Practicing to Make A Spectacle

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.

Base of Hearts - Valentine's Nail Art

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.

Kinda Sorta Stacked Stripes

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.

Zapow!

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

Shiny Manicure on a Sunny Day

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.

Glitter For Audrey

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 :)

Black Striped & Rainbow Nails

I was inspired to try rainbow nails with a pattern of black on top after seeing this tutorial for Mardi Gras Harlequin Nails on Nail Nerd. Instead of painting some skittle nails, I used a tiny little paint brush to dab bits of polish directly on my nails. Dab dab dab dab. That part was fun and I used some jelly polishes and some shimmery ones. Layers of dabbing China Glaze Red Satin, Rimmel Sunset Orange, Wet 'n Wild The Wonder Yellows, China Glaze Cha Cha Cha, Wet 'n Wild Bijou Blue and Eggplant Frost dab dab dab dab. The right hand, I tried to use a sponge to lay on the rainbow gradient and it kinda worked. The dabbing method worked better.

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.