AVON sweet pea dream

Hey everyone! I want to show you my heart nails that I’ve been wearing for a couple of days now…

They’re so fun to wear because the hearts are kinda pointy at the ends! When I wave my hands around it’s like, ‘come here… lemme pierce your soul with my spiked love talons”! Ok, well not quite that extreme.. but when you see all ten of them in real life they look kinda cute and fierce. 🙂 Here’s what I’m wearing-

♥ Sally Hansen Maximum Growth – one coat

♥ L.A. Girl French Manicure in Pink Nude – one coat

♥ hand-painted hearts using NYC Black Lace Creme – with a detail brush

♥ center of hearts filled in with AVON Sweet Pea Dream – using the bottle brush

♥ french tips dotted on with NYC French White Tip – with a dotting tool

I’ve really enjoyed this manicure- but it’s time to say goodbye. Gotta work on my design for the SEA theme of Nail Art Ideas Linkup! And don’t forget- you still have a few days to vote for your favorite nail genius of the week from last week’s SUN manicures! It allows you to vote three times…here’s the link:

August 7-11th SUN

Hey nail lovers! I have a gradient manicure to share with you for Day 26 of the Nail Art Challenge! I did this mani in a hotel room, late at night, without proper tools… so hopefully it’s still craftynail-blog-worthy!

Last month I bought a bunch of AVON Nailwear Pro+ polishes from their recent Petal Impressions collection. So I tried a gradient with with the blue, green and nude colors from this shimmery collection. The polishes are called:

Forget-Me-Not-Blue (blue)

Garden Green (green)

Sweet Pea Dreams (nude)

Even though these polishes look great paired together- the champagne color is a lot lighter than the blue and green. I figured it could be a challenge to get Sweet Pea to blend in naturally. So I decided to make my gradient heavier with the Sweet Pea polish just to throw off the balance of the three colors. I only reveal a bit of the blue and green and I like the way they pop! It looks cool in real life! Too bad my cuticles are a wreck though! I have been moisturizing a lot while out of town this week for work- but they have still gotten really rough and dry! In my luggage I packed my normal lotion and my rarely used tube of Onsen Cuticle Conditioner. I bought this Onsen stuff in Las Vegas from a high pressure sales rep in 2011. It was pretty expensive but it came with a buffer, a file, and a makeup bag so I thought WHY NOT. Well, I never really ended up using it religiously. Until this week. And I found out– it kinda sucks! It’s too watery, it doesn’t feel very moisturizing, it just rubs right in and seems to evaporate and disappear. My cuticles are in worse shape than they’ve been in months. In these pics I’m trying to cover up a hangnail- but it hurts! I just typed up a negative review on their website. I’m curious to see if they approve and publish it cuz they haven’t yet! Now that I’m back at home- I’m going back to my oil and LUSH cuticle butter! I guess I will slather some good stuff on my cuticles tonite and try to enjoy my pretty gradient. Hopefully I’ll be back to normal soon lol!