Fall Nail Art Challenge Day 1: Metallic

First day of TinRoofNails Fall Nail Art Challenge Week is Metallics. I used The One That Got Away from OPI's Katy Perry Mini Set. It's a really bright purply red pink metallic with micro shimmer. I really like it but it was kinda streaky to apply. Was opaque in just three coats and dried fairly fast. This is my first published stamping attempt. I got a 2 stamping sets as a birthday present to myself. One being the first Bundle Monster set and the other was the 2012 BM Collection. I used the paisley design from BM-315 to do this design in a silver polish. I wanted to do black, but I didn't know if it would show up as bright on top of this red. The One That Got Away looked MUCH darker in the bottle and this was the first time I've swatched it; that's why I thought it'd be good for this 7-day Fall Nail Art Challenge. But hey, it's fall enough for me. Especially since it still feels like summer outside.See? It does look darker in the bottle than on my nails. ;)

Valentines Mani #2: Jungle Funky French

This wasn't what I had in mind when I sat down to do a second valentines mani- it just happened. It's a super sparkly animal print funky French that had tiny pops of pink (it looks purple but it's pink) inside the cheetah print. I used metallic pink hexagon glitter to and outlined it in black to make a cheetah print. Underneath this is a white French tip, covered in Metallica by Wet n Wild, with an unnamed silver glitter on top of the silver part. Then I added a black zebra. It's fun, sparkly and is definitely a contender for actual Valentines day nails.

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!

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. :)

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 18 - Half Moons

I actually really liked this design when I was finished (granted it took me 3 tries to get it to come out like this... I was just so shaky tonight! I used two coats of Milani Neon in Neon Orange as a base coat, then freehanded these half moons on black (prolly why I kept messing up) then used a silver Art Deco striper to make this spider webs. The reason you can't see my ring finger is because I thought one would look cute with a coat of glitter topcoat, but it didn't and then I thought I'd put some stars on it, then decided to take them off but they had left an impression.............anyways it looked bad. Happy Halloween! Muahaha...

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 13 - Animal Print - Fish Scales

 I attempted to try something new for "Animal Print"  day because I love animal prints, and I've done it all. Zebra, leopard, cheetah, giraffe, tiger, and snakeskin from the "Metallic" day challenge. So this time (inspired my a mermaid/siren chalkboard drawing at starbucks) I wanted to attempt FISH SCALES. I used the same technique from the snakeskin nails: I tighty held a piece of lace on my nail and sponged on the top color. I used Nicole by OPI "Repect the World" for the French, and NYC "Big Money Frost" and a silver striper to sponge over the lace. Sometimes it looks like fish scales, sometimes it just looks frosty and unkempt. But I wanted to try something new as it is a challenge. Maybe someone else can do it better! I'd like to see another attempt at fish scale nail art. Lemme know if you see some!