Kawaii Nails for Fanime

Fanime is today and tomorrow in San Jose and my gf/hand model Chrissy asked me to do light purple rounded kawaii nails to match her Espeon costume! I did clear acrylics and just painted on French tips in a light lavender color, added some purple 3D acrylic bows, glitter, rhinestones and some metallic pearls. Ohhh la la.

OPI I Brake For Manicures Swatch

Merry Christmas everyone! I got a couple of polishes from my boyfriends stepmom today, one of them being OPIs I Brake For Manicures. I had time after my nap navidad to swatch it for you guys because it's a really interesting color but I'm not sure the pictures do it justice. It's a creamy dark grey/brown/purple that goes on smooth and opaque in just two coats. I love it. It's from the Touring America Collection which I loved almost every color of. It's a new shade for me, and perfect for winter! I'm glad I'm on a break from acrylics so I could easily swatch this on my natural nails!

I hope you can see the complex hue combo in this color- might add a sunlight pic later on. Thanks, Diane!

Do any of you guys have this color? What do you think of it?

Merry Xmas, followers!

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 19 - Galaxy

 Well, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to recreate my previous post of galaxy nails, so I tried to do it in different colors and I'm pretty happy with this! I did a black base coat and then cut a skinny piece off a makeup sponge to sponge on purple and light purple... Then sponged on a black with silver glitter in the dark spots. For the stars, I used 2-3 holo dot cut outs (the eyes that punched out of my playboy heads, I saved in this little jar). Then the pointy side of an orange stick for medium stars, and the pointy side of a sewing needle for the tiny stars.

For some reason, it doesn't look glossy despite my efforts with 3 coats of Beauty Secrets Top Coat!! Maybe its the color combo?? I'm going to add a few more coats tonight, so maybe I'll switch out the pictures if it works... :-/

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 17 - Glitter

I didn't do this for my nail art challenge, I did this because I haven't painted my right hand this whole challenge and I wanted to do something crazy for that hand because it was naked these past two weeks. I then decided that it would be perfect for a glitter post because it is so sparkly and glittery...

I used LA Colors Allure, a pink-orange shimmery neon for the tips, and a black and purple striper to make the wispy lines, then I dumped some Sally Hansen glitter topcoat in Strobe Light and used my striper brush to paint lines on top of the purple and black. then glued on glitter dots randomly, flatback pearls, silver holo Playboy heads, and square and circle rhinestones in different sides. then like 6 coats of top coat.....

I like it, but to paint my other nails and remove with cotton balls, I have to wear gloves .

Glitter!

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 6 - Purple/Violet

Ahhh dreaded purple day. It's funny because I never paint my nails purple! I'm more green, pink, blue, black... but this design actually turned out nice. I would tell you which colors I used but unfortunately the two purples were given as a gift to me and I have discarded the box; the polishes are unbranded!! Clearly I used white Sinful Colors polish for the white flowers, as shown. 

I painted on light purple tips and used a dotting tool to drag dots into these cute little flowers ! I actually love this design so much I'm keeping it on until my next challenge for tomorrow. I definitely am going to try this again in other colors!

Checkers and Marker Henna

I painted my nails this dark purple color that doesn't have a name, and was inspired to draw a henna design on my hands and arms (get this) inspired by my henna-inspired nails lol!!

I think it came out alright (my marker henna), I hopefully want to get into doing actual mehndi on my friends' hands as soon as this summer. I'm just getting my practice on!

I painted on light purple checkers on my ring finger (to cover up a chip of the dark purple that had fallen off). It came out alright, considering it's hard to paint on perfect squares as you all know. Especially hard since my hands were shaky due to a severe coffee buzz from earlier. Well lemme know what you think!

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

Roses are... Pink

Happy Birthday, Chrissy! These design was created for Chrissy for her birthday party which was yesterday... she wanted the nails to have roses to match her birthday dress. I was kind of scared to paint on roses but I do like a challenge. They turned out quite pretty, and I think Chrissy was pleased with the outcome. I'd let everyone know what they colors we used for it but she brought over her own polish and I didnt get a chance to write down which ones they were but I'll just credit it to OPI and fill it in later.

Yay.

Makeup Sponging? Sponge-ing?

I finally got my hands on some makeup sponges to experiment with fading nail polish techniques! Since I just have makeup brushes, I never went out and bought a whole bag of sponges because I didn't know how it would turn out. Now that I do, I think that makeup sponges is a total must have for any nail polish fanatic. In the top picture, I sponged on a very light coat of nail polish starting from the very tip of my nail and working my way down toward the nail base. Only work in one direction! If you don't, you won't get a nice fading effect like shown here. Then once you have a light coat, apply more nail polish to the sponge and work from the tip down again to ensure full opacity. Since you don't get a completely smooth look from sponging they way you do painting the nail, I applied a full coat of shimmery top coat (glitter top coat would also work well). It helped to smooth out the look of any imperfections. In the second photo I started with pink and working my way up the tip, I started to add a darker purple and then the darked sponged right on to the very tip. I think if you have many shades of one color it looks more dramatic than the first photo, where I sponged on only one shade of each color. Hope you guys like this!

Cute ribbon stripes

I saw a design similar to this somewhere online, but unfortunately I'm unable to credit anyone because I can remember who it was, or even if I saw just a picture of it or on a nail tutorial on YouTube. sorry! But anyways, I wanted to do a design that looked like a present or nails wrapped up with bows, but I couldn't commit to holiday colors again (as I kept my candy cane nails for the weekend) so I caved and went with pinks and purples. I added some rhinestones but I know I will regret then later today when I'm cooking or trying to open up bobby pins.

Got grapes?

I had to take one of these pictures with a flash because you couldnt really see the design but I sorta warped the colors... This was just a fast asymetrical tip design I did when I was to lazy and lacking creativity. I don't even like the color purple anyways; it's a good thing I did this particular design because my roomate caught a glimpse of these and had me do an almost identical version on her. The lighter of the purple is Nicole by OPI's "Virtuous Violet" and the darker is "Purple Pizzazz" by Sally Hansen Hard as Nails. I used my dotting tool to line the seam between the two purps. Got graaapes?

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.

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".

June Nails...

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