Pink and Yellow Color Blocking

For Easter, my very nice parents bought me some nail polish!  Haha!  The colors I used today are two of my new polishes:

I started out with a coat of Sally Hansen Double Duty.  I then painted two coats of Sinful Colors Unicorn (the light yellow) on all of my nails.  After that, I applied a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly (I also got that for Easter!) so the tape wouldn't pull up my base color.  I then stuck on triangular pieces of tape horizontally across my nails and painted on a coat of Sally Hansen Rockin' Hard.  I used tweezers and my fingers to remove the tape immediately after painting on Rockin' Hard.  I had difficulties doing this today, for some reason, so the lines are not all as crisp as I would like them to be.  Acetone helped me to fix up my major mistakes and issues, though.  I finished off with two coats of Dries Instantly.

I just want to take a moment to thank all of you for being interested enough in this blog that you keep coming back and looking!  I never expected anybody to ever look at this blog!  You guys don't know how excited I get when I see that people from all over the world have viewed it!!  Thank you all so much!!!  =) 

Throwback Thursday! Water Marbling

I have never done a Throwback Thursday before, and I have been meaning to do this post for a few weeks.  I took a ton of pictures of my nails with my lousy cell phone camera before starting this blog, but when I did water marbling on my nails a few years ago, my mother took pictures of my hands with her good camera so I could immortalize my design.  You can see how far my nails, cuticles, and technique have come since that time:

I have only ever done water marbling once.  I didn't even get the technique down perfectly.  You are supposed to paint on a layer of white before water marbling.  Anyway, I will go through how I did this.  I know I followed the instructions somebody on Youtube gave.  I don't know who.  Cutepolish, maybe?

For the nails that I didn't water marble, I applied Sally Hansen Espresso.  For my marbled ring fingernails, I used Sally Hansen Espresso and Essie Oui Madame.  I made sure the water in my cup was room temperature and I put scotch tape around my nails that would be marbled to minimize the cleaning up I would have to do.  I dropped some drops of the polish into the surface of the water and swirled them with a toothpick and then put my nail in the part of the design that I wanted on my nails.  I then blew on the surface of the water for 10 seconds to dry the rest of the polish and I used the toothpick and swirled the dried excess polish around it and then removed it from the water.  Then I took my finger out of the water, removed the messy tape, and used a Q-Tip dipped in polish remover to clean up my cuticles a bit.  I don't think I applied a top coat.

If you guys want, I could post the cell phone pictures I have of many, many designs that I did before starting the blog.  I wouldn't do tutorials for them, but you could have a look at the designs for some inspiration.  Tell me in the comments if you'd be interested in seeing them!  And, of course, I would be glad to answer any questions you had about colors I used in the manicures!

Copper and Blue Stripes

I decided that I will not do an Easter inspired manicure this year.  Holy Week and Easter are always super busy for me with all the church services and festivities.  I want my nails to match my dress on Easter, so I will just be painting them a solid color--very boring to post on a blog.  I have a bunch of manicures lined up to show you, though.

I started out with a base coat of Sally Hansen Double Duty.  Then I painted on a coat of Essie Penny Talk on my ring fingers and thumbs.  I painted on a coat of Rimmel Blue Eyed Girl on the rest of my nails.  These polishes are very opaque, so I didn't need more than one coat.  I then applied three pieces of striping tape diagonally on each nail where I wanted the base color to show through.  After that, I painted on a coat of the opposite color and immediately removed the tape with tweezers.  I finished off with two coats of Seche Vite.  Have a happy Easter!

Beach Nails

Yesterday I had such a hard time figuring out what I wanted to paint.  I considered not painting my nails at all, but I wanted them to look nice, so I chose a color I had never used and went with it.  I ended up with this:

I started out with a base of Sally Hansen Double Duty.  Then I painted on two coats of an L.A. Colors polish (the sheer, sparkly, tannish color).  When that was dry I applied a coat of Seche Vite so the sponge wouldn't pick up my base color.  I took three small chunks of a makeup sponge and, with tweezers, dabbed on the color of the waves.  I made sure I dabbed off the excess polish from the sponge on a piece of paper before applying it to my nails.

First I dabbed on Sally Hansen Hard To Get (the white).  I applied it near to the top of my nails and all the way down to the tips.  I made sure not to make it perfectly even on the top because waves don't go on to a beach in a perfectly straight line.  When that was dry I dabbed on some L'Oreal Now You Sea Me a teeny bit lower down than the white.  At times I made it go completely over the white so that it didn't look perfectly straight.  I didn't bother bringing that all the way to the tips of my nails on all of my nails because I was going to go over it with a darker blue.  When the middle color was dry I took my third piece of sponge and dabbed on Essie Go Overboard.  I tried to make it a little more opaque towards the tips of my nails.

To bring the design to life a little more I painted on a star fish with Avon Blossom and a scallop shell with Revlon Impulsive.  I used a small nail art brush for both of these.  I did not like how my scallop shell came out, but I made it a teeny bit better my adding three small lines of Rimmel Wild Orchid to detail it.  I finished off with two coats of Seche Vite, which has already chipped a lot, even though I have only been wearing this design for one day.  Not impressed.  I am a little hard on my hands and I did work today (I did some cleaning at my job), but I would do those same kinds of things with Dries Instantly and that would not chip.  I actually am really happy with the finished product, though.  Having pictures of my manicures makes me feel slightly better when they get ruined.  At least I will be able to look at them when they were first done and still looking perfect.

Negative Space Star Trek

So, once again, I have let my inner Trekkie out.  I have been wanting to do another Star Trek manicure and have been meaning to try negative space nails.  So, I decided to combine these two ideas.

I started out with a base coat of Sally Hansen Double Duty.  Then I painted two coats of each color on my nails.  On my ring fingers and thumbs I used Sally Hansen Black Out; on my pointers, Covergirl Out of the Blue; my middle fingers, Rimmel Stiletto Red; and Avon Sunshine on my pinkies. 

Once that was dry, I took a small, flat nail art brush and dipped it in acetone and dabbed and stroked off the black polish to create the Star Trek insignia.  (That is what a negative space design is.  Part of your nail will not have color on it.)  This took a while because I had to go over the same spots over and over, but it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  I don't know how well nail polish remover works for this.  Acetone works wonderfully.  I had to repeatedly dip my brush in acetone and wipe it off on a paper towel every few strokes to avoid the build up of too much black polish on it.  I created the insignia the same way I would have drawn it with polish.  I made an upside down "V" shape and then drew a diagonal line from the left side to the middle of the right side and then dabbed off the center.

  

When all that was done, I took some hexagonal, holographic gold glitter (I got a set of 12 colors from Amazon for $7.  The pieces are a little less than one millimeter in diameter.) and applied a line of it around two thirds down each colored nail.  I used Sally Hansen Double Duty to do this because it doesn't dry as fast as a fast drying top coat, allowing you more time to place the glitter.  I applied the dots of Double Duty and picked up the glitter with a small dotting tool.  I also applied a piece of glitter in the center of each insignia.  The lines of glitter remind me of Kirk's uniform in the Original Series.  He has a stripe of gold at his cuffs.  

To finish off the manicure, I applied two coats of Seche Vite.  I am really not happy with this top coat.  It dries super fast and is really shiny, but it does shrink my manicures and the second day I had this manicure, it chipped a little.  Dries Instantly doesn't chip for days!  (I have run out, though.)  Lots of girls say this is a great top coat, so maybe I really do have a bad bottle.  Have any of you tried it?  What do you think of it?