Christmas Minions

Who doesn't love these adorable little minions from Despicable Me?  I sure do, they're so cute and cheerful and funny.  Now they are ready for Christmas on my nails.  What I want for Christmas is a new yellow.  This one is really streaky.  :-(  I did get to use my google eyes again.  They really make the design pop but really are not required for the design, just a big dot of silver for the glasses then a dot of white for the eyes and finally a tiny dot of black for the pupil and they'd look just as good.
Merry Christmas everyone!!!

White trees on red background

I wanted something simple yet staying with the Christmas theme on my dominant hand and decided to do a part of a Robin Moses design but only focusing on the Christmas tree done in white acrylic paints on my favourite Christmas red bungle jungle by essie.  It took me a few tries to get the tree to look right and by the pinkie I didn't care any more, just wanted to be done.  I do think it looks pretty good and is a simple Christmas design since it's mostly straight-ish lines.  :-)
Here is the full tutorial from Robin Moses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLHcOpAaYoc

Diamonds are Forever

My nails were done in shellac by my manicure instructor and I want to leave it on as long as I can so I did my nail art over top of the shellac.  One nice thing about it is if you make a mistake - which I did a few, this is on my dominant hand after all - you can use polish remover to take it off and not worry about marring the base of your polish because it aint coming off that easily.
I used Revlon Top Speed 860 Metallic and a fine paint brush to put the lines in the required spots for this design.  No idea who to give credit for this design, it was just a quick tutorial I came across somewhat recently.  I was going to do it on a creme colour but seeing as how I am keeping this colour for a while I thought it would work especially with the silver on my other hand too.
Okay fine, I took the extra minute to find out where I saw this.  Cult Cosmetics.  :-)
This is their web site: https://www.cultcosmetics.com/
and here is their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CultCosmetics

Starry Night

My nails are currently in shellac so I wont be changing them for a while.  I did add some designs to them because even with an accent nail, they are boring to me.
I used Revlon Top Speed 860 Metallic and a paint brush which I used to get the paint right off the nail polish brush, this way you don't use too much and you don't waste any by pouring out  more than you need.  The only draw back is that it might dry out faster since the bottle is left open longer.  So with my brush I made the moon and then the stars and finally added a few little dots for far away stars.  This went well with my accent nail.  I used a top coat over my design to help it last longer.  I think I won't have any problems getting it off and keeping the shellac underneath.  We'll see.
This is actually a very simplified version of a Robin Moses design which I used because my nails are light midnight blue with tiny little sparkles if you look at it closely and rotate them a bit. Full tutorial found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxa7t5Y2xn4

Fun with Water Marble

After doing Diana's nails I showed her how to water marble.  I experimented with a few different colour combinations and fell in love with Pink Friday NL N16 by OPI and Diamonds and Rubies 360 by Sally Hansen Diamond Strength.  This made a look similar to candy canes and I thought it was quite Christmas like.

Christmas Tree

My mother in law came over yesterday for me to practice for my practical test today.  I at 35 minutes on a 30 minute time limit before I put the top coat on.  I think I need to go a bit faster for my practical... I had not yet put on the tree, that came afterwards.  She was started with my new favourite red polish: essie bungle jungle and then I added the tree using a toothpick and Revlon Top Speed 330 Emerald.  I added a little dot for a star using Quo by Orly gold striper and then some extra glitter on the tree for ornaments with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Disco Ball.  It is rather cute and simple, too bad the glitter polish did not show up much in the picture.

Christmas Presents inspired by cutepolish

You can find a Christmas present nail art idea easily on Google but I know cutepolish has done this one so I will give her credit.  You can find a pattern for this nail design and 9 others here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLv7zxea1lI located at 5:18.  I started with essie Bungle Jungle and then added the gold ribbon in gold acrylic paint with my handy paintbrush.  I think it's one of the easier designs.  I hope you do too, it's also really versatile in that you can change up the colours to match your outfit, unless you're wearing black, then I wouldn't suggest it ;-)

Gingerbread man by cutepolish

Still practicing for my manicure test this Wednesday.  I did another simple design using a polish I bought a while ago and hadn't had the chance to use yet.  It's a bit dark for gingerbread, but then I'm not wearing it for very long...  840 espresso by Revlon gave me the starting colour and then I used white acrylic paint and red.  I debated if I wanted coloured gum drop buttons, but decided I'd keep with simple to complete the design faster.  I shouldn't even be bothering with designs, but I can't help myself.  Plain coloured nails are just so boring to me now :-)
The design can be found here at 2:08 or you can watch all 10 designs by cutepolish http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLv7zxea1lI

Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon

My homework for my manicure / pedicure class was to practice painting my nails with the technique I was taught.  I think my blog is going to get a lot of attention for the next little while...
I started with Wet n Wild Wild Shine 424A Black Creme and then added all lines in white including where the rainbow goes.  Once dried I added the colour to the rainbow.  White under the colours help them stand out more over the black. I'm very happy with this design, especially since it's on my dominant hand.

Gold Lines on Red

This was just a pretty design I found on Facebook from Nailasaurus (https://www.facebook.com/Nailasaurus) and so I thought I'd do it on my left hand since I didn't feel like doing The Robin Moses daisies on both my hands.  I just did an accent nail using my Quo by Orly Glittering Gold striping brush.  It's still pretty.

Robin Moses White Daisies on Red

I had my first manicure/pedicure course today so we got to paint each other's nails before the end of class.  The light blue wouldn't open so I went with a Christmassy red (it's by OPI but I've no idea the colour).  Then I searched my "to do list" of nail art and found this Robin Moses design that I thought was pretty found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYDRppg5ens  She is showing how to do a gradient along the nail but I just liked the pretty daisies so I did those in my white acrylic paint and then put in the centers using essie 578 bungle jungle.  I think I need to cut new brushes as these aren't working as well as they used to.  I should also take better care of the ones I have.....

Movember Mustache

I realized November is almost over and I didn't show my support for the men out there growing their facial hair bringing awareness to male medical needs such as prostate and testicular cancers.  So I grabbed my new OPI Pink Friday and and then used my Wet and Wild black to toothpick on my mustache in bed last night.  Yup, I'm crazy but when I decide to paint my nails I want to get it all done unless I need extended drying periods (like when I use nail tape or scotch tape).  So, here are my results.  One picture I saw on google images had dots on the other nails but I needed to sleep so I ended with just the 'stache :-)

Professional DQ Snow Leopard

Professional DQ just posted this to youtube within the last few days and I thought it would be a nice recreation so started it with my Sally Hansen Hard as Nails 850 Pumping Iron and then dry brushed on some Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Celeb City.  Dry brushing is different from her sponge technique where you have very little polish on your brush and paint the tip of your nail and as even more polish comes off you go higher up.  It basically achieves the same ombre effect, but with only 1 colour instead of her two on the sponge.  I wasn't feeling spongy today.  I then added some Sally Hansen (I see a trend here) Xtreme Wear Disco Ball to add sparkles to the tips of my nails to give it that sparkle.  I then used my acrylic paints in black and white to do the leopard print.  You can do a rough outline with the black and then make it look a bit neater with the white on the inside, I just made sure the outline was smooth.  My paintbrushes have seen a bit of wear by this point.  When Chris saw I asked him if I should paint my right hand also.  He was quite firm with his yes reply and also said they needed more sparkles :-)  So, I recreated the leopard on my off hand and added more Sally Hansen on the tips and went over the whole design with essie (gasp, not Sally Hansen) multi dimension top coat.  I'm not too impressed with the essie polish, I thought it would be more holographic in nature.  Maybe I should try it again on a plain colour base... if I ever do one again LOL :-)

Pink with Gold Outline

I began my manicure with about 3 coats of Sally Hansen New Lengths Ceramics Porcelain Ivory and then used my gold striper from Quo by ORLY to outline the nail along the cuticle and "smile line".  It was a very easy design but looked so good in the picture.  The hardest part was waiting for the pink to dry for another coat.  I loved it and thought my recreation was really good but then showed them to Chris and I could tell by his face he didn't like them.  Then he shared with me it made under my nails look dirty.  I don't think I'll keep this manicure on my nails very long....
I found the image at the bottom from: https://www.facebook.com/nailartcommunity  I follow them on Facebook.

Halloween Googly eyes by Robin Moses

I am not even going to get into what I did to create these cute little nails.  I cut my nails short since they were breaking anyways so I could have had a little bit more room to work with, but I'm not sure I could have made them come out any better than they did.  They are hard to see in the pictures, but hopefully you get the idea of what I was going for.  You can also see the tutorial by Robin Moses here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgFrkD8BJMw
I started with Wet n Wild 424 Black for most nails but the spider and then painted what needed with my acrylic paints and finally added the googly eyes from the dollar store.  First time using them :-)  I've hit them a bunch of times but so far staying on okay.  I'll see how well my new Sally Hansen coat works after tonight and going to bed.

Right hand from pinkie to thumb: ghost, frankenstein, cat, pumpkin, spider

Left hand from thumb to pinkie: bat, dracula, mummy, witch and skeleton

missadelinne blue

My day was mostly a write off (I'm supposed to be looking for a job) but I have gorgeous nails I have to blog about right away.  My prize from Crazy Girl Texas (https://www.facebook.com/CrazyGirlTexas) came in today and I got the perfect blue striping tape and had to try again my recreation of missadelinne's gorgeous design I fell in love with the first time I saw it.
*deep breath*
So I started by using the sparkle polish (but you don't have to since you can just go over the whole design once the french tip is done) and I began with Sinful Colors 927 Nail Junkie on both hands but found it had too much of a green tinge and I wanted it clear so I took it off my left hand and left it on my right (I've got two broken nails on that hand so who cares about it?).  So new base on the left hand of a very ancient polish my sister got me years ago from a dollar store she worked at.  I then applied tape to my nails in the desired fashion once the sparkles were completely dry and began my french tip with a really great coverage dollar store blue from kozmic colours.  I didn't really wait for it to fully dry before slowly and carefully taking off the tape (normal scotch tape not the striping tape mind you) making sure not to mar the polish.  If you do (which I did on one of them) it's okay because you just make sure when you apply the striping tape that you cover over any imperfections.  Then go over the french with the sparkle polish you may or may not have used as a base.  I think the base is not necessary, I just wasn't thinking about what I was doing when I started.
On to the striping tape.  I used tweezers and tiny scissors to apply and pat down the tape where I wanted it.  This is a skill that you have to develop, it's not going to place easily the first time.  If you were impatient with drying make sure you put it on right or it messes up the french - not that I know this from experience or anything :-)  Once the tape is applied, patted down in the corners and the excess cut off (always cut more than you need to, just in case) then apply a top coat to seal the tape to the nail design and voila a beautiful design for all who see them to envy!!  I'm super happy with my design today and huge thanks to Charleen and her web site (https://www.facebook.com/CrazyGirlTexas) for giving me this tape as a prize.

Black Matte Fun

Decided to do some black polish designs due to my last week at work.  I thought it was appropriate.  I started with Wet n Wild 424 Black and then went over it with essie matte about you and finally added some black lines, dots and patterns with a toothpick, bobby pin, sucker stick from earlier that evening and my black striper from Quo by Orly.
I'm glad I took pictures last night as my middle finger with the drips broke at the quick.  It looks so dwarfed by the rest of my nails....

 

Robin Moses Pink Flowers

The Robin Moses design I wanted to do I seem to have lost and can not find again.  Trying to wade through that woman's flower folder is like trying to find... well you get the idea.  So I found this other design instead here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfeVx5fnxo0&list=PL16BAB047971B9CC9&index=21
I used Royal Blush Flush NL V08 by OPI to start off this design and then my black 59701 Quo by Orly striping brush to put on the lattice and finally my favourite dotting tool (a bobby pin) to dot on the pink acrylic paint and finally the bright silver from Sally Hansen Xtreme wear 4860-13 Celeb City (I really love this sparkly silver!)

Black and Silver stripes

I began with a base of Sally Hansen 850 Pumping Iron and then used my Black 59701 and Platinum Glitter 59703 striping brushes from Quo by Orly to add the stripes.  I created all the black lines first then then went in between them with silver.  A very simple design but looks very feral in a glittery sort of way :-)

Striping Tape

So I got some striping tape from a nail art course I took at Gen Con (convention in Indianapolis, Indiana hosted by https://www.facebook.com/glitterfactorybloomington) and finally got around to using it. Bright/fluorescent colours look best against a black overcoat, the metallic did okay as well.  I'm most happy with my right pinky and my left middle finger, they used the dollar store colours I bought after my dad took ill.
Here are pictures of the before, so you know what they looked like before the striping tape and to show how much work went into these ;-)

Here are the pictures for after with the stripers set and the black polish put over the stripes so only the colour underneath shows through.

Lastly since these took a stupid amount of polishes to complete I just took pictures of what I had out of my collection.  The last picture shows the striping tape and a polish that matches really well.  I'm sure I'll have something done with these two items at a later date.