Golden Snowflakes

Hello!  I know, I have been very slow with blogging lately.  I was inspired to do these snowflake nails because I have been getting so much snow at my house.  I had my third snow day of this college semester today.

I started out with a base coat of Sally Hansen Double Duty.  I then painted two coats of Sinful Colors Black on Black on all of my nails (the middle finger had some accidents, so I painted gold over top.  I had originally wanted everything to be uniform.)

I waited for my base to dry and then I took my Bundle Monster BM-323 stamping plate and stamped the snowflake image on all of my nails with Essie Good as Gold.  I accidentally double stamped my middle nail, so I painted a coat of the gold on it and then stamped it with the black.  

I wanted to add a little extra sparkle, so I took my holographic black and gold loose glitters and applied it with a dotting tool dipped in Sally Hansen Double Duty.  I applied black glitter in the centers of all the gold snowflakes and gold glitter in the centers of the black snowflakes.  I also put a few random contrasting pieces of glitter on each nail (so, the nails with the black base had gold glitter placed randomly on them, and vise versa.)

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

I have a Snapchat!  I have had it for months, but I want to get in to using it more for posting random things and my nail art to my story.  Follow me if you like!  My username is margie-jane.  (My sister calls me that as a silly nickname.)  I have written the username under my social media to the right of this page and here is my personal ghost that you can point your camera at to immediately add me (without having to write in my username!!!)

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.

Green With Purple Polka Dots

I have been doing my nails, but have just not been feeling like blogging.  I took pictures of all of my manicures for future posts, though.  Here's the manicure that I have on my nails now:

I started out with a coat of Essie Protein Base Coat.  I then painted on two coats of Essie Mojito Madness.  When that was dry, I took a small dotting tool and created my polka dot pattern.  The purple is Pure Ice Lacquered Lilacs.  

The way I did this was to make a dot in the center of every nail and then make a line of dots down the center on each nail.  I then created alternating lines of polka dots on either side on the center line.  If you follow these directions for creating polka dots, you can achieve perfect polka dots.  This trick really helped me.  

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

Bright Tricolor

Hey, guys!  Happy 2015!  

I started out with a coat of Essie Protein Base Coat.  I then got out my striping tape.  I used 40 pieces of tape in all to create this manicure.  Here is what I did:

I applied a piece of tape about a third down my nail from my cuticle.  I then took Confetti Cherries Jubilee and painted it onto that 1/3 of my nail.  It got onto my cuticles since I was working in such a small space, but I cleaned everything up at the end with a nail art brush dipped into acetone.  Don't be afraid to get a little messy!  You can clean it up!

I immediately removed the tape after applying the color.  I was left with a third of my nails painted.  I made sure to apply all my colors thickly so that I could get them opaque with one coat. 

I applied Sally Hansen Dries Instantly over my 1/3 painted nails.  I then applied two pieces of striping tape to each nail.  I applied one so it just covored the edge of the pink paint so that when I applied the next color you would not see any bare nail between them.  The other piece of tape I applied two thirds down from the cuticle.  I then filled in that middle section with Revlon Vintage Rose. 

Again, I removed the tape right away and waited for the polish to dry.  I then applied another coat of Dries Instantly to protect my progress from being lifted up by the next tape.

I then applied a piece of tape to each nail covering the edge of the rose polish and painted the tips with Essie No More Film, a very dark purple (I love this polish.)  I, again, removed the tape right away.

I finished off the manicure with two coats of Dries Instantly.

I have a substantial collection of nail polish that I have acquired over the years and I would love to do swatches so I can show you guys nice colors.  I do not buy expensive polishes.  The most expensive I buy is Essie, and I try to only buy ones that are on sale.  So, I am thinking I could occasionally throw in a swatch instead of nail art and maybe you guys would see a color you'd like to buy.  I customize my white balance on my camera to attempt to get a very accurate depiction of my colors.  I buy most of my polish from Walmart.  Buying online can be good too!  How do you guys feel about that?  Would you be interested?

New Years Nails

I titled this "New Years Nails" because glitter is involved and glitter is perfect for New Years, but this manicure can be done for any time.

I started out with a coat of Essie Protein Base Coat and then painted two coats of  Essie Penny Talk on all my nails.  I then took Maybelline Gilded Rose (which is a gold polish with rose gold pieces of different sized glitter it in.  It is SO pretty!) and dabbed it straight from the brush onto the tips of my nails.  I then lightly stroked some polish up toward my cuticles to give the glitter a gradient effect.  It was quite easy and quick.

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

I hope you all have a great New Year!!  I cannot believe how close 2015 is!

Christmas Presents

Merry Christmas Eve to everyone who celebrates it!  Even if you don't, I have a super cute present manicure to show you!  

I started out with a coat of Essie Protein Base Coat.  This really protects your nails from stains!  I then painted two coats of Essie Good as Gold on all my nails except for my ring fingers.  I painted two coats of Sinful Colors Gogo Girl on them.  When that was dry I applied one coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly to all my nails so the tape wouldn't pull up my base color.  

I then applied a slightly off-center cross of striping tape to each of my nails.  I wanted to create what looks like ribbons over wrapped boxes.  I painted Sinful Colors Gogo Girl over all of my gold nails, and Essie Good as Gold over my red nails.  

After painting each nail I immediately removed the striping tape with tweezers.  I made sure I remembered the order in which I put on the tape so that I wouldn't pull the piece crossed under the other piece of tape.  That can ruin your manicure.

When the manicure was dry, I took a small nail art brush and painted on the bows.  I used Nicole Glitter in My Stocking on all my nails but my ring fingers.  On my ring fingers I used the same red that I had been using, Sinful Colors Gogo Girl.  To make the red bows a little more opaque, I went over them again after the first coat had dried.

My final step before my top coat and clean-up was to apply a gold 1.5 mm stud in the middle of each bow.  I used clear polish and a dotting tool to stick them on.  I then applied two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly.  

I do not own any cuticle oil, but I wanted my cuticles to look a little more moisturized for my pictures.  So I used coconut oil.  It worked super well!  That stuff is great!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Glitter Snowflakes

Here is another snowflake manicure.  Sadly, it is raining at my house today.

I started out with a coat of Essie Protein Base Coat and then I applied two coats of Essie Borrowed & Blue to all my nails.  When that was dry, I used a dotting tool to put clear polish where I wanted to stick my small glitter pieces, and I used the same dotting tool to pick up the pieces of glitter to apply on my nails.  I got the glitter from Amazon.  It came in a pack of twelve colors.  All of them are holographic.  I used pink, light blue, and silver for this manicure:

It took quite a while to place all the glitter.  I made snowflake shapes on all my nails except for my pinkies, which were too small.  I decided to apply three clusters of three pieces of glitter to both my pinkies.  

To make the snowflakes, I put three pieces of glitter in a triangular shape in the center of each nail and then I put three to four pieces in a line radiating out from the center.  I made six of these, since all snowflakes have six points.  I then added a piece of glitter on each side of the radiating lines, near the tips, to give them the crystalline, feathered-out points.  

I actually did not know how I was going to make the flakes, so I winged it.  This is not a science.  If you try this, make the snowflakes however you want to!

After I completed placing the glitter on each nail, I applied a coat of Salon Perfect Cosmic Dust, a very fine, holographic glitter.  These nails are SPARKLY!

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