Welcome Back! Almond Acrylics in Fall Colors

Hello, my darlings! I am back and super excited to be blogging again. After nail school I went through a tremulous move back to Oakland and wasn't able to blog for a while. So here's my first set back: an almond shaped acrylic set with three base colors: OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons, Essie School of Hard Rocks and  OPI Over the Taupe. I added a 1mm rhinestone to the DPMB and SHR and on the OTT I did 3 slashes of Sally Hansen Complete Manicure in Gilty Pleasure and a black art polish. I'm going to try really hard to blog more often- I've missed all of you and thank you so much for visiting during my hiatus!! See you soonsies <3 

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.

NYE Mani #2

Ahhh... Much better. A NYE mani worthy of drinking and smooching the night away. I used "School of Hard Rocks" by Essie as a base color.  Then did a suuuper thin French tip in blueish glitter "Nail Junkie" by Sinful Colors. You can barely see it in the picture, but it looks awesome in person. I used a silver striper polish to do these little bursts coming from the corners of my nail bed. In the center of the silver bursty thing, I put a tiny silver rhinestone surrounded by tiny silver hexagons. Wish I could find my camera cord so I could upload better pictures of everything! Sorry!

Xmas mani #3

Its a minimalist Christmas mani! I just did a white French tip to my natural smile lines (one coat of Snow Me White by Sinful Colors), with a single coat of Vanity Fairest by Essie over the whole nail. On my accent ring and thumb, I just took a tiny brush and painted on a dark green holly leaf with Zoya in Envy. Then added red rhinestone "berries". Topped with Seche Vite, a fresh bottle from Chrissy for Christmas! And voila! A simple, clean and appropriate Christmas mani done in just minutes.

Fimo Fruits and Rhinestone Flowers (Pic Heavy!)

I finally got around to using my Fimo fruit slices! I've had them for a really long time and I've been dying to try them out! When I sat down to give me boring white French tips a fill, I had no idea what I was in for...

After my backfill, I drilled the tips super thin, but they were still white tips, so I had to cover them up with some color. I used a combination of blue, green, and pink iridescent hexagon glitters, lightly, just to add some color. The white remains as the base color. I topped with some fruit slices, mostly kiwi, strawberry, lemon, lime, Fuji apple, and watermelon. Then encased with a THICK layer of clear acrylic. (filed, shaped, and buffed, yadah yadah yadah...)

And added some colorful flowers made from rhinestones!

These are the things I used: the pink, green, and blue hex, Fimo fruit slice wheel, and 2 sizes of multi colored rhinestones: 1.5 mm and 2 mm, which I adhered at the very end with a lil top coat (after 3 coats of top coat on each nail dried)

Because I was just applying the fruits to the tips, there isn't much space to have a variety of the full shapes. I used a craft knife to slice some of the fruit in half.

(Carefully)! I did this to the limes, lemons, and the strawberries. It allowed for more fruit to be placed on each nail, and they laid a bit better on the nail too!

 

Here are all the fruits that came in my Fimo wheel (which I got for about $5 at Sally Beauty Supply). The ones I know for sure are lemon, strawberry, kiwi, 2 watermelons, lime, leaves, apple, and Fuji apple. The ones I'm not sure about are papaya, kumquat, and banana. But they are so weird looking that I'm not sure what they look like and I probably won't be using them. ><

Let me know what you guys think!! They are busy, but they are super shiny and the rhinestone flowers sparkle really nicely, especially in dim light. I'm digging it!

Pink Flowers, Rhinestones, and Pink Striping Tape

So I've been meaning to upload this, I couldn't find my camera USB cable thing for a few days. These are Chrissy's nails, my lovely hand model. She thankfully gets her nails done for my blog when I don't want to do mine or when I have poop nails that need to be filled. :) I painted her nails white (she's always trying to paint them white and I always talk her out of it!). I then used a medium dotting tool to make drag-petal flowers with Essie Raise Awareness (light baby pink) and OPI Elepthantastic Pink. I put tiny purple and blue rhinestones onto the middle of the flowers. For her accent nail, I left the base white, and when dried, I used my new pink metallic striping tape to make a lil fishnet-esque grid. I laid down the striping tape where I wanted it and then used clippers to cut the tape off where the nail ended. I topped with top coat and was pleased with the design. I only put one layer of top coat on, as she had somewhere to go and she did not upkeep with more top coat at her house. She later told me that the pink striping tape had shed it's color! She sent me a picture on my phone of her stripes still intact, but the pink had rubbed off to a dull grey/silver!~!! I would post this picture, but it was on my phone and I am lazy. I will retry this design with more top coat to see if I have the same problem, and also add this to my earlier review of my nail haul post.

  I have 10 colors to try, so far, this is the only one I've used, and I'm very worried that it won't hold, because it's soo cute! Has anyone used striping tape like this? Or how would you use it?

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 :)

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 7 - Black and White

Black and white... such a challenging challenge. I've been meaning to try to paint brass knuckles so I thought this would be a good time to try it. It didn't come out perfect, but for the first try, I'm happy with it. Also it seemed kinda plain so I junked it up with chunky circle and square rhinestones (for Chrissy who loves azn junk nails). I had tons of fun doing this mani and it will be a shame to take it off for tomorrow's rainbow challenge (grumble)......

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.

Simple Neons

"Sunny Side Up" is my all time favorite color, (it's this orange pictured here). And lucky me! It's only 99 cents (Wet n' Wild). This summer has definitely been the summer of hot pink, green, and orange; and I just might make it the winter of neons too... The green is "Can U Dig it?" by LA Girl Disco Brites. Which needs at least 3 coats to reach full opacity! And takes about an hour to dry! Which is why I only painted one nail green. The pink is NYC Prink Promendade Creme. Which looks great in the picture, but after a few days, I think it turns into red... It might just be me though.

New colors

My roomate brought home a ton of new nail polishes this afternoon including the new Sally Hansen HD polish. We got "Blu", a see-through sparkly medium blue, and "LCD", a see-though bright pink with tiny tiny blue sparkles in it. I used NYC "Pink Promenade Creme" as a base for my french tips and then topped them off with the "LCD". Then I added some twinkle designs with my striping brush in Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure "Calypso Blue" to bring out the blue sparkles in the pink, but I'm not sure if you can really see it in the pictures. Then I stuck some rhinestones on there and topped everything off with some top coat.
I was playing around before I did all my nails and painted this really cute skull, which I later redid on my roomate when I painted her nails. Enjoi.

June Nails...

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