4th of July Manicure

Happy 4th of July everyone!!!

So it's been a while since I've uploaded anything and even looonger since I've done a tutorial. So why not do one dedicated to the United States of America? Look at what manicure I'm sporting today! :)

Ok, first star off with a clear base coat of polish and paint your nails red.

Next, use either a toothpick, a striping brush, or thin paintbrush and paint white vertical stripes. If you're really careful, you can use the nail polish brush itself, it's just much more difficult.

*Optional* Paint your nails white with red stripes. :)

Next, you're basically going to paint blue french tips. Just use your blue polish and paint a smooth curved line at the tips of your nails.

Now to finish it all up, add some stars! Just make small white dots along the blue area. I did five stars on each finger, so there are 50 stars in total!

And it's that easy! Just finish up with a clear top coat to protect your patriotic manicure. I think this manicure looks great on short nails, but I'm sure it'll be fabulous on long nails too! :)

Fun Dip Inspired Manicure

Happy Mother's Day!!!

We've been having a great family weekend so far. My mom and I went to Mass last night and we totally cried when they sang a really pretty song about moms. We watched Black Swan and today my Dad's cooking some ribs for dinner. He's been smoking them in the smoke house all day. I can't wait! :)

Anyway, one of the things I remember from my childhood is that every time my Mom brought my brother and me to the movies (back when it was still cheap *tear*) she would give us fun dip!

Omg, do you guys remember this!?

My brother's favorite was the blue that turns green when you lick it. My favorite flavor was always grape, but that color changing one was soooo cool. So that's the inspiration for today's manicure!

It's not a great picture, but I used a blue polish with green tips and the marshmallow glitter that I talked about a few posts ago.

Dude, my Mom made my childhood soooo awesome. I miss being a kid. :)

I love you mommy! <3

Rainbow Tiger Stripes

Hey guys! Ok, so it's been a while since my last update. I got a couple spring themed manicures in the making, but how about a nice rainbow for now?

Well... rainbow tiger stripes. ;)

Totally reminds me of Lisa Frank! lol :D

MARCH MADNESS!!! (Basketball Manicure)

Ok, so I'm not really much of a sports fan, but I make an exception for men's college basketball. I looooove Syracuse! I'm actually watching the Syracuse vs. Marquette game in the 3rd round of the NCAA's as I'm typing. :)

So in honor of my favorite sports team, I just got done painting some basketballs on my nails!

Great thing about this manicure is that it is FANTASTIC for short nails! I actually think this is one of those manicures that actually looks better on short, broad nails than on long nails.

Anyway, that's it for me. There's about 11 more minutes in the game, so I'm outta here!

LET'S GO ORANGE! LET'S GO!!!

Blast from the Past! - Guest Manicures

Oops! Well, I've had these ones stored on my computer for a while... These are from back around the time I was going back and forth to Boston. When my mom and I would go, we would stay with my cousin who live near to Boston. She has three girls, all around the tween age, and every time we'd go down, I'd have to do their nails. :D

So these three manicures are theirs from the last time I went down. They browsed around my website and picked one out that they wanted.

The oldest, Lexi, wanted a lime green zebra print. I think this one turned out to be my favorite. :)

Chase wanted the frog manicure that I did, except with a few creative changes. She decided to have blue frogs instead. :)

Then finally, Eavery wanted the tropical sunset that I did for a pedicure. And if I remember correctly, I also used my glittery glow-in-the-dark polish. :)

Gradient Video Tutorial

Ok, so I promised this for yesterday, but I was having some trouble with youtube. :/

I've been using gradients a lot recently; it's how I did the sunset pedicure and a few others. A user on youtube asked how I did it, so here's a tutorial! I'm trying out a different style for video tutorials, tell me what you think.

Anyway, this is the manicure I show in the video. My camera just did not do it justice! It looked like a peacock in real life, so pretty! :D

So I hope that helps! Enjoy! :)

TWLOHA Manicure

Today is the To Write Lover On Her Arms day on Facebook! This organization does wonderful work, so to show my support, today's manicure is dedicated to TWLOHA! I decided to paint awareness ribbons in the four colors they represent.

I also made a quick little video, so take a look!

Spots and Polka Dots (Manicure)

So since I did stripes the other day, I thought it would be appropriate to show spots some love today. Here are some spotted designs I did a while ago. :)

First up is some black and white polka dots. I loved how these turned out, it looked so nice!



The only hard part about this design is that it can be very time consuming. It can also be tricky to get the dots evenly spaced, but it just takes lots of practice.

Toward the end of summer, I also did this blue leopard print manicure.



To do this, I started off with a light blue base coat. Next, randomly place some dark blue dots of different sizes. After they're all dry, take a sharpie, nail art pen or a brush to paint little squiggly "c" shapes around the blue dots.

So that's it for today. I'm off to Boston early tomorrow morning, so I don't know how long it will be until I do another post. I've been saving some reviews/hauls about some nail polishes two of my friends gave me, so maybe those will be next. :)

P.S. My nails have grown SUPER long lately, I'm talking almost a centimeter beyond my fingertips. They look beautiful, I love them! They're the longest they've ever been in my life. Bad news is that I have to take off all my nail polish off because I need an MRI on Monday. My nails tend to break if they're this long and don't have polish to protect them, so I'll be filing them down. Boo! :( But I figure if I file them a little it's better than if they break and have to file them a lot. Good news is that I took an awesome picture of the manicure I'm wearing now so you can see it and my nails around Christmas time! Can't wait to show off this one, it looks so cool! :D

Vertical Stripes (Manicure & Pedicures)

So for this post, I decided to feature some striped manicures and pedicures I've done recently. They are a super easy design to do. You can use sharpie, nail art pens, brushes, toothpicks and even the nail polish's brush. It's great for everyday wear and there are so many color possibilities! Also, one of the best things about vertical stripes is that they are great for short, broad nails. They give the illusion that your nails are longer and slimmer than they actually are! This also makes stripes great for pedicures, too. :)

I love black paired with bright colors. So for this manicure I used a black base coat with bright green, pink and yellow stripes. With the contrast against the black, the stripes really popped! They almost looked neon. :)

(sorry about the sideways picture! I couldn't orient it right for some reason...)

For this pedicure, I decided to go monochromatic. I think this was my favorite and most successful striped design. I used a light, medium and dark blue to do the stripes.



And then of course you can never go wrong with a good old fashioned rainbow! It looked great, and was very colorful!

I got a whole bunch of odds and ends to post this month, so look forward to a random November!

Sinful Colors Haul

I'm real tired, but I wanted to do something. So just a quick post:


My mom was out and about and wherever she was, there was a huge nail polish sale! So she came home with a pretty nice Sinful Colors haul! Super super cheap, and the colors are great! We've tried them all so far except the white, purple and opal colored ones.

The blue is peacock blueish, but in some lights, it turns a teal green. It's also pretty shear, along with the opal. The purple is really hard to photograph but it's a nice mid-toned purple. The hot pink and fuchsia are super super bright and pop very nicely. The dark red is perfect for a Christmas red and has a bit of a shimmer to it, but not too much. Then the black and white are just like any other black and white. :P

Missonaries of Charity Manicure

Today, August 26th, is Mother Teresa of Calcutta's 100th birthday. One of the most wonderful things she had done was found the Missionaries of Charity religious order. As a side note, If you don't know already, I'm going to be a nun someday. I have looked at this order and boy, they are some hardcore nuns!!

So in her honor, I was inspired to paint my nails with the famous three blue stripes that can be seen on their habits.

Pray for us Mother Teresa, and God Bless!


***Edit*** I added a poll to the right side column. It'll be open for two weeks. Please go vote! :D

Sally Hansen - Hard As Nail Xtreme Wear - Review

Ok, now I know I said I wasn't going to do reviews, but I have a bunch of these and I found this line pretty interesting...

Alright, so I'm reviewing a few colors in the Sally Hansen's Hard As Nail Xteme Wear line. First, let's start with the disclaimer: I have not paid for these products; they were given to me by my mother. I am not being paid in any sort of way for this review and this is my honest opinion.

Not all the colors have the same, so I can't speak for every color in the line, but after trying 6 of them, I think I can give a fair review.

ALL of the polishes started off super watery. The brush isn't very good either and doesn't hold the polish, so you'll make a huge mess if you're not careful! After your first or second try, they level out to the consistency of normal polish.

That is, except the white. The white just sucks. It thicken up super fast and it's now like painting with paste. I've thinned it out twice already and it's started getting thick again. The white also looks flat like white out, so unless you like that sort of thing, I would NOT recommend the white. HOWEVER, it's very pigment and is the right consistency for a Konad. It's a perfect, cheap alternative.

The yellow and orange are super shear, so you'll need 5+ coats to get bottle color. Either that or layer it on top of a white coat. I suppose you could also try layering it ontop of another color if you want to experiment.

The green is nice, but it's starting to thicken up like the white, though not as quickly. It's pretty pigmented, opaque in thin 2 coats.

Marine Scene is really good, it reminds me of a peacock blue. It's a frosted with a little shimmer in there. It takes maybe 3 or 4 coats to be opaque, but it's wearable after 2. It's also great to layer on top of another color. I have a frosted green and I put a coat of this over it and it looks gorgeous!

And the best of the bunch is Blue Me Away... it really did blow me away! I have never been so impressed with a nail polish before! It was opaque in 1 coat, is pretty chip resistant, and super cheap! And I just LOVE the color! It looks great on cool skin tones and really jumps out! The only downside to this polish is that when you try to remove it with polish remover, it stains your fingers blue for a few hours. Otherwise, I think it's a great bang for your buck and I would definitely recommend this color! In fact I better go out and get another bottle soon! :D

Overall, they aren't a fantastic nail polish but not bad either. The bottles are small, BUT they are VERY cheap, ($2.50-$3.50ish at walmart and drugstores) so I think they are well worth a try! The color selection is also very good and they have some very unique shades. There aren't very many nudes or skin tones, so this is a line for a girl who loves color!!!

Patriotic Pedicure

Happy 4th of July everyone! Sorry this post is a little late in the day, but here is the pedicure I've been sporting for the holiday! I invented this last year and I just love it!

It's very easy to do. I started by painting my big toes blue and all the others red.




After that, I just put white dots on the blue to represent the field of stars, and white strips on the red for the rest of the flag.




I chose to paint vertical stripes because they make your nails look longer and thinner. This is especially important for your toes because they are already broad and short for most people.

That is it! Easy and quick patriotic design that looks great! I got a ton of compliments on these and my cousin even asked to come over to paint her nails sometime! Happy 4th everyone! :D

Labyrinth Inspired Manicure - FAIL!

So this is definitely not my best nail art... ok, fine. I failed completely. It's hideous, lumpy and just around bad. I can't imagine it would look good one anyone's nails. But I'm going to share it with you guys anyway so that it might inspire someone to build upon it and make it work. Don't say I didn't warn you!

I love the movie Labyrinth, I've been obsessed with it lately. So I wanted to do a manicure inspired by it. The colors that come to mind are purples and blues... and glitter!



So I got the brilliant idea to take those colors and mix them all together to look cloudy and mysterious...



...yuk. But, oh wait, it gets worse when I try to add those little floating crystal balls...



...
Yeah... I told you it was ugly!

I was really disappointed. It looked so much cooler in my mind... I'll probably attempt this one again some time in the future, but I'll used different methods. Anyway, I hope some good came out of this and someone finds a way to build off of it!

Black and Blue Wavy Manicure

I wanted to play around with the Blue Sally Hansen nail art pen some more. It was really interesting that it came out matte... So here's what I came up with, nothing special.

Basically what I did was paint my nails black, and draw in little squiggles. I fulled in the bottom half and toped it with a clear coat of nail polish.

I was a little disappointed that started to give a crackle look. You can see it best on my thumb and index finger. It even crackled a little worse after I took the picture. I don't know what that was all about, so I'll have to fiddle around with it a bit more.

P.S. Does this remind anyone else of the Backstreet Boys? XD

Blue Snowflake Pedicure

Oops! I forgot to mention that I'll also be showing pedicures! Pedicure designs are especially great for girls with broad finger nails!

This is the current pedicure I'm wearing! All you need is a blue, white and a clear coat to make the polish last longer. I also used a coat of a glitter nailpolish, but this is optional.



Start off your pedicure with a base coat polish. I simply used a clear top coat for my base. It works just as well as a special base polish. Then I painted several coats of blue



Using a nail art brush, I painted a large white snowflake on my big toe. If you don't have a nail art brush, a skinny paint brush or a nail art pen will work just as well. If you don't have either, just use a tooth pick. I find tooth picks hard to draw clean straight lines with, but it can be done. You'll just have to be a bit more patient with it.



Paint small white dots randomly scattered on the other toes. I used a dotting tool, but toothpicks are WONDERFUL for this. I painted a coat of glitter polish on my toes, but that is optional for you. For me, it made the blue look a bit more frosty. Finish with a clear top coat!