Bold Gradient Dotticure for #NAILLINKUP

It’s the last week of our April NAIL Linkup and the theme is DOTTICURE.   Yes, it is officially May now… but I’m not too late!  This week’s theme goes til May 4th so you have some time to sneak in a dotticure too.

For this nail art I wanted to go bold and bright and mix together some weird colors. Here’s what I used-

♥ Zoya Dove as my grey base color

♥ OPI I Just Can’t Cope-Acabana sponged onto my tips for a gradient

♥ AVON Coral Reef that I dotted on with a dotting tool

 

It’s an unexpected color combination but I like it.  It feels summery and reminds me of beaches and Ron Jon surf gear.  I have no idea why, I dont even know what Ron Jon is really, but it popped in my head!

This weekend we’ll reveal our May N.A.I.L. themes so keep your eyes peeled for that.  See ya!

28th April – 4th May : Dotticure

The Beauty Buffs- Pastels

New things are happening over here at Craftynail headquarters!  And when I say headquarters I mean-  me, my nails and my computer.  LOL

I’m thrilled to finally tell you this!  I’m now part of a group called The Beauty Buffs!  We’re a wonderfully diverse collection of beauty bloggers brought together by Norelis of Fierce Makeup & Nails.  We will collaborate every other Wednesday to post about our top picks in color trends, nail polishes, makeup, beauty and more.  Our series has a new theme every two weeks and today is our first one… we’re talking about PASTELS!  So who are The Beauty Buffs?   Drop by our blogs and you’ll see all kinds of wicked nail art, swatches, makeup, fashion for all sizes, health, and product reviews.  Make sure to click #TheBeautyBuffs – PASTELS (also at the end of my post) so you can meet the other Buffs.  I know you are going to love our new biweekly series!   Especially you nail art fans out there. So let’s get to it…

Today we’re talking about pastels!  The pastel trend of soft muted colors is ‘a given’ when springtime arrives.  But what about when all the pastels are too sugary sweet for your liking?  Sometimes you feel like Sasha instead of Beyoncé, amiright?  That’s when I like to pair my pastels with a dark color to give them a fiercer look.  Fierce, haha that’s me!  Yup, just ask my boyfriend- he can give you a whole list of words that describe me. 😉

This dotticure is cute and springy, but it also has a little extra kick, don’t ya think?  I love how the muted colors really jump to life against the black.  Here are the polishes I used…

BLACK ♥ Black Onyx by OPI

PURPLE ♥ Charming by Revlon

MINT ♥ Honeydew by Fresh Paint

YELLOW ♥ Mellow Yellow by Sally Hansen

PINK ♥ Bubblegum Pink by Sally Hansen

BLUE ♥ Breezy Blue by Sally Hansen

My dots came out very uniform!  I want to share with you how I did that.  Take a look at my Perfect Pastel Dots Tutorial below.  You can use an unbent bobby pin or like me, I used an inexpensive dotting tool from Amazon….

The key is to start at the base of your nail and make one straight line of dots.  If your middle line of dots is evenly-spaced and straight (like in picture 3) then there’s a good chance that your whole nail will look good!  Then move on to your second line of dots.  You see how my second line started a little lower on the nail in picture 4?  It’s important to make the lines staggered like that … that way your first line of dots is offset from your second.  That’s what makes the polka dots look evenly distributed, kinda like checkers laid out on a checker board.  It’s hard to explain in words so I hope the pictorial demonstrates my technique. 🙂

Thanks for checking in with me today!  I hope you like my dots and that you find my little tutorial useful.  Dotticures were intimidating for me until I got my technique down.  Try this one out!  Then we can all be dot-dot-dotting like mad-women. 😀

Don’t forget to see what the other Beauty Buffs have got goin’ on….

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?

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!

Solar Eclipse Nails for #NAILLINKUP

Did you see the solar eclipse this morning?  I missed it!  We had daylight savings in the U.S. this morning too, which gave me an excuse to sleep in wayyy later than normal.  🙂

After deciding to make SOLAR ECLIPSE one of our themes for the November NAIL Linkup– this idea came to me rather quickly!  It’s an easy design too, which is always nice when you’re trying to squeeze nail challenges into your busy life schedule.

Each nail shows the different phases of the sun during an eclipse!  I did imagine the design different in my head though.  I’m surprised I was only able to fit 3 suns on each nail.  I imagined it with at least four suns, but oh well.  I need to face the fact that I don’t have long nails anymore!  lol

This manicure was simple simple simple!   I started with 2 coats of Brigits Digits called Witching Hour, a nice dark vampy holographic maroon color.  I just tried it out recently, but I’ve really been itching to wear it again since 1-Fall is great for deep mysterious colors like this and 2- now that my nails are shaped different I’m finding that I love to play with darker colors!  After my Witching Hour was in place I did 3 orange dots on each nail using AVON Creamsicle.  You may have noticed that I use that orange all the time, but for reals–AVON cream polishes are perfect for nail art!  To make the orange dots look like eclipses I just overlapped another dot over top using Witching Hour to partially cover the suns.  So basically, each nail has five dots on it.  How easy is that?

I enjoyed this look for a day, then I wanted to try mattifying it.  Matte topcoat makes holos look cool!  It brings out all the little flecks hidden in there!

Brijits Digits Witching Hour with MASH Matte Topcoat

I hope to see some fun SOLAR ECLIPSE manis as part of the Nail Art Ideas Linkup.  There’s so much room for interpretation with this one.  You could do suns, moons, galaxies, skies… whatever strikes your fancy!  Here are the other SOLAR ECLIPSE manis in the collection:

Solar Eclipse :

#31DC2013 – Polka Dots

Polka dot nails.  The french manicure nail guide stickers pulled some of my peach basecoat off.  How annoying !  I put topcoat over it and that helped smooth it out a bit.  Here they are………..

FYI-This is my 2nd attempt at polka dot nails tonight.  My first design got messed up too!  That’s all I’ve got to say about that.

signed, crabby in NY

Day 14 of OMD Challenge- Daisies

Day 14 of the Oh Mon Dieu Challenge is FLORAL. I usually think bright springy colors when I hear the word FLORAL… so I went the opposite way with this one.  Today’s manicure is a nice warm earthy daisy design!

I started with a few base coats of a unnamed peachy color called Sally Hansen Maximum Growth Nourishing Nail Color from my SH french manicure kit.  Then I sponged some Garden Green by AVON on my tips.  Garden Green is such a spectacular polish- it’s a deep natural looking green with slight shimmer that makes it glow.  And it’s uber-opaque which makes it perfect for nail art.  In fact, some of my favorite polishes for nail art are from AVON.  I could do a whole post about a yellow called Inspire that I’ve used 7 times already on my blog (wonder if anyone noticed).  After all my tips were green, which looked pretty cool BTW, I dotted on some daisies using NYC French White Tip.  The center of the daisies was then dotted on using a mustard yellow called Pull Over by Sinful Colors.  I added some Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat et voila!  Earthy floral french mani with daisies!

View the other floral creations here:

14. Flowers :