Mummies

This is obviously late...but here's my second Halloween nail art! Mummies!!

This design was a lot easier to do than the Vampire Bites. And all you need to create this look is a medium and small sized dotting tool, detail brush, and white, black, and tan polishes.

I didn't wait long enough for the eyes to dry so when I put on the top coat, they smeared a bit. So be careful with that and wait until everything is completely dry!

Swirls of Blue and Purple

Hello everyone!

I tried out sponging for the first time! My mom had an event to go to and I decided to try this out to match the print on her dress. I think it turned out pretty well considering it was my first time.

All you need to create this is a makeup sponge and the polishes that you want to use.

Enjoy!

Vampire Bites

Hey everyone! I have some Halloween nails for you today I found this design on another blog site recently and thought of trying it out myself. Here's what my finished product looks like:

To get this look, here's what you're going to need:
 
Polishes: (the exact ones I used are in brackets)
- Flesh-colored/nude polish [Orly Country Club Khaki]
- Bright red polish [Sally Hansen Perfect Cherry]
- Dark red polish [Revlon Valentine]
- Deep red/burgundy polish [Ulta Rio Red]
- Glitter red polish [Zoya Sarah]

- Your preferred base and top coat

Supplies:

- A pair of tweezers

- A detail brush

- A medium-sized dotting tool

- A makeup sponge

Directions:

1) Apply a base coat to all of your nails

2) Apply your flesh/nude polish to all of your nails and let dry

3) After the flesh polish has dried, use the detail brush to paint "blood" on all of your nails EXCEPT YOUR RING FINGER!! Your cuticles should look like they are bleeding

4) Move on to your ring finger while the blood is drying. Break off a small piece of your makeup sponge and use your tweezers to dip it in the dark red polish. Dab it on a napkin or paper to remove most of polish and then use the remaining amount to create 2 medium-sized circles on your ring finger. These are supposed to be the bruises around the bites

5) Now use your dotting tool and the deep red/burgundy polish to create a dot in the middle of each of the bruises. These are the bites

6) While the bites are drying, go back to the other fingers. Use your detail brush and glitter red polish and go over all of the blood

7) Return to your ring finger. Use the detail brush and bright red polish to create blood "dripping" out of each of the bites. After that dries, use the detail brush to go over the "drip" with the glitter red polish

8) After you have given sufficient time for everything to dry, finish it off with your favorite top coat!

I hope this helps and you all enjoyed it!

Autumnal Blur

I did these a few days ago since it is now fall. I wanted to do something to match the colors of the leaves changing because Fall is my favorite season and the leaves are gorgeous! Especially the trees near me. There are so many around me that turn bright red. These trees start turning red at the tips of every leaf and VERY slowly move down the leaf. So right now, some of them are half red and half green, where the tips all around the tree are red and in the middle, towards the trunk are still very much green. It looks breathtaking. Enough about these trees...!

One of the things I like about Fall is sitting in the car and just staring at the trees passing by. So I tried doing something to match what that looks like.

 This was easy to do but just took a steady hand.

1) Always always apply a base coat!!
2) The base color that I used was Revlon Golden
3) Then I used an art brush to lightly swipe across my nails. But I only used each color on a few spots on my nails and sometimes even only swiped across once for certain colors. The key is to not take up too much polish on the brush so that you can see the brush stroke on the nails.
4) Here are the colors I used, in order:
- Wet n Wild Sage in the City
- Zoya Sarah
- Revlon Sunshine Sparkle
- Revlon Amber Ablaze
- Zoya Edyta
5) Then to add some sparkle, I used Jane Megawatt and wiped the polish brush on the edge of the bottle so that most of the polish was off the brush. Then I swiped over the nail in the direction I did the other colors.

What do you think of my blur of autumn colors??

Double-cross

I got a few new bottles of polish and absolutely love the colors! So, naturally, I had to use one of them right away.

 The base color was from one of the new bottles! Revlon Vixen. It's like a deep red, burgundy, maroon-ish color. But it is soooooo pretty! I threw on silver x's over it to add a little something extra.

Do you like the color?

Lines and Arrowheads

My mom really loves triangles and lines so here is another one of those with me trying to match one of her outfits. I actually have fun trying to figure out a new way to do these too so that she gets a new design every time!

The base color was a gold/grey and then I used brown to make the lines and then the crown felt a little empty so I added red arrowheads to all of the crowns. My mom also loves dots and black so I added a black dot as well in between the arrowheads and the lines.

I'm not sure how many more of these I'll be able to do! But I'm always up for a challenge :)

Something different

I saw a picture of this on Pinterest and loved it! So I thought I would do something similar and see how it looks. Plus, I recently got surgery so this was the first thing I did due to me not being able to move or walk around. Using 4 different colors kept me occupied for a while.

This was easy to do, just took a little more time because I had to be extra careful to make sure I didn't mess up even a little bit on the middle and ring fingers.

1) I used teal on my thumb, index finger, and pinky finger.
2) I applied a lighter burgundy to my ring finger and then gold on the middle finger.
3) After the middle and ring fingers had dried thoroughly, I used a gold glitter polish on the ring finger and painted half the nail at an angle (I did not use tape for this part because the burgundy polish I used always peels off easily).
4) I used the teal and burgundy from the other nails and put different sized dots on the middle finger using a dotting tool.
5) Finish it off with a top coat!

Simple, just a little tiny bit time consuming. I hope you liked it!!

Confused Leopard

I can't stop using the matte top coat!! I'm pretty sure I'll be using it every couple of months so you all are going to get a lot of designs with me using matte. Here is the latest one.

Leopard matte!! I think this looks absolutely amazing and got tons of compliments from random people.

I started off by applying the gold to all of my nails except the ring finger. Then I put on the black on the ring finger and applied Essie's Matte About You to only the ring finger. Then I went back with an art brush and created the "spots" on all of the nails, including the one matte nail.

I really hope you all love this one as much as I do!! And let me know how it works out if you try it out!

Toothpicks

Helloooo. Some of my bottles of nail polishes are a bit old and I noticed that the brushes aren't soft anymore. So whenever I put the polishes on, the brush would scratch the polish during the second coat. That got me wondering...what would happen if I used something sharp to put on the polish? I searched online and found out that you can do this with toothpicks!!

Doesn't it look awesome??

And it wasn't even that hard to do!

Here are the steps:
1) Pick a base color and apply (I chose white)
2) Pick some colors that you want to "scratch" with the toothpick (blue, pink, purple, teal in the picture)
3) Start with one color and do all of your nails so you don't have to go back and forth opening the bottles over and over again. Put a drop of one of the colors at the crown and then take a toothpick and start scratching it lightly towards the tip of the nail (the size of the drop will determine how far you are able to scratch the color)
4) Repeat with each of your chosen colors
5) Finish it off with a top coat!

I hope you like this because I sure did!!

And yes, that's henna on my hands. I got it done for a wedding that I had to go to.

Triangles

Once again, here are my mom's nails! I just love doing her nails because she keeps them long most of the time and I always end up cutting mine after I'm unable to type anymore.

Again, I made a design to match her outfit. The base color was a light purple with a grey tint, then I went over it with a yellowish gold, and then a black. Topped it off with a red dot!

I normally use painter's tape to make the lines straight but since her nails are so long, it was easy for me to be able to make almost straight lines without the tape. So if you try to do this but aren't able to make straight lines, use painter's tape! Or any tape that you like and prefer :)

Solo Flowers

I did my mom's nails again! This time I tried to just make it really simple and do one little drawing on it...a flower! The colors I chose were to match the outfit she was wearing.

I just used a light pink as the base color and then used an art brush to make purple flowers! It wasn't hard, just took a lot of concentration on my part :P 

Matte + Flakies

I mentioned before that I love the new matte top coat. I am also in love with flakies!! They are so hard to find in normal stores so when I went to Walgreens and saw that Sally Hansen now has flakies, I had to get a few bottles.
So why not combine my two loves?

 

I used black as my base color and then used Sally Hansen's Diamond Strength Glass Slipper (has bigger flakies). And then topped it off with Essie's Matte About You. Sooo easy to do!

Yay!!

Arrowhead Crown

I've seen a lot of pictures of people doing something to the crowns of their nails so here's my attempt!

To show contrast, I used a silver as the base coat and then made the arrowheads with Sally Hansen's HD Laser. I made the arrowheads using painters tape. So I first put on the silver, let it dry, put the tape over the part of the nail that I wanted to keep silver, and then painted over with the blue. And then finished it off by outlining the arrowheads with a glitter silver.

Enjoy!

Uneven French

My mom wanted me to do her nails but she doesn't like anything too drastic and out there. So I tried out an uneven french with some fun colors.

The base color she chose was a shiny, light greenish color that had a hint of grey sparkles in it (I don't think you can see it in the picture). For the french tip, I used a dark purple and made it at an angle and then used a dotting tool to add some gold dots along the line.

What do you think?!

And I promise, as I get to recent designs, I'll add more of a tutorial and the names of the polishes that I used.

Bunnies, Eggs, and Pastel

Bunnies, eggs, and pastel colors remind me of Easter so I thought of putting those on my nails! 

Bunny on the thumb and a chick hatching out of an egg on the ring finger. And then for the other nails I decided to try to make them look like decorated eggs.

I used an art brush and dotting tools to make the designs. Isn't it cute?! I hope you all liked it!

Half Matte

I love matte polish! It looks great and there are so many things you can do with it. I got Essie's Matte About You and wanted to try it out.

I love black so I thought I'd try doing black french nails. I painted the entire nail black and then after it had dried, I used painters tape to block off the tips of the nails. Then I painted over it with the matte top coat.

I guess I didn't let it dry enough because when I peeled off the tape, the edges were sticking up. It still turned out pretty good!

Let me know if you all like it!

Gold Clovers

Since my other St. Patty's day nails didn't work out, I redid them.

  The base color was Wet n Wild Sage in the City. Then I used to gold to create four leaf clovers on all of the nails. And added some dot designs using a dotting tool.

Hopefully you all like it!

Pot-o-gold

 When I think of St. Patrick's Day, I immediately think of leprechauns, and a rainbow leading to gold. So I thought of making the second!

It didn't turn out so great. I used some nail art pens that a friend gave me and they smeared after I put the top coat on and the black pot started to crack. Aaand the colors of the rainbow started to fade. So even after doing all that, I ended up taking it off. Regardless, here are some pictures of it.

Hearts, Pink, and Red

I love doing nails on holidays! This time, it was for Valentine's Day. I wanted to do something sweet and not too out there.

I painted all of my nails a shiny pink and then after it dried, painted the tips of the nails a bright, shiny red. 

For the thumb and ring finger, I used an art brush to make a white heart and a black heart in the middle of it. Finished it off by adding black dots around the white heart. 

For the rest of the fingers, I used the smallest dotting tool that I have to make white dots in the pink portion of the nails. 

Voila!

Rainbow Galaxy

I've seen a lot of tutorials on galaxy/marble nails and decided to try that out for the new year. I tried to blend the two ideas into one. Instead of making it look like the "galaxy"... I decided to just make it a blend of some bright colors.

This is an old picture again, so I don't remember exactly which color from which brand I used. But I do know that I used Sally Hansen's HD Laser. I also used gold, pink, orange, teal, and red.

This one was a bit tricky to do for me. I used a makeup sponge to dab each layer of polish. So you put on a layer of polish, let it slightly dry, and then dab the sponge on it to take some of the polish off. Do this with every layer and they should pop up due to the unevenness.

There is another way to do galaxy nails but I wanted it to look more marbley, just a blend of colors, so I did it this way. The other way to do this is by applying your base color, and then putting some polish straight onto the sponge and then dabbing each polish onto your nail. I'll do it the other way soon so everyone can see what it looks like.

I hope you liked it!

Gobble Gobble!!

For thanksgiving 2011, I decided to paint a turkey! It was actually quite easy...I just forgot to clean up the sides before taking the pictures.

I started out by painting my nail a bright red. Then used a brown to paint the body. I did this my making 3 large dots and then blending them together. Then I used a dotting tool to make the eyes and mouth. I finished it off by using a nail art brush to make the gold streaks.

I couldn't figure out what to do with the other nails so I just made leaf-like things and used the same brown as the turkey's body for the base coat, and the art brush for the gold leaf outline.

Enjoy!

ZigZags

Hi everyone! French manicures are fun but I thought of adding a twist to it!

  

It's quite easy to do:

1) Put on a base coat

2) Apply your base color (I chose purple)

3) Cut piece of tape (I used painters tape) in whatever shape you would like the tips of your nails to be (I have zigzags)

4) Put pieces of tape on your nails after your base color has dried

5) Apply tip color over nails while making sure they don't go out of their boundaries

6) Peel off tape after polish has dried

7) Apply top coat

That's all! Have fun :)

Water Marble

I thought I'd try to do something new with my nails instead of just painting them one color, and because I have way too many polishes to just use as a single color.

So I decided to try to marble my nails! It was a pleasant surprise to see that it worked pretty well. It took me a few tried to get the first nail, but after I got the hang of it, it was a breeze.

I did teal and silver to show as much contrast as I could.