Cherry Gingham Nails

Hi girls, I saw this design and just HAD to recreate it on my nails!

For this mani, I started with a base of Essie French Affair. I might need to repurchase this soon, I use it so often...

I then stamped over it with Konad plate m64 and a pink chrome Sally Hansen pen. The only bad thing about these pens is they give me all these little stamping wispies that I have to flatten out on my nail. I don't really know what else to call them, so I hope you know what I'm talking about. Hahah.

I made the cherries with acrylic paint and a small paintbrush. I think they turned out nicely, I only wish I had stamped with a lighter background color because I think it makes the cherries a bit difficult to see. But oh well! I'm a little out of practice, so hopefully these weekly nail nights with Mama will get me back into the routine :)

Just a brief post tonight because I'm on my way to visit the manfriend. And I am a little buzzed. Ok Bye!

Sparkly Summer Butterflies

Hi ladies, it's been in ill minute since one of us has posted, hasn't it? Well, Mama was in town for the week of the 4th so we were spending lots of time together. Hopefully you can't fault us for that :)

I wanted to sit down and do some nail art with some pizzazz this weekend, but OF COURSE I didn't know what color I wanted to use or what I wanted to do! So what did I do? Settle for one of my most FAVORITEST colors ever -- Zoya Jacy.

This color just makes me drool. It's vampy and berry all mixed into one and it's formula is awesomesauce and *le sigh* I just love it. Do you have it? No? Go get it. Now!

I used two coats of Jacy and topped with a coat of Revlon Quick Dry. I gotta tell you, I've given up on Seche Vite.  You see, I sat down and did this UBER sparkly mani Friday night... it was a light golden pink shimmer with a few coats of Teenage Dream, and it was AWESOME. But without fail, about ten minutes after I top-coated with SV, I experienced the worst tip shrinkage (giggity) that I've ever had. So I think I'll be giving some love to the other top coats I've neglected during my love affair with SV. Sorry SV, it's been real, it's been fun, but it hasn't been real fun. Peace Out.

ANYWAY! I sponged Zoya Faye on the tips for some nice sparkliezz. Then I used the little butterflies on Konad plate m78 and one of my Sally Hansen Chrome pens. Those things are AWESOME for stamping, and you can get them at the dollar store!

I finished up by adding some little microbeads with the butterflies. I think it looks kinda like a flight path!  Mama also got these at the dollar store during her visit. It's a little pack that comes with 8 colors. Pretty cool! I think they look nice, but boy they sure were a biatch to get on and I doubt they'll stay on long. I'll probably end up picking them off when I get my hands stuck in my hair.

Anyway, here are the pics :)

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Dandelion Nail Art Tutorial

Hi!

I know this is long overdue, and it very may well be no longer relevant, but I figured since this mani is still floating around on Tumblr and Pinterest that I'd make a tutorial for those of you who are interested. It is our most popular blog post to date, so I figure some people must like it :) Better late than never, right?!

(I've added a short video at the end if you'd prefer that instead of pictures.) Without further ado, let's get started!

Here are the supplies you'll need...

A light polish, black striper polish, white and black acrylic paint, white nail art pen (optional), dotting tool (you can fashion a makeshift one out of a bobby pin or something similar), and a small nail art brush.

First, apply a base color. You can use whatever you'd like, just make sure it's light enough so you can still see the art that we're going to put over it. I used China Glaze Sea Spray.

Next, you want to to put a black dot on the nails you want the dandelions to be on. I just used black acrylic paint and a medium sized dotting tool.

Use a black striper polish to make stems on each of the dots.

This is the trickiest part of the entire design: Using the tiniest nail art brush that you have and some acrylic paint, make little petals coming off of the black dot. The trick to this is wiping almost ALL the polish off of the brush before you start painting. That will give the petals the delicate, translucent look. (See video below)

Using the same technique as above, paint little floating petals on the other fingers. I made little dashes and shapes that look like T's.

Seal your design with a top coat and you're all done! That really is all there is to it. It looks harder than it is, I promise :)

So there ya go, I hope that was helpful for some of you! Here is the video I mentioned:

Electric Beat Funky French

Hello out there! I'm still alive :)

I went to visit the BF this past weekend at his parents' house, and his mom had a super cute mani on that I just HAD to recreate. Hers was a gel mani (she gets them done at a salon), but I didn't see why I couldn't do the same thing with regular polishes! It was so simple but I just really loved the way it looked for some reason.

The base here is two coats of China Glaze Electric Beat. The french tips are China Glaze First Mate, and the silver is just a regular old silver striping polish.

I really like the way this came out, I just wish those stupid striping polishes were easier for me to use. The lines turned out gloopy and not as straight as I would've liked. And I pulled up the base color on my thumb, and my polish had been dry for a few hours. *tear* I rarely do funky french manis because I usually don't have the patience to sit down and do them. And I always get polish leaking underneath the tape, but I was mildly successful today! Snaps for Amanda!

When BF's mom was showing me her nails on Friday, she goes "Look at my nails! Are they too much?!" to which I laughed and thought, "girl have you SEEN what I put on my nails? Nothing's over the top for me...I put freaking neon pink zebra stripes on my nails!". I thought you guys would appreciate that :)

Aaaand I'm going to wrap this up because my Blogger changed to the new format and I HATE it and can't find anything!

Hope you all have a fantastic week. And question: Would any of you be interested in a "Nail Art for Beginners" blog series? Let us know in the comments!

Really late Girl On Fire nails

Are you guys tired of seeing Hunger Games nails yet? I'm sure you are, but I decided to share mine with you guys anyway. Especially since it's been like 6 years between each of my posts... I figured I might as well get SOMETHING up for you :)

This was done by sponging orange and yellow all over then freehanding the black with acrylic paint. Pretty simple, but my flames look a little more ... abstract? than everyone else's. Haha.

Are you guys going to see the movie? I will be seeing it twice! My work is taking my department to go see it tomorrow (yes, really... I get PAID to see this movie...) and I'm also going with the BF on Sunday, as we made plans earlier to see it and he's looking forward to it too :)

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Nail Art: Polka Dot Birdies

What's this?! Amanda's actually posting something?! I'm just as surprised as you are! Still trying to find the time to keep up with the blog in my new schedule, but I think I'm getting better at it. And I'm learning some neat things at work that I can incorporate into the blog too!

I don't know what it is about me and bird nail art, because this is the second or third time I've done something with birds. I just think the images that I look off of are so cute and they translate really well into nail art. But oh well, because I think it came out pretty well. I only wish I'd used acrylic paints instead of polishes. I didn't want to take the time to mix out the colors in acrylic paint. You'd think after whipping my butt in to shape for a 40 hour week my laziness would be gone....but nope! ^_^

The base of this is Orly Pure Porcelain. It's a good off white color, but the color is a little streaky so I find myself having to use pretty thick coats. Then I just freehanded the birdies and polka dots on with polish :)

Hope you all had a great weekend. The bf and I went to the Black Keys concert in downtown Indy on Friday night, and it was AWESOME. They throw a really great show, so I'd definitely recommend any of you guys that like them to go in the future. :)

Pink Wednesday - Wicked Roses

Hi girls. Sorry for neglecting you lately. Still trying to get in the swing of this work thing. I swear, I get up at 6am, go to work for 8 hours, come home, have about 4 hours to myself, go to bed, then do it all again. There's not enough hours in the day to do my nails and blog :(

Anywho, I finally found some time to sit down and do my nails last night (yay!). I used China Glaze Wicked Style as my base....which is definitely not this orangey-red. Wicked Style is much more of a berry pink color in real life, but of course it has to be a nuisance and throw off the color balance of my camera. And of course I'm too much of a noob to know how to alter the colors....so just pretend, mmkay?

I wanted to do some sort of quick nail art over top of this so I could still have some time to myself. I decided on Konading, but the design and polish I picked smeared together so I decided to do some freehand roses. I've tried this once before, and they didn't come out too well. This one looked funky at first, but after I painted the leaves on I think it really came together. The roses are made with Revlon Candy, Essie French Affair, and Zoya Erika. The leaves are China Glaze Starboard with China Glaze Entourage for the highlights. I finished with one coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust (duh) and a coat of Seche Vite and voila!

I'm actually liking the way this came out, considering I was kind of hurrying myself along. And I actually did it on all ten nails...shocking! I can't get away with only doing one now that I have to actually go in public and talk to real live people ;)

Hope you are all having a happy hump day! Only two days til the weekend (it's weird that I have to count down to it again now after being unemployed for so long....ha ha)!!

Leap Day mani

Happy Leap Day everyone!

I knew I wanted to do some sort of nail art today, but wasn't exactly sure what until I came up with the idea of a frog leaping to a lilly pad.  Amanda is the nail art pro in the family, and I have a whole new respect for her after attempting this nail art.  Wow - it was hard drawing this tiny design and trying to keep my hands steady.  I think in the future I'm gonna leave the nail art to her!

So here is my attempt at nail art.  I used Essie Aruba Blue as a base (my b/f's mom got me this for Christmas this year) and the nail art is all done with acrylic paints and a tiny brush.  Although I am not a big fan of Essie polishes (they always go on streaky for me), the formula on this one was pretty good.  I did have a little staining on removal, so you may want to double up on your base coat.  Also, I need to get an ultra fine sharpy marker because obviously my '29' is not so great.

Have a great Hump Day everyone!

Here is Aruba Blue all by herself



Sheep Nails

Hi friends!

Today I have some cute....sheep (?) nail art to show you! I'm not sure what goes through my mind when I'm picking a design to do on my nails... I guess it's something like, *type 'cute' into ShutterStock.* "AHA! Cute sheep picture! Guess that's what I'll do."

Anywho, I started with a base of China Glaze For Audrey. My bottle of this is getting terribly low and difficult to work with. I think it's time to suck it up and buy another one!

The sheep are made with black and white acrylic paint. Pretty simple, really. If you can make blobs with a small paintbrush, you can do this design.

One thing I did notice -- every time I do some kind of nail art that's based around an animal, one of them always looks special! I don't know what it is...maybe my pinky nail is too small to draw much on so they always look slow? I don't know, but it always makes me laugh :D

Also! I have some good news to share with you guys! If you follow me on Twitter, you might've seen me post that.... this blog got me a job! Yeah! It's not anything related to polish, but in the job description they said they wanted people with blogging experience. So during my interview, I talked all about it and what I've learned from it (to two males, so I'm sure they were really interested...haha). My last day at good old Charming Charlie was last night and I start my new digital marketing job on Monday!

Back to the post... I think these sheep came out pretty cute except for the special ones.. haha. Devin's words on this mani were, "Is that cabbage?" Yes. Yes, darling, I painted cabbages on my nails. Really though. I wouldn't put it past me...

I think these nails are... baaahhhaaaaaaaaddd ass. Heh... see what I did there?

Happy hump day!

Junior High Doodles Nails

Hello!

Goofy title for this one, eh? I'm not quite sure where this idea came from, but I do think I've seen some people in the nail blogosphere do something like this before. However, I don't know WHO so if you know who originated this idea, please let me know and I will give credit where credit is due :)

(edit: here's some of the originals! iiamjelly, Emerald Sparkled, Victoria7)

For this one, I started with a base of Sinful Snow Me White -- the ONE color in my collection that's close to being completely empty. And also one of the worst whites in the history of the world. I added a top coat of Seche Vite and drew on all the details with a fine tip Sharpie. BTW -- thanks to those of you that suggested Sharpies for writing text! It was MUCH easier than painting. I definitely suggest it if you're not as nimble with a nail art brush as you'd like to be. One thing I did notice is to wait until your mani is completely dry. I tried to draw the blue lines on my pinky 5-10 minutes after the SV and it ended up squishing/denting it a little bit. I also had to rotate my nail for the blue lines as opposed to just drawing them by moving my other hand. Do you guys get what I"m trying to say?

Anyway, I think these came out pretty cute. I used to draw doodles like this on my notes all the time during school. Sssh, don't tell my professors that I wasn't paying attention :)

Bee Mine Nails

Hi ladies! Is anyone getting tired of Valentine's Day manis yet? I know I am... I just want to get back to regular ole manis :P

Quick post today because I have lots to do, but I just wanted to share this one with you!

(Don't mind the randomly placed watermarks... I'm trying to find an unobtrusive way to mark my pictures.)

The base is Essie French Affair (I know I know....I dislike Essie's formula, but I can even get over it for this color because it's just so darn pretty!). I drew the silhouette of the bees first, because I don't have a steady enough hand to draw a black outline last. So, drew the black silhouette first, then added in the white face and wings, and yellow stripes with acrylic paint. I also tried to paint "Bee Mine" on my thumb, but I really need to get some good nail art pens or something because it is REALLY hard to paint text with a nail art brush. Maybe I just need a brush with shorter bristles instead? At any rate, I think it came out pretty cute :)

This one's for my mama, because her name means Honeybee :)

Have a great weekend everybody!

Heart Vines Nails

This is a mani I did based off of an image I found on ShutterStock. The image was of various hearts hanging off of a sort of branch or tree.

For this mani, I used a base of Orly Pure Porcelain. Pore Porcelain is a great neutral that's opaque in just two coats. It's a good alternative if you don't want to use a stark white background as a base for a nail art design. It's simple, but it's one of my favorite neutral colors in my stash.

The branches, hearts and dots were all made with black and red acrylic paint (what else?). I really like the end result of this mani and it wasn't too terribly hard to reach it! If you have the patience, this is an easy mani to pull off.

Happy Tuesday, hope you're all having a good day so far :)

Anti Valentines Day Mani

Hi ladies!

Someone on Tumblr suggested that I do some anti-Valentine's Day manis, and I figured I'd oblige because come on, who HASN'T hated Valentine's Day with the fury of 1000 hells at some point in their life? I know I have.

I painted all my nails (except my ring finger) with Wet n Wild Burgundy Frost. On my ring finger, I painted a black base. I then used acrylic paints to draw the lines, "explosion" (I don't know what else to call it?) and broken heart on my ring finger. I also topped all the other nails with OPI Black Shatter.

Now, I've never been into shatter/crackle polishes AT ALL, mind you, but this one seemed to fit. Black Shatter, shattered heart....yeah, my emo side is coming out.  But I digress. Anyway, the ONE time I used this bottle of Black Shatter (I got it in a giveaway) and it's goopy and clumpy. So... I don't know if that's the reason you can hardly see any base color or if I applied too much...but I only used one thin coat. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is I wish the deep red popped out a bit more underneath the Black Shatter. It did come alive a little more with top coat, you should have seen how dull it was before!

I have the whole week off, so hopefully you guys can expect more posts than usual this week! Gotta keep myself occupied somehow ;)

Valentines Cupcakes

Hi all! I have another Valentine's Day Mani for you today.  This one is your run of the mill cupcake design, but I jazzed it up a bit for Valentine's! I wasn't feeling just painting plain hearts today so I decided I wanted to do something cute but still festive. I think this fits that :)

The cupcake liners are done with Zoya Sooki and everything else is acrylic paint. Sooki is one of my very favorite polishes ever....but the smearing is so bad when you take it off. Ughhh.... such a mess.

Happy hump day! :)

Valentines Love Birds

It's time! Time for the beginning of Valentine's Day manis! Yay! I love love :) :)

I found this adorable little image of a love bird on Shutter Stock and decided I had to recreate it on my nails. The base color is OPI Sparrow Me The Drama and the rest is done with acrylic paints. I really need to get myself a full size bottle of Sparrow Me The Drama... I only have the small one from the POTC mini pack (which sucks to use on my big nails, btw)

 

Aren't they cute?! I didn't want to take these babies off!