Life Update--My New Guinea Pig

Hi, guys.  As you can tell from the title of this post, this is not going to be nail art.  So, feel free to stop reading now if you would rather look at some art!

Today I finished my last final test at the community college I am at now.  I am graduating with my associate's degree in Childhood Education with a focus in English on Saturday.  I can't believe it!  I am so excited!  I was home schooled, so I have never had a real graduation before!

Yesterday, on Mother's Day, I adopted a little baby...guinea pig!  I have always adored guinea pigs.  I have had two before the one I bought yesterday.  

Meet Henry!

Digby LOVES Henry

He's still a tiny baby

the nails are still intact

My sister, who is very allergic to guinea pigs, couldn't resist his cuteness.

It has been HOT where I live!  I feel like we went straight from winter to summer!

Monochrome Nautical

I am super excited about this manicure!  I did it yesterday and couldn't wait any longer to show it to you!

I started out with a coat of OPI Natural Nail Base Coat.  (This base coat is working out really well for me!  My nails have not been staining at all and it dries sooo fast!)  I then painted all of my nails with two coats of Sinful Colors Snow Me White.

I waited for that to dry and then applied a coat of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly to my pointers, middles, and pinkies in preparation for the striping tape.  I then took white and black acrylic paints and used a dotting tool to dot on the top of the anchor near my cuticle on my ring finger.  I took a small detail brush and painted on the anchor (first the vertical line, then the curved lines, one by one, then the horizontal bar.)  A couple spots were messy, so I took my white acrylic paint and neatened up the edges.  Then I dotted on a smaller white dot in the center of the black one to make the hoop at the top of the anchor.

I then moved on to the thumb.  I decided to stamp on an image from Bundle Monster's BM-401 image plate.  I chose the tentacles.  I used Sinful Colors Black on Black to stamp with.  

I cut a ton of strips of striping tape when I waited for various stages of the manicure to be dry.  I applied them to my pointers, middles, and pinkies with tweezers and then painted over those nails with Sinful Colors Black on Black.  I immediately removed the tape after painting each nail, waited for the black to dry, and then applied two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly to all of my nails. 

Mint and Gold Stripes

I did this manicure back in January and just had it saved up for a future blog post. 

I started out with a coat of Essie Protein Base Coat.  Then I applied two coats of Rimmel Mintilicious.  When that was dry, I applied two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly to my pointers, middles, and pinkies because I was done working on these nails.  

I applied one coat of Dries Instantly to my thumbs and ring fingers so the striping tape wouldn't lift up my base color.  I then put pieces of striping tape on vertically in preparation for the gold polish and painted a coat of Sally Hansen Golden-I on top.  I immediately removed the tape.

I finished off those nails with two coats of Dries Instantly.

It was super fun because my sister and I visited our friend when I had this mani on.  It was winter break from college.  We took a subway to Boston and had a great day going to the New England Aquarium.  It was so cold.  We are such small town girls.  We couldn't even figure out how to get T-tickets out of the machine at first.  Haha!  Once we got into Boston, we walked around in the freezing cold for 45 minutes because we couldn't find the aquarium.  On our way back, we rode a subway to the end of the line because we got on the wrong one.  At least we have some funny memories from that trip!!  Anything's fun when you're with your best friends!

Ziplock Bag Technique

Hi!  Today's post is inspired by ohmygoshpolish from Youtube.  She does AMAZING manicures!  Around a week ago she released a video called "Zip Lock Bag - Navajo White Howlite."  In this video, she used a cool technique involving a ziplock bag!  I wanted to give it a try.  I will explain the method, but watch her video if you want to see it done!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v2hybB-Cw4

I started out with a coat of OPI Natural Nail Base Coat.  I then painted on two coats of Sinful Colors Snow Me White.  After that was dry, I went on to the ziplock bag technique.

So, you need a ziplock bag.  I used a small sandwich sized one.  I chose three polish colors, one of them my base color.  So, I used the white, Sally Hansen Pink Blink (the light pink), and Essie Angora Cardi (the dark pink).  I took a dotting tool and randomly dotted on some white (you can also just use the brush from the bottle of polish.)  You do not need to be at all neat with this because you eventually squish it all with your plastic bag.  I then immediately dotted on some of each of my pink colors.  Don't worry about them mixing.  This is totally fine.  

Right away, I grabbed my plastic bag and pressed it onto my nail on the wet polish.  I then immediately peeled it off and was left with a marbled effect.  If you ever aren't happy with a nail, just add more dots and squish the bag onto your nail again.  You can't go wrong!  

I wanted this to be glittery and even more girly, so I added a coat of Salon Perfect Cosmic Dust, a very fine holographic glitter which I love.  I finished off with two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly.

This is what my bag looked like after I used it on all my nails:

the aftermath

I am nearly done with this semester of college.  I cannot wait for it to be over.  I am going nuts!  Is anybody graduating?  Leave a comment!  =)

   

eos!

I have been loving eos lip balms for years.  I remember I was in my local grocery store, which I also used to be a cashier at, the first time I saw them.  The first one I bought was honeysuckle honeydew, the light green one.  I now have all of them (counting limited editions, there are 17).  So, I use them just about every day.  When I was half asleep this morning, an idea popped into my head: eos manicure!  So, here it is:

I started out with a coat of OPI Natural Nail Base Coat.  I then applied two coats of different colored polishes to each nail.  I matched the colors as closely as I could:

Yellow--Avon Sunshine; Pink--Sally Hansen Pink Blink; Teal--Rimmel Mintilicious; Blue--Essie Borrowed & Blue; Purple--Pure Ice Lacquered Lilacs

When that was dry I mixed some gray and white acrylic paint to make light gray and used a toothpick to stipple on the eos logo.  I then applied two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly and then a coat of NYC Matte Me Crazy.  This made the texture look more similar to the rubbery packaging of eos lip balms.

Milani Silver Dazzle

Sorry for my absence again!  I graduate in a little under three weeks, so I am finishing up the semester.  My sister let me use one of her polishes for this post.  It is from Milani's One Coat Glitter collection.  It's called Silver Dazzle.  This is a seriously cool polish.

under fluorescent light

 If you think this looks cool, just look at the pictures taken in the sunlight.  I started out with a coat of OPI Natural Nail Base Coat (which is a GREAT base coat.  My nails aren't staining and this polish seriously dries immediately) and then applied two coats of Milani Silver Dazzle.  It dried super fast because it is mostly glitter.  I didn't really need two coats.  This really is a one coat glitter polish.  I finished off with two coats of Sally Hansen Dries Instantly.  The tin foil method took the polish off really easily.  So, here are the super cool daylight pics:

perfect sparkles!

Water Marbling Mani!

Hi!  I am FINALLY getting around to blogging!  I've been wanting to for days, but it just hasn't happened.  I only have three weeks of school left until I graduate with an associate's degree in childhood education!  I am so excited!  So, anyway, I have done water marbling twice before doing this mani.  I had never done it on all of my nails.  It was messy and time consuming, and I am still not perfect at it, but I was very happy with the result...especially on my thumb!  Here it is:

I started out with a coat of OPI Natural Nail Base Coat.  Then I applied two coats of Sinful Colors Snow Me White.  Oh!  Also, before doing anything I made sure I had a disposable plastic cup of room temperature water.  For water marbling, you can use any type of water, but it needs to be room temperature.  

I used scotch tape to make this process a little less messy.  I applied it all around my nails and part way up my fingers.  This majorly cuts down on the clean-up process at the end.  I think I'd use masking tape next time, because it is more flexible.  I then started water marbling.  Here's how you do it:

1--Open up the tops of all your polishes.  The runnier the polish, the better.  Thicker polishes are more difficult to water marble with because the polish won't spread out on the water nicely.

2--Start dripping drops of polish onto the surface of the water.  Hold the bush just a little over the surface and let the polish drip off.  Use as many colors as you want.  I used three.  You can create a pattern by alternating the drops of polish, or you can use more drops of one color than another.  Do whatever you want!

3--Take a tooth pick or pin or special water marbling tool (I used a tooth pick) and drag it through the polish on the surface of the water to create a design.  There are TONS of videos of people doing it on Youtube.  There are all sorts of designs you can create!  I learned all I know about water marbling from Youtube.  (OhMyGoshPolish does amazing water marbling manis!  Look her up!)

4--Dip your nail into the part of the design that you want on your nail and then leave it submerged in the water.

5--Blow on the surface of the water to dry the excess polish.

6--Take a tooth pick and move it through the water to grab all the extra polish.

7--Remove your nail from the water.

8--Remove the tape from your finger.

9--Clean up any polish on your skin with acetone or nail polish remover on a small brush or a cotton swab.

10--Apply a top coat.

Wow.  Sorry those directions are so lengthy.  I wanted to give a fairly good explanation of how I do this.  Watch a Youtube video!  That is much easier to understand!  Anyway, I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White, Essie Loophole, and L'Oreal Now You Sea Me for my water marbling.  

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

My favorite nail in this manicure!

I was really excited about how my thumb turned out.  Water marbling is still a learning process for me.  It is super fun!  I can't wait to experiment more!