I shouldn't have been allowed to pick colors today. White, Blue, Yellow, Neon Orange and then Gold stripes? What?
I have been working a job where my hands get torn up and I finally grew my nails back out and I did this to them. Rude! Rude artist! I took it off almost right away.
I added many more layers of color to my most recent paint job and I don't even know the names of all the colors I added on. Just grabbed a bunch and went to Color Town!
I've been getting a bunch of compliments on them since I zazzed them up.
Sunday night I tried a new tutorial from Get Nailed blog, the Antique Nails Tutorial. I took these photos in the bathroom of the Electric Six show we were at that night :)
Base coat is NYC French White Tip and the paint brushy stripes of color are Wet 'n Wild Fast Dry 9.0.2.1.Orange, China Glaze Bizarre Blurple, NYC Midtown Mimosa, NYC Empire State Blue, Wet 'n Wild Shine Red Red. I liked how the sheer yellow layered over the other colors to make green and orange in a few places since I forgot to grab a green polish to use.
I was staring at my new cataloged list of nail polish and couldn't decide what color to use yesterday. I have 62 colors not counting clear top coats, so I asked a few friends to name a number between 1 and 62. Someone suggested adding together all the numbers they picked and the average was going to be my manicure. *heh* I got the number 24.5 so I used both color 24 and 25.
As you see here, we have 3 coats of Wet 'n Wild Gray's Anatomy, a sheer purple to green duo chrome. And on top, I tried making hearts with a dotting tool for the first time in Wet 'n Wild Heatwave :). I think it looks cute! Thanks Mathy Friends!
Did you know GAP has nail polish? Did you know you can buy them at the GAP outlet for $1.99 with an Old Navy Gift Card that has been in your purse for over a year? You can! I used GAP Hunter Green tonight to cover up my tip wear. I also procured a purply magenta creme from GAP that I'll break out later this week.
I put a strip of tape across my nail and painted on the full nail with GAP Hunter Green. It was thicker polish than I expected and dark. I wished it smelled like a pine tree. Then some lovely gold stripes with Sinful Colors Pot O Gold and topped with more NYC Matte Me Crazy. It turned out too....lumpy. I took it off soon after I photographed it. Nice idea though and I like the color combination.
A simply sweet nail art post today. A few days ago, I painted on two coats of Rimmel London Posh Pink and then topped every nail but the ring finger with NYC Matte Me Crazy. I really love the soft finish the matte top coat leaves.
I am just now getting minor tip wear so I'm going to go spiff them up and you'll see them again tomorrow :)
One day last week I sat and practiced some nail art ideas on fake nails. I got 500 nails from Amazon for under $3 woot. I figure it'd be a good way to practice a bunch without getting cruddly cuticles from taking off nail polish over and over all day. This sparkle nail was one of my favorites I made up that day so I recreated it last night.
Zooooom close-up so you can see the loveliness of this glitter. The base is two coats of trusty Wet 'n Wild Black Creme. I went to pick up dinner wearing Black Creme on every nail of my left hand and nothing at all on my right hand last night and the checkout lady complimented my nails. Uhhhh thanks? :)
I swiped one coat of China Glaze Rare & Radiant, a gold green holographic polish, along the right side of my nail. Then I used two coats of China Glaze Make A Spectacle on the left side. Make A Spectacle is so holographically beautiful! Teensy holo glitter and larger pink green gold teal orange shimmers of holographic hexagon glitter all over.
I tried to take some photos inside and outside to show the color changes at every angle of both these polishes, but it's hard to capture.
I returned a bummer of a polish to Sally Beauty and picked out Make A Spectacle on sale because it looked like a snow globe in the bottle. I thought it would be white glitter but it is so much better. I need to figure out a way to incorporate it into a Galaxy nail. These nails make me think of glittery beetles in space.
Happy Valentine's Day to you! I freehand painted today's shiny sparkly art. After I was done I realized my nail tips are the base of chubby red Valentine's hearts. My husband thought they looked like Iron Man! Happy Iron Man's Day too you too.
I am trying to paint my nails carefully so I don't need to clean up my cuticles. First I painted two coats of Orly Dazzle. This is a very shimmery metallic made up of very fine, very dense silver particles.
The tips are two coats of China Glaze Ruby Pumps. I have worn this color everyday for weeks....on my toes! The red jelly base of the polish ended up looking a deep pink over the silver of Dazzle in some lights. You can see it's red glitter shine through here and there in the sunshine.
Rue21 has a polish that I think is pretty close to Deborah Lippmann Candy Shop. It is color #050 Rue Beauté! Nail Deco and you can find it at their website here listed as Trans Chunky Glitter in purple. It is lovely in person and much much closer to a light pink than light purple. And Rue21 has them on sale 2 for $5 :) I don't have the Deborah Lippmann version of Candy Shop so I'll compare it to Claire's as a duplicate. Dupe of a dupe!.
The glitter pieces are practically identical and if anything, Claire's version is a bit more dense in the glitter department. The combination of orange, yellow, and light blue glitters I haven't seen in other rainbow glitter mixes are there in both yay! The pink base of Candy Shop is like HOT PINK IN YO FACE now to me and #050 is a milky, light pinkish purple. Wanna see some comparison swatches?
#050 showed up as a nice sheer pink and the formula was easy to work with and not gloppy at all. Thinner than the polish from Claire's but still had great glitter dispersion.
In the sunshine, Candy Shop looks so crazy bright! I've layered it over darker polishes like navy blue before and didn't notice it changing the other polish even with it's crazy brightness :)
Matching my manicure to my purse :) My Mom gave me a new Vera Bradley tote in Plum Crazy and I love the jewel tones in the fabric. I thought the coral in the pattern went pretty closely with my current favorite polish Rimmel London Sunset Orange. I recently bought Wet 'n Wild Megalast Heatwave on clearance and with an additional coupon for 66 cents! Woot! I thought it would be a good duplicate for Sunset Orange - it is pretty close in color, almost as sheer, but is definitely a darker coral orange with leaning more towards red.
This manicure is one coat of Heatwave, topped with one coat of Sunset Orange, and tipped with 9.0.2.1. Orange (also procured with same super sale at 66 cents). Now I have shimmery tips with gold and orange in it at the same time. The visible nail line helped me paint on the french tips without needing a nail guide.
I have a nail patch made of teabag on my right thumb, so I did a reverse manicure and covered up the bit of teabag you could still see with a ton of sparkle.
I was trying to do a mardi gras themed version of Chalkboard Nails Springtime Stacked Stripes and it started to look like animal eyeballs on my nails. My nails....they are looking at youuuuuu. *waggles fingers*
It devolved into me doing some fishtail stripes here and there and then calling it done. I wore them for two days and have decided they are a Moderate Nail Fail. They are okay...but not anything I'm proud of. Basecoat is Wet 'n Wild The Wonder Yellows, green stripe is China Glaze Cha Cha Cha, and purple stripe is Wet 'n Wild Eggplant Frost. The green was too sheer to show up how I wanted it.
This weekend, I painted my nails Wet 'n Wild Sage in the City and wore them around for a day just plain green. The next morning I took my gold nail art paint and just scrubbed it around on my nails randomly to make abstract swirly patterns. The right hand here is kinda blobbity.
The left hand here turned out much cooler. I love the symbol looking swirly on my thumb. Some of them look kinda ribbony too.
Hey all! For this week's nails, I followed a tutorial at swatchandlearn.com. It looks really complicated, but was surprisingly easy!
Colors used: Sephora by OPI "Opening Night" (dark blue), OPI "Danke-shiny Red" and Revlon Top Speed "Golden"
I do recommend letting each stripe of polish dry completely before moving to the next stripe... I didn't, and my nails took ALL DAY to dry.
This was very fun, and you could do so many color combinations that the possibilities are endless! Neons for summer, glitters mixed with flats as in the tutorial... just so many choices! I will definitely try this again.
This tape manicure was done on Jan. 5th this year. A lighting bolt french manicure from a tutorial at nailside.blogspot.com :) I used Wet n Wild Blue Moon for the base and China Glaze Ruby Pumps and China Glaze Glistening Snow for the tips. Oh Ruby Pumps, you are one of the best polishes ever!
Manicure link - tinyurl.com/aeekvdd
China Glaze Unpredictable is the shimmery green base coat, then Wet n Wild Bijou Blue and Sinful Gold Nail Art for the...well nail art designs. And some NYC top coat to see if it doesn't peel like the Seche Vite had peeled badly recently.
Tuesday's manicure was showing a bunch of tip wear and some chips so I got the Rockstar Pink glitter polish out and went glitter goofy.
I covered each nail with another coat of Rockstar, a coat of Matte Me Crazy, and then glittered up just the tips to try and make a gradient. Kinda worked, kinda didn't - but it was definitely extremely glittery and will be fun to try to take off tomorrow!
I didn't have a specific manicure plan this morning. I did know I wanted to use one of my recent Christmas gifts to myself. I specifically bought China Glaze For Audrey because I have a new little niece named Audrey. And it's such a pretty creamy tiffany blue.
Over my base coat I freehanded a stripe of Orly Angel Eyes that has bright blue itsy bits glitter and silver hexagons and then a small stripe of Sally Hansen Rockstar Pink that has teensy red, pink, purple, and blue glitters. I went a little glitter overboard on a few fingers, but I like it. I still have a teabag patch on my thumb so the glitter covers up the lumpy buffing job I did :)
The ring finger on my left hand and the pinky on my right hand were the only ones not chipped and flaking after two days at work. I open latches a bunch at work and know those eat polish for dinner, right? I retrieved all the colors from last time and painted each remaining nail a solid color. That didn't look quite finished so I used my new topcoat NYC Matte Me Crazy and it looks all velvety now.
Left hand - I think I'll leave the ring finger shiny instead of mattifying it.
Right hand!
I used a top coat and let it all dry. I tried to hand draw on the triangles in the tutorial...but that just got all blobbity. My nails aren't long enough yet or maybe I need a thinner brush. Instead, I used tape for the design since I have a wee bit of experience with tape manicures. After Christmas, I bought a ton of Christmas themed washi style tape on super sale called Recollections Crafting Tape at Michael's (examples of washi tape in this blog post here reviewing different kinds of washi tape). It isn't as sticky as masking tape and easier to see than trying to use clear tape when laying it on your nails.
This was the part that took forevers and evers. Note to self, cut all the bits of tape when your hand isn't wet with paint. Also, make sure you watch something really boring on TV like "The Bourne Legacy" so it seems like your manicure is taking more forevers than just one forever. This is somehow inexplicably an important part of this manicure....
Right Hand!
Left Hand!
My favorite two fingers on my left hand. I made most of the rainbows start with red at the nail tip, but my ring finger had a reverse rainbow. I also think the taping came out looking crisp and sharp here.
I got a ton of nail art tools for Christmas (dotters, striping tape, manicure scissors, glitter top coats) and have been teaching myself some fun techniques and trying not to buy ALL THE NAILPOLISH EVER!
This post is one of my first attempts at a tutorial this year where I was just so so so happy with how it turned out. I used all Wet 'n Wild polishes with Night Prowl as the base, Metallica, and Eggplant Frost. With a Seche Vite topcoat. This Fishtail manicure was from Chalkboard Nails tutorial .
Yay learning to paint tiny things on my tiny hands wheeeee!
