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!

Nail Art Earrings part deux

I have my second pair of nail art earrings to show you!  The first one is here.  For this pair I used some little wooden pendants that my dad cut for me to use as earrings.  They are rectangle and circle shapes and he drilled tiny holes for the earring clasps. He sanded them, but I also used a nail file to smooth some of the corners.  Then I grabbed my nail polish and started decorating them!

I painted the wooden squares with black wet n wild nail polish called Ebony Hates Chris.  Then I stamped the rectangles using blue Keks by Butter London along with my MoYou Pro Collection 04 stamp.  The squishy stamper kinda went wooooosh sideways… you can see my stamps are a little off-center.  😦 But still, I love how the Butter London stamps over the black.  I tried this combo one time before when I reviewed some MoYou London items.  It looked wicked, but you couldn’t really tell since it was only on my thumbs.  (here’s a pic! check out my thumb!)  I just knew I had to try that black n blue combo again.  So I did. I also added a few rhinestones to my earrings that I stuck on with clear nail polish.   Lastly, I attached some fishhook earring clasps, and there ya have it.  My Butter London Earrings.

Thank for stopping by and I hope to see you tomorrow. I have a new underside mani to show you!  Then later this weekend I’ve got a gradient for our Nail Art Ideas Linkup.  Ta-ta!

Nail art earrings and other stuff!

Remember when I showed you those little wooden pendants my dad made me?? Here they are pictured on the left.  Well, I finally painted them with nail polish!   I like to call them my nail art earrings. 🙂  I painted them using all Essie winter shearling colors and I also used a bunch of easy nail art techniques.

• I painted them in three Essie colors
• then used a dotting tool to do some dots on one side
• used my MoYou stamping stamper and pro plate to decorate the other side
• swept on some clear polish and placed a line of rhinestones
• then I finished it with a coat of sally hansen topcoat

In case you are laughing at them, yeah I know.  They’re a little ‘busy’.  But in my defense, I wanted to try different nail art stuff on them … it’s my first nail polish & jewelry experiment!  They came out cool and it was a lot of crafty fun.  I def wanna do this again!  If you don’t have pendants like the ones I used then maybe you can find some earrings laying around that might work.  Or maybe the dollar store near you has some cheapo flat earrings that could use a fresh layer of nail polish!

This was a fun project for me, especially since I can’t paint my nails right now.  I am actually wearing some Incoco french manicure nail strips right now and I wanna see how long they last. I am loving them.  They look so great!  Here’s a sneak peek!  What a perfect french mani, right?  They are wearing really well.  No signs of chipping yet and I’m on day 6!  So in lieu of painting my nails for 6 days… I painted some earrings!  Oh, and I also made some diy nail decals using some of my cheeky and moyou stamping plates.  They came out so cute!  I made little yellow happy faces, multi-colored hearts, and little teddy bears!  Hopefully I can play with them soon.  I also have some news for my giveaways…..

Tomorrow I will announce the winner of my Moon Sugar Nails decal giveaway.  Make sure you enter for a chance to win a sweet gift certificate for some waterslide decals!  Giveaway closes on feb 9th.  Good luck! (oh, and once that raffle is over I have another one coming up- so stay tuned!)

Here’s the link to enter for a chance to win some moon sugar decals: a Rafflecopter giveaway 

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!  

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!

Nail Art Ideas Linkup (NAIL)- A GREAT READ

 

The final week of August’s Nail Art Ideas Linkup (NAIL) challenge is A GREAT READ.  If you’d like to do a manicure for this theme here’s more info and you can submit your design up until Sept. 1st!  Oh, and did you vote for last week’s NAIL Genius yet?  Everyone gets three votes!  Cast yours now!  

A Great Read?  Well, my most recent favorite book is from the Hunger Games trilogy.  It’s book #2 called Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.  It usually takes me a few months to finish a book.  But not this one- I whipped right through it (just like with the Hunger Games)!  After I finished book 2 I started book 3, but I stopped. Duh, right?!  I dunno, sometimes I like to wait to read a book ’til RIGHT before I see the movie.  It’s fun to have it fresh in my head when I go to the theater.  But that’s kinda dumb- I should go read Mockingjay like right now!!!!

I started this manicure the night before by preparing DIY nail stickers.  I’ve never made my own decals before- but I’ve been itching to try them and they’re perfect for a night when you wanna play with nail art but don’t wanna do an entire manicure from start to finish!  It turns out that these DIY nail decals were a lot of fun and they applied so much better than I expected!  Here’s how I did it…

I taped a plastic snack baggie to a heavy piece of cardstock so the bag wouldn’t move around too much.  Then I painted some mockingjay emblems on the baggie using a detail brush and cheap black nail polish.  I also tried gold, but that didn’t work well as you can see (there’s wiped-up gold smudges in the above picture).  Anyway, when I was done painting my mockingjay symbols, then I painted over top of them with enough clear topcoat to cover the design and maybe a little extra around the corners.  I let it dry overnight.  The next day I was afraid they’d stick… but instead, my stickers lifted right off the baggy.  They peeled right off without a hitch!  Then I cut them with scissors a little bit ’til they looked like they’d fit my nails well.

Once I had my nails all clean and bare, I was ready to paint them and test out my diy stickers.  I used one coat of Nail Envy and then three coats of L.A. Girl 3D Effects Nail Polish in Electric Coral.  When my thumbs were still tacky I placed my stickers on top of my orange polish.  Because my stickers were big they felt kinda wrinkly when I tried to wrap them around my large curved thumbnails.  But after a couple minutes they seemed smoother somehow.  Go figure?!  Then I covered them with a coat of seche vite and they looked so nice & shiny.  WIN!  For my other 8 nails- I stamped a flame design using Cheeky 52 plate (it only seemed right given the name of the book- Catching Fire).  I think they look wicked.

I can’t wait to try my own DIY stickers again! Weeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Check out the other manis for this theme here:

A Great Read- links open ’til Sept 1