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.

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

It's my favorite time o' the year, the salt beef stewin' in the pot, the praties are boilin' on the stove, the Guinness flowin' from the keg.

Okay I'm just kidding. I don't like Guinness, my heritage be damned, it's too much of an acquired taste and I don't have the time or money to acquire it.

LOVE corned beef and taters, though. And the color green.

Augh the kitchen smells so good. What's your favorite foods associated with holidays?

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.

Chevron

I am so ridiculous sometimes. I KNEW I did my nails for last week's post, but I just could NOT find the pictures for them, so I broke down last Tuesday night thinking I forgot to take the pics for them.

Suddenly tonight, I found them! ...They were in the folder I never use, which is literally named "Nails" for my blog pics. I put something away for once, and couldn't find it because of that.

Yeah. Brilliant.

Anyways, I found them, yay!

This is a very trendy look right now, with the glitter on one finger and the chevron on the next, and I really did fall in love. Era picked the purple and I did this at work. 

I have no clue what happened to my pinkie. It was like that IRL, it's not an issue with the camera.

That dratted thumb, can never get that corner right....

I freehanded the heart and the chevron! I used this Pinterest tutorial as a general guide. Unfortunately, I have dug through her tumblr AND her actual blog and I cannot for the life of me find the original post :( Darn pinterest!

I used Wet'N'Wild Megalast On a Trip, which my camera didn't like too much (It's too blue in these pics), China Glaze Cosmic Dust and Fairy Dust (on my middle finger), and Revlon's Spirit. Topped with Seche Vite.

I will likely do this several more times because it's just so friggin' cute :)

Zoya + Bundle Monster Stamping

I got new Bundle Monster plates! I've been eyeing the 2012 collection for a while and finally decided to get them (taxes rule!). I absolutely love this entire set, there are only a couple that I don't think I'll use.

For my first use, I decided to break out my Zoyas Charisma and Robyn. I forgot to bring a white with me (took a bunch of stuff to work), so I grabbed a hot pink for my base color. Two layers of Sinful Colors' Neon Fusion and two layers of Charisma gave me a satisfying purple. I then stamped with Robyn. Accent nail is Robyn with Petite's Craze, stamped with a makeup sponge.

Topcoat was Seche Vite.

1 night after Seche Vite application and I've already got shrinkage going on. *sigh*

I'm in love with these colors together! 

I taught my friend and coworker how to stamp a few months back, and she came up with this:

I forgot to bring my cleanup brush to work, please forgive her cuticles lol

Too cute! She chose Sinful Colors' Savage and Rue Beaute's Mint.