Stripes and Daisies

I love daisies. And this color palette. So why not put them together? Inspired by this pin, I decided to have a go at it. I was not impressed by my freehand skill, so I decided to use a stamp. Much better!

Freehand

Yeeeeah, I'm not a huge fan of that. I couldn't get the lines thin enough, even with using acetone.

Stamped

For this mani, I used Pure Ice Kiss Me Here, NYC Lexington Yellow, Wet'N'Wild I Need A Refresh-Mint, and Revlon Spirit. 

I laid down three coats of Lexington, and then placed striping tape down where I wanted the yellow to show. I then painted Kiss Me Here and pulled off the tapes after about 5 seconds. I got really clean lines this way, for the most part. I then did a layer of Seche Vite, in case I needed to erase a mistake later. I decided to freehand the I Need a Refresh-Mint, as using the tapes was starting to wear on my patience lol. Another layer of the Seche Vite, and I was done for the evening lol

Before the daisies

The next evening, I tried to do the daisies. I still suck at freehand, but practice makes perfect, right? I gave up and pulled out my stamps, instead of trying to use my left hand. The stamps look best, I think. What say you?

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!

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

YAY! CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE FOR EVERYONE! 

This is one of my favorite holidays. I'm Irish, I love potatoes, my favorite food is corned beef. I might dye some white wine green. 

So I'm really excited to do St. Paddy's Day nails. You might get another post. 

To start off: these nails are not my favorite. The two greens I chose look REALLY different in the bottles, but when stamped they were REALLY close. Oddly, the darker color turned out lighter after sponging. 

I sponged Finger Paints Silkscreen Green and Sally Hansen's Tan Lime in a gradient. Apparently, Tan Lime is much more sheer than I was expecting. 

I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White as the base color. On the accent nail, I used striping tape and Tan Lime to create the stripes. 

Flash

Sunlight

After actually looking at the pics, I like them a little more than I did when they were on my nails.

More October Nails

I know, GREAT title right? lol have anything better, leave it in the comments ;)

These were fun :D I'm starting to perfect the striping technique.... The trick is to make sure everything underneath is 100% dry, and peel the tape off when the polish on top is still wet. I was not doing that before, and either whole chunks of the top color would peel off, or polish from under the tape would come up. It was a mess! Not this time, though!

Waterfall Nails

I saw this post in quite a few places, and fell in love with the waterfall look. I started reading through her blog, www.thenailasaurus.com, to find out she's in love with waterfalls too, and even made this tutorial. I didn't follow it to the tee (I didn't use the right brush), but I just had to use my new China Glaze Cosmic Dust today and I thought grey/black/white tones would be GORGEOUS over it. And I was right. But it did need a pop of color, so I added purple (based on my ABF's preference). And man oh man I'm in love! (with the mani...)

Obviously, I need some practice, but I loooove this!!! The way the holo is grey until the light hits it, it works perfectly! When the holo, y'know, holos, it's just brilliant. In certain lights the purple looks like another grey, and it all is just perfect :)

Blue India

I couldn't figure out a name for this, but it makes me think of Henna tattoos that are very popular and traditional in India, so...

Blue India.

To differentiate from the nameless salmon version I did a couple weeks ago.

I REALLY like the design. Which is why I did it again. I figure, practice makes perfect, so I'll keep plugging at it until I get it right. (I didn't, btw. I missed a finger.)

Yeah I missed that ring finger. Gorram it!

I used Sally Hansen's Extreme Wear's Blue Me Away, Pure Ice's French Kiss, and Pure Ice's Superstar! for the India, and for the gradient, I used LA Colors' Flurry. 

I used NY Color's Matte Me Crazy topcoat.

I used a new (to me) strengthener by Sally Hanson, called Instant Strength. I wasn't thrilled at first, it was extremely thin and I was kinda wary that I'd just dropped $6 on a waste. Well to make a long story short, I am impressed.
Beyond a couple of TINY chips, I haven't had any problems with it. My nails still are kinda bendy, but they have a nice strong curve. According to GoodGuide, it's the #3 nail strengthener, and the #1 isn't even sold anymore, apparently. I'm going to keep working with it for now.

What are your feelings about the India print?

OPI's Black Spotted Released in US!

LOL just kidding! Sorry to get you all excited there :(

I do have some amazing news, however! SOMEONE HAS FIGURED OUT HOW TO DO SPOTTED MANI'S!!! And I was able to replicate it using dollar-store items (nail polish bought at Target)!!!!

Youtuber CutePolish came up with this tutorial that I found on pinterest. I already have toothpicks and plastic shot glasses from the dollar store, and all I needed was the hand sanitizer, so I went to the Dollar Tree and grabbed one. Finding the sanitizer was more difficult than I imagined, because the spray kind isn't with the normal hand sanitizer, it's in the cosmetics, buried amongst the chapsticks.

 I then invited Heaven back over to test it out (I'm still wearing my Saran Wrap nails) and we came up with this. I really hope you like, this is so cheap and sooo easy!!!

For the accent nail, we used a crackle.

The top coat messed up her middle finger :( She still loved it, though!

Up close and personal with her favorite. Darn I missed this nail with the acetone. Oops :/

For these, we did pink, purple, and white stripes with a black spot. In hindsight, it might have been really cute to do white with pink and purple spots. I'll have to try that next!

All you do is drip the polish on the surface of water-just as if you were doing a watermarble. Then spray it with hand sanitizer. The spots will appear and then you dip your finger in it just like you would for a watermarble.

What does this inspire in you?