I had my company Christmas party last week, and I wanted a really classy ornate Christmas design on my nails for the event. Here is what I came up with:
Check this out ^ I even managed to do the design on my left hand!
Here are the steps I took:
Drew a diagonal french on each nail with Sally Hansen Insta Dri Silver Sweep.
Using a detailing brush, I created the cute little swirls in Zoya Verushka. I followed this tutorial on Youtube to teach me how to draw the swirls.
After a coat of Seche Clear I added three little red rhinestones to represent some Holly Berries.
I love all the cute Christmas looks, but I think sometimes its nice to have a break and do something ~*fancy*~
Funny Story: I actually went and got a professional pedicure the day of my company Christmas party, and the ladies at the nail salon were studying my manicure HARDCORE! They all couldn't believe I did it myself, and wanted to know how I did it of course! ;)
When I saw this pin on Pinterest, I fell in love! What an awesome Christmas look! Extra bonus: it came with a tutorial! I'll be honest, this look was a challenge! Mine definitely doesn't look as good as Never Too Much Glitter's I'm going to blame it on using nail polish instead of acrylic paint. Here's hoping Santa brings me some for Christmas!
My base color for this manicure is Rimmel Gray Matter. I used a white striper for the white parts, and a konad red stamping color for the red parts. The deer and the snowflakes were stamped, not hand-done because I wanted them to look nice and so I could save some time.
I know I'm the most inconsistent blogger out there, but I"m hoping to make that up to you with a TON of Holiday looks this week! I've got a huge backlog of manicures, so I may be posting multiple times a day to give you some last minute nail art ideas!
This post is from the vault, man do I miss my long nails! I can't wait until they grow back to this length! *sigh* I got this really cute Sally Hansen color recently (Fairy Teal), and I wanted to use it right away. So I did a free-hand chevron tip with Milani's Totally 80's accented with a black striper
I think chevron tips are a great way to change up the typical french manicures.
Confession time: I have a very crazy pair of pajamas! And every time I wear these, I think omg I have to do a nail look inspired by these jammies! Here is the inspiration fabric:
And here are my nails:
This look was achieved by started with a white base. I then sponged a light purple, a light pink, dark pink, and dark purple to create the gradient look. Then, I used a black striper to draw the zebra stripes and the leopard spots.
So, what do you think? Did I match my inspiration well? What weird things have inspired your nails lately? Let me know in the comments!
As you may know by now, Pinterest is my crack! I am on it all the time, pinning awesome things. I have a whole board of nail inspiration, and whenever I have no idea what I want to do with my nails, I always go there for ideas. That is where today's manicure comes from. I saw this adorable Tiffany Box inspired mani a long time ago, and decided to recreate it and put my own spin on it.
Base color is China Glaze For Audrey, which is just the perfect Tiffany blue. I free-handed the bows with a white striper polish. I think this would be a fun look for the holiday season in different colors, so I hope it inspires you! Let me know what you think! And if you are on Pinterest, comment with a link to your board so I can follow you!
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month, I wanted to share some pretty special nails I created. This look started with a base coat of Zoya Portia. The pink ribbon was created free-hand using Zoya Areej (one of my favorite polishes of all time!), and then I top coated with Color Club's Starry Temptress.
As you can see, my nails are now nubbins! You may see some more designs from the vault with longer tips, but sadly, I had some unfortunate breakies so frenchies will have to hold off until they grow.
I got the inspiration for this manicure after watching nail art tutorials on Youtube. I really love the work by IndigoNova1. She originally did these nails with a green background, but I decided to use Zoya Kylie2 as my base which is a really bright corally red.
My manicure didn't come out nearly as cute as Indigo's, but I found the tutorial really easy to follow, and it turned out as a pretty cute manicure. Hope you like and it, and try it soon! I've been finding some great nails on YouTube lately, if you are on there, or have a favorite youtuber I should check out, please let me know in the comments!
I must start out by saying that I am so sorry for my absence. I have just been sooooooooooooooo busy and I hate that I've neglected my little bloggy. I promise to make more time for you in the future!
Ok, so now to today's Pink Wednesday manicure, holy hotness! I know this look has been done a zillion times before, but I don't care, these nails were SO MUCH FUN! Srsly, if you have never done anything this bright and fierce on your nails before, DO IT!!!! DO IT NOW!!!! Here's the look:
Here's how to achieve this look:
Start out with a base of China Glaze Shocking Pink (neon) - a color very true to it's name ;) I used 3 coats.
Then add a diagonal french using your favorite white, you may need 2 coats for full coverage. You could tape this off for a clean line like I did in this manicure, but I didn't because I knew I would be going over the line with black.
Using a black striper (mine is from Art Club) draw a line where the white meets the pink.
Still using the black striper you can draw your zebra lines OR you can tape off your pink side and stamp the zebra print like I had on my zebra kisses konadicure. I know konad, born pretty and bundle monster all have at least one zebra print design on their plates.
Let your design dry really good, and then top coat. I used Seche Vite because it does a good job of not smearing the design.
(Optional) Before the top coat dries, add your rhinestones on the black line.
Hope this tutorial helps you get some super fierce zebra print nails! Holler if you are wearing pink nails today! And Let me know in the comments if you'd rock this very bold look!
XOXO!
-Jen
WHAT A WEEK!!!!! In case you haven't heard, over here on the east coast, it has been one hell of a week of weather! On Tuesday we had an earthquake, Thursday night we had a really bad thunderstorm that generated a tornado in the area, and then Saturday hurricane Irene hit!!!!! CRAZY!!!! I think the locusts are coming this week! :P So, I have decided to dedicate a manicure to all this crazy weather!
If you are looking for a manicure for the different weather, here are the ideas I had:
For earthquakes: Crackle: DUH!
For tornadoes: how about a water marble or drag marbling to make a swirly!
For Cloudy Skies: Start with a dark color and then sponge a lighter color in cloud shapes.
For rain drops: I used a dotting tool and just put a little drag in it to create the drop.
And the last nail is just weird, and I apologize for that, it was supposed to symbolize the eye of the hurricane, but it was kind of a big fail! OOPs!
Oh well, hope you liked these nails! And I hope the weather where you live has been much calmer then here!
Happy Pink Wednesday, Lovelies! It's day three of summer fruit week. Hope you are enjoying the manicures so far! For pink Wednesday I decided to create a strawberry themed manicure!
I didn't take pix of the steps this time (Sorry!) but here is what I did:
Painted all nails, except one accent nail on each hand in Zoya Portia.
Painted accent nail in Zoya Dana.
On Portia painted nails, add polka dots in Zoya Flora using dotting tool.
On Dana nail, add smaller polka dots in Zoya Pippa using dotting tool.
On Dana nail, add green lines at the base of the nail for the stem.
On Portia nails, add red strawberry shapes using a thin nail art brush.
Add yellow dots and tiny green stems to strawberry shapes.
I like using the ring finger as my accent nail, but as you can see in the pictures, I accidentally made my middle finger the accent on my left hand. Oops! lol. I think I like my other strawberry manicure better than this one. What do you think?
Lately my manicures have kind of been duds! It's hard coming up with gorgeous post-worthy nails EVERY DAY! Today I didn't have anything new to post, so I went through my images to see if there were any manicures I hadn't posted yet, and here's what I found:
Hand-painted chevron: Zoya Dove base, light pink is Zoya Flora, and dark pink tips is Zoya Areej, outlined with dollar store black.
Revlon Sunshine Sparkle (a shimmery light yellow, which you can't really tell from this picture) I think the stamp is from konad M77 plate.
Hopefully I'll come up with some fantastic ideas this week, if not, I may have to skip a day until my stock of images builds back up! If you have any ideas for what kind of posts you'd like to see when I hit an inspiration block, please let me know in comments!
When I saw my fellow blog roundup pal, Ling Ling, at Wulio's Nails was having a franken contest, I just had to give it a try. I follow a lot of blogs that franken all the time, but I never tried, so this was a perfect chance to give it a try! I've had this Zoya South Beach Ice for awhile now. It is the only Zoya that has ever really disappointed me because its sooooo sheer. It would be the coolest color if it was just one of their glitter formulas. Its still a great color for layering, and turns out, its also a great color for mixing in a franken! So, here is the color I came up with:
I mixed my color on a piece of paper first to get the right mix of colors, and then I started blending the polishes in an empty Seche Vite bottle. As I was blending the polishes, I kept testing on a nail wheel until I got the desired darkness. I really love how this came out.
Here are all the colors I put in my franken: Zoya Ibiza, Zoya South Beach Ice, Dollar Store White, and China Glaze Dorothy Who?
And here is my final manicure. I decided to add a little nail art to match the theme of the polish I created. For my nail art I drew some shooting stars using Sally Hansen Silver Sweep and the tail from the star is Milani HD Holo. Tell me what you think. Any franken tips for me? I really loved doing this, but I feel like I'm lacking supplies to do it all the time. What should I stock up on if I want to do more?
In case you haven't noticed, I have a bit of an obsession with bows! Since, on Wednesdays We Wear Pink, I decided to celebrate my obsession with a big fat pink bow on my nails!
Tip is Wet N' Wild black and bow was added with a nail art brush with Zoya Lo. Hope you are having a lovely pink Wednesday!
I used Zoya Sookie for all the red parts and my dollar store black and white for the rest. The little Mickey Mouse heads were done with two different sizes of dotting tools from the lovely Born Pretty Store as were all the polka dots. The bows and the words were done using some new nail art brushes I got at Sally's.
I'm super behind on posting my nails, but that's not because I haven't been painting them! Here are the two different manicures I did for Easter:
I call this one grown up Easter eggs. I did pastel skittles with Zoya Portia, Caitlin, and Gemma, plus Revlon Lily and a light blue from Cosmetic Arts with no name. Then I stamped the lacy top using a bundle monster plate.
I got my idea for this next Easter mani from Meliney on Youtube. The base color is Zoya Robyn. All the work is hand-painted.
Its been pretty busy around here. I have so many blogs to catch up on! The reason why its so busy? Lucky got a new friend over the weekend!
His name is José, he is a 9-month old chihuahua and him and Lucky have been have been having so much fun together!
So we're all adjusting to this new addition, which means my nail painting and blogging time has been a little sparse lately.
As I mentioned in my "Whip My Nails" post, I'm currently working my way through the FABULOUS Robin Moses nail art tutorials on YouTube. As soon as I saw this one, I just knew I had to try it!
I LOVE this style of ceramics. My grandmother has a gorgeous collection of them, so I've always had fond memories of them. And if I was going to try this design, I had to do it before my nails broke. I knew a breakage was coming soon and while my nails were the perfect length, I had to take advantage of it. I started by painting the tips white and then went to town with this all hand-painted design. The color I used here is Zoya Breezi.
Left hand. It was a little harder on this hand, plus I had some nubbins to deal with, which didn't give much room to get details on.
I'm so proud of this design. I think this is my favorite manicure to date! I just love Robin for giving me and all of her followers the confidence to try to tackle such detailed work! If you haven't checked her out yet, please do! I'm really looking forward to trying more of her designs, and creating some of my own in the future! Do you have a favorite Robin Moses tutorial you think I should try? Let me know in the comments!
Also, don't expect any more frenchies any time soon. As predicted, I broke about 3 nails this weekend. Oh, and because I loved this manicure so much, I left it on for like 3 days, which is rare for me, which means I might not have enough designs to do 5 days of manicures this week, which is my goal. I'll try though!
I'm not gonna lie to you, my toes are not super cute. In fact, my mom compares them to the feet on the Flinstones. Sweet, right? But, this week my pedicure is sooooo cute, I just had to share this design with you.
I call it Tiger Toes. I painted the base using Zoya Austine and using some new nail art brushes, I free-handed some black lines to make the tiger stripes. What do you think? Would you rock it? Feel free to call me Tiger Toes from now on :D
