A girl and her love of nail polish

Posts tagged ‘nail art’

Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge: Spider Nail Art

Today’s theme for Day 7 of the Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge from datyorkLOVES/SassyNails is spiders.There are 10 themes for the challenge, and I have to complete all of them by the end of October, but other than that, it’s self-paced.

Spider Halloween Nail Art

I found this super-cute spiderweb funky french manicure from Kayla Shevonne that I liked a lot, but since I just did Frankenstein french tips for yesterday’s prompt, I switched it up a bit for this one by doing a gradient instead.

Spider Halloween Nail Art

I started with three coats of Sinful Colors Lets Meet, which is pretty much a shimmery Tweety Bird yellow. I followed that with one coat of Poshe fast-dry top coat.

Spider Halloween Nail Art

Then I applied Sinful Colors Lets Meet and China Glaze Riveting (beautiful shimmery orange) directly to a makeup sponge and dabbed that on my nails. I did it at least twice on each nail to get the orange as dark as I wanted. I followed that with one coat of Poshe.

Spider Halloween Nail Art

For the spiderweb and spider legs, I drew on my nail using a Kiss Nail Artist pen. The spider body is a large dot of Orly Liquid Vinyl. The eyes are smaller dots of NYC French White Tip and Orly Liquid Vinyl again. Topped that nail off with one final coat of Poshe.

Nail-aween Halloween Nail Art Challenge

 

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Holiday

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Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge: Frankenstein French Tips

Day 6 of the Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge from datyorkLOVES/SassyNails brings me to Frankenstein. There are 10 themes, and I have to complete all of them by the end of October, but other than that, it’s self-paced.

Frankenstein French tips Halloween nail art

I looked around the Interwebs for ideas and saw lots of really cute Frankenstein faces that I liked a lot. But I wanted to try to contribute something a little different to the conversation. I really liked this patchwork manicure that Fancy Schmancy Nails did for the Nail-aween challenge, and my original thought was to do something similar but only using shades of green. The idea of morphing it into Frankenstein French tips came to me after that. I searched around a bit and didn’t find anything that looked like this, but let me know if you find it elsewhere.
Frankenstein French tips Halloween nail art

For the base color, I used three coats of Color Club Tweet Me, a chartreuse creme (not the greatest formula, as I discovered doing this retro wallpaper nail art). I added one coat of Poshe fast-dry top coat, and then taped off the tips and added a thick coat of Sinful Colors Exotic Green. I added another coat of Poshe, and then used a Kiss Nail Artist pen to draw the stitches.

Frankenstein French tips Halloween nail art

Simple Halloween nail art, but I was happy with the way they turned out.

Frankenstein French tips Halloween nail art

Nail-aween Halloween Nail Art Challenge

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Holiday, NOTD

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Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge: Mummy Water Marble

I couldn’t come up with anything unique for Day 4 of the Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge from datyorkLOVES/Sassy Nails, so I modeled my mummy nails after my favorite version, from Colette at My Simple Little Pleasures, who is the queen of water marble nail art.

Obviously mine do not compare to hers, but I did give it the old college try. I tried to model my color choices on the ones she features in the video tutorial, but I realized after the fact that mine actually had too much white in it. Having more of the ivory and brown shades is what makes hers look more like mummy wrapping.

Mummy water marble Halloween nail art

For mine I started with two coats of Ulta Snow White as the base. I also used it for the water marble, along with Megan Miller Lemon Ice (which I mistakenly thought would come across a ivory) and Essie Mink Muffs, which is one of my favorite brown shades. I added one coat of Poshe quick-dry top coat at this point.Mummy water marble Halloween nail art

For the eyes, I applied Orly Liquid Vinyl, a black creme, using a small nail art brush. For the eyeballs, I used the head of a pin for the larger dots and a small dotting tool for the smaller dots, Ulta Snow White and Ulta Steppin Out. I finished it with one coat of a regular top coat.

Mummy water marble Halloween nail art

As far as the water marble goes, I think I actually had sections that looked better than what I was able to get onto the nails, but that’s just one of the many challenging aspects of water marbling that I have yet to conquer. I dipped multiple nails at one time on this one, so not sure if that helped because it was quicker or hurt because I might have gotten better design placement if I had been doing one at a time.

Mummy water marble Halloween nail art

When you do water marbling, do you usually do multiple nails at once? If so, any tips?

Nail-aween Halloween Nail Art Challenge

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Holiday, NOTD

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Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge: Bloody Nails

Here’s my Day 3 entry for the Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge from datyorkLOVES/SassyNails. There are 10 themes, and I have to complete all of them by the end of October, but other than that, it’s self-paced.

Halloween Nail Art: Blood Smears

Today’s theme is bloody nails. I tried to do something a little different here since there are so many creepy examples out there of Halloween manicures or vampire-themed nail art featuring drippy and splattered blood. I went for smears instead, as if someone had smeared blood on a wall.

Halloween Nail Art: Blood Smears

I started with two coats of OPI Berlin There Done That, a nice neutral taupe that I thought could very easily stand in for a wall color.

Then I used Ulta Steppin Out for the blood smears. I think both the color and the thicker consistency of this polish mimic real blood.

Halloween Nail Art: Blood Smears

My technique on this was to drop some of the red polish onto a piece of wax paper. I then used the straight edge of a piece of paper and dragged it through the polish, then dragged it across the nail. In some cased I dragged left to right, other times dragged downward.

Nail-aween Halloween Nail Art Challenge

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Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge: Matte Dotticure

So this is my Day 2 post for the Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge from datyorkLOVES/Sassy Nails. There are 10 themes, and I have to complete all of them by the end of October, but other than that, it’s self-paced.

Today’s theme is a matte dotticure. I was really happy with the way this one came out, and it was really fun to wear.

Halloween Dotticure Dotting Nail Art with China Glaze Riveting

Halloween Dotticure Dotting Nail Art with China Glaze Riveting

I started with two coats of Orly Liquid Vinyl on all of my nails except my ring finger, which is two coats of China Glaze Riveting.

I added one coat of Poshe quick-dry top coat. As I did, some of the China Glaze Riveting transferred to the brush and then to my nail as I was painting the next black nail, and it left behind a bit of the orange shimmer. I really loved the way it looked, so I decided to do some minor frankening: I mixed a bit of the two colors together on some wax paper and then painted that on top of the black nails so they’d all have a bit of the orange shimmer on them. Topped all of that off with Poshe when I was finished.

Halloween Dotticure Dotting Nail Art with China Glaze Riveting

Then I added dots. I started with Ulta Snow White dots using the head of a pin, then used a small dotting tool for the inner dots: black on the orange nail, orange on the black nails. The accent nail almost looks like a bunch of googly eyes, don’t you think?

Halloween Dotticure Dotting Nail Art with China Glaze Riveting

To make it matte, I added one coat of Essie Matte About You. Unfortunately I didn’t let it dry long enough before I applied it, and it smeared some of the dots. 😦 The matte effect wasn’t very strong, perhaps I needed to add more.

Halloween Dotticure Dotting Nail Art with China Glaze Riveting

Here’s a look at the manicure before I added the matte top coat.

Halloween Dotticure Dotting Nail Art with China Glaze Riveting

Halloween Dotticure Dotting Nail Art with China Glaze Riveting

Halloween Dotticure Dotting Nail Art with China Glaze Riveting

Nail-aween Halloween Nail Art Challenge

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Holiday, NOTD

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Polish Us Pink – Pink Glitter Gradient

As you’ve hopefully heard by now, October is breast cancer awareness month. Several nail polish bloggers have organized the Polish Us Pink campaign, through which they will be posting pink manicures on Mondays throughout the month to help raise awareness. I’m joining in with today’s pink glitter gradient, which is dedicated to my grandmother. She was a breast cancer survivor.

This manicure is similar to the silver and gold glitter gradient I did last month. There’s a link to a tutorial in that one if you want to learn more about the technique.

Pink Glitter Gradient Nail Art with Essie Luxeffects A Cut Above

I started with a clear base coat and then added Sonia Kashuk Smoke And Mirrors, a silver metallic, to my tips (in retrospect I wish I had started with a pink polish instead of the silver but at the time I wanted something metallic. I now think something shimmery pink would have been fine).

Pink Glitter Gradient Nail Art with Essie Luxeffects A Cut Above

I then brushed on Essie Luxeffects A Cut Above (medium and small pink hex glitter in a clear base), concentrating on the line where the tips met my nail to start the gradient.

I added on a little bit of OPI Mad As A Hatter, which is a much-coveted densely packed multi-glitter with pink, purple, silver and turquoise, spreading that to about the halfway mark.

Pink Glitter Gradient Nail Art with Essie Luxeffects A Cut Above

And to top it off I layered on Ulta After Party, which looks pink in the bottle but I think technically is just red and silver micro glitter, bringing that almost the the cuticle line.

Pink Glitter Gradient Nail Art with Essie Luxeffects A Cut Above

Blurry to show glittery goodness

For more about breast cancer, please visit  the breast cancer page on the American Cancer Society’s Web page, which has lots of information about mammograms, treatment and how to get involved with the fight for a cure.

Here’s a look at some of the other bloggers participating in Polish Us Pink. Please click here to see them:


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NOTD

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Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge: Water Marble

So this is my Day 1 post for the Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge from datyorkLOVES/SassyNails. There are 10 themes and I have to complete all of them by the end of October, but other than that, it’s self-paced.

So today’s theme is water marble. I’m not that happy with the way it came out. I tried to fix it, and I think that made it worse. Alas.

Halloween Water Marble Nail Art

I started with two coats of Ulta Snow White and then moved on to the water marble. I went with Halloween colors: black – Orly Liquid Vinyl; orange – Zoya Jancyn; purple – Sally Hansen Rock Hard; and white – Ulta Snow White.

Halloween Water Marble Nail Art

When I was done, I thought some of them looked a little messy so I tried to camouflage with some dots, using Sally Hansen Rock Hard. The polish was a bit on the sheer side, so then I started with a dot of Ulta Snow White and laid a dot of Rock Hard on top of it. Mistake. They didn’t look that great, and the smeared a bit on my index finger when I added a coat of Poshe fast dry top coat, making it look messier than it really was. I should have just left well enough alone and not tried to add the dots.

Halloween Water Marble Nail Art

Cleanup was a little tough with this; I suppose that’s par for the course.

Halloween Water Marble Nail Art

I did like the way the middle finger came out,and the ring finger almost looked like a spider web.

Nail-aween Halloween Nail Art Challenge

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Holiday, NOTD, Water Marbling

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