bumble bee nails

These nails have been in my head for a while now.  So many ideas, so little time!  But I’m glad I finally had the chance to make them happen.  Plus, I’m on a yellow kick since my group of Beauty Buffs posted about yellow yesterday.

I’m wearing Sinful Colors Pull Over then I did some bundle monster stamping in konad black polish on a few of the nails.  I used BM-422 for the full-nail honeycomb look, and I used BM-401 for my busy little bees.  I used OPI When Monkeys Fly! to add some glitter to a few of my nails too. The gold glitters sorta remind me of the chambers in beehives too. I actually applied the glitter under one of my stamps too to see what it looks like.  Here’s a close-up:

I’ve never tried glitter under nail stamping before.  I just did it on one nail per hand.  But I quite like it!

My next post will be some hot pink nails with rhinestones accents for DIAMOND week of our April Linkup.  I hope the pics come out good because I just love how my blingy nails are lookin.  See ya then!

 

Bird cage nails for #NAILLINKUP

Hey ladies!!  Here are my BIRD themed nails for our April Nail Art Ideas Linkup!

It took me around two hrs just to get the pics ready to post.  Ughh- I have been having mega computer problems with the new desktop I bought.  I purposely got windows 7 on it, even though at the time win8 was brand new.  Well, that pc would not connect to the internet.  It was so frustrating!!!  We tried every troubleshooting thing possible, and even shipped the pc back to HP twice, yup, TWICE, and they kept sending it back unfixed.  WTF!  After arguing with them for months we finally got a newer desktop the other day, which works!!!!!!!!!  Holy crap.  The internet. Thank God.  I feel bad, because I know they will probably re-furbish it and sell it to some other poor soul who will never be able to get it connected to the web either.  Regardless, I’m glad that lemon is out of our hands.  But now, I’m having a hell of a time adjusting to windows 8 on the new machine.   Navigation is weird and I hate the whole app thing.  Many programs try to open as apps and the functionality is limited and sucky.  I know what I want to do, but don’t know what to click to make it happen.  I had to watch a damn youtube video the other nite just to figure out how to shut the desktop down!  Hopefully I can get the hang of it.  If you have any windows 8 tips, please let me know!

Back to the nail art….I’m wearing a grey holo as my base color.  It’s called Weng Weng from Bobbie brand- I will have to post swatches soon since it really deserves it’s own 5 minutes of fame.  Then I made some diy birdcage decals using white konad polish and BM-407 stamping plate. I usually make my decals on plastic baggies, but this time I left the stamp right on my MoYou stamper, then colored the white birdcage in with a detail brush and Essie Butler Please.  Then I covered the stamp with seche vite.  It dried pretty quick, then I peeled it off the stamper and applied it to my grey nail.  Awesome.  I will definitely be doing this again.  I feel a tutorial coming on.  Some of my other nails are decorated with some blue rhinestones and one of my favorite glitter toppers- Lights Of Emerald City by OPI.

You should try a bird themed manicure too!  Here are the other nails from the april linkup–

7th – 13th April : Birds

 

Crazy ash nails!

I didn’t know what to call these nails.  It’s kinda hard to summize them in a couple words!  So my title kinda rhymes with something.  I like to keep my blog G-rated, ya know? 😉

This is one of those manis that had no plan.  I just went for it.  I started with a basecoat and two coats of AVON Coral Reef.  Coral Reef is one of those coral shades that has a lot of pink in it.  It’s too pink for my mom so she gave it to me!  Shweeeeeet.   Then I stamped a Bundle Monster (BM-403) geometric shape with a silvery AVON shade called Platinum… but it didn’t show up too well.  So I did another stamp from that same plate using black nail polish.  That second stamp kinda looks like cogs inside a machine.  I like it.  I like it a lot.  (imagine Jim Carrey’s voice to get the full effect.)  Then I did a border around each nail in different colors.

Is it me, or does this nail art kinda look Indian somehow?

Also, I just finished my nails for the BIRDS theme of our Nail Art Ideas Linkup.  They came out wicked.  I wanted to post them tonite but I don’t have the energy to make that happen… so you’ll see them this weekend.  In the meantime, here’s some of the other nailarts from this month’s linkup.  For your viewing pleasure:

31st March – 6th April : Rain (April Showers)

7th – 13th April : Birds

 

My entries for the #BMCYO2014 Contest

Have you heard of the Bundle Monster Create Your Own 2014 Contest?  You can submit up to ten original designs to Bundle Monster for consideration.  The company will select their favorites and those will be the designs they’ll use for their next set of nail stamping plates!  I am submitting 9 images (right before the deadline)!  The last day to enter is March 31st, 2014.  They didn’t say if they wanted all submissions on one pic, or separate pics?  So I decided to go with 9 separate jpegs sent via one email.  Hope that’s okay!

Here’s what I came up with!  I drew them on paper and then flatbed scanned them.  I had to brighten them up in photoshop a little bit since the pencil marks looked smudgey.   I am not really good at drawing, especially small things like these (I wanted to make sure they’d fit on a nail).  But these came out okay!  I think the frog is my favorite.  And even though it’s really simple, I think my magic wand is kinda cool!  In fact, I could actually go for a magic wand on my nails right now!

I can’t wait to see what the final collection will look like this year. 😀

Sugar skulls and alien heads!

Wait, sugar skulls and alien heads? YUP!  These kinds of noggins don’t normally go together… but these two designs were on the same bundle monster stamping plate… so why not?

These images you see on my nails are actually little diy decals that I made with nail polish.  They are so cute I’m glad I finally got a chance to wear them!  But it’s been two weeks since I made them (original post here)… and they got a little brittle.  Plus, my house is cold and that seems to make them even more brittle.   So I tried to warm them up before I applied them to make them more pliable.  I have one of those neck warmer things that you microwave, so I set my decals on that for a minute so they’d be more bendy.  That actually did help in getting them to fit the curve of my nail better. Oh, and two coats of seche topcoat helped too. 🙂  I also added studs at the end by sticking them into my topcoat while it dried.  The studs really made the mani come together.  Before studs- meh.  After studs- wicked!

Also, I don’t want to neglect mentioning my awesome base colors.  Under my decals I’m wearing two different AVON cosmic collection nail polishes.  The blue is called Celestial and the yellow is called Starlight and they’re both scattered holos.  I swatched these cosmics in the past (here) and I needed three coats.  But now that my nails are shorter, they only needed two coats.  Or maybe the polish thickened a little over time?  I dunno, but it works for me!

I hope you like my nails! Talk to ya soon!  Next time you hear from me we’ll be talking about the April prompts for the #NAILLINKUP. 😀

 

weekend fun with nail decals- bundle monster and dope digits

I haven’t changed my nail design in 4 days, which is a pretty long time for me.  Partly because I love my current nude/neon leopard nails.  But also because I’ve been getting my daily nail art fix from making diy decals. I had some sugar skull cravings so I tried out my new Bundle Monster 413 plate and made some fun skull stickers!

I peeled the blue plastic film off my bundle monster plate (BM-413) to find that it had a few big (but not deep) scratches on it.  Not sure what’s up with that or how that happened.  I used black konad polish and stamped some of the skull designs onto a plastic baggie.  Some of the lines in the etchings were very fine/skinny so the polish kept sticking to my Moyou squishy stamper instead of transferring off onto the baggie.  I thought maybe because the bag wasn’t sticky enough, so I tried it on different surfaces but I had the same issue.  That woulda bugged me if I messed them up on freshly manicured nails, but since it was on a plastic baggie I didn’t care that much.  Here’s what my decals looked like after I stamped them, painted them in, and covered them with Revlon quick dry topcoat.

You can see several skulls didn’t stamp well so I didn’t paint those ones in.  I also hand-painted some shamrocks too and I filled them in with a sparkly green Sephora Formula X called Mr. Positivity.  I might use those shamrocks in my next March N.A.I.L. design for the St. Patty’s Day theme.  You can see I also tried to hand-paint a pint glass of beer.  I thought it would be cool to have green beer on my nails.  I dunno… the pint glass wasn’t looking too good, so I didn’t bother painting it in with green.  LOL

I also want to show you the water slide decals that I won from Nail A College Dropout‘s recent giveaway!  When I saw these Beyoncé decals I knew I had to have them!  I always say that in my next life I want to come back as Beyoncé!  She’s so gorgeous and I wish I could dance like her.  And that jelly!!! But anyway…… lucky me- I won the giveaway!  Here’s what I got, including dope eyes and these crazy twerk decals with big booties on ’em.  IDK I probably shouldn’t wear these to the office, huh?

Hope you’re having a great weekend and that you get to do something fun or creative!  Like maybe some St Patty’s nails!  The weather is a little warmer here in NY but the snow has not melted yet.  It’ll get cold again tomorrow so I will probably stay in and paint my nails!  What else is new ? 🙂 Ciao my bellas!

STAMPING- OPI Chevron for #NAILLINKUP

This is my first Nail Art Ideas Linkup design for the month of March.  I’m excited for the themes we have this month!  Especially AQUA for some reason . 😀

The theme for week 1 is STAMPING so I reached for my new Bundle Monster set!  I finally got the Create Your Own 2013 set that I’ve been lusting after.  I’m so excited to use them all!  For this easy chevron I used plate BM-423.

I’ve never done a traditional chevron using little pieces of zig zaggy tape or anything.  I’ve always felt like if I tried I would screw it up!  Me and tape don’t always get along.  So using a stamping plate instead was the perfect solution for me! I generally have good luck with stamping.

Besides my bundle monster plate, I used three different OPIs for this manicure. I like how the different colors coordinate and clash all at the same time for a cool 80’s vibe.  Here’s what I’m wearing:

♥ Did It On ‘Em ♥ Elephantastic Pink ♥ Haven’t the Foggiest 

Thinking of joining in on the March N.A.I.L. fun?  More info right here- NAILLINKUP.  And don’t forget to check out the other stamping manis >>

Stamping –