Aqua Leopard Nails for #NAILLINKUP

Week 2 of the March N.A.I.L. Linkup is AQUA.  I picked through my stash for the best aqua shades (ironically two of them had the word MINT in them.. go figure) and I came up with this cute leopard print.  I only tried leopard one time before, using water-based paints and only on 2 fingers, so hopefully this came out okay!

What I’m wearing:

base color ♥ wet n wild I Need a Refresh-Mint

blue sponged on tips ♥ NYC Skyline Blue

silver spots ♥ OPI Push and Shove

teal glitter ♥ Sinful Colors  Lush Life

black striper polish ♥ L.A. Colors Art Deco in black

I’m excited to wear my new OPI Push and Shove mirror polish!  I haven’t worn it on it’s own yet, and since I’ve been dying to try it, I decided to make my leopard spots with it!  To make my silver spots look even cooler I thought I’d add my Sinful Colors teal glitter in little blobs over top… but unfortunately the sinful formula wasn’t dense enough with glitter.  So I ended up lightly swiping the glitter over the entire nail instead.  Not really the look I was going for since I really only wanted it over the silver, but as I always say… it’s good to want things! Other than that little change in plans, the leopard print was pretty easy to do.  Now I wanna try it again!

I hope you like my first ‘real’ attempt at leopard print!  You can see the other aqua designs right here:

Dreamcatcher Decals

Today I’m wearing some more Moon Sugar Decals!  These are a cute dreamcatcher design that come 33 to a sheet as shown here.  BTW, did you see that I’m having an international GIVEAWAY where one lucky winner will get a $20 gift certificate for moonsugardecals.com ? Get on it!

Here’s how to enter my giveaway: a Rafflecopter giveaway

For this look I painted my nails with OPI My Vampire is Buff and I did a wood grain accent nail using my MoYou London nail stamping plate.  Then I put dream catcher water slide decals on the other nails.  Don’t know how to use water slide decals?  Here’s a step-by-step that I put together: DECAL TUTORIAL.  I followed the same application process for these dream catcher nails, except I also applied a very light layer of clear nail polish before sticking the decals on.  You don’t need to do that though.  They stick well enough from the clearcoat that you put on afterwards, but I just felt like trying it a different way.

I also used a dotting tool and some Wet n Wild I Need a Refresh-Mint to make some simple turquoise dots.  It only took a minute to place the dots, but they really transformed the manicure.  It gives a Native American feel I think.

I hope you like my nails and good luck in the giveaway! With a $20 gift certificate you could probably buy about 5 full sheets of decals!  If you win…. which designs would you pick from their catalog???  I really like their sugar skulls, but I also have some of their lotus flowers that I haven’t tried yet.  I got the lotus flowers from Julie at Short & Sweet in Texas.  We purchase different decals online and then mail each other little samples.  Julie and I are like an after-school-commercial… COLLECT THEM ALL, TRADE THEM WITH YOUR FRIENDS!  LOL

♥ If you place an order on moonsugardecals.com make sure to use my crafty coupon code 20OFFCN to save 20% off your order!!!  Code 20OFFCN is good til Feb 21, 2014. 

Holo Feather Motif (inspired by pinterest) for #NAILLINKUP

I love the N.A.I.L. theme this week : INSPIRED BY PINTEREST!  I have over 1600 pins (most of which are nails) so I had no problem finding a nail art pin that inspired me.  When I pin pics I always think “Oooooh I love this nail art design,  I’m pinning it so I remember to try it later!”  But do I ever try it?  NO.  See, this is why I love this week’s theme!

I tried one manicure and it was an epic fail, but my second one came out great!  Let’s see….

This handpainted feather motif was inspired by just1nail’s pin of her instagram pic posted here.  Something about her design really stood out to me!  I love how the opaque pastel feather stands out against the dark holo background!  So pretty and sorta retro. Thanks for the inspiration Paola!

I didn’t have the same polishes as Paola so I changed it up a bit. Here’s what I’m wearing…

♥ Duri Rejuvacote – one coat as my basecoat

♥ Zoya Payton – two coats as the maroon holo base color

♥ Wet n wild I Need a Refresh-Mint – blue accents painted with a skinny brush

♥ Seche Vite – topcoat

 

13 – 19 January – Inspired by Pinterest :

Rainbow Nails and my gradient technique!

Today’s nails were inspired by my inner child!  When I was a little girl (back in the 80’s) I just loved rainbows!  Rainbow stickers, rainbow spiral notebooks, rainbow earrings… pretty much anything that had a rainbow on it caught my attention.  Too bad it took me 30+ years to discover this rainbow gradient technique!  Well, this mani is dedicated to you, little Jacqui from the 80’s!  I know you would’ve loved these nails. 🙂

My first attempts at gradients were total fails- until I came up with this very effective way of using makeup sponges.  Here’s a pic of how I use my sponge for a gradient:

I start out with a standard cosmetic application wedge and use sharp scissors to cut it into 4 or 5 long skinny pieces.  I take one of the pieces, fold it in half, and dab it into a drop of nail polish on my work surface.  Then I sponge it onto my nail to create the gradient effect.  I think these folded over sponge strips work well since their surface is slightly curved, yet small-so you can dab, dab, dab away to get the paint just where you want it.  I use a different sliver of sponge for each color.  The small surface area of the sponge worked great to get the skinny lines of color for today’s rainbow gradient… but it also works well for a larger-scale gradient (like this leopard design where I only sponged on one color).  I think this technique is less messy and it’s fool-proof!!  I haven’t screwed up one gradient yet since I started doing it this way !

WHITE BASE ♥ one coat of Sally Hansen Teflon Tuff in French White Tip

RED ♥ Zoya Carmen

ORANGE ♥ AVON Orange Creamsicle

YELLOW ♥ AVON Inspire

AQUA ♥ Wet n wild I Need a Refresh-mint

PURPLE ♥ Nicole by OPI I’m a Belieber

This mani makes me happy on this beautiful friday!!

Do you love rainbows as much as me??

Ten Minute Tie Dye Nails

Ten minute nail art?  How cool is that?  I whipped these babies together in no time!  I did a base coat or Orly Ridge Filler… then I painted four different strips of bright colors.  I just sort of glopped them on very thick and messy.  Then I dragged a dotting tool through them to create the tie dye effect.  It would probably look nice with a bright white base coat- but I was going for quick and easy today so I skipped that part.  For such a ‘quick n dirty’ technique it came out pretty cool I think.  This could be a great option for some quick summertime nail art!

Have you ever tried tie dye nails?  I imagine that there’s a lot of different tie dye techniques out there!

Yellow ♥ China Glaze Yellow Polka Dot Bikini

Orange ♥ China Glaze Sun Worshiper

Pink ♥ OPI Elephantastic Pink

Teal ♥ wet n wild I Need a Refresh-Mint

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!

Ruffle Nail Art

I’m so excited about this nail art technique called Ruffle Nails! Every nail fanatic needs to try this- it’s easy and has lots of wow factor.  All you need to do is grab your favorite polish shades and a dotting tool (or bobby pins) to make some over-lapping rows of dots (it helps to use the largest tool you can find so the dots aren’t too small).  If you’d like to see a step-by step tutorial here’s a great one by Chalkboard Nails.  Now that I’ve discovered ruffles- I’ve got all these ideas swimming around in my head- neon ruffles, rainbow ruffles, black n white ruffles…  I want to try them all!

My first attempt came out much so better than I expected!  I casually worked on this design while sitting on the couch and I honestly didn’t try too hard.   I figured I’d end up taking it off with polish remover and then give it a real go later.  Well, I couldn’t believe how cute my test mani came out so I took some pics!  I used some of my favorite green and purple polishes here… and I think the matte topcoat really pulled it together nicely.  The variety of colors and the satin finish made my fingertips look like fimo clay! ↓

I went with a cool color combo of blue, pink and grey for my second design. ↓

One thing I like about the ruffle technique is that it’s so easy, you can even do a great job on your ‘other’ hand!  I’m right-handed so my left hand nail art usually looks good, and my right-hand comes out how should I say… non-photogenic? LOL.   Well, not with ruffles!    Try it out for yourself and let me know your results!

♥ Mood struck polish as my base (teal)

♥ Wet n wild I Need a Refresh-Mint (light green)

♥ Revlon Charming (light purple)

♥ OPI Dutch ‘Ya Just Love OPI (dark purple)

♥ Orly Gumdrop (light teal)

♥ MASH Matte Topcoat

♥ Orly Faint Of Heart as my base (grey)

♥ China Glaze First Mate (navy blue)

♥ Revlon Blue Slate (medium grey/blue)

♥ China Glaze Dance Baby (pink)

♥ Orly Kiss The Bride (light pink)

♥ Seche Vite Topcoat