International Women's Day Nails!!

Well, I had been doing well with blogging.  Oh, well.  I am super excited about this manicure today!!  March 8th is International Women's Day!  I will be away this weekend with my two best women (my sister and my best friend), so I won't have time to do a mani then.  I decided to do it a little early!

My inspiration:  Rosie the Riveter

I started out with a coat of Sally Hansen Double Duty.  The I painted two coats of polish on all my nails.  On my thumbs I used Sally Hansen Pink Blink; on my ring fingers I used Sinful Colors Gogo Girl; and on the rest of my nails I used Avon Sunshine.  I then applied a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly on the yellow nails to get them ready for tape.  

On my thumbs I took a bunch of earthy polishes to represent skin tones and then dotted those on to form a female sign.  I used a couple different sized dotting tools to do this.

Then I moved on to my ring fingers.  I used white acrylic paint and a dotting tool to make my polka dots, like on Rosie's bandanna.  

I then applied corners of squares of masking tape near my cuticles on the yellow nails and then painted over that with Sally Hansen Thinking of Blue.  These are supposed to be Rosie's blue shirt.  I used yellow because it matches the background of the Rosie the Riveter poster.  

Anyway, after the blue dried, I mixed gray and white acrylic paint together to make a lighter gray.  I then took a small detail brush and outlined the collars of the shirt and painted on the lapels and buttons and line showing where the shirt comes together.  I used gray acrylic paint and a dotting tool to add Rosie's lapel pin.

I finished off with two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly.  

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY!  BE PROUD TO BE A WOMAN!!

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"Three Cheers...

...for the red, white, and blue!" =) I am desperately trying to make my titles a little more interesting instead of complete labels! Haha! I have been planning my Independence Day manicure. Here it is!

I love manicures that don't just have the same thing on every nail! I am trying to get better at mixing it up a bit! I started out with a coat of Essie Protein Base Coat and then applied two coats of each color. On my middles and pinkies, I applied Sally Hansen Thinking of Blue; on my thumbs, pointers, and rings I applied Sally Hansen Hard to Get (a white.) When the polish was still wet, I immediately applied two holographic star sequins to both my middle fingers. I applied a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly to my thumbs to get them ready to sponge, and to my pointers and rings to get them ready for striping tape. I then took some silver and light blue glitter polish and did a slight glitter gradient on my pinkies. I have never done that before, so it didn't come out great, but I am happy with it. Next, I painted stripes of red (Rimmel Stiletto Red), white, and blue on a makeup sponge and stippled that on my thumbs. I then cut twenty pieces of striping tape and applied five to both of my pointer and ring fingers. I made sure the tape was pressed down at the sides of my fingers so the red polish wouldn't go underneath the tape. I then painted on a coat of Rimmel Stiletto Red on all four of those fingers. Before painting the next finger I would remove the striping tape from the one that I just painted. To finish off the manicure, I painted two coats of Dries Instantly on all of my nails, except for my middles on which I applied three coats so the corners of the stars would not stick out as much. Happy Independence Day to the Americans!

Techie Nails!

I am excited about this manicure! I knew I would get back into the mode soon enough! I have been wanting to use the binary code image from one of my stamping plates since I got them a while ago!

I used so many polishes for this manicure! I started out with a base coat of Essie Protein Base Coat. I used two coats of all of my base colors. On my thumbs I painted NYC High Line Green; on my pointers I did a gradient, but my base color was Revlon Dreamer; on my middle and ring fingers I painted Sally Hansen Black Out; and on my pinkies I painted Sally Hansen Celeb City. After that, I got ready to do a gradient on my pointers by applying a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly so I could avoid removing my base color with the sponge. I then got down to stamping on my other nails. On my pinkies I used Bundle Monster plate BM-422. The polish I stamped with was Sally Hansen Black Out. On my ring and middle fingers I used Bundle Monster plate BM-415. I stamped with Sally Hansen White On. On my thumbs I used plate BM415 again and used Essie Penny Talk. On those nails I then applied two coats of Dries Instantly.

For the pointers I created a gradient. I wanted it to be light in the centers and fade into darker blue at the tips and near my cuticles. So, I applied a stripe of Revlon Dreamer in the center of a makeup sponge, and then put stripes of Sinful Colors Rain Storm on either side of that line, and then put stripes of Sally Hansen Thinking of Blue on either sides of those lines. I then used a stippling motion to apply it to my pointer nails. When that was dry, I used Essie Borrowed & Blue and the same image I used on my pinkies (from BM-422). I finished those nails off with two coats of Dries Instantly, as well.

Winter Snowflake Nails

I was super excited to paint my nails for Thanksgiving, but, last minute, I worked all day on the day before Thanksgiving and then I went away on Thanksgiving day and didn't get back home until today.  So, there was no time to do a manicure.  I am really excited about today's mani, though.  I have been looking forward to using Bundle Monster's snowflake image for a long time:

My base color is two coats of Sally Hansen Thinking of Blue.  I used Bundle Monster plate BM323 to stamp with.  My stamping color is Sally Hansen White On.  That polish is actually pretty old, so it got very gloopy.  That's why it works so well to stamp with.  On my ring finger and thumb I used a couple 1.5 mm silver studs from Born Pretty Store.  I used two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly as my top coat.   

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!