as to how I could have done better? Please leave them in the comments!

Halloween Character Nails!

I apologize that I haven't posted in a while. I just started this new job and I'm still trying to get used to my schedule. Next week, I'm moving into my new apartment, and a couple weeks after that, I'm hoping to get my own internet. Posts will come more regularly after that.

These are my Halloween Character nails! I really hope you like them, they took me a while to do, and didn't last very long :(

From left to right: Zombie, Alien, Mummy

Vampire and Cthulhu

From left to right: Ghost, Werewolf, Witch, Frankenstein's Monster

I did Slenderman on my right pinkie, but I accidentally messed him up before I could get a picture :(

Closeup of the Witch. I cut down and painted a fake nail to make the cute hat!

Careful... Don't look at him too closely. You'll go insane!
I made the tentacles by coating some yarn in green polish and sticking them on with nail glue.

Closeup of the mummy and the Zombie
For the Mummy, I watermarbled browns and whites and added pearls with black dots.
For the Zombie, I slapped on shades of green and brown and then drew the mouth and stuck on some pearls, to which I added green and black and brown polish.

I really, really loved these nails, but they fell apart REALLY fast. The eyes popped off in the shower (Looked like a bad remake of Hostel in there!) and the Witch's hat came off that night at Walmart, and was lost forever :(

I had a lot of fun making these, though they took a while to make. I watched League of Extraordinary Gentlemen TWICE through these nails lol

So what is your favorite Halloween character? Would you have done someone different?

These nails were relatively cheap. I got the pearls for the eyes at Walmart when they were on clearance for about $.50, and the yarn had been laying around the house for a while.no new polishes were needed for these nails.

Bubble Nails

Looking around the blogosphere I came across bubble nails. She (I can't find the post, and I don't know who the poster was *sob*) used different sized straws to create bubbly-looking nails. I went on the hunt for straws, and here are my results :)

I added quite a few layers of different glitters and added a couple of dots here and there to make it look like different-sized bubbles. I really, really liked this one :)

With the glitter topcoats.

Without the glitter topcoats.

These were HORRIBLE to get off, even with the tin foil method, I waited five minutes, and still had to scrub a little. It was sooo worth it, though.

What do you think? Do you have any suggestions? What would you do with this technique?

Candy Apple Nails

I was wondering what to do Saturday night, so I went with my default- I did my nails! But what did I want to

do? My mom gave me the answer: Candy Apple nails! They turned out cute, and I've been wearing them ever since :)

These were pretty easy! Just sponged the colors on, and then add the caramel topping :)

I used Sinful Colors Unicorn as my base. I was planning on letting it show with the other colors,  but that didn't happen.
Unicorn is a very soft yellow creme. Very pretty.

After the sponging, before the matte coat. I tried to make every nail unique. No two apples are alike!

Here's with the "caramel" applied. I added a matte topcoat to the apple. I mixed a soft brown creme I have with a gold I recently bought to create the caramel, and then topped it with my Wet'N'Wild topcoat.

I guess I didn't get as much disparity as I wanted, all the red is on the right side of the nail. Oh well, they still don't look the same!

To finish, I added a stem and a leaf on top. I think they turned out really cute!

All done!

So what do you think? Totally fall, right?

Rainbow Sugar Spun Nails FAIL

So while looking for inspiration, I came across all these Sugar Spun manis, and they looked SUPER CUTE!!! So I went and watched a tutorial and decided to try them. Well, as you can see, I failed. Miserably. I just couldn't get my polish to string. So I eventually gave up and just dragged my toothpick across the polish in my nails, creating the effect you see in the pictures. Still super cute, I've been wearing them for a couple of days.

On my accent nail, I used a tiny straw dipped in my colors and just layered them randomly. Again, super cute.

My base color is Pure Ice Black Rage. I used a Color Workshop for the red, Sinful Colors' Cloud Nine for orange, a nameless mini I got at a garage sale for the yellow, Wet'N'Wild's Fergie Glowstick, NYC's In A New York Minute Water Street Blue, and Orly's Charged Up for the purple. I used NYC's Wild Shine topcoat.

I really do love these, even though they aren't what I wanted. Isn't it awesome how that turns out sometimes?

I don't think my camera did the colors justice.

So what do you guys think? If you tried it, how did yours turn out? I'm excited to see :)

The Dark Knight Rises Nails

This is an older mani I have saved for when I need to post something but have been too busy to do anything with my nails.

When my boyfriend told me when we were going to see Batman together (he'd already seen it with his brother (WITHOUT ME) the jerkface!) I HAD to do Batman-themed nails. This was when I was kinda first starting out, and not terribly good at freehanding. Even for a beginner, I think I did pretty well! For most of the villains, you can tell who they are. I tried to use the most recognizable characters...

Joker!

Two-Face!
I couldn't stop playing with his eyeball... It was a pearl I found in the Walmart scrapbooking aisle on clearance, $.50 for a pack. TOTALLY worth it!

Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy

Batgirl. I was getting tired at this point, and didn't do a great job :(

My pinkie is supposed to be an explosion... 

Riddler

Batman insignia

Batman insignia

I can't remember what I did on my other pinkie, and I don't have a picture of it :(

For a beginner at freehand, I think I did pretty well :) I wish I'd had finer brushes, and more experience, but I still enjoyed wearing these for a few days. I waited until Two-Face's eye fell off to take them all off.

Job Interview Nails

On Monday the first of October, I had a job interview and decided to do my nails for it. Best way to calm the nerves, imho. While looking through my stash, I noticed that I had colors that matched my favorite shirt (the one I was wearing to the interview), so I thought I'd try to match the pattern. I was hoping to try and replicate this kind of technique with the colors, but I didn't know how, so I ended up with this, which was cute anyways :)

Here's the shirt. I tried to get a part with all the colors. I LOVE this shirt! Got it as a present from my mom, who found it at my favorite clothing store out here, Cato.

And here's how they turned out! I cleaned them up a little better before the inter view.

Left hand :)

Basically what I did was paint my nails white, let them dry. Then I take the nail polish brush and scrape off all the nail polish that I can before quickly swiping it across my nail. I wore these about four days. I loved them, so colorful!

It's Finally October!

October is my favorite month. I absolutely love the beginning of Autumn, I love the pumpkin spice everything, I love Halloween, I just love everything about October!! I spent most of September anxiously waiting for October to arrive and it's finally here!!!!

We're only 3 days in, but I've already had a couple dreams come true! I found a job that pays enough for me to have my own apartment, a babysitter, and enough left over to eat and have a hobby! YAY!!!! October is my miracle month :)

Okay enough about my personal life, on to the nails!

For the first of October, I HAD to do Halloween-y type nails. I took the classic colors, black and orange (both by Sinful Colors (Cloud Nine, Black on Black), how appropriate!), and added purple (Let's Talk by Sinful Colors). I liked the striped look, so I just threw a matte on the top.

And then I looked through my glitter. I have black glitter (Target sells it in a pack for about $2.50 with a purple, an orange and a green)!!!!  I did a fresh stripe of black paint, and then sprinkled the glitter over it, gently pressing down with my finger to make sure it was nice and in the paint.


On my accent finger, I did a gradient of the three colors and then stamped a skull and bones using BM-225 :) He's so cute!

On to the pics!

So friggin' cute!! And messy... That glitter was HARD to get off!! :(

A macro shot of the orange base, Cloud Nine. Very glittery, I love it, and I usually am NOT a fan of warm colors. :)
This is a VERY thin color, and needs at least three coats. This is three, and I can see some places that could use another layer.

This is my accent nail. No matter what I do, I just cannot get white to stamp on purple without the white turning to  purple. I'll even put a topcoat in between, and it STILL CHANGES COLOR! GRRRRR! Still turned out pretty cute, though.

The finished base nail. I LOVE the effect the glitter has, since the rest of the nail is matte. It's totally cute! Maybe I'll do something like this with just blacks at some point...

I wore these for a couple of days and then I had a job fair to go to, and didn't think it would be appropriate to wear crazy nails, so took them off... To find my nails had stained orange. -_- I bought a new Nails base, and it's not very good :/ Every time I've used it as a base I've gotten stained. So lame.

So that's today's update, hope you enjoyed!

Love Letter Nails

Look! A watermark!! ...Please ignore the black nail polish on my palm...

Hello, ladies and gents! Today is a GREAT day! For nails, anyways! Today I'm going to show you pic-by-pic how to get the newspaper look on your nails! (It's super easy!)

When I started doing these, I couldn't remember how exactly I was supposed to go about doing them. I thought I'd read somewhere that I was supposed to soak the nail for like 5 minutes in the alcohol and then press the newspaper onto my nail. That dissolved my nail polish. So I thought it's gotta be like doing a temporary tattoo, and attempted it that way. It worked!!!

First, paint your nail white (or light grey, if you want it to look like a real newspaper). Let it dry COMPLETELY.

Cut your newspaper down to just larger than your nail. I used the smallest type I could find in my newspaper.

Soak a cotton ball in alcohol, place the newspaper on your nail in the direction you want it, and place the cotton ball over the newspaper. Let it rest for about half a minute.

Gently peel off, and voila! Newspaper print on your nails!  Let it dry for a minute and then GENTLY add a topcoat. I used a very subtle glitter topcoat by Pure ICE.

To finish, I took some stamps (like, the type you use for stationery) I found at Walmart for $1 and stamped L O V and E. (On my right hand, I messed up and stamped it backwards... I was trying to get it to match my left hand which I'd stamped first >.<). Then on my thumbs I drew a heart and outlined it in black to make it stand out a little, added a matte topcoat, and enjoy!

It's been two days, and I'm STILL wearing this mani. I absolutely love it, and it was so simple to do! I hope you like it as much as I do!

Watermarbling Madness

So out of sheer boredom I started practicing my watermarbling technique. In the name of Science, I tested and labeled all of my different colors into one or two of three categories (This took several sittings...). Green means "I can marble really well!" Yellow means "I'm OKAY at it. Use if desperate," and Red means "I cannot marble. Don't even TRY!" Green and yellow puts it in the middle between okay and good/great. A lot of the brands surprised me, I thought the cheaper ones wouldn't do it as well, but the majority of the LAC's did pretty well :)

Here's the pics from last night's adventure:

Some turned out really well! And others.... Not so much.  :/ I honestly have no clue as to how I got that rainbow splatter one :'(

Now that I live in Iowa, I figure I'll need to know how to do Cyclone and Hawkeye nails. This one turned out pretty well, despite the black not working with me very well.

This was my first attempt at Cyclone and Hawkeye nails. The black REALLY wasn't working with me here (I had it labeled as yellow, but added red to that rating), and I don't think these turned out terribly well. For practice, however, they're just more experience.

This one was my first REALLY successful nails. In fact, I'm quite proud of it.

So that was my evening. These are cheap, blank, fake nails my sister gave me when she moved out of our house. You can find them for about $5-$10 at Walmart. I just use a small dab of thick white nail polish to keep it attached to my stick.


My nails right now are blank. I'm going to do a fall-themed watermarble when I get home (I'm currently at the library... internet is internet, even if it's slower than a tortoise on a tricycle.)