Zoya Sooki Funky French

Hi all. I'm alive!

Today I have a funky french for you guys. Since I rarely have the time (or motivation) to do my nails these days, I've been building on plain color manis as a refresher so I don't have to remove the entire mani.

This started with two coats of Zoya Sooki (any True Blood fans here?) which is the SEXIEST red in all the land. I love it. It's just like...UNF!! Then I taped on a diagonal and used Zoya Kelly to make a funky french. I stamped with a Sally Hansen chrome pen and Konad plate m73. I usually have problems with this particular plate design but it worked pretty well with the Chrome pen.

Sorry for the short post, I hope you all are well! Until next time, see ya :)

Bright Flower Gradient Nails

Hello ladies, hope you've all been well :)

Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been recovering from a brutal allergy season. I've had a terrible cough for the past two weeks.. BUT! I'm back in action with a pretty new mani to show you guys!

I started this one with two coats of China Glaze Papaya Punch, then created a gradient with China Glaze uh.....the fuchsia one from their spring collection, and China Glaze Spontaneous. And you know what? This freaking mani chipped in two hours! Yeah. I did these at about 6:30, got in the shower at 7:45, and when I got out they had chipped. WHAT! Lame.

I'm not sure what my camera's problem was when I took the pictures of the gradient, because that's DEFINITELY not how this looks in person. The final pictures are more color-accurate.

I Konaded over it with plate RA-112 - don't know what to call this pattern? But anyway. I think it came out so pretty! I've been out of practice lately with my nail art so I was pleasantly surprised with the way this one turned out.

That's all for today, have a fabulous day! Almost the 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:

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)!!

Day 15: Delicate Print

Hello ladies! Today's theme is delicate print. I feel like the term "delicate" is very up to interpretation, so I did another flower mani for today.

I started with two coats of OPI Play The Peonies then stamped over with this Konad flower image!

I think it definitely represents "delicate," how about you? I originally thought of doing snowflakes for today's theme, but.... I am very anti-snow and I don't want it to think it's welcome yet. Because it's not. I know, I know... I live in central Indiana. I should be used to snow by now. I am....but that doesn't mean I like it or want it anytime soon! :P

See you tomorrow for Tribal Print!

Day 14: Flowers

Flowers! Yay I love doing flower manis. There are just so many options!

For today, I decided to do an abstract flower design. I started with a base of OPI DS Coronation. The colors I used for the flowers are Zoya Codie, Sinful White on White and OPI Sparrow Me The Drama.

Funky!

Senorita Bonita + Daisy Nail Art that looks like fried eggs

Hello nail junkies!

I just received the entire China Glaze Island Escape collection for receiving runner up in StyledOn's nail art contest recently! Obviously I'm a little slow on the uptake of these seeing as how summer is almost over...but that won't stop me from wearing these in the middle of winter!

I did want to use one of them today since summer IS almost over though! I decided on Senorita Bonita... I obviously have a thing for purples.

 

This color is REALLY hard to capture. As you can see, I tried to edit the color in Photoshop (the first swatch is closest to what it really looks like) but it destroyed my skin tone.

Then I thought it'd be fun to say goodbye to summer with some little flowers! I did daisies (because the are easiest and I wasn't feeling well today) but.....I feel like they ended up looking like fried eggs...

Hahah. I ended up taking the flowers off and just repainting using SB because I just wasn't feeling them. But now I'm hungry...

Also, random question for you guys: What is your most difficult nail to paint? I ask because I always have such difficulties painting my thumb nail and it baffles me because it's the largest... I feel like it should be the easiest to make look good but I always struggle with getting polish on my skin and making the line at my cuticle even/look good! Maybe Probably it's just me though :)

Take Two: Wedding French Manis

Hello all! We are starting a new series which we are calling Take Two . Each week, we will pick a different type/theme of mani and both do our takes on it. Then we will put them in a post together so you can see how similarly/differently we execute the same general type of design!

This week's topic is Wedding Appropriate French Manicures. A relative of ours is getting married and we needed something not too obnoxious to wear. Bright blue and neon green aren't really appropriate for weddings ;)

Melissa's Design:

 

I used a base of 10 Professional Pinky Promise. This was a little thin -- I had some cuticle pooling. I then sponged a white french onto the tips of my nails. Finished with a dotting tool and Sally Hansen Insta-Dry in Lightning and OPI Be A Dahlia Won't You.

Amanda's Design:

I know black is a little... "out there" to be considered wedding appropriate, but I tried to keep it tame/elegant at the same time. My dress is white and black so I thought a black-tipped french with lace accents could be pretty, but unique at the same time.

I started with three coats of China Glaze Innocence, a sheer baby pink. I have a love-hate relationship with this polish -- it applies fine, but it's so sheer that you can always see the yellow on my nails underneath. A perfect french mani color though. This is probably my most used China Glaze color! Here are some swatches of Innocence:

Then I made black french tips using Sinful Black polish. I always just freehand it -- I hate waiting for my polish to dry completely to use those little guides (same with tape) so I always opt to try myself. I gotta say, I've gotten better at freehanding french manis! My old attempts were futile. Then I used a small paintbrush and made little black loops and finished with little dots on top for the lace accent (can you tell that's what it's supposed to be? haha)

Dandelion nails!

 I know what you're thinking. "Dandelions?! But those aren't even real flowers, they're weeds!"

Yes...but what screams summer more than dandelions!!? Plus I did this pretty base color and found myself too unskilled to do any pretty flowers, so I had to settle for something a bit easier. :)

I started with two coats of China Glaze Sea Spray. This polish posed such a problem for me back in February! It was one of the first posts I ever did, and I was a noob. My swatches weren't good and my polishing skills weren't up to par with what they are now. But Sea Spray....why are you so pretty? It's so shimmery and subtle and BOOTIFUL!!

Then I used a dotting tool to make the big...center (?) of the dandelion and a black striper to make the stem. I used a special striper nail brush and white acrylic paint to make the ... petals? weeds? of the dandelion. I just hardly used ANY paint so it came out looking very dainty and see-through...which is what I was going for :) Yay me! The little flying petals were surprisingly difficult to do though -- I don't have a paintbrush THAT small so they turned out a little too big compared to the dandelions, but oh well. Art doesn't HAVE to imitate life :)

I like this because it's subtle...it's not in your face. I almost just left Sea Spray on by itself! But alas....nope.

I'm off to Kokomo for the weekend...

Aruba, Jamaica ooo I wanna take you
To Bermuda, Bahama come on pretty mama
Key Largo, Montego, baby why don't we go
Down to Kokomooooo!

Have a wonderful weekend!

-Amanda

Summery Konad Flowers

Hello all!

I wanted to do something summery and fun and bright, but I wasn't feeling very creative today when I sat down to do this. Which meant that I was going to Konad, as that's my go-to for when I don't have anything fun planned.

I started with three coats of Zoya Phoebe. Phoebe is part of Zoya's recent Mod Mattes collection. I normally love Zoya's formula but this one was a little difficult for me compared to their other colors. I think it probably had to do with it being a matte color? It was just kinda streaky and I found that it wouldn't smooth out if I kept going over the same part of my nail more than once. I've never used any of Zoya's other matte colors so if anyone could let me know if that's how they all are, that'd be great :)

Here is Phoebe on its own:

Then I stamped over it using plate BM 224 with Konad special polish in white... I tried to do something fun with yellow or light green stamping (Sally Hansen Insta-Dry polishes) but it just wasn't having it :(

This plate kind of looks like a children's flower pattern or something... I don't know, but it's cute! :) As you can see, I put top coat over it even though it's a matte color. I like this one matte, but it IS pretty shiny too....ooooh shinies.

-Amanda

Cherry Blossoms

Oh Revlon Minted.... you are so pretty but why do you have to be such a PITA to apply? You are too streaky and chalky and I have to use a bazillion thick coats to even things out and then due to the bazillion thick coats I get bubbles and it takes forever to dry and because it takes forever to dry I bump it and get smudges!! Asdflkjasldkf anger. I don't even remember the last time I got bubbles from a polish! I've gotten pretty good at avoiding it.

ANYWAY... here's three *thick* coats of Revlon Minted. And it's still not completely smooth and opaque... stupid chalkiness.

And this next part, goes 100% to Miss Kayla Shevonne. If you haven't checked out her blog, DO SO! I really love her blog a lot. Like I said, I used her cherry blossom mani idea because I thought it was SO cute! So all credit goes to her for this design :)

I LOVE this. And it was so simple and easy to do. Literally just a striping brush for the stems/branches and a dotting tool for the petals/middles of the flowers and acrylic paint.

Fun Fact: I have a cherry blossom tattoo! Betcha didn't know that :)

Hope you all have a lovely day,
-Amanda