Thanksgiving feather nails for #NAILLINKUP

Today I’m sharing my last mani for the November NAIL Linkup. That means the announcement for the December themes is right around the corner! If you are getting in the spirit for holiday manis then you’ll want to keep your eyes peeled to the blog! Brijit and Jemma and I will be posting the themes real soon! And if you’re not into the whole ‘santa thing’ don’t worry – because we’ve got some non-denominational fun for you. That way you can make your nails as Christmas-y or Non-Christmasy as you’d like!

Here’s my week 4 mani for N.A.I.L. Linkup.  The theme is FEATHERS:

My two middle fingers are painted a deep brown shimmer called Sunrise by Kardashian Beauty.  This is my first time trying a Kardashian nail polish.  Not impressed.  At all.  The end of the brush bristles were cut at a slant so I couldn’t get a clean curved paint line around my cuticles.  I think the brush was defective.  Also, the bottle was sealed with a little bar code sticker that left an icky glue-y reside on the outside of the bottle.  I probably won’t wear this polish again.  Which is a shame since it’s a really nice dark color, but the brush really turned me off. UPDATE ON THIS DEFECTIVE BRUSH!

I painted some thanksgiving-colored turkey feathers over top of my dark brown Kardashian color.  My feathers were done in orange, yellow and green polish using what I like to call my ‘splash design’.   Then I painted little black lines inside the splashes to transform them into feathers.  I like doing splashes- they’re really easy for me to do and I like their retro feel.  You can see my other splash manis here and here.

The Kardashian polish was a pain so I painted my other nails with an OPI liquid sand called What Wizardry is This?  I think Liquid Sand applies so easily and has such a lovely texture.  That’s a good enough excuse for me to throw some texture in my manicure. 🙂  At first I was turned off by texture since you couldn’t use topcoat with it.  I am super impatient so I always wanna use quick-dry seche on top of my manicures.  But, textured polishes seem to dry very fast and also do not show dings and marks… so I’m cool with it now.

There’s still some time left for November though- so please feel free to add your manis to the inlinkz below.  Did you do a Movember moustache mani yet?  If not, I hope you jump on the bandwagon!  Or else you may have to wait a whole ‘nother year to do some seasonally-appropriate moustache nails. LOL!

Solar Eclipse :

Movember Moustaches :

Animals & Pets :

Feathers :

Snow Bunny Nails!

I don’t want to write this whole post in Caps Lock mode… so you’ll have to take my word for it– I am excited over here!!!!!!!   Nail Polish Canada is hosting their 2nd Annual Holiday Nail Art Challenge and I’m participating this year!  They were going to announce the first theme yesterday so I basically spent all my free time obsessively checking my email waiting for the prompt! 🙂 Upon finding out that the theme is SNOW I quickly thought of SNOW BUNNIES!  You skiers out there may enjoy this nail art!  Here are my cute snow bunnies skiing down the slope…

You can click THIS LINK to see all the contestants’ manicures.  If you’d like to vote for mine simply enter your name and your email and then pick CRAFTYNAIL.COM from the list of participants.  Whomever gets the most votes this week wins a bunch of nail polishes from Nail Polish Canada.  I clearly don’t have enough nail polishes, so thank you in advance! 😉  And may the odds be ever in my favor! ha!

I really love my lil bunnies and trees and I’d like to give credit to this cutie graphic I found online (which was the perfect inspiration for this mani).  Of course painting a tiny little ski bunny was a challenge, but hey- I’m up for a good challenge! It probably would’ve been much easier with acrylic paints, but what can I say?  I’m a nail polish kinda girl. 🙂

I made my own nail decals by hand-painting my snowbunnies and trees with nail polish onto a plastic baggy.  I waited overnight for the I decals to dry and then placed them over my blue and teal painted nails.  I put some white dots on top to look like lil snowflakes and then topped them with seche vite.  I love diy nail decals because when you topcoat them they melt down and adhere to your nail like magic.  Oh, I also would like to mention that my bunnies and snow flakes were painted using OPI’s Alpine Snow.  So maybe I should call this mani Alpine Snow Bunnies? 😀

This manicure really got me into the holiday spirit!  It even snowed here in NY today.  I’m really feelin it now!!!!!!!  Don’t forget to vote for your fave snowy nails here and Happy Holidays!

-Craftynail xx

I painted my kitty on my nails!

The theme for Nail Art Ideas Linkup this week is Animals & Pets.  So I couldn’t resist painting my own pet onto my nails.  My cat’s name is Fergie and she’s a dilute tortoiseshell kitty with cool grey and peachy colors in her fur.  Her name was actually FOGGY when I adopted her, but I changed it to Fergie and she didn’t even notice.  Nowadays she’s so Fergalicious I can’t imagine her any other way!  🙂  She’s such a fluffy little livewire!  She’s super vocal- meow meow meow all the time, and she can be quite temperamental at times!  So we basically treat her like a big baby and spoil her rotten as to not upset our special little girl!  Fergie gets the royal treatment.  (you guessed right- I don’t have kids yet LOL)

If I’m gonna paint my nails in her likeness and the root of her name is FOGGY then I might as well use my new bottle of OPI Haven’t the Foggiest.  Foggiest… Foggy… Fergie.  Makes sense!

This is the first time I’m trying this polish.  I wore it for four days on its own and I hafta say- I am LOVIN IT!!!!!!  If you like silvers or metallic shades, then you need this one!  It’s super-opaque and applied like a dream.  It has a cool brushed chrome finish and it’s not brush strokey.  After enjoying Haven’t the Foggiest for several days with no chips- I then painted my kitty Fergie on top.  I did a cartoon version of her.  Let’s check it out!

The idea to paint my kitty in a cute cartoon style came from a pinterest pin that led me to this article.  The article doesn’t link back to the nail artist that came up with it but I really like her nail art! I used it as inspiration and freehanded my design.  I also threw in some paw prints… just cause they’re adorbz. I like the way that my Fergie head came out.  I think I captured her attitude in an endearing kinda way!  

Wanna hear what Fergie did to me yesterday?  She came over to sleep near me.  I started watching a long youtube video of a guy that just kept talking and talking.  Then Justin came in the room so I started talking a lot and laughing, telling him about the funny video.  I was being kind of loud and well, apparently, Fergie was getting annoyed with me.  So she stood up from her nap, faced me, and meowed “AAGGGGHHHHHH” right at my face!  It was like she was sayin, “SHUUUUUUTTUUUUUP!”  It was hilarious!  I dunno, maybe you had to be there?  But that was the first time I ever got yelled at by a cat!  It just cracks me and Justin up!

If you’re feeling inspired to paint your pet on your nails- you really should do it! 🙂  If not for fun, then for posterity!  Then post your pics somewhere online and link them here:  NAIL LINKUP.  If you’ve never used the inlinkz thing before and you have questions, then just email me!   I hope to see your pet or animal-themed nails!

Animals & Pets :

what I’ve been up to….

1) This week’s N.A.I.L. theme is animals/pets.  I did these black and green nails a few days ago and although they look cool….  I decided not to submit them to the inlinkz for our nail art challenge.  I did stamping for these nails but for the NAIL Linkup I think I’d rather do some nail art.

On the left hand I did an owl accent nail using MoYou Pro 07 stamping plate↓

On the right hand I tried a ‘bird on a wire’ accent nail using that same MoYou Pro 7 plate ↓

The black that I used is China Glaze Liquid Leather and the green is AVON Garden Green.  The ivy on all the nails was stamped using MoYou Mother Nature 03 plate.  These are cute, but I’ll do something more original for the linkup.

Stay tuned to the blog !  I’m hoping to tackle some kitty cat nails for the ANIMALS/PETS theme!  ♥

2) This time last year I posted my Financial Aid Fingernails that I wore to the big federal aid conference.  Well, it’s almost time to do that again.  See, I’m a financial aid counselor so I have to keep up on the ever-changing federal aid regulations.  They change constantly, so my college sends me to a conference every year so I’m on top of it all.

last year’s Fin Aid fingernails

In fact, right now I’m working on editing non-disbursed direct loans to include the new increased origination fee that kicked in because of the sequestration.  This is a change that’s occurring in the middle of the aid year (mid-year changes are the worst)!   The new fees will only be a few pennies different, and since computers always round off the dollar amounts- most borrowers won’t even see a difference.  But the amount of work it takes for me to update all that in our system is quite a rigmarole!  The U.S. Dep’t of Ed keeps us aid administrators on our toes- I might as well be a ballerina!  Anywhooo, the big conference is right around the corner so I will be traveling out of town soon.   I painted my nails for last year’s conference using OPI Don’t Pretzel My Buttons (see pic on the left) but unfortunately, they chipped so fast!  I had to buy an extremely over-priced bottle of nail polish remover in the hotel gift shop, and then I proceeded to drag my boss all over God’s creation to find stores that carry nail polish.  She must’ve thought I was ridiculous, but she went along with it!  I’ll try not to push my luck this year, and I want to avoid all that hassle too.  So hopefully I can find some extremely long-lasting nail polish to wear.  I might go with textured!  I have a bottle of Pixie Dust in my untried’s stash so I should definitely try that, right?

3) I’m trying to get into better shape and I joined a month-long fitness challenge at work.  I’ve been hitting up the gym after work each day and I’ll continue to exercise like a fiend for a few more weeks still!  That means I don’t have as much time in the evening to blog.  So you may have noticed that I haven’t been posting as much during M-F.  But… I’m still painting my nails, and I will be able to catch up on blogging during the weekends!  I’m still in the groove, I’m just adjusting my blog schedule a bit I suppose.  🙂

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/14496030024134267/

Thanks for reading and see ya soon!

my WHITE SNAKE NAIL TUTORIAL for luchessa.org

Luchessa over at Beauty Expression by Luchessa asked me to be a part of her Grimm’s Fairy Tale Series!  She published my guest post yesterday on her blog at luchessa.org.  You should check it out!  I did a crazy cool snake nails tutorial inspired by the fairy tale called THE WHITE SNAKE >>  See it here!

easy bobby pin nails

This post is for all you girls out there that think you could never do your own cute nail art.  It’s easier than you think!  For this fun dot manicure all you need is a few nail polishes, and a bobby pin or two!

♥ Start with a base coat.  I like to use a nail strengthener like Sally Hansen Maximum Growth or OPI Nail Envy.

♥ Then paint all your nails in a solid color.  I like to use the darkest color for this.  It creates a cool 3-d effect later when you add lighter dots over top.  I used a nice medium blue cream as my base color.

♥ Pick a color for your dots and dab a few drops of it onto your work surface (a piece of paper or magazine would work).  Then unbend a bobby pin so it’s sort of straightened out, and then dip the tip of it into your drops of polish.  You’ll use this as your handy dandy dotting tool!

♥ I find it easiest to start by making the middle row of dots first (yellow in my case).  Then I work on building up rows above and below it in complementary colors.  My patterns come out more uniform that way.   You can wipe off your bobby pin in between color changes, or just use a new one if you have a zillion of them.

♥ I like to wait a good ten minutes of dry-time before applying topcoat.  You wouldn’t want to smear your fresh dots!  My favorite topcoat is Seche Vite.  If you’ve never tried it, you need to because it makes your manicure dry in just a few minutes.  It will change your life.. and I really mean it!!

What other household items can you use to make nail art?  I’ve used toothpicks before, but I’m sure there’s a bunch of other cool ideas that I’ve never even thought of!  I’d like to hear what crafty stuff you’ve found around your house!

Bright and pretty nails!

I’ve got some pretty colored nails for you today! I used a mirror shine nail polish from AVON as my vibrant pink base color.   Then I applied some pretty water slide decals that I got from my friend The Nailinator.  This is my first time trying water slide decals.  I thought they would be more fragile and sticky.  But once I realized that I could grab them and move them around and re-place them several times without messing them up… then I got the hang of them quickly.

This small sheet of decals is labeled ‘Beautiful Finger’ brand and I think they will last me a while.  After cutting several decals out of it, I barely made a dent.  And aren’t they pretty?  Rachael sent me these decals all the way from the Philippines.  For anyone who’s interested, she recently posted an update on her blog after Typhoon Haiyan devastated areas near her.  Click here to see her Philippine Flag Nail Art and to hear how you can help those in need.

I also wanted to post a swatch of my base color.  Shown above is two coats of AVON Blaze.  Blaze is a pretty magenta/pink foil from their Mirror Shine collection.  It’s funny to see how AVON cycles through their products and brings them back every so often.  Blaze was released maybe 6 months ago and I happen to have an old Mirror Shine from back in 2003.  That’s right, I still have a bottle from 10 yrs ago!  It’s silver, not pink.  But still….  It’s funny to have two bottles side by side that are ten years apart.  The old one still wears nice.  The bottle shape and size is identical, only the label has changed in ten years.  Just goes to show….AVON- I will still keep buying your products over and over again. 😀

Well, my weekend’s almost over.  Get ready for monday morning y’all.  Good luck!