Snowflakes for N.A.I.L. Linkup

Hey everyone!  This nail art is for week 1 of the December Nail Art Ideas Linkup!  The theme is snowflakes….

Shown here is…

♥ BASE COAT- Sally Hansen Maximum Growth

♥ BASE COLOR- 2 coats of Dancing Nails, a rose-colored metallic from Sinful Colors.

♥ GOLD GRADIENT- I sponged Julie G Metallic Heels onto the tips of my nails.  This rose/gold metallic gradient looked so cool!

♥ WHITE SNOWFLAKES- I stamped white Konad polish using my MoYou Festive 03 Plate.

♥ ACCENT NAIL-  The 3 maroon and beige snowflakes are a water slide decal, and then I placed rhinestones on top.

♥ Topcoat – 1 coat of Seche Vite

Don’t you just love winter-scene manis?  I hope we see a lot more snowflake designs in the #NAILLINKUP!  Here’s the gallery:

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

Brijit designed two beautiful widgets for the NAIL Linkup this month- a blue one and pink one!  Don’t they look sweet?  Which one is your fave?  I’m really groovin on the pink one!

Nail Art Ideas Linkup- Games and Apps Theme!

The third them of September’s Nail Art Ideas Linkup (NAIL) is Games & Apps.  What a fun theme!  There were a lot of things swirling through my mind: Dance Dance Revolution, Ghost Radar, Zuma Blitz, Scrabble, Angry Birds… the list goes on and on!  But there is one card game that I’ve been playing obsessively lately and it’s a Nook app called Aces Spades made by Concrete Software, Inc.  I’m not dissing Barnes & Noble or the Nook, but most of my Nook apps are a wee bit lame.  But this Spades game is just too fun!  It’s a nice basic version of four-player Spades, it’s glitch-less, and I love the color scheme and ‘feel’ of the app.  It almost looks a little gothic.  Here’s a couple screen shots of the game so you can see what I mean.

Check out my sexy partner Julian played by the computer!

I really like this blue, gold and purple color scheme.

For this nail art I’m wearing:

♠ OPI Unfor-greta-bly Blue with some black sponged on top

♠ the yellow accents are Sinful Colors Pull Over with some Julie G Metallic Heels mixed in

♠ the purple accents were made with a magnetic polish called Houses of Parliament by Nails Inc.

I kinda love the trio of colors here!  And I’ve never used magnetic polish for an accent nail before.  I’m really happy with the result!  I’ll definitely have to try that again, especially since my big stash of magnetics are all sitting in a box unused!  So what do you think of my Spades nail art?  Did I capture the essence of this app at all? 

View the other Games & Apps themed nails right here … or enter your own design up until September 22, 2013:

#31DC2013- Green Nails

Here’s my GREEN mani for Chalkboard Nails 31 Day Challenge!  I painted my nails with two coats of Metallic Heels (gold) by Julie G and then hand-painted some green segments on the top and bottom of my nails.

The green theme for today was a great excuse to try my brand new mint polish from Five Below.  It’s a nice light green color called Honeydew by Fresh Paint.  I’ve been wanting a green like this forever.  Many of my greens are darker or have a tinge of blue and look sorta aqua…. so I think this green is a perfect addition to my stash!  Unfortunately, it’s not that great for nail art.  I applied it with a detail brush and it seemed to have a chalky formula.  It ended up looking goopy and brush-strokey.  Live and learn!  Next time I’ll use it as a base color instead of an accent color.  I made sure to really slather on the seche vite to help smooth it out.  🙂  But still, it’s pretty and I like the effect of the gold strip shining in between the green.  The two colors contrast and coordinate, all at the same time.

See some of the other green manis here:

Day 26 Favorite Vacation- PDX

Phew I got this post in before the day was over!  The theme for day 26 of the OMD Challenge is FAVORITE VACATION and my fave has always been Portland Oregon!  My best friend Amie has lived there for about 10 yrs now and I usually make it out there at least once per year.  I always fly into Portland International Airport so the airline code PDX is engrained in my brain!  I’m always scouring the web for good prices to PDX.

Amie and I have done some fun stuff over the years during my vacays- ghost tours, seaside excursions, weddings, devouring mass quantities of meat (her hubbie’s a butcher)… but we usually have the most fun together just doing nuthin and hanging out!  Friendships like that are priceless, don’t you think!?  I have another trip to PDX scheduled for August.  A nice break from work, some Portland sunshine and some much-needed time with my BFF and her family (oh, and pugs too).  Can’t wait!

Here’s what I’m wearing- two coats of a Julie G gold polish called Metallic Heels, some studs from Claire’s Boutique and my black Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen.   It was nice and easy, which is perfect for a TGIF-kinda friday!

There’s only 5 days left of the challenge! The links will be open til Aug 5th for any last minute submissions… then we will pick our 4 random winners!  It’s pretty exciting!  From looking at the raffle numbers it looks like you’d have a good chance of winning too- especially if you’ve been participating everyday!  Good luck everyone!

26 Favorite Holiday/Vacation :

Day 9 of the OMD Challenge- Gold Textured Nails

Hey party people!  Ready for my day 9 TEXTURED post for the OMD Challenge?

I’m not going to talk too much today…. I’ll keep it short and sweet.  I had a stressful and busy day at work (what else is new?) and I feel like all I did was clickity clickity click on a keyboard all day!  And then I go home and clickity click some more?  Oh well, at least I have my nail polish to bring me some joy!

Here’s what I’m wearing……

mustard yellow ♥ Sinful Colors Pull Over (2 coats for a yellow?  yay!)

gold glitter ♥ OPI When Monkeys Fly!

textured polish ♥ OPI Liquid Sand What Wizardry is This? (love!)

gold gradient sponged on top of Liquid Sand ♥ Julie G Metallic Heels

I hope you likey! ! See you tomorrow for metallic day! Metallic, oooooh that should be fun! 

9. Textured :