Nail Art Earrings part deux

I have my second pair of nail art earrings to show you!  The first one is here.  For this pair I used some little wooden pendants that my dad cut for me to use as earrings.  They are rectangle and circle shapes and he drilled tiny holes for the earring clasps. He sanded them, but I also used a nail file to smooth some of the corners.  Then I grabbed my nail polish and started decorating them!

I painted the wooden squares with black wet n wild nail polish called Ebony Hates Chris.  Then I stamped the rectangles using blue Keks by Butter London along with my MoYou Pro Collection 04 stamp.  The squishy stamper kinda went wooooosh sideways… you can see my stamps are a little off-center.  😦 But still, I love how the Butter London stamps over the black.  I tried this combo one time before when I reviewed some MoYou London items.  It looked wicked, but you couldn’t really tell since it was only on my thumbs.  (here’s a pic! check out my thumb!)  I just knew I had to try that black n blue combo again.  So I did. I also added a few rhinestones to my earrings that I stuck on with clear nail polish.   Lastly, I attached some fishhook earring clasps, and there ya have it.  My Butter London Earrings.

Thank for stopping by and I hope to see you tomorrow. I have a new underside mani to show you!  Then later this weekend I’ve got a gradient for our Nail Art Ideas Linkup.  Ta-ta!

Nail Art Ideas Linkup has started up!

Brijit, Eeeek and I had so much fun with our OMD Nail Challenge!  We don’t want to lose the momentum of this nail art excitement so we’re starting up Nail Art Ideas Linkup (NAIL)!   We’ll have four nail art ideas for each month so you’ll never run out of inspiration!  The themes for NAIL August 2013 are sun, sea, sand and a good read (book).   Stay tuned for the themes for upcoming months which will be found on my NAIL reference page posted on the main menu of my blog.  Of course Brijit and Eeeek will each have the details posted on their sites as well.   🙂

The first theme for August is SUN and we’d love for you to create a sun-inspired manicure too!  The inlinkz for the SUN theme will be open til Aug 11th so make sure to click this link to submit your mani!  Here’s the linkz:

N.A.I.L. Theme 1 – SUN :

Now I’ll share my sun-inspired manicure!  I’ve been in the mood for something dark and edgy so here’s what I came up with.  I’m calling it my abstract solar design……

I’m wearing three coats of Zoya Paz which is an electric orange cream.  It was funny, the first coat was very opaque and I was like WOW this will be great as a two-coater, but strangely the second coat looked almost the same as one coat did!  So I ended up doing three.  Then I hand-painted a black abstract solar burst shape on my tips… and added some black studs for visual interest.  I painted my other nails straight black using wet n wild Ebony Hates Chris.

If you’re interested in doing a sun manicure on your blog, facebook instagram, etc you have til Aug 11th to submit your link.  When the links close we’ll open up the vote and you can pick your nail genius of the week.  FUN !

N.A.I.L. Theme 1 – SUN :

Tribal Nails

Day 16 of the Nail Challenge is Tribal nails.  I have never tried tribal before- so please don’t judge lol. I used a dotting tool, a skinny striper brush and these polishes:

Sally Hansen ♥ Commander in Chic

AVON ♥ Inspire

wet n wild ♥ I Need a Refresh-Mint

OPI ♥ Grand Canyon Sunset

wet n wild ♥ Ebony Hates Chris

I didn’t have a plan when I started working on this design…. I just sort of started with one color and made a bunch of shapes.  I cleaned my brush, and then moved onto the next color until I ran through all 5 polishes and my nails were covered with a wacky design.  Next time I would like to plan it out more and maybe I’ll get better results!

Can’t wait to see what the other girls came up with because this was an interesting theme with a lot of room for interpretation!

Ruffian Manicure

Day 13 of the Nail Challenge is Ruffian !  I freakin love Ruffian manis!    I also love that it makes me wanna speak with a Jamaican accent.  Not sure why… maybe because it reminds me of the word Ragamuffin which makes me think of Reggae music and stuff IDK?  RRRUFFIAN MON! 

This mani was pretty simple- here’s what I did:  I started with a black base of Ebony Hates Chris by wet n wild.  Then I taped my nails off with some french manicure nail guide stickers and applied my contrasting 2nd polish called Sweet Pea Dream by AVON.  I peeled the nail guide stickers off slowly to reveal the ruffian.  A topcoat smoothed it all out and bam-  a sexy ruffian!

Even though the technique is pretty simple- I actually did this mani over the course of two days.  See, I’ll admit that I’m very impatient when it comes to waiting for nails to dry.  When I start painting, I wanna paint all the way through to the end without stopping.  And since I planned to do my ruffian with tape, that means that my black base needs to be completely dry before I apply the nail guide stickers.  The thought of waiting for my black to dry and hoping I don’t mess up my tape job due to still-tacky paint causes me undue stress.  So to avoid all the anxiety and sitting around waiting….I painted my nails black, slapped some quick-drying seche vite on top and called it a day.  I rocked the black nail polish by itself for a day and got some compliments on it so that’s cool!  The next day I applied my nail guide stickers and then painted my 2nd color to finish my ruffian.  This process worked well for me since it eliminated the risk of screwing up my tape job and it allowed me to wear two different manis over the course of two days.  Win, win!

This look is so fresh- it’s like a rebellious french mani!  Classy and wild all at the same time.  I’m in love.

Butterfly Wings

I had a lot of free time last night and sat down with my box of very old polishes that I never use.  I rummaged through them and tried out all my spring-iest colors.  The AVON Retro Rose floored me!  In the bottle it looked matronly, but once applied it morphed into this stunning peachy pink with gold shimmer!  I sponged on some Sinful Colors Lagoon which is a sheer orange shimmer.  This polish must be very old- check out the retro bottle in my bottom pic!  The peach and orange looked great together and then it hit me- MONARCH WINGS!  Yes!  Time for me to try out butterfly nails!

Butterfly wing nails have been one of my favorite looks ever since I got interested in nail art.  They’re breathtaking and have been on my to-do list for a while.  I’m so glad I finally tackled this project last nite.  I guess I just needed the perfect base color to inspire me!

I used some black wet n wild polish and a sephora nail art brush to freehand the black wing outline.  The design was very forgiving… I didn’t even have to wipe it off and start all over again –  you girls know what I’m talking about, right?  Here’s the list of polishes and tools that I used….

I love it.  It will break my heart to have to take it off once it starts chipping!  And in case you are wondering… yes, that IS snow in the background of my pics.  We got another bad storm last night in NY.  Will it ever be spring?  Probably not.

Paw Print Nail Art

Winter Storm Nemo just swept through New England!  The snow started falling here in NY on Friday afternoon… and by Saturday morning we accumulated at least 12 inches of the white stuff!  Other states like Connecticut and Massachusetts got hit even worse.  The news reported that some people were even stuck in their vehicles on highways overnight until the roads became passable!  Luckily, we’re just fine here in the Hudson Valley.  It’s like a beautiful snowscape outside ….. and I kinda love it!

My kitty cat Fergie got curious about the snow too.  She ventured out onto the front porch and left behind the cutest little paw prints ever!  When I saw those little tootsie marks I realized that I’ve never tried paw print nail art before!  So I decided to test out some techniques today and I wound up with two different designs….

♥Sally Hansen Diamond Strength in Platinum as a base color ↑

♥Wet n wild Fast Dry in Ebony Hates Chris for the paws

♥Sally Hansen French Manicure Pen in Pure White Tip ↑

♥Wet n wild Wild Shine sparkle topcoat in Kaleidoscope

♥Wet n wild Megalast Through The Grapevine for the paws

Black n Blue Matte Colorblock

I watch a decent amount of prime-time cable (okay, I watch A LOT of cable) and lately I’ve noticed a definite fashion trend:  almost every leading lady in the last few weeks has worn dark blue and black together!  Personally, I’ve always steered clear of blue and black since the old rule is that ‘navy and black clash’.  But the more I see these two colors together, the more I likey!  This trend inspired me to do a color-block nail design using the following:

♥ one coat of Orly Ridge Filler as a base

♥ two coats of Cynthia Rowley unnamed neon blue polish

♥ a striper brush and Wet n Wild ‘Ebony Hates Chris’ for the black accents

♥ MASH Nails Matte Topcoat – I needed two coats to make it matte since the black Wet n Wild was super-shiny!

Why doesn’t Cynthia name her polishes?  I’ll never understand that!  Well, I’m gonna go ahead and name this neon Shark Week since it’s a vivid dark blue that reminds me of the bottom of the ocean.  The shade really lightens up for the camera so I tried some different lighting conditions to get the blue to stay as true as possible. It’s still way darker in real life… but c’est la vie!

I have heard that Cynthia Rowley nail color is hard to find.  Luckily, I received a three pack set from my lovely sister for Christmas!  In case you’re trying to get your hands on some in the US… I think she found it at Marshall’s Department Store.