Matte Camouflage Accent Nail with Zoya Envy

Ahhhh, Zoya Envy, you are my favorite almost-black. I love this super dark green. It inspired me to do a sweet green camo accent nail that I matted out with ELFs Matte Finisher.

First, I painted all but my rings with 2 coats of Zoya Envy. Then 2 coats on the ring fingers of Essie Mink Muffs. I sloppily did squiggly horizontal lines of a mix of Mink Muffs and a green franken I conjured up a while back. A few squiggly lines of a dark green which has no name (from some kind of art kit), and a few squiggles of Envy to tie it all together. I did a coat of super shiny Seche Vite to smooth out the creases then topped with one coat of the Matte Finisher. Can you see me?

St. Pattys Mani!!

I painted my nails just 2 coats of Mint Sorbet by Sally Hansen. And added green iridescent heart shaped glitters in the shape of a clover. Four hearts with their pointy parts together make the cutest little lucky clovers! I adhered them with brush on nail glue and layered a few coats of Seche Vite to seal them in.

Striped Nail Art Inspired by New Striped Apron

I've had this brightly colored pink, black, and green fabric for a long time now and always thought about using it for an apron but never got around to it. I've been wanting a new full sizes apron as my other one is white and horribly stained. So I whipped this cute pink and black one up today and did a quick (albeit, sloppy!!) nail art to commemorate!

I used a hot pink Baby Cakes by Jessie's Girl, light pink Raise Awareness by Essie, lime green Green WIth Envy by Sally Hansen, and strippers in green, pink and black. I just followed the pattern on the fabric to make vertical stripes as carefully as possible and topped with lots of topcoat to smooth out the seams. :)

Green Glitter Fishy Scales

Ya, it could be another kinda animal that has scales, but it's scales nonetheless. I used my bright neon green Franken as a base for my entire nails then slowly and painstakingly placed on iridescent neon green 1mm hexs down. Basically that's it. It's a fun and easy nail art to do that even looks good in the dark!

Pastels and Kawaii Totoro Nail Art!!

Last night, my girlfriend and dear hand model Chrissy came over with yet another kawaii nail idea: Totoro nails!! Unfortunately my boyfriend was blocking my nail area while he played Kinect on Xbox so we had to make due with the polishes that were in my train case from the morning's out of the house gig I did on my friend Jessica. I laid down two coats of the creamy minty green "mint sorbet" by Sally Hansen. Followed by black spiky balls with white eyes, a white bunny, and a grey bunny- I will repost this with the names of the characters- sorry, Totoro fans!

My pink with flowers nail art is "Raise Awareness" by Essie. Laden with a rainbow glitter my dad gave me for Christmas and topped with "Mint Sorbet" and white flowers. The centers of the flowers are these pastel shiny dots that are actually the eyes that pop out of my playboy glitter! They were loose floating around the bag the glitter box came in and I saved them for a rainy day. Not so rainy was last night, but I was glad to find use for them!

Essie School of Hard Rocks Swatch

Ahhh I've had this polish for a few weeks now and haven't gotten a chance to swatch it out because my crap long acrylics and my 30 day challenge. But here's the scoop: School of Hard Rocks from Essie's Winter 2011 Collection is a creamy, slate blue/green/grey polish that glides on smooth and opaque in just 2 coats. I was sorta worried as it's been sitting upright in its drawer for at least 3 weeks and it had already settled at the thin liquidy stuff rose to the top. I gave it an extra few shakes and it was good as new. The first coat was transparent and streaky, but it coulda just been me, as my hands are very badly sore from 3 straight days of crocheting Xmas presents. I love the color, it is such a new shade of blue/grey/green (lol) that I really haven't seen before. I instantly felt like it was winter and it made me feel very warm inside. The only problem I have with this polish: when I was applying top coat, the polish started to rub off onto the top coat brush!!! And I'd had my nails dried for nearly 45 minutes! Maybe it was just this top coat, I'll let you guys know next time when I use a different top coat. But my review stands: this is a great new color!! I love it, and can't wait to try the other Winter 2011's from Essie!

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 20 - Water Marbled

Ahhhh the dreaded water marble. When I saw this was on the challenge list, I knew I wouldn't be marbling my long acrylics! I can't imagine cleaning under the nails, even with the protective tape, I make a huge mess. Luckily, my good friend Audrey volunteered. I painted a single coat of white to make the colors pop and into the water I dropped red, yellow, and green (of course) for a swirly marbled Rasta design. We did the thumb soooo many times, I can't tell you how many times we messed it up before, during or after dipping.

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 8 - Metallic

I totally skipped a day and did rainbow nails so I had to snap a pic of them for tomorrow and redo them to be metallic! So I did a really fast job/experiment on snakeskin nails. I painted on 2 coats of NYC "Big Money Frost" a metallic light green. Then I used a small piece of lace trim from my fabric stash to wrap around the tip of each finger. I held each one tightly against my nail and used a makeup sponge to dab on black lightly in some spots and darker in others to give it a kind of animal-in-the-wild feel. I suppose I could have done this later in the challenge for animal print day but I love animal print, so that day won't be much of a challenge.

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 4 - Green

Sally Hansen's Xtreme Wear Hard As Nails in "Green With Envy". I painted neon orange and black tiger-esque stripes on the side. I'm feeling really uninspired by this challenge so far. Maybe I'll get more creative when I get past the initial first 10 days which are just "color" challenges.

Topped with 2 coats of Beauty Secrets Hardening Top Coat.

White to Mint Fade + Grey Zeebz

I just recently got a package of makeup sponges (which I LOVE to use, but NEVER remember to buy, as I use makeup brushes), so I'm back on a sponging kick. This interesting color combo is a result of my recent house-cleaning day in which I moved ALL of my nail polish/implements under the bathroom sink, and these colors happened to miss the move as they were hiding on my coffee table. But I was pleasantly surprised on how it turned out! From far away, they seemed like a subtle pale green, but up close you can really see the details. I painted on two coats of Sinful Colors Snow Me White, then gently sponged on the Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Mint Sorbet. I then busted out Chrissy and my franken "Ash Wangsday" (ashy grey) and painted on some zebras. The end result was awesomely subtle. But unfortunately didn't last long on my hands; I ended up messing every finger up making dinner soon after I took these pictures.

This is a remix on the mint-white design, I wanted to try darker colors and black zebra stripes for a bolder effect. I don't know which I like better. But I love having different colors on all my nails.

Also, I haven't been able to comment on anyone or my own blogs. I try to comment on y'all's blog posts and it takes me in a loop where it keeps asking me to sign in, write my comment, sign it, write my comment again, etc. This is why I haven't been giving yous guys props for your beautiful nail designs in the last two months! :( If anyone knows how to help, it would be greatly appreciated!

Glitter Fade + 3D Stars!

I love doing glitter acrylix mixes like this but I don't know why I still do it since I get sick of them in like 2 days, and you can't take them off like nail polish. Anyways, I did four different color mixes with my Martha Stewart glitters, the pink/silver is called Kunzite, the purple/silver is called Purple Sapphire, the green/silver and green/gold is Golden Beryl mixed with Peridot (my August birthstone!) and the turquoise is of course Turquoise.

I have a few thousand of these flat star confetti, which look really cool embedded under the acrylic.

Hopefully I'll figure out a way to do nail art somehow on top of this nail design when I get super bored of them.

Also, I'm having problems with my computer! I've been looking at everyones blog but I can't comment! When I write a comment on your post, it asks me to sign in, then I sign in again and it keeps putting me in a loop! So I'm sorry, to my fav bloggers, I am reading you but I can't talk to you- if anyone knows how to help, it would be greatly appreciated!

The Incredible Hulk

Oh man, this took forever. Oddrey wanted the Incredible Hulk nails and we had to paint the "Marvel" thumb 3 times because I didn't leave enough room, the Hulk eye pointer finger 2 times because the first eye looked like a zombie, and the Hulk spread over 3 nails... I'm pretty happy with the way it came out though!

Floral Print on Creme de Menthe

So, I guess I wasn't happy with the roses I did for Chrissy's birthday a few posts back so I redid it on my first (unpublished) franken (never photo-ed) called Mint Julep. Note that I made it in a Seche Vite bottle. I do not reccomend anyone do this is in a Seche Vite Dry-Fast Top Coat bottle, because, while it was easy to mix, it thickened up quite fast. It was almost unusable after 2 weeks.

I still am not happy with the roses, or whatever kind of flower they are, but I like the color scheme, and I will definitely be posting a new floral print soon when I am satisfied with the result. Practice makes perfect.

Erin Go Braugh

It's a little early for St. Patty's Day but I wanted to try an Irish design for my girl Erin, aka Ireland- I ended up looking like a total weirdo for a few days. Asian girl with Irish nails.... Not a good look for me.

Can You See Me?

Inspired by my boyfriend's Call of Duty game, he asked me to make some camo nails. I would have never thought about doing it, but I figured it out and they were super easy, especially for my left hand. Of coure, after I did this I covered it with glitter. The colors are Sally Hansen "Green with Envy", the purple is the green mixed with a drop of NYC "Plaza Plumberry" the beige is the green mixed with a drop of Milani "Awesome Orange" and the black is just whatever black, lol.

New green tips!

The lighter green on the tips is from my new stash, its "Big Money Frost" by NYC, underneath it is "Carribean Frost" by Wet N Wild. I did a layered asymetrical tip with black stripes coming from one corner. I'm going to call that kind of a design a "burst" until I can figure out another word that describes it. Anyways, I made the bursts black with my striping brush and on a few of them I painted a light coat of glitter just on top of the burst and coming out on to the ends of the stripes. It looked really cool in the sunlight, but not sure if you can see it in the pictures.

While watching the news...

While watching for potential riots on the news today in downtown Oakland, I was experimenting with some more designs. The first is boring; I used patches of white "French White Creme" by Wet N Wild, maroon "Burgundy Frost" by Wet N Wild, and a metallic light blue/purple "Rain Check" also by Wet N Wild. I just outlined it with some "Black Lace Creme" by NYC and there's some dots on there too because I'm so into dots since I found my new dotting tool. The second is an idea I got from Love4Nails on YouTube. She's amazing; she does lots of nail tutorials on YouTube and is really talented and the way she talks is just strangely relaxing! So for those who haven't seen her YouTube videos, definitely check her out! I made four checkered patches and outlined them with white dots. I used Nicole's "Respect the World" as the blue, Nicole's "Virtuous Violet" for purple, "Caribbean Frost" by Wet N Wild as the greenish blue, and "Burgundy Frost" by Wet N Wild as the maroon. Then of course, as I do with most every design, covered it in glitter BEFORE dotting on the white outlines.

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.