Argyle Nails, Striping Brush Fun

I have never gotten along with my striping brush. I have never managed to get a straight line with it, but after several attempts of struggling with my striping tape (are you sensing the pattern here? I am...) I gave up and dug out the nemesis.

Sooo glad I did, these nails turned out WAY cuter than they would have!

Today I got my hands on OPI's Int'l Crime Caper from the Muppet's Most Wanted line. My Walmart's Smart Style salon had it in their Buy One, Get Two Free promo, and since kiddo was getting his hair cut... I had to grab some. And then I had to use this one! Inspired by this, found on Pinterest, I went with a totally different color scheme, and I'm really pleased with it!

The colors used are OPI's Int'l Crime Caper,  Salon Perfect's Blue Ribbon, Pure Ice's Kiss Me Here, Revlon's Violet, and Revlon's Spirit. I used Seche Vite for top coat, Orly's Nail Armor as a base.

After two coats of Nail Armor, I laid down a layer of Int'l Crime Caper. Once it dried, I sponged on two layers of Kiss Me Here (I put Int'l Crime Caper on the sponge too). I freehanded the diamonds, and then used my striping brush to finish. Topped with Seche Vite and lookit how gorgeous! Must say, I'm tickled pink with how this turned out.

I'm going to start trying to post every Friday, as I have Thursdays off regularly now. With my recent hiatus, I do have some posts saved, in case I ever need backup again. Thank you guys for sticking around for me, glad I have some loyal people around.

Have a lovely evening!

Dusty, Ditzy, Dandelions

Hey guys, sorry about the long hiatus, life got super busy and hectic and stressful and I haven't even had time to do my nails lately. Hopefully things settle down soon and I can post regularly again.

I finally had a moment last night, so I did a design I've been wanting to do for a bit. Dandelions!

I love these colors together. I used Essie's Bikini So Teeny and Pure Ice's Kiss Me Here for the base colors, and then threw in Pure Ice's Silver Mercedes for the gradient and the fan brush art. The dandelions were done in Revlon's Spirit.  I created the dandelions using a 10/0 spotter brush that came in a Walmart paint brush pack, cleanup was with a 1/4" angle from Michael's. Fan brush was part of a nail-art brush set I bought on Amazon.

I had a lot of fun with this design. Took a while, but it turned out really cute :)

Not Nails: Splatter Paint

One of the most fun, messy, awesome things ever is splatter paint. You can do so many things in this design! Nails, walls, canvas, clothes...  So I did some stuff!

Let's start with the nails! Inspired by this pin, I had a lot of fun, though a bit of difficulty at the beginning.

Using a makeup sponge, I made a gradient of two colors, then I used a coffee stirrer and splattered the third color on. There's really a trick to it. You have to gather the paint into the straw and then blow really hard, really fast, aiming at the nail. I did not know this the first time I tried, and as you can see, my right hand is a little weird. Still looks awesome, though!

Okay, here's some more splatter paint!

I'm still in the process of creating my living room's environment, and part of that, I felt, is some art above the love seat. I found some fabric that I like to base the room on, so using that pattern, I'm creating my own art. The first panel of art I melted crayons in a drip pattern. The second, I decided, needs to be splatter paint! So, I took Kiddo outside and got to creating a mess!

The colors

The resulting mess: meet the Kiddo

Kiddo plays dirty

The result of the mess, before the chevron tapes were removed.

After the chevron tapes were removed, and touched up with white paint

Kiddo had a BLAST doing this! I knew he would go nuts, so I bought white cotton shirts so that maybe we'd have some awesome shirts come out of it. They turned out really cool, too, but I haven't set the paint yet, so I don't have any final pics, but you can see Kiddo's shirt above. This was a seriously fun half hour, and it gave me some awesome art.