Christmas Borders

The rush to Christmas is insane! I spent the day baking cookies and there's a full day of shopping to look forward to tomorrow ... and probably Monday too. Yes, I am a world class procrastinator. I've put this all off until the last minute ... again, because this is exactly what I did last year. I don't even have any decorations up yet. So, this is the reason for the cut back in posts if you were wondering, lol.

I had all these wonderful ideas I was going to do, and then I just never seemed to have the time to do them. So, I came up with a few very simple nail designs to share. This is one of them. Dotted border nails. It's something new to me. I've done true border nails before but never dotted borders.

I decided to keep it very Christmas-y with alternating red and green. This is carried over onto my other hand, starting with green on my thumb so it's all very different and interesting. This could totally be worn alone if you don't have much time for dots. Two coats of Sinful Colors Exotic Green and two of Wet n Wild I Red A Good Book, a layer of quick drying top coat and you're out the door looking perfectly festive.

For the dotted border I used my smallest dotting tool. I created the dots and then went over them again to make them brighter when I realized they weren't showing up well. I wish I had started with white dots first before using red and green. This would have made them much more noticeable, but you live and learn.

Overall though, a very simple and Christmas-y mani. Enjoy. :)

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F is for ...

I had a few ideas on what to do for F in the ABC Challenge but the one that really stood out and begged to be done was frog. Not just any frog though, I wanted to do Blue Poison-Dart Frog nails. I actually want to do a collection of poison-dart frog nails.

I started with a three coat base color of China Glaze Secret Peri-Wink-Le and used my trusty eyeshadow applicator to lightly sponge on China Glaze First Mate. I mixed Secret Peri-Wink-Le with a small bit of L.A. Colors white to create the lighter speckles. The black dots were created with my largest and my smallest dotting tools and done with L.A. Colors Black. I'm sure even those who don't know anything about frogs know that frogs have this slick, wet or slimy look about them so I used two coats of top coat to give these nails an extra froggy shine.

I used this stock photo as my inspiration. As animals go, I'm pretty neutral about frogs. I don't have a fear nor would I scream if I saw a frog but I wouldn't want to run up and try to pet them like I would a dog. However, I do find some breeds, the poison-darts especially, of frogs stunningly beautiful. The poison-dart frogs all have such bright, bold, and beautiful colors and markings. I find them oddly like butterflies in this way, using their colors and markings to warn off predators.

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Nail-Aween Matte Dotticure

Sorry this is a bit late. It was supposed to be up Friday. There were two manicures in the Nail-Aween Challenge that I was least looking forward to and they were the water marble and the matte dotticure. Personally, I'm just not fond of matte dotticures. I love bright colors and flashy nail art. I managed to get a bright color but it's certainly not flashy nail art.

This is New York Color's Spring Street and it's one of those really hard colors to photograph, but I think I managed somewhat well. Spring Street is an orange-red that leans orange in person but instantly turns red on camera. Between the bottle and the color on my nails you should have some idea of what this color looks like.

No matter how much or how little I like this color it is something truly amazing when turned matte. I did three layers of Spring Street. Two would have worked but I wanted a perfectly smooth surface. As anyone who has used matte before can tell you it chips easily and quickly so I always do a coat of my usual top coat before using my matte top coat. I've never had any problems so far so it must work pretty well. Once the matte top coat was completely dry I was stunned by how rubber my nails looked. This picture does them no justice!

After the matte top coat dried all that was needed was some dots. Really, what can you do with a matte dotticure? There are only so many combination of dots you can do without it looking crowded. I went with a row of medium sized dot right up the middle.

Honestly, I'm happy to be through with this manicure. But I'll let you in on a secret ... the next one in the Nail-Aween Challenge is going to be awesome!!!

I forgot to add this in my last post. Here's a list of the other artists taking part in this challenge. Go check them out, give them some love. 

datyorkLOVES

Erica's Nails and More?

DreamyMM Nails & Make Up

Tes Did It Nails

Sassy Paints

Nicole gets Nailed

glitznglammer

Finger Food

Wicked Tips

Fancy Schmancy Nails

Delight In Nails

Polish Groupie

My Nail Journey

Get Polished Up!

Just A Girl and Her Polish

Le nail's corner d'Alex

Hello.Lacquer

Countess Nails

Color the world with polish

Nail Crime Nail Art

Coat of Mani Colors

Cutie Cuticles (nail art by Laraib)

Wacky Laki

Nail-Aween Nail Art Challenge October 1-31st, 2012

GLAMOROUS NAILS

Over The Topcoat

Polish Gone Crazy

tragedystipsandtreats

Susy In Color

(List includes blogs and FB pages)

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Swimsuit Shopping

Hey everyone. I went swimsuit shopping yesterday! I got my first swimsuit in years for vacation last year after losing about 15-20 pounds. Well, I lost another 10 or so this year. That brings my total to just over 30 pounds lost. Yay for me! However, I'm still not at my goal weight so swimsuit shopping is a fairly trying experience, but I guess that's true for almost anyone, isn't it? Are any of us truly happy with every feature of our bodies? Isn't there something, small or large, each of us wants to change? With the horrors of swimsuit shopping in mind I did a quick swimsuit manicure for luck.

I've seen bikini nail art before but I don't think I'll ever look or feel good in a bikini so I decided to do a combination of swimsuits. The first is a sexy pink one shoulder. Next is a sporty blue and white striped swimsuit. Then a red and white polka dotted one-piece that I fell in love with while shopping online (it was $160 though), and then a shiny purple bikini.

And on my thumb is a bright orange and yellow polka dotted tankini. I must have done something right with these nails because I came home the proud new owner of a sexy (and slimming) black one-piece suit at a great price!

Here's a picture of my new swimsuit, front and back, taken from the JCPenney website. I will look nothing like this in my swimsuit of course, but I'm thinking of sewing some of those pushup bra swim cup things into mine in an attempt to give myself something on top since it has such a deep neckline but don't want to ruin a $40 suit. Has anyone, or do you know anyone, who has done this? How did it work for you or them?

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Happy Ugly Tie Day

Hey everyone! Happy Father's Day ... or rather ugly tie day.

We don't do much for Father's Day in our family since we're a bit ... different. I have my mom and my bonus dad. That's our family's word for step.

So, my bonus dad gets a card and a gift. We also go to my bonus grandparents house for lunch. Today we're having hotdogs on the grill with homemade Chili sauce and sides.

With such a simple day I decided to keep my nails simple too.

I started out with three coats of white polish and drew the 'shirt collar' on with black. For the ties I used a dotter and my thin nail art brush. It is such a simple design that my family really enjoys.

That's it for this post. I hope you all have a great day if or however you celebrate.

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A Parliament of Owls

Hello girlies! I don't know about you but I've been seeing owl nails everywhere. Sometimes just colorful owls like SuPa Nails Oh Oh Owls! Sometimes not so colorful like JawsOfKita-LoveHim's Owl Nails. There's also those with one owl like cutepolish's Cute Nail Art tutorial. Or those with designs that incorporate all nails like Chalkboard Nails Valentine's Owl Nail Art or Unhas da *micktuti*'s owl nails.

With all these awesome owl nails I wanted to try some of my own. I saw this design on Pinterest first and just had to recreate it. It's originally from Chalkboard Nails and was then recreated by Let them have Polish as part of a challenge�inspired by a tutorial.

I couldn't have chosen a worse time to do this design though. It was very hot and humid; the kind of heat that nail polish doesn't dry well in. I also had very little time to do my nails before I had to start getting ready for my niece's dance recital. I thought I could do it though. How hard could they be? Well, I'll admit they weren't that hard. I didn't think out the color choices very well. I mostly just reached into my nail drawer and grabbed the closest colors.

The base colors worked well together but once I started lightening it for the chest, dotting on the chest spots, and adding the beak everything just kind of blended together.

The spots and beak look nearly perfect on the mint and purple, shows up slightly less on the pink and red, but really just blends completely on the orange. If I had more time I'm sure I would have tested each color on paper before using them, but I was in a rush.

How much of a rush you ask? So much of a rush that I didn't realize I had scraped the eye off my thumb owl and dented the tip of the middle finger owl until I was in the car and far away from my nail supplies. I told my nieces that the orange owl was evil and attacked the pink owl. *giggle* I'm so mean. :)

I'm actually pretty proud of how well my right hand turned out all told. I'm right handed but through much practice I've gotten my left hand able to do much of the fine detail work. Still, it's never as good as doing nail art with my right hand. However, besides the googly eyes on the red owl I think everything came together very well.


For those who are wondering ... a groups of owls is called a parliament, hence the title. Yeah ... I had to look it up too. ;)


Polish Used

• Revlon - Base Coat
• Wet n Wild - I Red a Good Book
• Wet n Wild - I Need a Refresh-Mint
• Wet n Wild - Club Havana
• Wet n Wild - Bite the Bullet
• Wet n Wild - Tropicalia
• Sally Hansen - Mellow Yellow
• Sally Hansen - Sun Kissed
• LA Colors - Black
• LA Colors - White

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Bonsai

Wow! I am like dead on my feet. I've been going to my sister's place every day. Sometimes we go shopping, mostly we go tanning. I'm getting a nice jump on some summer color. She also has three little girls: the older two in school and a two-year-old with her constantly. So, I've been getting run ragged by a little girl who wants to play with her 'Annie'. I was talked into throwing a softball for her and the middle girl yesterday. This is why I have a dog! Children expect you to run after them and get involved unaware that you are many years older than them and have nowhere near the amount of energy they have ... a dog will run and bring the ball back perfectly content if you stand in the same spot the entire time! Lol. I've had no time or energy to create elaborate nail art so I used a stamp and my dotting tool for this one.

I picked this color up last weekend during a shopping trip to Walmart. They have changed their entire selection of nail polish. They now offer new brands of nail polish and new collections from old brands. As always seems to be the case though, the one collection I was there looking for was the one collection they seemed not to have. With my luck, I simply overlooked it.

I did manage to snag Bonsai from the Revlon Colorstay collection. I'm not the kind of person who can pull off many shades of green without looking sickly, but Bonsai is a really pretty shade that worked well with my skin tone. This might have something to do with the very light yellow gold shimmer.

 You can see in the pictures that the shimmer is very hard to see though. That wasn't the only problem I had with this polish either. The polish was very hard to get on the nail, streaky and with large gaps where the polish wouldn't lay. I had to use three coats to get total coverage. It wasn't such a big problem since I was using a design over it, but it is something to think about if you enjoy one color nails.

Another downside is that this polish only stayed on for one day! Not even that long because it showed signs of wear almost immediately and began chipping that night. I know I've been going non-stop and have likely put my nails through some hard times but that was ridiculous. Especially from the Colorstay collection which touts long wear, 11 days of wear if worn with their base and top coats. I did not wear this with their top coat but I did use their base coat. That should add something right?? I will allow that maybe I got a bad batch or some other kind of error because I have never had this many problems with the other polishes I own from this collection. But ...

All in all, pretty though it may be, I don't think Bonsai will become a staple around my house.


The stamping was done with Sally Hansen White On. I found this worked very well with my image plate but that might have something to do with White On being very old and thick. If you have some old lying around give it a try with your stamper. Or try it with new and let me know how it works.


I'm off to get ready for another day on the town. Have a great day everyone!

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Spring Fling

Another day, another post. I know I mentioned it somewhere before, whether here in a post or on my Facebook page, but I was asked to do a set of nails for my niece for her Spring Fling dance. I'm happy to say I got them completed and didn't mess them up while helping her glue them on. They looked amazing with her dress!

She was my personal hand model for the day and was nice enough not to complain when I twisted and repositioned her fingers into what was surely uncomfortable positions. :)

The nails also looked adorable with her enormous ring and oversized earrings!

Alright, gals, say hello to my niece. She was finally all decked out for Spring Fling and ready for pictures.

Can you imagine dancing in those shoes???

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Dots Galore

Hello, my lovely followers!! I hope everyone is doing great today. I would be better if it didn't insist on raining. Still, I managed to get enough sun for pictures so I can't complain too much.

I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but I did a standard trim before painting my nails for the last post. I hadn't realized how long they were getting, and I'm really beginning to enjoy them short. I'm happy to say that this nearly evened out the break of my index nail. It's nearly unnoticeable now. Yay!


I also want to give you an update on my 'Electrify on Fast Track' mani. Electrify may be the prettiest glitter I own, but it's still a glitter. I seem to have forgotten that while I was enjoying it so much. It took me nearly an hour to remove Electrify from the tips even using the foil method. It was a painful reminder of the tediousness of removing glitters. By the time I was done there was bits of red and gold glitter everywhere and my nails were scrubbed raw. Glitter reminds me of sand in the way that it gets everwhere!!!

Full Sun

My left hand with its pretty purple thumb.

With this fresh in mind, I went for a very simple mani today. It's a recreation of The Polished Perfectionist's Polka Dots mani. I went with a different color theme and they turned out nice, but I still think hers are prettier. I definitely recommend that you go take a look at this mani as well as others by her. :) I loved her idea of taking a picture with hands wrapped around a cup so you can see the full effect, so I borrowed that as well.


Have I ever mentioned my love of my dotting tool? I bought it years and years ago as a tool for clay working. While I left the clay behind I found another use for it with my nails. I would love to pick up a set of various sized dotting tools but for this mani my medium sized dotter gets the job done nicely.

Natural Light, Slight Cloud Cover

My left hand with its mint green thumb.

I think these are a perfect combination of Spring and Easter. Everyone who saw them thought they were Easter egg nails.


Polish Used

• Borghese - Brillante
• Sally Hansen - Mellow Yellow
• Borghese - Buon Viaggio Mauve
• China Glaze - Secrete Peri-Wink-Le
• Sinful Colors - Beautiful Girl
• Sally Hansen - Mint Sorbet
• L.A. Colors - BCC 561 (White)
• Sally Hansen - Insta-Dri

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Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day, my lovely followers! I had absolutely nothing planned for today as I was so excited by the China Glaze Hunger Games collection. Still, I felt I had to do something. I hardly ever let a holiday go by without giving at least a slight nod of acknowledgment.


So, I went with something very simple. This is a design that anyone can do. (Which is always great, right?) It's simply two coats of white polish on all my fingers, then I used a semi-small dotting tool for the dotted nails; you can use a different size or even a toothpick to get your dots. The rainbow nail is my shaky freehand (way too much coffee lately) but you can use the tape method to get near perfect lines. It's all very simple but gives a very eye-catching set of nails.

Full Sun

A hint for doing dots? Do them one line (up and down) at a time and stagger them. Every other line should match up. It's so much easier than trying to do them vertically across your nail. 

Flash

What's on your nails for St. Patrick's Day? I would love to see any designs you guys have come up with. ?

Polish Used

• Borghese - Brilliante
• Sally Hansen - White On
• Pure Ice - Siren
• Sally Hansen - Sun Kissed
• Sally Hansen - Mellow Yellow
• Pure Ice - Free Spirit
• Sally Hansen - Blew Me Away!
• L.A. Colors - BCC 590 (Purple)
• Sally Hansen - Insta-Dri

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