Marble Nails and a Foiled Success

I really should come up with my own designs, I know. But pinterest is so inspiring, and there are so many things all right there... yeah. I'm sure I'll get tired of it soon enough.

Anyways, I fell in love at first sight at this mani and had to have them!

So here's my take:

 I LOVE these!

Here's how:
Prep nails.
Apply light blue/periwinkle. I used a light blue by Rue21 that I picked up a few months ago.
Get a cup of lukewarm water, and drip one (it's all you need!) drip of silver nail polish. I used Pure Ice's Silver Mercedes. It tends to shred instead of spot, which is what I wanted.
Spray hand sanitizer on the spread out drip. (You can get the spray kind at Dollar Tree)

Dip your fingers in. You can get up to three, depending on how far it spreads!
Topcoat.

Easy peasy!

For my accent nails, I tried a foil from Dollar Nail Art, then waterspotted over it with the blue.
It came out kinda funky, so I did the corner in the solid blue, and a stripe of the Silver Mercedes.

I would like to take a moment here to be excited. This was the first time I've EVER gotten a smooth cover in foil the first time. Guess it was just that I needed practice, which this blog is all about, I guess :)

On this mani, I tried a new topcoat (new for me) by NYC. It's a speed-dry topcoat. I've worn these nails ONE DAY and they've chipped. And I haven't been typing all day and being hard on them, so I'm a little disappointed. It did REALLY well on sealing everything, and it did it fast, so there's a plus, but I might go over it with another layer of something more reliable.

I would also like to say that this topcoat worked REALLY well with the foil's adhesive, but I'm wondering if that's because of the waterspotting on top of it. If that is the case, maybe it's possible to use water to keep the adhesive from wrinkling... I'll have to look into this!

What other colors do you think would work well with this method? I like the two colors that I used because they're so similar and you kinda can't tell at first glance :)

Have a wonderful week, luvvies!

Grunge Rainbow Foils

So another Pinterest find has inspired me, and now I can't find it to show you the original (don't you hate that?). Grr.

How to achieve this look:

Paint nails black (I used Sinful Colors' Black on Black)

Apply foil adhesive on the top 3/4 of the nail.

Apply the foil (it's okay if it's not perfect, holes will make it look better)

Take a fan brush, and brush upwards, creating rough edges along the sharp line created by the edge of the foil.

For the rainbow, I used two separate foils from Dollar Nail Art: Citrus Flash and Wildberry Flash to create the rainbow effect. 

The adhesive reacts to certain topcoats, so don't use anything that's fast drying. I used Revlon's Extra Life No Chip Topcoat and it doesn't seem to react like the others.

Frustrated Mani

So last night my little booger just would NOT go to bed, and I got frustrated. So once he finally did go bed, I decided to do my nails to calm down.

It did not work.

I just got more and more frustrated, because my nails and my brain just weren't working with me.

First, there was a design change. I had originally thought of doing something simple, then I saw something on Pinterest and decided to try that. Which lead to a color change. Which meant I had to completely undo everything I had already done. Then, I didn't let the nail polish dry long enough before adding the nail glue, and the foil stuck to the wet nail, and I had to restart that nail.

It took me two hours to do a mani that I was completely unsatisfied with.

And then, once I woke up, I found that I had chipped a few of them in my sleep. WHO DOES THAT?!

Me, apparently. Ugh.

So this is what I woke up to this morning:

Basically on the pointer, pinkie, and thumb nails, I dotted some adhesive and then used a fanTABULOUS foil called "Fiber Optics" from the Dollar Nail Art store. On the middle finger, I just did a stripe of the adhesive, and on my ring finger, I covered my entire nail, and the did the rim of black. 

I used an NYC topcoat. I've been noticing that it chips fairly easily. Thankfully, I rarely wear a mani more than a couple of days, but still... I'm not putting keys on keychains in my sleep...

On my right hand, the foil rubbed completely off my pointer. I'm wondering if I even remembered to put the topcoat on it....

So yeah... Mani Therapy did NOT help last night. :/

Hopefully tonight's mani is a whole lot better, and hopefully kiddo goes to bed early enough that I can *do* a mani... I didn't get to bed until 4 a.m. this morning :(

Have you ever had a mani end up like this?

Acrylics and Owls- Guest Starring Whitney

So another one of my friends from work came over today to get her nails done :) I gave her a full set of acrylics, and I can't tell you how proud I am at how they turned out! I wish I'd have gotten a pic!

Then we did one of her favorite manis from Pinterest, this, with a few modifications.

Aren't they cute? I absolutely love how these turned out! Even the acrylics turned out amazing, though the cleanup wasn't the greatest (we were short on time).

The white half moons were foiled in Opal Swirl from Dollar Nail Art. I then used binder dots to create the half-moons, and painted the owls.
I used Superstar by Pure Ice underneath the foil and for the eyes, the Dream On by Sinful Colors, Pink by Sinful Colors, Sally Hansen's Blue Me Away, and Wet'n'Wild's Fergie Glowstick, and Black on Black by Sinful Colors.

I really can't wait to see how they look all cleaned up!

This was her favorite of the bunch.

Loot

So this month I decided that I was going to throw caution (and money) into the wind. I bought a BUNCH of new stamping plates (96, to be exact), and I bought $27 worth of stuff at the Dollar Nail Art store (it hasn't shipped yet).

I got the first shipment of stamping plates on the 15th-two days before the first day of estimated arrival.
They were from RedAngel (link here). I was so excited I took The Book to work with me to put them in! (What's that? I haven't told you about The Book? We'll get to it, all in due time.)

Fast-forward to this morning.

I get woken up by my mailman, knocking at my door. He's holding TWO packages for me! One is from amazon, and the other is a little envelope. It has a few things inside (including a belated Christmas present for my mom), but the thing I was waiting for?

This little oddity

What is that, you ask? This makes my mani's like 90% easier on my carpets. NOT that I'm constantly spilling, but I am knocking over my bottles like 85% of the time...

Maybe I shouldn't have used such a transparent color...

This little doodad keeps my polish in place. It's fairly stable, pretty hard to knock down. And it's made of silicone, so it adjusts to the shape of my bottle. It's got a fairly good grip, too. I love it! I got it from SammyDress. The shipping speed isn't great (I bought it around the 11th of December), but it's worth the wait. Mom loved her Christmas present.

In the Amazon box, were three packs of stamps. Gals Fairy set, Gals Princess set, and Mash's 26-50 set. I put them in The Book asap.

Okay there's that thing again, I guess I'd better tell you (even though you might have figured it out already. You're pretty sharp, aren't you?)
I got a binder to organize my plates!

Giant glowy tome. Can you hear the angels singing?

I looked into getting this, but it's just a little out of my price range. This binder was $6 at Walmart. It's one of those old-school scrapbooking binders with the sticky pages to keep the pictures in place, and it does a decent job of its job!

Empty pages

Full pages. 

The biggest downside is that the seal doesn't always hold, and the ones at the bottom tend to fall out. But that's okay. It just means I need to keep a close eye on things.

So I'm really stoked about all these plates. Biggest downside is that now I have so many things I want to do and not enough nails to do them on!

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***Disclaimer: NO companies discussed in this blog have been contacted or have contacted me for review.***