Happy Birthday!!!

My blog is a year old! I'm actually pretty proud of myself that I've kept it up so long :)
So while watching the last season of Sherlock last night, I did some Birthday nails to celebrate!

That's supposed to be a one.

Happy birthday, PinkiesForAPenny!

Thank you everyone who follows or has visited my blog, I could not have done it without you :)

Another huge thank you to my friend, Jaxo, who created my banner and did a guest post :)

Here's to another good year! 

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?