Outer Space Nails

A while ago I did my mom's nails for her.  It was "space week" at the preschool/daycare she works at, so we thought it would be great for her to have space themed nails.  Kids really do notice nails.  I know they always notice and appreciate mine, especially if they have studs or gems on them.

I started out with two coats of Sally Hansen Black Out.  I then used a dotting tool dipped in Sally Hansen Hard to Get to make random dots and star-shaped things for the stars.  If I was to do this again, I would put a few less stars on.  You really can put them on sparingly.  After that was dry, I applied a coat of Sally Hansen Diamonds, which is a super fine, iridescent glitter.  It is so pretty and I really like it!  The glitter is so fine that it is no problem taking it off!  I finished off with two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly.

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!!

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?