The Beauty Buffs- Royal Blue

Have you heard that one of the hot nail colors for spring 2014 is royal blue?

Just because cobalt and royal blues are trending right now that doesn’t mean you need to run out and buy new bottles of polish!  This is a perfect chance for you to ‘shop your stash’ and see what blue beauties you have tucked away in your nail polish collection.

Blue is one of my favorite shades to wear!  I have a bunch- shimmers, navies, pastels, holos.  But I wanted to find one that reminds me of the intense blue hues that I’ve seen on the runways this season.  And I think I found the perfect shade!

Here I’m wearing two coats of  Butler Please from Essie.  This color is actually my very-first-ever bottle of Essie!  It’s intense, eye-catching and is the personification of blue.  It dries sorta matte so you’ll want some topcoat to make it shine.

I went ahead and did simple nail art on top using another color that I notice is on trend this spring- chartreuse.  I think I was in Kohl’s when I realized how hot this color is right now. I looked around and saw tons of this funky yellow/green color dotted throughout the women’s clothing section.  If you’re looking for a great chartreuse you may want to try Sinful Colors Innocent.  I have a few funky greens, but none are as perfect as this one for nail art.  It’s nice and opaque and the formula is great.

Now I’m styling for spring!  You should totally shop your stash for the perfect blue too!

See how the other Beauty Buffs will be wearing royal blue this season >>

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….

Spring Flowers for #NAILLINKUP

This is my design for the SPRING FLOWERS theme of the N.A.I.L. Linkup!  The colors I chose are a bit more intense than the usual spring pastels.  But then again, it doesn’t feel like spring yet in NY!  It was kinda nice out yesterday, but today is like brrrrr.

BASE COLOR ♥ I Love Nail Polish – Grape Alicious

STAMPING NAIL POLISH ♥ AVON Mirror – Blaze

STAMPING PLATE ♥ MoYou London – Pro Collection 04

RHINESTONES ♥ magenta gems from Sally’s Beauty Supply

ACCENT NAIL GLITTER ♥ Sinful Colors – Star Dust

NAILLINKUP Spring Flowers –

Easy Watercolor Nail Art Tutorial

Ok, this is one of my faves!! It’s easy peasy lemon squeezey and gives such an awesome effect!!  Like an artist’s palette!

Step 1 ♥ Paint all your nails white and wait for it to dry.  I know, waiting is hard….so you can use a quick dry topcoat to speed it up if you’d like.

Step 2 ♥ Dab some nail polish onto your 1st white nail using the regular nail polish brush from your bottle- no special tools required!   I used 5 colors and just splotched it on kinda thick and did not overlap the colors.  Just apply enough splotches of color to cover the nail.  I probably did about 7 splotches on my nail.  Some colors I dabbed on once, others I dabbed on twice.  It’s all random and quick and easy.

Step 3 ♥ Take a small piece of saran wrap, plastic wrapper or whatever (I used small snack baggies cut into thirds) and place it over your wet nail.  You can either pull down on the plastic wrap (almost as if you were wrapping your fingertips tightly with the plastic wrap), or simply press down on top of the plastic.  Either way, you will get the same effect- the dabs of polish will get smooshed by the pressure and when you pull the plastic off you will have a beautiful watercolor effect!!  Here’s what my plastic looked like when I pulled it off my nail.

Step 4 ♥  Repeat step 3 to color your other nails. Make sure to do one nail at a time since you want the polish wet when you apply the plastic.

Step 5 ♥  Clean up around your cuticles if the nail polish bled onto your skin at all.  And then topcoat your nails with clear polish to lock in your watercolor nails.

And that’s it!!!  How lovely (and simple!) is this nail design?  It’s perfect for spring!

yellow → AVON Inspire

pink → Zoya Sweet

blue → Sephora by OPI Natural Environ-mint

green → NYC Tudor City teal

purple → Sephora by OPI It’s Hippo To Be Square

Spring Gleam mani from Julep

It’s day 8 and the theme of the 30 Day Nail Art Challenge is ZIG ZAG. That reminded me of an email I got from Julep last week about a simple zig zag spring tutorial.  When I saw it I made a mental note to try it out sometime.  Well that time is today!

I don’t own any Julep polishes so I had to improvise with what I had.  I used the following:

Sephora by OPI ♥ How Cute Is That?

NYC ♥ Skyline Blue

Revlon ♥ Charming

Here’s Julep’s version↓  If you want to see their simple tutorial you can click their image below…

Konad Cloudy Sky Nails

Hi everyone!  Here’s the cute lazy-day Sunday mani that I came up with today.  It’s been very cold here lately, but today feel more springy and the birds are all chirping outside- so I think this happy cloud design seems fitting.  My base color is Sephora by OPI Natural Environ-mint.  It’s totally blue so I don’t know why they call it ‘mint’!!  Then I stamped some clouds on using my Konad M79 plate and some white Konad Special Nail Polish.

I added some matte topcoat by MASH to finish off the look.  This MASH matte polish is so great!  I bought it because it was cheaper than most other matte toppers.  Turns out that it dries super-fast and I’m really happy with the smooth formula.  I guess my cheapness paid off with this purchase!

Hope you all have a happy end to your weekend!  I’m going to go back to watching Breaking Dawn Pt1 now.  I recorded it a month ago and I’m having a hard time deleting it because I love it so much.  So I’m watching it again to get my twilight fix.  Maybe that will make it easier for me to delete it from my DVR box later!?