Nude and Neon Leopard Nails

I’m on a leopard print kick!  So here’s another fun catty mani for you!

If you’d like to see a tutorial, Polish Alcoholic has a nice one here: TUTORIAL.  A year ago I commented on her tutorial that I loved it…  why did it take me so long to try it?  I have no clue!

• I started with a base of Sally Hansen Maximum Growth
• then did two coats of OPI Don’t Bossa Nova Me Around
• then quickly made some pink, blue and green splotches using 3 neon nail lacquers from Cynthia Rowley
• then I outlined the neon dots using a black skinny striper polish from L.A. Colors
• lastly, I finished with a coat of seche vite

Hope you survived the week.  Living for the weekend, amiright?  Have a great one everybody!

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. 

Day 25 of OMD Challenge- Dazed and Confused!

It’s INSPIRED BY A MOVIE day in our nail art challenge!  Have you ever seen Dazed and Confused?  I’ve seen it probably 100 times!!  Last night I pulled out my special edition DVD case to find all kinds of fun stuff inside.  There’s a movie poster in there… and check out this cute insert that looks like a high school notebook with scribbles all over it!  This insert was my inspiration for today’s manicure:

I used ten different polishes for this manicure… but the hardest part was getting the right base color.  I ended up layering a couple different shades and then sponged three different colors over top.  The fade effect is very subtle, but at least it resembles the color of the insert now !  I drew my scribbles on with my Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen and then painted a few multi-colored circles on with dotting tools and a skinny detail brush.  I prefer more cohesive designs on my nails- but still, this mani is funky and fun… and I love that it depicts one of my all-time favorite movies!  What do you think?

Tomorrow is INSPIRED BY YOUR FAVORITE VACATION day!  I dunno about my past vacations…. all I can think about is my upcoming one in August.  I need some time off so bad I can taste it!  Some de-stressing and time with my BFF is definitely in order!  Southwest Airlines- take me away!!

25. Inspired by a Movie :

Day 11 of OMD Challenge- Striped Nails

I don’t know about you but I’ve been having a blast doing the Oh Mon Dieu Challenge!  I’m so happy to see so many fresh designs each day and that they span across different platforms like wordpress, blogger, IG and FB!  It’s so fun doing this challenge with all you girls!  Just had to say that!

Moving on to the theme for day 11- STRIPES.  I’ve never really done a straight up striped mani before so I went with a simple design.  I started with 2 coats of mint green polish and then painted on some beige and purple stripes using the bottle brushes right from the nail polish bottles.  Then I made some thin stripes using gold nail polish and a skinny striper brush.  This mani was relatively quick to put together.  And I like the soft vintage neutral tones… it’s almost like a palette cleanser since I’ve been using a lot of crazy bright colors during the challenge!  Here’s the polishes I used….

Mint Green ♥ Orly Jealous, Much?

Purple ♥ Butter London Scoundrel

Neutral Beige ♥ Butter London Yummy Mummy

Gold ♥ Sally Hansen Golden-I

Check out the other striped manis here↓ and I’ll see you tomorrow for dots, dots, and more dots!

11. Stripes :

Godiva Pixie Dust Swatch with a Stamp

When I saw the array of pixie dust colors I knew this nude one called Godiva was my fave!  So I purchased this polish back when the Zoya collection first came out!  Sorry that I’m so behind the ball with swatching this pixie dust!   But there’s a few reasons why I kept pushing this fresh bottle of polish to the back of my stash:

♦ The instructions say to apply this without a basecoat, and that just seems icky to me.  I always wear a strengthening basecoat.  Always.

♦ Pixie Dust is meant to be worn without a topcoat too.  And patience is not one of my virtues, hence my love for quick-drying seche vite topcoat!  So I’m gonna have to wait for Godiva to dry on it’s own?  Every time I try that I end up with sleepy sheet marks on my nails!  Even if I wait HOURS for a polish to dry I will still mess it up when I’m asleep.

So I pushed my issues aside and finally tried my pretty Godiva!  I did use a base coat though since other bloggers said it didn’t make a difference.  I applied it on a sunday so I had the full day to wait for it to dry.  I needed three coats to make it opaque.  It’s beautiful and the texture doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.  In fact, I really like it and I think it makes my nails feel stronger!  I especially notice it when I get out of the shower- my nails are usually soft and bendy then, but they felt strong and tough with my pixie dust on!  Another thing I like is how glittery and glisteny it is in the sun.  I took this pic in the sun to try to capture it- and check out the burst of glimmer in this pic ↓  I didn’t even photoshop it!  🙂

But after 24 hrs I was a little bored with all the nudeness  … so I tried out one of my new Cheeky brand stamping plates!  I went with this weird circle design (CH48).  Out of all the ones to choose from I picked this weirdo splotchy one?  I guess it kinda reminded me of rocks and I thought that would look good with the organic appeal that Godiva has.  It was fun and easy to stamp on pixie dust!  It soaked right in and I didn’t need topcoat.  Next time I will pick a plate with a more crisp image and see how that transfers onto the textured polish.

I’ve been wearing Godiva for about 52 hrs now and it’s holding up well.  I think I might invest in another pixie dust… maybe from Zoya’s new summer collection.  They have some really pretty colors!  So have you tried this stuff out?  What did you think of it?

Candy Sprinkles Swatch

It’s glitter day in the April Nail Art Challenge!  Although I was tempted to use some glitzy in your face glitter (my Sinful Colors Paparazzi Glitter is sadly sitting here unopened and unused), I couldn’t resist this Hard Candy polish today!  It’s called Cocoa Smore and it’s from the Candy Sprinkles collection. I think it’s just lovely!  It has a nice neutral mauve/beige base color along with silver and matte black sparkles.  I guess it’s similar to the ‘robins egg’ polishes that are all the craze this year.  This is my first bottle like this… much more affordable than the Illamasqua speckled varnish that I’ve been craving.  Thank you Walmart 🙂  Even though this Candy Sprinkles collection is a cheaper alternative to the high-end speckles… there is a down-side.  The bottles are much smaller!  My Hard Candy bottle is 7.8ml which is basically HALF of the size of a normal bottle of polish.  Hmmm what’s up with that Hard Candy?  Still, I love Cocoa Smore- it dries fast, and only needed two coats.  It’s neutral, but still has pizazz.  I will definitely be wearing it again !  Heads up- you may need more than one topcoat though as the glitter leaves a bumpy feel.

Have you tried any speckled polishes?

what I’m wearing today- maraschino tips

The red mani that I’m wearing today kind of went in a different direction than I planned.. but it came out cool!  Originally I wanted a french manicure with red tips.  So I free-hand painted some red french tips on my nails using a Sephora by OPI polish called And a Cherry on Top.  Sephora describes it as an opaque vivid maraschino.  I have a mini-sized bottle of this polish and the small brush is perfect for hand-painting french manis.  Well, it came out more dramatic than I expected!  I loved my blood-red tips!  They were shiny red and hot hot hot!  I would’ve taken pics but it was late at night and dark out.

Keeping in mind that I had to attend a family event today – I felt the need to soften the look a bit.  I went ahead and topped it off with a coat of Sally Hansen Maximum Growth Nourishing Nail Color  – the sheer nude that came with my SH French Manicure Kit.  Unfortunately the red didn’t shine through well after applying the nude topcoat. So I put a row of tiny dots using more of my And a Cherry on Top.  Then I slightly mixed both the cherry and the nude polishes together and then dabbed it on my tips with a q-tip to give a blotchy effect.  Mixing the two colors really transformed the maraschino to a hot pink.  It came out kinda cool…a different play on the regular old french manicure!

Sometime soon I’ll have to try out my And a Cherry on Top again- it’s a luscious red!!  I don’t have a favorite red polish yet, so maybe this could be the one?  Do you have a favorite red ?