Daft Nails!

   Do you guys like Daft Punk? I do, and If you're like me and you've been waiting for this album for 7 years you're probably excited too.  I did these nails because their new album, Random Access Memories, came out today. I've been listening to the leak for about a week and I think it's pretty awesome!

  
   For these nails I started with two coats of a regular black, I used Essence Black is Back, on each finger.  For the logo on my thumb, I used white acrylic paint. The glitters on my index and middle fingers are Thomas and Guy-Manuel from Daring Digits Daft Punk set that I don't think is available anymore. Thomas (on my index finger) is a silver shimmer with silver hexagons, large red squares, and small black and red squares. Guy-Manuel is a gold base with multicolored square glitters and gold hexagons.
 
  

  The glitter on my ring and index fingers is just some loose black glitter that I poured over a coat of wet black polish. I used that because I think it looks like those really cool YSL sequin suits that they're wearing now.

 I used two coats of top coat on these just to be sure that everything was nice and smooth.

Pink and White Valentines gradient

   Hey guys! I'm sure you noticed the two pictures in this post an how different they look. Both of these pictures were taken using the same camera (hard to believe, I know) but the top was taken with a daylight bulb in a regular desk lamp and the bottom with flash from my camera. I'm still trying out different angles, so the picture I'm using now might not be the best, but I still think it looks much better than with the flash setting.

  Onto the nails, I really wanted to do a Valentines Day themed gradient to start off February. I originally was going to add hearts to this, but I really liked how the gradient looked by itself so I left it alone. The colors I used for this were Essie Blanc and Lime Crime Parfait Day. Parfait Day is a beautiful pastel pink with a slightly blue undertone. The formula on this polish is awesome and great was great for use in this gradient.

I little glitter...

My first hand placed glitter. It got a little messed up with the top coat because I wasn't patient haha. The glitter looks purple because of the flash, but it's actually blue. I did this over three coats of The Young Hero from the Pretty and Polished Mathematical collection.

Snowy Flakes

 Snowflakes! Haha there isn't even any snow here yet. I tried to make every snowflake different because every real snowflake is different. I'll also admit that I'm obsessed with the one on my pointer finger. I love how it came out.

  For this I used Sephora + Pantone Universe Parachute Purple. It's a dark purple with a blue duochrome. I normally don't like purple, but this is sooooo pretty. It's also a pretty close dupe for RBL Scrangie.

I did the snowflakes with white acrylic paint using a striper and a dotting tool. I also added some iridescent blue loose glitter powder on all of the snowflakes, but it's hard to see any of the color in the photos that I took.

Gangrene from WickedPolish

   Yay for Indie nail polish! This one is called Gangrene and it's from the WickedPolish Pestilence Collecion.

   This color is a milky white base with matte neon glitter. Yes, I said matte and neon and it looks as awesome as it sounds. The white base is packed with tiny, bright yellow glitters, medium sized green and yellow hexes and large green and yellow hexes.

  I did need to do a base for this color, I used an off white that I had laying around.

I think the reason I love this one so much is because it's really unique. I mean I've never seen a polish with neon glitter in a white base haha so to me, this one is really cool.

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

Them Bones

      This is Them Bones from Pretty and Polished, It's a black jelly with white hexagon and bar gliter made to look like bones in the ground. The moment I saw the swatch of this I knew I had to have it! I am so glad I got it because this polish is awesome and totally my style.

    This is three coats, but I'm sure it would look just as good over one coat of a regular black.

   

This was really hard to photograph, but here is a close up

Gradients 4 Lyfe

    This started out as something totally different that I ended up hating. Luckily, I'm really happy with this unplanned result! Gradient/Ombre nails are probably one of my favorite things to do, they are so easy and messy and fun. If you're into nail art and haven't done a gradient, I recommend that you do one right now! You really just need two colors (or more) and a makeup sponge.

    The colors I used for this are Essence Colour and Go You Belong To Me and Essie Blanc. I started with Blanc (the white) as the base and, with my makeup sponge, I dabbed You Belong To Me about halfway down all of my nails. I always looks pretty crappy before cleanup and top coat, so I cleaned up the polish that got on my skin with a q-tip and then added a nice thick coat of Seche Vite!

Eye See You

    
     So last week Zoya was having this Back To School BOGO type sale for existing accounts. The sale was Buy one get one, but if you got six you got free shipping, so of course I got six! This nude is one of the colors that I bought. It's called Avery and oh my gosh it's the most perfect nude I've ever owned ever! I am so glad I got this color because I almost didn't buy it!

     I am so surprised at Avery. Most of the nude colors I have are not opaque in one coat like this is, or they are too dark or too yellow for my skin tone. This color is almost a perfect match to me skin tone (the flash in the picture made the color look slightly more dark than in real life.) It's also nearly opaque with one coat and it dries super fast.

     I obviously really loved this nail polish, but I didn't want just plain nude nails, so I added an eyeball! The eye color is Illamasqua Nomad and the black I used is Essence Black is Black. The White, as always, is Essie Blanc. I used a medium striper brush and dotting tools to draw the eye.

I know this isn't a back to school mani, but Happy Back to School for anyone going back! Good Luck!

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!

Knot-ty Nauticals

      Well I guess I forgot to make a post about these nails. I'm not even sure how that slipped my mind. It was probably because I took a short trip to New Jersey with a couple of family members about a week ago. 

      If you know me, you know I love anchors and all things nautical themed. I love love love nautical themed nails and I've done some before, but these have to be my favorite I've ever done.

      Anyway, For this I used OPI - Red Hot Gift For the red, and Essence - Walk On Air for the blue, and of course Essie - Blanc as the white. I used an angled nail brush to do the stripes and designs. I got a chance to use my new nail beads/balls! I'm not really sure what they're called but I'd rather say beads than balls. I got these on ebay for super cheap and the little nail wheel that they came in has both gold and silver tiny, metal beads. They are a nice addition to my nail art accessory collection and I'd recommend buying them. They make it really easy to make add a cute accent to a simple or extravagant nail, and they are pretty cheap on ebay.

I also wanted to add that I made a Pinterest account where I will also be posting all of my nail art along with Tumblr, Beautylish and Instagram.

Blossom