Color Blocked Neon Stripes

    Hey guys, what's up? Today I have some neon color blocked nails to share. Is color blocking still in? Probably not, but oh well, I'll still rock it.

    For these nails I started with a base coat of white. I used two coats of Essie Blanc. Then, with a striper brush, I used some black acrylic paint to do the black stripes on all of my nails. After I did the black stripes I went in and added the gray stripes to all of my nails using Zoya Dove and China Glaze Recycle. I let all of that dry for about a minute and I added my neon stripes using Sinful Colors Neon Melon.

   I wasn't really going for a pattern here, I just went with what I thought looked nice and tried not to put two of the same color next to each other. Next time I do this I'll probably add more, skinnier, black stripes.

   Like always, I finished this off with one coat of Seche Vite.

I went crazy with these Born Pretty Store Studs!

    Hey guys! Do you like studs? I know I do and today I have a review of this awesome nail wheel filled with studs from Born Pretty Store. This wheel has 12 different styles of studs in gold, silver, and black. As you can see here, I went a little stud crazy...

   This set has a ton of different shapes including hearts, stars, small dots, medium dots, circles, squares, teardrops, and ovals. Some of these are in both silver and gold and there are even some black dots.
    The only two in this set I had trouble with were the hearts and the stars. They're usable, but they're too big for any nails but my thumbs. Other than that, these are easy to use and they're aluminum plated so thy could be reused if you want them to be.

   I didn't count these, but there are enough studs here to do a lot of different things. The website says that this has approximately 300 all together.

  For my nails I stuck with only the gold studs and placed them over Essie Turquoise & Caicos. I wasn't really following any pattern, I just placed them where I thought they looked good.
  
   I used an orange wood stick dipped in a tiny amount of clear polish to pick these up and place them. I finished this off with a thin amount of top coat over the studs to avoid any bubbles.

 

If you use  the coupon code SGL91 you can get 10% off of your order and they always have free shipping!

*This was sent for review

Spring Gradient

  Hey guys!  Here is are some gradient nails that I did that I think look really pretty for spring!

I used two Essie colors, but I don't know the name of them because the labels are missing. I do think that the pink/coral one close to my cuticles is California Coral, though.  I did this gradient starting with two coats of the color that I think is called California Coral and then I used a damp makeup sponge to dab the other color about halfway down each nail.

And I don't know if you can tell, but I changed my lighting set up around a little bit before I took these pictures and they came out looking really good besides the fact that the light made my hands look so white! haha

Roses

 
   So, I was honestly debating whether or not I should post these because a couple of these fingers got ruined by my top coat and my camera decided it wanted to be a jerk and not take pictures correctly. Obviously I decided to post them because I still think they were really pretty.

  I used this tutorial from Chelsea's Get Nailed to do these roses. It was pretty easy, and I think my roses came out good. These ones on my thumb came out the best of all of them.

 I started with a base of two coats of Butter London Bossy Boots, I freaking love this pistachio green. The roses were Lime Crime Parfait Day, Crema De Limon, Essie Fiesta and white. The leaves were done with Essie Sew Psyched and mixed with some white. Then, I ruined this with one coat of Seche Vite...

Happy Valentines Day!

  Happy Valentines Day everyone! I did this heart look using Essie Leading Lady and Essie Beyond Cozy.  I started with two coats of Leading Lady and then I used a detail brush to add a cute silver heart with Beyond Cozy.

  I love these colors a lot and I really was just looking for an excuse to use them again, but Leading Lady is so freaking hard to photograph. This second picture shows the color better, but you have to see this color in real life to see just how beautiful is really is.

Watercolors!

   Hey guys! Sorry I haven't updated in a while again, my computer decided it wanted to stop working again.  Everything is good now, and I'm back for real this time haha!

 I'm sure you guys may have seen some "watercolor" nails before. I saw a bunch of them last year and never got around to trying it, but I finally did and I really love how them came out!

  So, you probably know that this wasn't really made using watercolor, but with nail polish that has been sort of diluted with acetone. Using a nail brush dipped in acetone makes the colors almost like watercolor paints!

I used this tutorial, and started with a white base and picked a few colors that I thought would look nice together. I was going for something that looked like stormy clouds at first, so I started with some gray, blue, and purple, colors. I started with the color that I wanted to show up the least, the gray. After waiting a few minutes for the white to dry, I put about two or three drops of gray onto the white and then, with a brush dipped (not dripping, wipe it off a bit) in acetone, I dabbed with brush onto the dots of color and dabbed it around the nail.

  I did this to each nail with each color until I liked the results. At the last minute I added some neon yellow and green (and I'm super happy I did), because it looked really boring and bland with just purple, blue and gray. Then, I finished with one coat of Seche Vite!

I am so in love with how this turned out! You will probably be seeing more watercolors from me in the future. ;)
 

Here are the colors I used for these nails

• Essie - Blanc
• Zoya - Dove
• Ciaté  - Headliner
• Essence - A Lovely Secret
• Color Club - (this one has no label)
• Funky Fingers - Tortuga
• Sinful Colors - Neon Melon

Icicles!

  I'd been wanting to do this for a while, half matte icicles!

I used a ton of colors for this. Here goes, The base colors are two coats of Zoya Dove, then one coat of CND Ice Blue Shimmer then one coat of Butter London Matte top coat.

The icicles are plain white striper polish, then white acrylic paint. One coat of Essie Luxeffects Pure Pearlfection over the them, then some loose blue glitter and then a very thin coat of Zoya Frida. Finish off with Seche Vite over the icicles and done.

  I was going to do a tutorial, but honestly you just need a base color and a white polish/striper. Start with two coats of your base polish color and let that dry and then do some crazy, chunky white lines!

Christmas Lights Nail Tutorial!

   More holiday nails, and a tutorial! Wowzers!

Ok, for this I used Essie Beyond Cozy as my base color.

I used a striper, detailer, and flat end brush.

Black, orange, blue, yellow, green, red, and white acrylic paints. You can use nail polish, but I find acrylic paints much easier to work with when doing nail art.

 You can use any base color, but I think this looks really great over glitter.

1. After I let my base color dry most of the way, I used my striper brush and black paints and made some squiggly lines on each nail.

2. Then, I added a small, short black dot where I wanted each blub to be.

3. Not you can start with your little light bulbs! I chose to make mine teardrop shaped using a detailer brush, but you can make yours round (with a dotting tool) or whatever you want! The color pattern I used was orange, blue, yellow, green, and red. 

4. Now you can take your striper again and dip the very end in white and make some tiny white lines on each bulb. This gives it more depth and makes it look rounder.

Finish with your favorite top coat, mine is Seche Vite, and you're done!!


   Do you guys like tutorials like this, with pictures? Since I've found that making tutorials like this is so easy, I'll probably be doing this more often.

Baker Street and Beyond Cozy

 
   Hey guys! I hope everyone had an awesome weekend and had a great holiday, if you celebrated. If anyone went Black Friday shopping, I hope you scored some good deals.

  Here are a couple of new nail colors that I got that I thought would look really awesome together.

 The blue is Baker Street from Nails Inc. I have been lusting after this color for a while now and I finally got it with my Sephora 20% off VIB. It's a royal blue that is dark and bright at the same time, if that makes sense. The formula on this is smooth and it glides on amazingly.

The silver is Essie Beyond Cozy from the 2012 holiday collection. It's an antique silver micro glitter, so this silver has an almost gold tinge to it. This one is a winner, It also had great and easy application and this is only two coats of it! When I saw it in the bottle, I thought I would for sure need 3 coats, nope.

Holiday Plaid

Ahh the holidays. Thanksgiving is tomorrow, so here is my first official holiday manicure of the season. 

  This is a glittery red with a black and glitter plaid accent using Essie Leading Lady and Beyond Cozy.

The red is Essie Leading Lady. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed with this nail polish. It's a beautiful color, but the formula on this is all wrong. It's thick and goopy and really hard to apply. I only did two coats of this and my nails feel like they have 4 coats of polish on them.

   I did the accent nail with a black striper and Essie Beyond Cozy.

The Howling Wolf and The Moon aka My favorite Halloween nails ever

     Hi guys! I am super excited to share this because I am really proud of how this turned out. I got the idea a couple of days ago to do some sort of wolf themed Halloween nail art, but I wanted it to have a cool wolf silhouette over the moon. If you couldn't tell, all of my nails are supposed to look like the moon and my ring finger is the howling wolf.

    To do this I did two coats of an off-white nail color and let that dry almost completely. Then I got two gray colors, a darker and a lighter, and I painted some of that onto a piece of balled up saran wrap and then alternated between dabbing the dark and light grays onto my nails. I tried to concentrate the gray into some spots. If you look at a picture of the moon, you will see why I did that.

    Then, I did one coat of Serum No. 5 DayGlow to get a yellowish hue and the glow in the dark effect.

   The wolf silhouette was done using black acrylic paint and a detail brush. It wasn't easy, I had to do this twice... -.-'

    The first picture was taken using the normal settings I use with my camera, Macro and Flash
    The second was using a night setting, with macro in semi dark with no flash
    The last picture was taken in complete darkness using the same night setting.

The colors I used for these nails:

A franken off-white made with Essie Blanc and CND Marshmallow Rose

The two gray colors are China Glaze Recycle and Zoya Dove

The Glow in the dark color is DayGlow from Serum No. 5

and acrylic paint was used for the wolf

Fall Trends: Metallic

     I'm sure that if you're like me and read magazines and pay attention to trends you would have sen how huge the metallic trend is this year. This design was inspired by a pair of shoes that I saw in a magazine that had a gold metallic toe.

     I didn't want to do a metallic tip on my nails, so I did a fat gold stripe down the middle. This is really just the most simple nail art there is. The green is an Essie color that I got from Ross it doesn't have a name (Just did a quick search and found out that this color is called Sew Psyched), unfortunately, and the gold is ULTA brand called High Roller. I did this design by doing two coats of the green and letting it dry for a few minutes and taking the gold and just doing a stripe down the middle of all of my nails.

   

Nudey Neon

      This is the second time I've done this mani and I still love it. The last time I did it I had pointy nails, I think it looks good on both pointy and square.

     For this I used

• Essie Topless & Barefoot
• Black Poppy Nail Color

 

The color has no name, but this is what it looks like.

      To do this, I just painted half of my nails with Topless&Barefoot. Then, with damp makeup sponge I dabbed on the pink color. Finish with Seche Vite.

Studs & Caicos

This is Essie Turquoise & Caicos with some gold stud accents.

English Rose

    This is my first successful attempt at nail foils. I got my order from dollarnailart.com a few weeks ago and I immediately tried out some of the foils. My first few tries turned out really bad. I then found out that most top coats over the metallic foils completely wrinkle them. I was a little more than disappointed and kinda gave up on them for about 2 weeks.
     
      So, yesterday I was just messing around again and I used English Rose. A foil that I hadn't tried out yet on my nails. It's not metallic like most of the other foils that I got so I did put a top coat on it and it worked!

 

      English Rose is a very sheer, shimmery white with pinkish colored flowers. I put this over two coats of a white, Essie Blanc. My ring finger is OPI Teenage Dream from the Katy Perry collection that came out a while ago.

      I'm really happy with how this came out. I'll admit that I keep admiring them. They are just too pretty not to!

Sexy Serpent

I've wanted to try doing some snakeskin nails for a while now, but I honestly never imagined they would come out this good on the first try. I was just going to play around with some lace from some old clothes and I thought that I'd just end up taking it off. Now I really wish I would've taken pictures so I could post a tutorial. 

       For this I used

• Essie Blanc
• Essie Sew Psyched
• Essie As Gold As It Gets
• Essence Nude It!
• Essence High Spirits
• Essence Black is Black
• Essence Gold Rush
• Kleancolor Cappuccino
• Fresh Paint Oatmeal
• China Glaze Luxe and Lush

 I tried to stay with more earthy nudes and greens and brown shades.

What You Need

• A small piece of Mesh/Lace      
• A Sponge
• Small brush

 

Here's how I did it

1. I started with one thick coat of white on all of my nails and let it dry completely.
2. Take the lace and lay it on the nail. Try not to move it while dabbing the colors.
3. With some tweezers and a small chunk of makeup sponge and started dabbing the lightest nude color I am using.
4. With a brown or darker nude color I tried to make some lines or diamonds with a small brush that resembled patterns on a snake.
5. Now I took the greens I had and randomly dabbed them in the more empty spaces. 
6. Just before I took off the lace, I took a tiny amount of black on my brush and went over the parts with the brown to make them stick out more.
7. Now, slowly pull the lace upwards. It might stick just a little bit but that's okay, I just slightly pushed it back down with my finger.
8. I took a sheer champagne color and dabbed a small amount around the nail not covering it all the way. This is optional.
9. I then took As Gold As It Gets and did a coat of that and then a coat of Luxe and Lush. It gives it a scaly and almost wet look.
10. Two coats of top coat and you're done!

How I Do My Border Nails

Hi guys! So I've been seeing a lot of Border/Frame/Outline nails lately and I love this trend! The first time I did this, I painted the border around my nail last. You probably thought that that was the easiest way to do this trend, but I've found a way that works much better, and is much easier, for me anyway. 

 All you need for this is two nail colors and a white

I used:

Sinful Colors Neon Melon

Kleancolor Concrete Gray

Essie Blanc

Here's how I did it

 

 Step 1. So I started with a nail strengthener and a sticky base coat like always. Then, Put a coat or two of the color you want as the border.

Step 2. Now, take the nail color you want in the middle. Move your nail polish brush in the motion that the arrows go in the picture. Start with it at the bottom like you would normally paint your nails, but leave your border color showing at the bottom. Move the polish brush in a curved motion and pick the brush up just before it reaches the tip of your nail. If you mess up, don't worry! It's an easy clean up!

Step 3. Clean up and Fix up. I had some mistakes that I needed to fix, so I took a white nail polish and went over the gray to erase it. When the white was dry, I just took the color I used for my border and went over it. Then, you can just clean up any messy edges, or clean up polish you got on your fingers.

Now just add your favorite top coat and show off your awesome nails!