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.

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.

Sage & Gold Abstract Nails

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.

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.

Matte Skittles and a few Black Stripes

From Friday night's manicure, only one nail on each hand survived the weekend unscathed! And oddly, both nails had the horizontal stripes. Odd!

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!

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.

Welcome to Nail Town, Population Me!

I started reading The Daily Nail blog in 2010 and branched out to follow a bunch of other nail art blogs. I didn't paint my nails much since I worked in a job where I had to wash my hands a billionty-four times a day.

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!