Diamonds are a girl’s best friend! for #NAILLINKUP

It’s DIAMOND week for the Nail Art Ideas Linkup.  This theme makes me think of Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend!” and also “Material Girl” by Madonna.  Remember their hot pink dresses with the big bow?  And how they were dripping with diamonds?  That’s the inspiration for my manicure today!

I’m wearing two coats of my favorite hot pink polish- Zoya Ali.  It’s so hot and summery… when I applied it the other day I was actually screaming HOT DAMN! Because I love it so much. Does anyone else get super excited by polishes like me?  So much so that you run around the house waving your hands around hooting and hollering?  Please tell me you do that too.

Now that we’ve established that Zoya Ali is a good base color for me…. then I applied a sheer pink holo over some of those nails.  Bobbie brand Margarita (which I swatched the other day) needed four coats, so I assumed it’s sheerness would be a good topper for Ali to allow the hot pink to shine through, yet still add a touch of holo sparkle to it.  I didn’t apply that holo to my middle or thumb fingers, just because.  And on my middle finger I painted a bow just like on Madonna’s and Marilyn’s dresses.    I used a white and a black striper along with thatleanne’s tutorial to do my bow nail art.  And the funny thing is, I just realized she used Zoya Ali in her tutorial post too!  What are the chances of that?  Such a strange coincidence!

Lastly, I added some diamond-looking bling on a couple of my fingers.  I love this manicure!

Don’t miss the other diamond nails here:

21st – 27th April : Diamonds

 

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. 😀

 

St. Patrick’s Day Nails for #NAILLINKUP

This is my St.Patty’s design for the N.A.I.L. Linkup! I loved brainstorming about which green polishes to incorporate into this design to make it look Irish.  I freakin love green nail polish.  Here’s what I’m wearing:  The dark green is Zoya Ivanka.  I’ve only worn it once before so I was happy to try it out again.  What a gorgeous foil green!

The light green is a new AVON quick dry polish that I ordered from my avon lady called Don’t Be Jaded.  It was in the outlet catalog for $1.99! Like seriously!  My mom picked up a bottle too and she texted me a cute nail pic this AM (it was her jade green nails with a sudoku game as her backgrdrop)  LOL. Her text said that she painted her nails with Don’t be Jaded on thursday. Today is sunday and it’s still holding up.  Yes, this is why we love AVON.  And green is my mom’s fave nail polish color too so we be happy!

Do you like my giant gold glitters on my thumb and pinky?  They kinda remind me of gold coins at the end of the rainbow. It’s OPI’s When Monkeys Fly! which I dabbed on and also had to pick and place some of the glitters too.  I also did a rainbow dotted nail using a dotting tool and a bunch of random polishes.  Then I placed some gold studs on my Zoya fingers, added some seche vite, and now I have a fun mix mani for St. Patrick’s Day!  It was relatively quick and easy.

I’d love to see your St Patrick’s mani too.  Here are the inlinkz so you can enter a N.A.I.L. pic for March-

St Patrick’s Day 

My new years nails- magnetic snakeskin

Happy New Year!!!  Here are my new years eve nails for the N.A.I.L. linkup! I went with a mix-match snake skin manicure.  I used two different magnetic polishes in this design and I also hid ‘2014’ in there as well. 🙂

GREEN NAILS- My green nails were painted with Sinfully Magnetic Snakeskin nail polish in a green shade called Force Field.  I applied one coat and let it dry.  Then I applied the second coat and then immediately held the included magnet over top.  The magnet reacted with the polish and created such an amazing criss-cross snakeskin effect (see my other post about Force Field here). This is probably my absolute favorite magnetic polish & magnet of all time!  I also applied some pearl-toned studs to these nails for a feminine sexy touch.

BLACK NAILS- These nails were painted with China Glaze Liquid Leather.  Then I stamped MoYou Pro 05 snakeskin design over half of these nails using a silver magnetic Orly polish called Paint on Electron.  I’m so glad that the silver stamped so well!  The puny Orly magnet that came with the polish really sucks…so I’m happy to find another use for Paint on Electron which didn’t even require a magnet.  *Another thing to note about stamping with magnetic polish- it didn’t smudge at all when I applied topcoat!

Oh and about the hidden ‘2014’-  I placed my studs strategically to represent the year 2014– I put 20 studs on my right hand and 14 studs on my left.  🙂  I also patterned my nails differently on each hand just for effect. 

Do you think magnetic nail polish has a fun ‘party feel’ ?  I love it and I think it’s just perfect for the holidays. Plus, I did magnetic nails last new yrs eve… so I’m sorta keeping up with traditions by doing another one tonite.  These nails are also just in time to say goodbye to the SNAKE.  Au revoir 2013, year of the snake!  Bonjour 2014, year of the horse! 

While we’re on the topic, I’d like to show you a pic of my new horse calendar for 2014.  I got it as a Christmas present from my uncle!  Isn’t it purty?

I look forward to a new year!  See you in 2014!

View the other N.A.I.L. entries here:

N.A.I.L. December Theme 1 – Snowflakes

N.A.I.L. December Theme 2 – Shopping

N.A.I.L. December Theme 3 – Winter Solstice

N.A.I.L. December Theme 4 – Festive French Manis

N.A.I.L. December Theme 5 – New Year

Rival de Loop Perfect Pinky

Today I’m showing you a lovely polish that I won from luchessa.org!  Luchessa mailed it to me all the way from Germany so this polish is totally unique in my stash!  It’s called Rival de Loop Perfect Style Effect Nail Color in Perfect Pinky.  Even though the name suggest it’s pink, it also has nice purple tinge to it.  So I layered it over a purple OPI to really play up the violet tones….

Shown here is…

♥ Sally Hansen Maximum Growth – one coat as a base coat

♥ OPI Dutch ‘Ya Just Love OPI – two coats as my purple base color

♥ Rival de Loop Perfect Pinky – one coat as a special effect topper

♥ purple painted studs – for fun!

Isn’t it gorgeous!?!?!  I also tried Perfect Pinky on its own- it needed four coats for opacity and it looked totally different!  It had an almost rhubarb-colored pinkish purplish tone with tons of copper shimmer.  It’s so pretty any way you wear it though- by itself or as a topper.  I’m so thankful I won this bottle- thanks Luchessa!

Have you ever tried this brand Rival de Loop?

Green Glitter Christmas Nails

I wanted to squeeze in another holiday mani before Christmas day arrives.  Ready or not, it’s right around the corner!

I got this cute green glitter polish in an ABC Store in Las Vegas earlier this month.  It’s called Island Volcano by Island Girl Hawaii and it’s a perfect polish for a Christmas mani!  I also grabbed a few other items from this brand and I love that I own Hawaiian nail products now!  Especially the beautiful bottle of cuticle oil with dried flowers floating in it.  I’ll have to show you sometime!

Here’s what I’m wearing…

♥ Essence Peel Off Base Coat – 1 coat

♥ Funky Fingers in Limelight – 2 coats

♥ Island Girl Hawaii in Island Volcano – 2 coats

♥ no-name brand red studs – I like that they look like tiny maraschino cherries 🙂

♥ Seche Vite topcoat

I’d also like to add this manicure to the INSPIRED BY CHRISTMAS COLOURS inlinkz for #ChristmasWithFLP which is a cute December Nail Challenge that I found out about on Lekker Lacquer’s blog.  There’s a lot of fun themes for this Christmas Challenge… check it out here!

Shopping Nails for #NAILLINKUP

It’s week two of the December N.A.I.L. Linkup and the theme is shopping.  If you’re like me, the word shopping in December means a mad scramble to finish your holiday shopping list!  Luckily, I got most of my shopping done on friday.  The only time I ever really visit Kohl’s is Christmastime… and what amazing deals they have!  Then they give you Kohls CASH which is icing on the cake!  I got gifts for everyone on my list and now I’ve even got gifts on my nails! Let’s take a look at my shopping nails for #NAILLINKUP…..

The wrapping paper and bows came out great!  They’re actually decals that I made.  I’ve shown you how to make decals here, but I’ve never tried it with stamping before.  So basically, I stamped the gifts onto a plastic baggie using my MoYou Festive 03 plate.  Then I painted on top of the gift stamps with green/gold/blue and then I topcoated it.  Once it was dry (overnight) I peeled it off the baggie, flipped it over, et voila!  A pretty little painted present!  I got the idea from Indian Ocean Polish’s blog.  Everytime I login to pinterest I go ga-ga over her decals so I just had to try them out!  Here’s her tutorial- you should check it out!

I’m also happy to wear red again.  I’m loving red more and more lately!  Shown here is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Cherry Red.  I’m really impressed with it’s formula!

Be sure to check out the other girls’ designs for the Linkup- see the blue guy below!  If you’d like to join in, here’s more info on the linkup…

N.A.I.L. December Theme 2 – Shopping