Gold and Black Glitter Tips + Cross

I, admittedly a little tipsy, decided last night at 2 am, I was going to drill out my blue green glitter tips off my left hand and replace them with any color combo of my twin bro's picking. He was staying over at our place and was watching TV as I did my nails. He said black and gold so I used my new black hexagons on top of an old acrylic mix from last year that was Martha Stewart's Copper fine glitter and clear acrylic. I dumped a bunch of black hexs into the mix and applied it to my tips.

After shaping and buffing, I applied the black hexs to my index finger in the form of a cross. The center is a small silver rhinestones, with larger black rhinestones on the edges of the lines. I really like this and will probably try again is different colors later on.

 You can see my  thumb here without topcoat because I accidentally forgot my thumb, but thought I'd take a pic anyways for educational purposes. This is what it looks like buffed and before top coat. It looks a little cloudy.

Here's the interesting part of this post: One day, while looking in my black star cut out pot, I discovered a cut out heart. I dumped it out onto a piece of paper and rifled through it. I found about 30 cut out hearts with almost as many center cuts in there! It was enough for my to throw into its own empty container and save for  a rainy day. :) Bonus glitter!

Red and Black Bunny Set - RIGHT Hand

Yay! I finally got to do a set of bunny nails!! I decided it was time to do my right hand over because they were empty for a few weeks! And I'm so glad I did because they turned out pretty snazzy for applying with my left (non-dominant) hand!!

On my middle finger, I put a bunch of 1.5 mm red rhinestones on because my black stars were not encased deep enough in clear acrylic and when I was filing my nails, I shaved off half of the large cutout star :-/

Here's all the stuff I used in this set ^^

My glitter mix was clear acrylic, red hexagons, silver tinsel glitter by Martha Steward in Sterling, and black fine glitter also by Martha Stewart in Onyx.

(My NYE 2010/11 nails were this mix minus red hexagons.)

Aaaand here's my bunny heads and stars in the cap waiting to be placed on my nail. :)

Nail Mail Haul + Reviews

So this is my most recent and final nail art haul from www.banggood.com . They're located out of China, and like I said in my last nail haul from them, you're getting the same stuff you get off Amazon but for dirt cheap + no shipping. This 12 color hexagon set on Amazon is trying to sell for $17!! I got it for $3. 

The tiny jars ha twist on lids, as with most glitter pots, and there was only a small about of spillage. I wouldn't even call it spillage, it was just a few hexagons stuck to the larger container. I swept them off with a paper towel onto my glitter laden carpet and that was that. They are about 1mm (sorry I didn't have my ruler out to show you) and they are small enough to stick on to your nail with top coat and not have it be sticking out off the nail in one corner, also small enough to throw into a glitter acrylic mix (pic in my next post). But large enough to tell they are hexagons. The only problem I have with these is that some of them are straight metallic (red, black, silver, copper, pink/purple) and some are irridecent (pink, blue, purple, green, yellow, and clear/white). The only reason why I don't like that is because I was REALLY hoping the green would be a straight metallic green so I could do red/green/silver acrylic mix for Xmas! But I still have time before Xmas to figure it out or find a new green hexagon. LOL.....

These are 10 colors of striping tape that I also ordered... kind of an impulse buy because they were I think $1.50 for all ten colors? I just thought since I was ordering stuff, and everything takes so long to get here that I might as well stock up on stuff.

I'm not quite sure how I will use the stripe tape, but here you can see that it is very thin, but you can still clearly see it's pretty metallic blue color. As I was just testing the size of the tape on my nail and wasn't planning on leaving it there, I must report that it came off very easily and remained sticky, so if you place it in the wrong spot, it will be easy to pull off and move over.

The tape was so thin and hard to tell which color was which

, I thought while I had everything out during my nail mail photo shoot, I labeled all of the striping tape bags so it would be easy to grab the correct on quickly while doing nails.

And last but not least, a new set of double ended dotting tools (whose handles match my acrylic art brush set from my last haul) a wheel of flat backed pearls, and some 1.5mm and 2mm rhinestones, I thought I swore off rhinestones forever but these were too cheaply priced to pass up- I think each wheel was about $2 for about 24000 stones/wheel. And to answer the question you always ask: how do they hold up under top coat? They don't! Never do that! Rhinestones always look best if they are the very very last thing to apply! Even Swarovski crystals- you don't want to top coat those either! They lose their tiny facets under a layer of topcoat and therefore, lose their sparkle.

Here are my flat black pearls^^. Love them, haven't really seen them being sold before. I got these because my girlfriend Chrissy loves everything azn and cutesy so these are prolly going to only be used on her nails- maybe I'll take the red and blacks though. 

Oh yeah and I also got a pair of tweezers for picking up tiny things like Fimo slices, glitter shapes, rhinestones, etc. They were 79 cents each and they work great!

I hope you guys check out www.banggood.com because they are cheap, good quality, and they have free shipping!! Only took about 2 1/2 weeks to get here, but hey, I didn't pay a penny for shipping :)

Can we talk about Snooki's nails?

Snooki posted these nails on Twitter today. 

I'm all about weird crazy nails, and I'm not against duck feet tips... but why are these nails so bumpy?? The shape is way off, I can't imagine that she went to a salon and paid to have them do this. Here's an outlined version so you can see exactly what I'm talking about: 

I've seen her nails shaped and filed neatly and uniform before but I just can't imagine that she walked happily out of the salon- she either was drunk when she got her nails done or maybe she did them herself, but I highly doubt it. ><

Blue & Green Iridescent Glitter Star Acrylics (underside pic! yikes!)

 Ahhhh... finally my challenge is over and now it's time to get movin' on projects I've been neglecting; I have a few birthday presents to knock out and I have to start working on Christmas! (lol sorry to those who don't think farrrrr ahead, but the week before Halloween = it's Christmas time.)

I used a hot pink acrylic mixed with clear to make my nail bed color. I call it "Pinky Promise", I drilled out the area closest to the cuticle and only applied the pink there. It's really hard to see it in the pictures because of the lighting but the idea was to have it look REALLY pink at the very  base of the nail. See picture below:

For the tips, I drilled out the smile line and filed off the thick layer of clear acrylic I'd been painting on during this whole challenge (ew it was sooo stained and gross). Filled the tips with a mix of the Martha Stewart Iridescent Collection fine glitter and glitter stars, encased in clear, and shaped and buffed smooth. 

I'm going to eventually post this method for tip-fill and back-fill but most of my followers don't use acrylic (and if I'm wrong PLEASE correct me  Where the acrylic girls at!) 

This shot is just a "front"? view of my nails to show you how thick/thin they are with my actual nail + acrylic + glitter + stars + top acrylic + top coat. 

WARNING   WARNING   WARNING   WARNING   WARNING   WARNING

KINDA GROSS PICTURE COMING UP...

I'm only posting this shot because my twin bro and my boyfriend saw the undersides of my nails last night and were appalled to see that I'd had my acrylics on for SO LONG (Aug 30th - today) that the tips I originally glued on had grown out completely and all that was left was my natural nails underneath and you can see them EWWW! 

Does this make sense? Look at this picture:

Ew! those are my hella long and gross natural nails! They just have acrylic on top-- And the middle one is still yellowish from when I attempted water marbling during the challenge and it got green under my nail....

For the record I am removing these acrylics, cutting my natural nails, and reapplying a fresh set in about a week. But I had to show you my dirty little secret :(

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 30 - Inspired by a Tutorial - Plants vs. Zombies

OK so I'm going to make this short: this wasn't a tutorial, but it WAS someone elses nail design. They had french tips in bright green with these crazy zombie heads on them. Oddrey, my lovely hand model is modeling these right now for me as I needed to paint my other challenge on my hand. After I already had painted them on, I realized their original picture was copyrightedand I couldn't show you guys what it looked like! Also I didn't even know these were Plants vs. Zombies zombies until I showed my boyfriend the picture! I thought they were just super cute zombies. :)

I'M DONE WITH THIS CHALLENGE FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 29 - Inspired by the Supernatural - Dia De Los Muertos

Dia de los muertos! I have been waiting to do this all month... Still not happy with how it came out. I should have been layering top coat the whole time to smooth out all these details!!! Now in the middle of the nail where the skulls are, there is basically a pile of polish... Not a good look.

I painted each nail a different color, pink, yellow, orange, blue, and green. Added contrasting flowers to the corners of the nails for some spice. Then painted my white skull shapes on. I decorated the skulls with dots and flower shapes and when I couldn't fit any more deco on, I outlined with black and added my eyes. Wish  I had recieved my package today I could have added something cool into the eye holes... :(

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 28 - Inspired by a Flag

I know, I know, my hand painted stars are poop. But I haven't acquired every color of star glitter yet and my "white" is basically just clear. I love the American Flag! It's my favorite, but I do it quite often, (also red white and blue). My boyfriend Kevin suggested I do the Confederate flag, and I thought it would be a great idea but since I didn't want to paint the same flag on every nail so I incorporated the orange and blue "01" to mimic the side of the Dukes of Hazzard car! Smart, huh? That orange ^^^ is Sunny Side Up by Wet N Wild. I've bought it so many times because I think it looks nice with my skin color... I haven't used it in months, but brought it back to life with some nail polish thinner.

If anyone is wondering why I'm posting 1-3 challenge posts a day... it's because I was sick of the challenge like 3 days after I started it and I'm trying to finish it as soon as possible! I haven't even had time to do any awesome Halloween nails-- It's almost Halloween..!

Also, follow me on my Twitter I'm still trying to figure out how to use it!

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 27 - Inspired by Artwork - Tokidoki

For my "Inspired by an Artwork" post I decided to do Tokidoki characters because they are so cute. I really dropped the ball on pretty much every nail except the thumb, but I'm still pretty conten with how the design turned out as a whole. I'm going to also try to paint/upload my next challenge post tonight too- only 4 more to go!!!

Who here has a nail/swatch Twitter???

I am so confused, not sure how a nail Twitter will work, so if we are following each other, please send me your Twitter account name or just let me know and I'll follow you!

my Twitter name: nailxxxobsessed

Also, if someone wants to give me nail art Twitter blog advice, that'd be great, I'm totally lost on Twitter! <3 you guys! What are we supposed to "tweet" about? Lol.....

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 25 - Inspired by a Pattern - Burberry

Funny, I chose this for "pattern" instead of fashion. But this pattern is highly recognizable, so I hope I didn't totally make a mockery of it! I attempted to do the Burberry plaid, which is super hard because it has so many intersecting lines. I used a lot of top coat to smooth out the striping process.

My process is as follows:
1. 1 coat Apricot Beige by Caroina
2. Using the brush in the bottle, made thick "T" shapes on each nail.
3. 1 coat top coat. Let dry.
4. Using red striper brush, add the 4 red stripes, intersecting at the center of the beige square.
5. 1 coat top coat. Let dry.
6.. Using a custom striper brush, paint on one direction of the navy lines on each nail.
7. 1 coat top coat, and let dry.
8. Paint on the last 3 navy lines perpendicular to the first set, intersecting at the intersection of the white cross shape.
9. Then top coat to smooth.

Came out pretty smooth, huh? Coulda been a bumpy mess. :)

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 24 - Inspired by Fashion

Thanks, to my hand model Oddrey, I was able to do posts for my challenge without taking off my current nail design. I searched the word "fashion" on Google Images and found this trio of Gucci dresses that I picked as my inspiration for fashion nails. I used black, white, and Mellow Yellow by Sally Hansen, with a darker golden yellow (that is unnamed) on top to match the yellow in the dresses. I'm pretty happy with this design, too bad it's not on my hands!

Huge Post: Haul, Swatches, Reviews... (Pic Heavy)

This is OPI's "Crown Me Already" from the Miss Universe Collection (the silver and large hex glitter). And the blue is "Across The Universe " by Deborah Lippmann.

OK let's start with 'Crown Me Already': I'm not sure if it was just this bottle, it's my friend Megan's and she ordered it online and she said when she recieved it a little bit had leaked out a bit. Not sure if it was a little think because of the insane amount of glitter, or because of the leak, but it was pretty hard to apply, and seemed to PUSH more polish out of the bottle each time I put the brush back in. I love the glitter, love the sparkle, but it was pretty hard to smooth out the texture, even with Seche Vite top coat. I also used a toothpick to push the large hexagon glitters around to keep my cuticle line clean looking.

"Across the Universe" is a dream glitter polish. It only took 2 medium coats to opaque and despite it being loaded with hexagons, it went on smooth, and had a jelly-like finish. It was smoothed out instantly with only one coat of Seche Vite. This is also Megan's polish. I got to swatch these while dog-sitting her super awesome golden retriever, Lady. Hey Megan!

YAY 3D acrylic! I'll go into details about that further down the page, as this is a swatch review for Essie's "Raise Awareness". It's Essie's breast cancer awareness pink and it is a lil tricky. I did read another review of this polish saying it was streaky and it is. I feel like when I'm painting tips it's even streakier vs. whole nail application. So this is two coats. I love the color, it would be less streaky with 3 coats, but I don't like to have heavy looking tips. I think that this polish would be less streaky in 3-4 months as it ages and becomes a little thicker.

Here is my pink nail drill I just got yesterday from Beauties Factory. Check it out here. I got it for about $25, and actually this is my replacement drill for the one I just got last month and BROKE. Now for this review I would like to make it clear that I BROKE the drill the first time. It did not come malfunctioning. Good news: the BF pink drill has a one year warranty, and this one was sent to me for $10 fee and I got to keep my other drill, it's cable, and drill bits. As for it's power: it goes up to 20,000 RPM (super fast and powerful) but so far I haven't had to use it at it's max speed; it does the job on medium. I've successfully filed a nail I had to put on today, and carved out the moon tips from my squared off nails. It did a fine job, my tips are sharp and more defined that with my previous battery powered drill. See above, the moon tips in my Essie "Raise Awareness" pictures. The only down side I have seen with this drill so far: it gets pretty warm in my hand after long use, and once it has overheated and slowed down. I turned it off for about 5 minutes, and was able to use it just fine again. I would reccomend this to any beginners for use on home acrylic application. And these are my acrylic brushes that I got JUST for doing 3D kawaii japanese nail art!!! and this 12 color set of acrylic powder. The colors are pretty random, but I'm not too picky about that right now these are just for practicing 3D stuff. I only paid about $2.50 for the 5 brush set (free shipping) and $6 or so for the acrylics also free shipping. It only took about 2 weeks to get here from China, and they are good enough quality to do a few little bows and flowers.

The website is here and it's insanely cheap for decent quality nail stuff like rhinestones, glitter, etc. So you should DEFINITELY check it out. Free shipping from China to US and came in a super decent amount of time. The comtainer that the acrylics came it was a little dusty (as shown) but I just dusted it off with a paper towel after I saw how yuck it was in the photo. None of it was spilled in shipping, but it was just a little dusty with powder. The brushes are super cute and the bristles are a nice soft sable hair for acrylic application, and they clean as well as my expensive ones from Sally's.



Well, if anyone read this whole thing, kudos to you, and I hope this was helpful for someone!

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 24 - Inspired by a Book

 My "Inpired by a Book" nail art is of course inspired by this beautiful copy of Arabian Nights. This hardcover came out with a huge selections of all the classics, all with beautiful artsy covers. I got this for Xmas from my boyfriend Kevin :). It's blue, gold, and white intricate cover was super fun to recreate on my nails and looks crazy!

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 23 - Inspired by a Movie

I am a few days behind on blogging, but I have the pictures to prove I still did my challenge! I'm going to upload them all now, and keep the posts to a minimum.

For "Inspired by a Movie" I chose to do Scream, keeping in mind the season; also I just saw Scream 4 which was pretty awesome. I was thinking about doing "Stab" nails which is the movie in the movie Scream that tells the story of the first 3 Scream movies... Basically it's Scream's "Scream"?? I didn't think anyone would get it so I just stuck to the original. On the thumb and ring finger I have painted on the Scream mask, the index finger is just kinda random but inspired by the frayed edge of the killer's outfit. The middle is a bloody finger print with some blood dripping from the cuticle (it really looked like my finger was bleeding, it was actually creepy looking at IRL). The pinky's a bloody knife!

OK on to the next post...

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 22 - Inspired by a Song

Mine: ^^^

Ke$ha's :

I was actually watching Pop-Up Video on VH1 when I had to do this design, and luckily enough Ke$ha's Tik Tok Video came on and they show her feet with gold leopard toes at the very beginning of the video! I hopped off the couch and immediately did these! With matching hands!