It’s friday night !

Hey everybody !  Happy weekend!  I’m so glad it’s friday night…. woohooo!  I have been a little stressed lately and I thought I’d type up a spam post for fun.  To bring the blogging back to blogging.  How about a conscious stream of random nail stuff???????

I just got some Nicole by OPIs in the mail!  For free.  Well, sorta kinda.  I had to buy 8 boxes of Special K cereal to earn them.  They had a promo here where if you had 3 UPC codes from their cereal boxes you’d get the red polish.  But if you collect 8 UPC codes you get all three bottles (red, blue and pink).  I entered my 8 codes onto their website and then they mailed them right out to me!  I only had 2 Nicole by OPIs in my stash so I’m really glad to have 3 more.  I have well over 300 bottles of polish but I only owned 2 Nicoles?  I know, I don’t get it either.  Here’s the three colors I got:  ♥ Challenge Red-Y, ♥ Pros And Confidence, ♥ Be Ama-Zing!

Nice trio right??  Moving on to valentines day stuff….I was looking through my old pics and I found this cute photoshopped pic of an old valentines manicure.  I used regular stickers on my nails for this design.  The original post is here: Easy Valentines Day Nails.  Lookit my cute little squared off nails!  Awwws! They look so cute and funny compared to my current shape!

I have this MoYou London plate that I haven’t used yet and I wanted to show you! MoYou London sent it to me for review along with a pro plate and a scraper. It’s called Back to the 60’s – 01.  I love all the funky hippie designs on here (it’s so reminiscent of the artistic hippie town that I live in).  Since a lot of the designs on this plate are small and have blank spaces in them- they may be perfect for some diy decals!

The other two items I received for review are posted here.  I must say, the MoYou Large size stamper they sent me is literally the bomb, I use it exclusively now.  I never use my konad stamper anymore.  Someone recently commented on one of my posts that MoYou carries a new grey stamper.  It’s described as XL on their website so I guess it’s bigger than the one I’ve been using.  You can check out their three stampers here: MoYou London NAIL ART TOOLS.

Also, MoYou has been pumping out more new collections …it feels like every week now!  The most recent ones are SCI-FI and SCHOLAR.  They even carry jewelry findings so you can stamp onto jewelry and make your own wearable nail art!  Here’s the link for MoYou’s Stamping Jewellery.  I love this idea and I’ve been thinkin of making my own stamped jewelry now too!  My dad is a woodworker and when he has little scraps of wood sometimes he’ll make me pendants for earring n stuff.  He just surprised me with a pair in fact (see pic below), so I think I’ll give it a go with nail polish! I will def post the results.  OK, I feel extra Craftynail all of sudden!

Well,  that’s all folks.  Enjoy your weekend and talk soon!

china glaze border mani

Here’s my last mani for the January N.A.I.L. linkup!  The week 4 theme is BORDER MANI.

I’m wearing a couple polishes from the China Glaze Happy Holiglaze 2013 collection.  It’s actually a three-pack from that collection called Dash of Dazzle.  I chose the two metallics of the bunch because OMG I love metallics lately!  But also, because the other one called Bells Will Be Blinging has bar glitter, and well, I’m not a huge fan.  Maybe some other time!

First I applied one coat of So Blue Without You.  It’s so bright and vibrant!  Then I applied the gold polish called Mingle With Kringle.  So much gold foil goodness!  When I applied the gold I made sure never to touch the base or sides of my nail.  But I did pull the gold polish all the way to the tips of my nails (which makes the border look like a horseshoe), which isn’t a biggie… because then I just hand paint little strips of blue onto my tips to make the blue border reach all the way around my nails.  It’s actually done in no time at all- with no special tools required.  Just the bottle brushes. 

This manicure is a little crazy-looking, huh?  It didn’t come out quite as expected.  I think the metallic finish blurs it so my border isn’t very crisp.  But it was super quick and it’s very eye-catching, so I can’t complain!

Since January is almost over that means the February Linkup themes will be coming out soon!  Keep your eyes peeled this weekend for the announcement!

In the meantime, here are the galleries of January nails…

6 – 12 January – Health and Wellness :

13 – 19 January – Inspired by Pinterest :

20 – 26 January – Opposite Day :

27 January – 2nd February – Border Manis :

the first of my valentines nails!

This will be my first valentines manicure for 2014! After I got my manicure station setup in my house last weekend, i sat down to do my very first mani there. I wanted to do something bright and busy! I didn’t have a plan…I just picked some vday colors and went to it…

Here are the colors I used:
white- OPI Alpine Snow
black- China Glaze Liquid Leather
light pink- Zoya Sweet
bright pink- Zoya Ali
red- Zoya Carmen

In my last pic you can see I did the left and right hands a little differently.  I ended up really liking the solid nails with one little heart on top.  I will be doing that again soon I think.

I did all this with just a dotting tool. Oh, and the five different nail polishes too. Lotsa dots and hearts, huh?!! The ladies at my eye doctors office flipped over them. I was secretly très proud of myself! hehe. People are always shocked that you can do designs like this by yourself, without having to visit a salon. But honestly, you can do all this with just a bobby pin.  A little practice doesn’t hurt either. You can even practice on paper!  If you never have, go ahead and try some fun stuff with dots! You may surprise yourself. 😉

Are you looking forward to all the vday nail art too?

My DIY Cameo Decals

Hey! !  I’m psyched to show you this mani… it came out so cute!

I’m wearing Zoya Dove (grey), Orly Jealous, Much? (my mom’s FAVE mint color) and some cameo  decals I made using my MoYou London Pro 04 stamping plate.  If you wanna know how to make diy decals make sure to check out Chanfie’s tutorial here.

I don’t feel like typing much today.  So here’s another pic!

I hope you have a great remainder of your weekend.  <wiping a tear>  Do you get sad on sunday nights too?  😦

On the bright side, the premier of Sherlock episode 2 is on Masterpiece Theater tonight. 🙂  Oh…. and I almost forgot!  I had a productive/busy weekend and still managed to set up a nail station for myself!  I used to have all my nail stuff located in one spot (well, maybe it spread out a lil bit)… and even though it was organized, I still I had no dedicated place to paint my nails.  Sometimes I’d be at the counter, other times the couch, or the computer desk.  But now I have my own well-lit work space!  It’s tucked away in a little corner of the hub of the house… so that means I won’t feel isolated or far away.  I look forward to painting many a nail there!  

Plaid nails! for #NAILLINKUP

Did you know that today (Jan 25) is an unofficial holiday??  Happy Opposite Day everyone!  You can read more about the holiday here on this Daily Grid article.  Our monthly nail challenge called NAIL ART IDEAS LINKUP has the perfect theme to commemorate this funky holiday!  Ready to see my nails for our ‘OPPOSITE DAY’ theme??

I’ve never done PLAID nails before so I thought this is the perfect time to tackle them!  In fact, when I did Short & Sweet’s 30 day nail challenge last year I did my nails EVERY day except one of the days: PLAID DAY!  It seemed hard at the time, I was drawing a blank, and I decided to skip it.  Well, it still urks me that I never did the plaid prompt!  I’m ending all that madness today!

In true Opposite-Day-spirit, I also used a color that I rarely wear: RED.  Here’s how I did this plaid mani:

♥ I did two coats of Zoya Seraphina (silver) as a base color.

♥ Then I hand-painted 4 red stripes on each nail using a mini bottle of sephora by OPI called Sample Sale.  Because it’s a ‘mini’ the brush is really tiny so it was perfect for making the red stripes! Minis are very handy for nail art!

♥ Then I used an L.A. Colors black striper to paint a skinny black line in the middle of each red stripe.

♥  Lastly, I used my Essence tip painter (which is kinda like a striper) to paint 6 white stripes in between the red.

♥  Of course, I used my trusty seche vite topcoat to finish it off.

This mani took a while, but it wasn’t too challenging.  Just time-consuming.  To do both hands I had to hand-paint 140 stripes for goodness sakes!!  I’d also like to mention that I used Seize the Nails purple plaid nails as a reference while I was doing my nail art.  Bella’s purple nails are gorgeous and almost make me wanna try this look one more time with prettier colors just like hers:  PURPLE PLAID NAILS

That’s all for today!  View the other ‘opposite’ designs right here:

20 – 26 January – Opposite Day :

A frosty blue from Bath and Body Works

I’m taking the Crumpet’s Golden Oldies Thursday very seriously. 😀  We’re supposed to use old nail polishes for this challenge, so I’m trying to track down my very oldest bottles.  Like over ten year old!  A first I thought it would simply be fun to try some oldies again, but now I’m realizing that it might be a great way to de-stash!  This challenge may help me sort through everything and decide on which old bottles to put to rest.  Sadly, today’s nail polish will probably wind up in the trash.  Here’s what I’m using for the BLUE theme of the Golden Oldies Challenge……….

Do you remember that old scent from Bath & Body Works called April Showers?  I still have a mini body spray of that scent kicking around somewhere.  Well, I guess B&BW made nail polish to coordinate with it… and I got the set years ago from my cousin who was the manager of one of their stores.  (I think the bottle of polish had a silver-tone horseshoe charm on it too).  So let’s see what April Showers nail polish looks like on the nail….

This needed three coats to be opqaue.  Which normally is fine for me, but these layers were getting thick and it wasn’t drying well.  I placed some glitter for an accent nail because the polish looked a little BLAH to me.  I do like the shade of April Showers- the pastel blue is very pretty.  But the finish is too streaky and too imperfect.  Oh, it smelled it too.  😦  I added some seche vite topcoat which I thought would make it look better… but the seche somehow pooled at the tips of my nails.  It’s very weird!

Geesh, I wonder what gems I’ll dig up for the next GOT challenge?  Hahaha, but seriously, I promise to bring you some prettier nails next time, I swear!

  You can view the other girls’ BLUE manicures by clicking the little guy below.  I’m sure theirs will be nicer than mine so it’s worth a click! And please let me know if you’ve ever worn nail polish from Bath & Body Works before!

Dreamcatcher Decals

Today I’m wearing some more Moon Sugar Decals!  These are a cute dreamcatcher design that come 33 to a sheet as shown here.  BTW, did you see that I’m having an international GIVEAWAY where one lucky winner will get a $20 gift certificate for moonsugardecals.com ? Get on it!

Here’s how to enter my giveaway: a Rafflecopter giveaway

For this look I painted my nails with OPI My Vampire is Buff and I did a wood grain accent nail using my MoYou London nail stamping plate.  Then I put dream catcher water slide decals on the other nails.  Don’t know how to use water slide decals?  Here’s a step-by-step that I put together: DECAL TUTORIAL.  I followed the same application process for these dream catcher nails, except I also applied a very light layer of clear nail polish before sticking the decals on.  You don’t need to do that though.  They stick well enough from the clearcoat that you put on afterwards, but I just felt like trying it a different way.

I also used a dotting tool and some Wet n Wild I Need a Refresh-Mint to make some simple turquoise dots.  It only took a minute to place the dots, but they really transformed the manicure.  It gives a Native American feel I think.

I hope you like my nails and good luck in the giveaway! With a $20 gift certificate you could probably buy about 5 full sheets of decals!  If you win…. which designs would you pick from their catalog???  I really like their sugar skulls, but I also have some of their lotus flowers that I haven’t tried yet.  I got the lotus flowers from Julie at Short & Sweet in Texas.  We purchase different decals online and then mail each other little samples.  Julie and I are like an after-school-commercial… COLLECT THEM ALL, TRADE THEM WITH YOUR FRIENDS!  LOL

♥ If you place an order on moonsugardecals.com make sure to use my crafty coupon code 20OFFCN to save 20% off your order!!!  Code 20OFFCN is good til Feb 21, 2014.