Game Day Nails!

The skins are in the playoffs so... party like it's the Superbowl!  I did some game day nails for the game this afternoon.  This was really fun!

Products Used:

China Glaze Merry Berry

Spoiled Designated Driver

Wet n Wild 449C

China Glaze Electrify

Essie As Gold As It Gets

Milani Jewel FX in Gold

LA Colors Art Deco in White

Rainbow Dot Nails

I've seen this style floating around the Internet lately, and seeing as how I can't let a rainbow pass me by, I decided to give it a shot.  I received a set of dotting tools for Christmas- yay!- so this was my first shot at using them!  Very cool!

Not too shabby!  There's a few things I would do differently next time, but overall I think it was fun and bright and cute for the end of 2012!

Products Used:

LA Girl Matte Black

Zoya America

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Sun Kissed

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lightening

China Glaze Gaga for Green

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Brisk Blue

China Glaze Gothic Lolita

Rainbow Dots!

This one was super simple but still one of my favorite looks when finished!  UNFORTUNATELY.  The color I chose to use as my base- Stone Cold from China Glaze's Capitol Colors collection- purely exists to make me SO MAD.  It is a gorgeous, gorgeous color.  It's all metallic and glimmery and gorgeous when matte and even moreso with a top coat.  But the formula is so bad!  I mentioned it briefly before. but it seriously chips within literal minutes of drying!  It doesn't seem to matter what I do- basecoat, no basecoat, top coat, no topcoat, whatever.  I look down and then realize that my nails are all chipped up and I just painted then an hour ago.  Talk about frustrating!  In order to take these photos I had to completely redo my thumb and pointer finger, got back to my computer and realized that the pinky finger was all chipped to hell also!  So I just covered up the chips and went to redo the pictures.  Bah!  China Glaze is probably my favorite brand.  But this particular color is just a pain in my side.

Anyway, wow, what a long-winded rant.  Onto the photos!

                       

Products Used:
China Glaze Stone Cold
Zoya America
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed
China Glaze Sunshine Pop
China Glaze Gaga for Green
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Brisk Blue
China Glaze Gothic Lolita

Quick Neutral/Neon Polka Dot Mani

I figured I probably shouldn't do ANOTHER gradient even if I love them to death, so I went another direction.  I was gifted a nail dotting tool by one of my friends so I figured I'd give that a shot.  I've been using toothpicks for the past, I dunno, 26 years when I need to make dots on my nails, so I thought the dotting tool would just make it that much easier.  Lo and behold, I kinda suck at nail dotting tools.  I am sooo not used to it- but I think this is just going to be one of those practice makes perfect deals.

Products Used:
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Wet Cement
China Glaze Sunshine Pop
China Glaze Fuchsia Fanatic

Fall Leaves on Cheeky Chops

Since I felt kinda weird wearing around these yellow nails, and I'm too cheap to take it off immediately, I decided to go forth with some fall inspired stamping!

I used Butter London's Cheeky Chops as a base since I'd swatched it previously, and stamped on top with a Bundle Monster design in red, orange and brown.  I like it, but I thought it was missing something- so I topped it with my matte topcoat, and I like it.

Products used:

Butter London Cheeky Chops

Revlon Hot for Chocolate

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed

Gap nail polish in Admire

Essie Matte About You

Bundle Monster plate BM04

Swatch: Butter London Cheeky Chops

Well, this is definitely a yellow, and the brand/cost didn't change much about that.  The color is pretty, but very very similar to Sally Hansen's Lightening (which you can see here), though Lightening is a little bit more warm I think.  And Cheeky Chops still needed three coats (or maybe a 4th for good measure would've been nice) to go on opaque and you can still see all my gross nail ridges.  The good news is that, same as with Scoundrel, Cheeky Chops dried SO quickly- seriously, SO fast!  And I like yellows and I only have two or three in my collection, so I think this was a necessary purchase- I just think that I wouldn't buy it if it weren't on sale.  You can get similar yellows for a third of the price.

Yes, my pinky finger hurts like a mofo and 

I'm sorry you had to see this

Swatch: Sally Hansen Hard Lemonade

Previous to this, I only had three yellows in my collection!  I like this one- it's more pastel than some of the other yellows I've had my eye on, but it's lovely in its own way.  Typical problems I've had with most yellows- streaky, needs like 3 coats to opaque, etc.  But still!  Pretty.

Inside, with flash

Inside, no flash

Lovely, right?!  

Sally Hansen Hard as Nails in Hard Lemonade

Rainbow Leopard for Summer Vacation!

Nothing says "red eye flight" like rainbow designs!  I went home this weekend to visit and I have some exciting news, but that can wait until tomorrow.  Until then, here's the design I headed back home to Maryland with:

Products used:

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in: Whirlwind White, Lightening, Brisk Blue

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in: Sun Kissed

OPI: You're Such a Kabuki Queen

Wet n Wild Mega Last: Soul Mate

Base/Top Coat: Sally Hansen Double Duty

Konad Plate: m57

Color Changing Nail Polish!

If I had had this nail polish when I was a kid... man, I don't even know.  Even now, I am 25 and I slapped it on literally 10 minutes before running out the door- I didn't even use nail polish remover from my white mani, I just peeled that stuff off and slapped on a base coat and went on from there, so there's little bits of white remaining... I really was not expecting much from this stuff.  But I have been playing around like a little kid for the past few hours.  I am SO EXCITED about it.  I watched it change when I stepped outside, when i was in the mall, I pressed my nails against the cool window and watched the contact points change.  I am LOVING this stuff and I can't wait to go back and buy ALL of the other colors.  Seriously!

This is directly after being run through cold, cold tap water.

This is directly after being run through hot tap water.

Transitioning from hot to room temperature (yellow-green)

The foreground is room temperature, the background transitioning from heat.

In these photos, there is a basecoat and 3 layers of polish, no top coat.  

Products used:

Mood Struck (no name, colors are green/yellow)

Polka Dots Feather Mani in Yellow

Living in Oregon is tough sometimes.  It's so dreary and rainy 9 months out of the year, and I'm pretty sure March broke a record for being particularly cold and rainy.  And April isn't off to a good start.. it was hailing today!  So I thought I needed some bright spring/summer color in my life to get me through this.  I tried my hand at a feather manicure.  It was way more difficult than I had planned, but the good news is that I learned very quickly (the second hand I did was exponentially better than the first).  So here's a few photos to share!

Left

Right

Left again

So I did my left hand first and here's what I learned: definitely trim up the feather as closely as you can to the shape of your nail before sticking it on the nail.  Putting on a layer of SV and then smushing the feather on did NOT work for me.  I ended up using Elmer's glue to glue it down and SV to really stick it.  On my left hand, I used two feathers because my first feather ended up kind of misshapen and wonky and didn't cover the whole nail (due to me struggling to get it to stick) so be sure that your feather is big enough!  My right hand surprisingly (because I was using my bad hand) came out better.  The feather looked nicer and covered most of the nail.  My only problem is that I had a difficult time trimming it up and it had some sharp edges hanging off- I used a nail file to get at those bits after applying my topcoat.

Other than that, I think it came out pretty well!  The feathers that I bought came in a multitude of colors, so I definitely will try this again sometime.

Products used:

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Lightening

SV topcoat

Elmer's glue

Creatology Feather Plumes from Michael's

Spring Break Goes Out With A.... POP! of Color

Well my spring break is coming to a close, and starting Monday I'm back to being a semi-professional (the kids at my school LOVE checking out my nails but I don't fell comfortable when meeting with parents and other professionals), so I figured I'd go out with some brights!  I've seen a lot of pink and yellow color combos lately (Nail Addicts Anon, Nail Polish Art Addiction, Nailside) so that was my first thought.

I like this quite a bit, I think.  It feels a little bit like a circus tent, which is fine by me!  It seems so cheerful.

Products used:
ELF Summer Ready Collection: Fuchsia
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri: Lightening, Silver Sweep
Bundle monster plates BM20 and BM05

Looking Back

I went through my files and pulled out some of my favorite nail polishes/designs from the past year.

This "major award" inspired fishnet french was from January 2011. 

December 2010 I tried these Christmas lights (everyone say hi to my dog, Abby, in the background)

This purple zebra mani is from September 2010 when I got my first knonad plates!

In August 2010 I tried water marbling with the primary colors.

So there was a quickie run-through of some of the designs I've tried in the past.  I was going to do a plain old french mani tonight since I have and interview for internship this week (yikes!) and I want it to more professional than.. say... purple zebra stripes... But I've been battling a migraine for 9 hours today and I'm really not feeling the nail polish fumes right not.  So instead I'm going to slap on a clear coat and cross my fingers that I don't gnaw off what little "white bits" I've got left tomorrow.  If the french doesn't work out I'm just going to go with a pale pink or neutrally taupe.  I never ever do plain pink by itself so that will be.. interesting?  We'll see!