Night Sky

I have started another semester of college.  I graduate with my associate's degree in childhood education at the end of this one, so I am pretty excited.  The other night I went to my school for a night class and looked up at the sky.  It was a deep blue which faded into a light yellow at the horizon.  The moon was a crescent.  I was inspired to create a manicure based on how pretty it was.

I started out with a coat of Essie Protein Base Coat.  I then painted on two coats of Sinful Colors Unicorn, a very light yellow.  I applied a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly after that so the sponge wouldn't take off my base color.  

I put four colors on my sponge.  I painted on a stripe of Sinful Colors Black on Black, Sinful Colors Into the Blue, Rimmel Blue Eyed Girl, and a very thin stripe of Sinful Colors Unicorn.  I then stippled that over my nails with the black at the cuticle.  

If I were to do this again, I would have immediately applied another coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly to make the gradient blend better.  Since I waited, I was left with a slightly grainy effect.  It's not bad, but it could have looked smoother.  I am really happy with it anyway, though.

I eventually applied a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly over everything but my ring finger.  I used a dotting tool and white acrylic paint to dot on the moon.  I then put a drop of my black polish and my darkest blue touching each other on a piece of paper and I dipped in a dotting tool so I could match the dot which created the crescent moon to the background a little bit better.  In person, it doesn't stand out quite as much as it does in the pictures.

After applying Dries Instantly over all the nails, I applied two coats of NYC Matte Me Crazy, a matte top coat.  I wanted to make my night skies look a little more realistic by taking out the shine.

Three Musketeers

My sister, my best friend, and I have always joked that we are the Three Musketeers.  My sister is Porthos, I am Aramis, and my best friend is Athos.  Today I was inspired to create a Three Musketeers manicure:

I started out with a base coat of Sally Hansen Double Duty.  Then I painted two coats of Rimmel Blue Eyed Girl on my ring fingers, thumbs and pointer fingers.  On my pinkies and middle fingers, I applied two coats of Sally Hansen Hard to Get (the white.)  When that was dry, I put a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly on all of my nails.
 

When all that was dry, I took a toothpick dipped in Sally Hansen Celeb City (silver) and carefully drew on the script on my pointers and ring fingers.  I had to use a stippling motion at times.  Make sure you don't push when you do this, so you don't leave gouges in your base color.  My pointer says, "tous pour un," which is French for "all for one."  My ring fingers says, "un pour tous," which means "one for all."
 

I used a striping brush dipped in the same silver polish to make the three crossed swords on my thumbs.  I then used a dotting tool to make the handles.  For the crosses, I cut thin pieces of scotch tape and crossed them on my nails and painted Rimmel Blue Eyed girl over top.  I didn't feel like writing in script on my right hand, so all four fingers on my right hand have the crosses.  These crosses are similar to the ones that would be on the Musketeers' uniforms, which were blue.  I didn't make the crosses as fancy as they would have been because I wanted it to look neat.  I finished off with two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly.  All for one!  And one for all!!

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!

Patriotic Nails

This design is actually from this past Fourth of July.  I know it is a little off season, but you can be patriotic any time, right?  =)

On all my nails but my ring fingers, I first painted on two coats of Sally Hansen White On.  I then applied a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly.  When that was dry I put on a few pieces of striping tape and painted over with Rimmel Stiletto Red and then immediately removed the tape.  After all that was dry I put on a coat of Dries Instantly.  For my ring finger I painted on Rimmel Blue Eyed Girl.  I then put on rows of 1.5 mm silver studs from Born Pretty Store.  I finished that off with a couple coats of Dries Instantly.  This manicure is modeled after The Nailasaurus's Fourth of July nail art, which this link will bring you to:  http://www.thenailasaurus.com/2013/07/independence-day-nail-art.html

Five Shades of Blue

Hi!  Work has been busy for me for this past week, but I finally got around to painting my nails again.  I had seen many pictures of this nail art style on the internet and I finally painted it on my own nails.  I used a bunch of my blue polishes and painted a different shade of blue on each nail:

In the top photo I used my camera flash.  The second photo was taken under my fluorescent desk lamp.
On my thumb I used Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Thinking of Blue; on my index finger I used Avon Mega Watt in Shock; on my middle finger I used Rimmel London 60 Seconds in Blue Eyed Girl; on my ring finger I used Covergirl Outlast Stay Brilliant in Out of the Blue; lastly, on my pinky I used Essie in Borrowed & Blue.  The 2 mm silver studs are from Born Pretty Store and I used two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly as my top coat.

I can't wait to use different shades of pink to do this style!