Monarch Butterfly Wings Nail Art

I did my girlfriend’s nails last night- it was a fun and relaxing way to spend a friday night!  I had the idea to do monarch butterfly wings.  Which is kinda funny considering the first time I tried that technique was almost exactly one year ago (seen here).  I guess the beginning of spring must make me think of butterflies!

Her base color is OPI Live.Love.Carnival.. Then we sponged some Butter London Snog (raspberry) on to the tips to give the color more dimension.  The black was painted on with a striper brush and China Glaze Liquid Leather.  We used Zoya Purity for white dots.  We also added some flakies (Zoya Chloe) to add sparkle, but unfortunately the pics don’t show it.  But in real like the flakies add a hint of magic to this springtime manicure. 🙂

I think Vanessa loved her nails!  I sure do.   Next time I’d like to try this with duochrome polishes- I bet it would mimic the iridescent effect that you see on bugs in nature.

Enjoy your weekend, talk soon ! 🙂

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?

Movember Nails for #naillinkup

It’s Movember, the month dedicated to growing your moustache for prostate & testicular cancer awareness!  I’m a supporter of movember, are you?  And I think moustaches are sexy!  If you like your men with facial hair then check out this gallery of ‘stached men who support the cause: MO PHOTOS. 

My nails even got in the spirit this month- let’s see my Movember nail design for the N.A.I.L. Linkup!

I free-handed my 2 moustaches and then stamped my other nails.  I didn’t paint a moustache on each of my fingers because that would be pushing my luck!  I was happy to get two nice looking ‘staches on my left and 2 on my right…. so that’s good enough for me!  Quit while you’re ahead.  🙂

Here’s what I’m wearing-

♥ Sally Hansen Maximum Growth as my basecoat – one coat

♥ Brijits Digits Annie Laurie silver polish – three coats

♥ Zoya Ginessa – sponged onto my tips for a slight gradient effect

♥ China Glaze Liquid Leather – black polish used for moustaches and stamping

♥ Konad M79 plate for my dotted stamp design – on pinky and pointer fingers

♥ Cheeky CH55 plate for my necktie stamped design – on my thumb

♥ Seche Vite topcoat

Do you ever finish some nail art and feel this serious vibe that if you topcoat it you will ruin it and make the design bleed?  I was totally feeling that vibe with this mani… so I slathered on the seche vite very heavily so that the brush wouldn’t drag across my designs.  In doing this I wound up applying way too much topcoat.  Oh well!  At least there was no bleeding!  🙂

I can’t wait to see the other moustaches for the November Nail Art Ideas Linkup!  Please join in- here are the details!

Movember Moustaches :