Paradise Blue Cheetah and Gilty Gold Zebra

 I'm attempting to paint my nails as often as possible during my break from piano. I raided my roommate Ashley's np stash and found two new favorites: "Paradise" by Sinful Colors and "Gilty Pleadure" by Sally Hansen Complete Manicure. Paradise is a bright creamy sky blue which I can only imagine is even more beautiful in the daytime. I sit here admiring it in artificial light and can't wait for the sun to come up. I'll have to update you all with a daytime pic soon. It was two coats to full opacity. The first thin coat was streaky and I almost started to doubt my decision on picking a Sinful Colors polish out of her stash instead of a higher quality. But I was thankfully reassured by a thicker 2nd coat which brought the color to a dreamlike consistency. Gilty Pleasure is a champagne gold I used to make a couple streaks in my last post. I love it and it's so perfect on any skin color. Again it's two coats to opaque but with a light color like this, three should be perfect. I don't like to do three coats because, frankly, ain't no one got time fo that. 

I was a little disappointed in myself for not thinking outside the box and reverting to animal print. I promise my next post won't be something I've done a thousand times over. Hope you enjoy!

Pink Glitter & White French Mani

Classic pink & whites with a twist! I accidentally grabbed my sparkly pink glitter vomit mix instead of my regular clear pink I use on my nail bed. There's all kinds of glitter in there: pink metallic tinsel, pink and purple dust glitter, iridescent hexagons and stars. Basically the kitchen sink. I placed the white cut out acrylic tips sort of lower on my nail bed than I usually would so it has room to grow out for a couple weeks. I used Krazy Glue to adhere my tips on and it was so bad! It took forever to dry! I only put my acrylics back on because I had found a fresh bottle of Krazy Glue in my craft box and I have been out of glue for over 2 months now! Well, that's all folks, and prolly for a little while unless I feel inspired to dress up these nails enough to post!

Basic Pink and White French Manicure

Ahh the tried and true pink and white acrylics... I can't believe I only lasted 2 days without my fake nails! >< I wrote on my to-do list "Swatch Zoya Envy for blog" and when I sat down to do it, this happened! Jeez... what is wrong with me?

On the upside, I've been meaning to try these new white tips I got for a few months now, and I've never actually done a real pink and white manicure before, and I've never gotten one done!! Can you believe it?

I tried to make them super thin as practice for doing other people's nails. Most people don't like them too thick, so I tried to do them as thin as possible. I'm pretty happy with this result, I just hope that they don't chip while I craft or do dishes!

I used my Pinky Promise acrylic mix that I made for the nail beds, but I can't see it in the pictures too well. Maybe I will upload a daytime/sunlight pic tomorrow! (And hopefully the sun will come out for it!)

Purple Glitter Acrylic Mix

Haven't done a glitter acrylic mix in a while, and thought I'd give myself a break after being so tired from my vacation.... I haven't given a name to this mix, but it has an unexpected color combo. I used mostly Charoite (a purple fine glitter), Lapis Lazuli (a tinsel bright blue glitter), and Copper (a tinsel copper glitter) all by Martha Stewart. I eyeballed the purple glitter into a tiny bowl and put equal amounts of copper and blue tinsels. I mix the glitters first because I can see what the colors and proportions before adding the clear acrylic powder (which looks white). When I found a nice balance, I added the acrylic and applied my French tips. I'm happy overall with how it turned out. I love the color of the purple glitter, but never seem to use it on my nails...

I added a half swipe of LA Colors Art Deco striping brush in a black with silver glitter color. And that's it! I'll prolly keep this on for a few days until I can't stand it anymore. I'm getting there. If you want information about making your own glitter/acrylic mixes, just email me or comment below. I might do a tutorial, but honestly I'm video camera-shy!

Martha Stewart Glitters:

purple: Charoite

blue(tinsel): Lapiz Lazuli

copper (tinsel): Copper

So behind... nails from last week!

This picture with my hand on rocks is actually my hand in a creek that was near when my boyfriend, my mom and I went on a hike in Truckee last Wednesday. Just thought it was a cool shot.

The white french tips are actually the first time I'd painted my nails white since I started doing my acrylics. I wanted to do them white because my whites are all getting too thick, so before they died I gave them one last hoorah as a base color before they retired to use only in designs. I used my dotting tool to make pink flowers and leaves, and actually at this time last week, I didn't have an opaque green, so I had to make this green out of a yellow and a bue to make the leaves around the flowers.

Experimentation Time

Im experimenting with designs right now while my boyfriend plays video games. This is just an asymetrical tip design with layers of blue and purple, and of course, glitter. The lightest blue that I used is Nicole's "Respect the World", in the middle is one coat of Sally Hansen Hard as Nails "Purple Pizzazz" and then a second coat to make the third stripe. I did add three hot purple dots to the left side (one for each different color of stripes) but you can barely see it in the picture I took with my iPhone. I've been so lazy taking the pictures because its so much faster to upload with my iPhone than it is to upload the pictures from my camera to the computer. I'll do that someday when I'm not so lazy.

Let's get physical

Kind of an homage to this weird purple and pink moo moo my grandma used to (and possibly still does) wear, and a late 80s early 90s jazzercise leotard. I dunno, is it still dorky and tacky if you can admit it? I'm taking them off; I just wanted to take a picture of them. The blue is Nicole "Respect the World", purple is Nicole "Virtuous Violet", pink is CoverGirl "Fuschia Girl".

My rendition of MAC green zebras

I saw these green zebra stripes in a MAC catalogue and this is my version using Wet N Wild "Caribbean Frost" French tips and NYC "Black lace creme". My boyfriend told me he liked this design when I first tried it on my natural nails, so I redid them in order to woo him into taking me to see Twilight: Eclipse. I'll cross my fingers.

99 cent Wet N Wild tips

French tips with wet n wilds red red and blazed.



Wet n wilds black creme



Both of these have wet n wilds hallucinate glitter top coat on the tips and clear top coat over the nail bed. A large chunk of my polish collection is wet n wild, obviously because it's cheap!

June Nails...

Here are some designs from June. Some are on my natural nails and some on me and my roomates acrylics.

Argyle style

Argyle paint jobs: the pink and white/ orange and white on my roomate and blue and white on me. Summery. Makes me wanna play golf. Or just drive a golf cart.

Fourth of July nails!

Sporting the stars and stripes:
I used clear tape cut into strips to paint the red stripes on top of white French tips and I put cut out white stars on top of blue tips on my thumbs. Then glitter and lots of top coat. Voilà!