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?

Snowfetti Sandwich

I distinctly remember trying to make a wintery jelly sandwich this same time last year. It was right after the holidays, early 2013, and I tried probably 4 different white jelly sandwiches (all of which were complete fails and they never made it to the blog)!  But in the last year I’ve accumulated a few (ahem) new polishes… so let’s try it again!

I wanted my jelly sandwich to be white, shimmery, and with some slight multi-colored glitter effect to look like snowflakes.  Let’s see what I came up with…

It has many layers (8 layers to be exact), but I love it!  I will call this my snowfetti sandwich.  It also pairs perfectly with the winter weather advisory that we’re having in upstate NY right now!

Here’s what I’m wearing…

♥ Sally Hansen Maximum Strength (one coat) as my base coat

♥ OPI Alpine Snow (one coat) as my white base color

♥ Funky Fingers Jawbreaker (one coat) for some colored glitter w/a creamy base

♥ Wet n Wild Megalast Break The Ice as a sheer white topper (three coats)

♥ OPI Lights of Emerald City (one coat) for some fun square glitter on top

♥ Seche Vite topcoat (one coat)

I just love Lights of Emerald City by OPI!  It’s probably my favorite glitter topper ever!  My boyfriend’s mom got it for me for my birthday over the summer and I’ve worn it three times so far on the blog.  The square glitters in there are so unique, and the fact they’re white helps soften them so they blend perfectly into your manis.  I hope OPI keeps making glitters like this one!

A quick FYI… the January Nail Art Ideas Linkup themes are coming out real soon!  So keep your eyes peeled for the announcement!  The January N.A.I.L. linkup will start Jan 5th 2014.   

Winter Solstice Nails

Week 3 of December’s Nail Art Ideas Linkup is WINTER SOLSTICE.  December 21st is the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere (that date is also the summer solstice for the southern hemisphere).  The sun is the lowest in the sky during the winter solstice and it’s also the one day of the year with the least sunlight.  I was googling images for the solstice for some nailspiration and most of the images had the moon in them.  Which is kind of weird considering the solstice is all about the sun’s position, but hey, I’m a cancer moonchild so I’m happy to do another lunar design.  I wanted to incorporate the moon and some blue wintery colors.  Here’s what I came up with…

I used Nailuminium’s tutorial for inspiration.  Check it out here: CANDY TRIP TUTORIAL by NAILUMINIUM.  Her candy trip swirl nails are amazing!!!!  I’ve been wanting to try them out for a while now!  I should’ve stuck to her tutorial and made all my nails swirly, but I got a little too creative and made some different patterns.  Like my weird ring finger which does not look as cool as my swirly pointer finger!  Oh well!

I like this kinda nail art since it doesn’t require any special planning or concentration.  Sure, it took a long time, but I didn’t burn through any brain cells in the process…. I just kept painting swirl upon swirl until the nails were filled with designs! Lookit, even my right hand came out great!! ↓

I used nail polish for this design.  I never really use acrylics, but they would work fine too (Nailuminium used acrylics in her tutorial).  I started with a good base coat and two coats of OPI Alpine Snow.  Then I painted my swirls with a nail art brush and a few different colors.  I used a silver, a dark blue, a light blue and a mint green.

As for my moons, the craters look cool I think! The moons was painted with Zoya Dove and I made craters by making a big dark dot, then a smaller lighter dot inside.  They’re kinda cute- I might have to try some more moon nails!

So what do you think?  Did this spark your creativity to come up with a WINTER SOLSTICE design too???  Here’s the inlink for our #NAILLINKUP if you’d like to join!

N.A.I.L. December Theme 3 – Winter Solstice

Candy swirls for my friends

Hey all!  I haven’t posted in a few days but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been doin lotsa nail designs!   I’ve been busy making some festive diy nail decals using some of my moyou plates…and I also did some holiday candy swirl manicures for my friends.  Let’s check them out….

For Vanessa’s nails we didn’t really have a plan, but we wanted to go with glittery red and gold.  I started with two coats of Butter London Chancer, a red glitter that glows just like Dorothy’s shoes!  Then we dotted her ring fingers to created some triangular christmas tree shapes.  Accent nails are always fun!  Then for the other fingers we sponged some gold glitter on the tips.  It looked so festive and glimmery, but we didn’t stop there… we were on a roll.  Vanessa wanted some stamping on top for extra pizazz so we decided on MoYou Festive 03 plate which has a cute peppermint candy swirl design.  We used a silver polish for stamping, but then I free-hand outlined the stamp with some dark green polish to make the swirl stand out.  I really like the effect that the outline created.  We also added some rhinestone bling to the center of each nail and on top of our accent nail xmas trees!  Here they are ↓

Vanessa’s nail are usually much longer but she had to cut them recently for her piano class.  She also has an upcoming piano recital for her final grade.  Pianists nails should be short and simple so I hope these nails don’t get in the way during her recital.  However, I think she should get extra credit for nails like these.  Don’t you agree?  😉

Now let’s take a look at the nails I did for Sue!  The candy swirl design was a winner in my mind, so I tried it again on Sue’s nails, but using a different color combo.  Check them out↓

I used a cream white OPI called Alpine Snow as a base color and then stamped on top using a red holo called Sparkle Ruby by L.A. Girl.  It’s funny how the photos look like we used pink instead of red. We decided to use a photo editing filter to fancy up the pics- but they still look pink.  Oh well!

We hope that Sue’s candy swirl manicure lasts a while since she has some MBA graduation festivities coming up.  I used Orly Bonder as a basecoat so hopefully they will withstand the test of time.  🙂  And congrats to Sue on her MBA- all her hard work has paid off and I’m so proud of her!

If anyone wants to drive themselves over to my house- I’ll gladly paint your nails too!  But we just got slammed with a massive snowfall in NY so I assume most of my friends will be hibernating this weekend. 🙂

See you tomorrow for my next holiday manicure!  The theme for our December NAIL LINKUP this week is SHOPPING and I have some fun homemade nail decals to show you.  Cheers!

Snow Bunny Nails!

I don’t want to write this whole post in Caps Lock mode… so you’ll have to take my word for it– I am excited over here!!!!!!!   Nail Polish Canada is hosting their 2nd Annual Holiday Nail Art Challenge and I’m participating this year!  They were going to announce the first theme yesterday so I basically spent all my free time obsessively checking my email waiting for the prompt! 🙂 Upon finding out that the theme is SNOW I quickly thought of SNOW BUNNIES!  You skiers out there may enjoy this nail art!  Here are my cute snow bunnies skiing down the slope…

You can click THIS LINK to see all the contestants’ manicures.  If you’d like to vote for mine simply enter your name and your email and then pick CRAFTYNAIL.COM from the list of participants.  Whomever gets the most votes this week wins a bunch of nail polishes from Nail Polish Canada.  I clearly don’t have enough nail polishes, so thank you in advance! 😉  And may the odds be ever in my favor! ha!

I really love my lil bunnies and trees and I’d like to give credit to this cutie graphic I found online (which was the perfect inspiration for this mani).  Of course painting a tiny little ski bunny was a challenge, but hey- I’m up for a good challenge! It probably would’ve been much easier with acrylic paints, but what can I say?  I’m a nail polish kinda girl. 🙂

I made my own nail decals by hand-painting my snowbunnies and trees with nail polish onto a plastic baggy.  I waited overnight for the I decals to dry and then placed them over my blue and teal painted nails.  I put some white dots on top to look like lil snowflakes and then topped them with seche vite.  I love diy nail decals because when you topcoat them they melt down and adhere to your nail like magic.  Oh, I also would like to mention that my bunnies and snow flakes were painted using OPI’s Alpine Snow.  So maybe I should call this mani Alpine Snow Bunnies? 😀

This manicure really got me into the holiday spirit!  It even snowed here in NY today.  I’m really feelin it now!!!!!!!  Don’t forget to vote for your fave snowy nails here and Happy Holidays!

-Craftynail xx

Back To School Nails

September’s here!  And Nail Art Ideas Linkup has four fresh themes for the month!  Here are my BACK TO SCHOOL nails for week one. I’m wearing…

WHITE ♥ Alpine Snow by OPI

BLUE ♥ Blue Me Away by Sally Hansen

RED ♥ Fame Fatal by Essence

GREEN ♥ Lucky Duck by Orly

BLACK ♥ Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen

The links are open ’til Sept 8 2013 so you have several days if you’d like to submit a back to school mani too!

Day 23 of OMD Challenge- Equalizer Nails

Day 23 is all about music!  I’m on a bit of a stamping kick lately… but I’ll go ahead and post my 3rd stamp design in a row! 

I’m wearing EQUALIZER NAILS today!  A few other girls in the Oh Mon Dieu Nail Challenge had the same equalizer idea.  I guess we were on the same wavelength: check out Vic’s and Seize the Nail’s designs!   I was the only one that ‘cheated’ by using a stamp though! LOL

For my look I started with two coats of Alpine Snow by OPI.  When that was dry I sponged on stripes of four bright neon colors.  Then I topped it off with my CH31 Cheeky stamp and Konad black polish.  That cheeky stamp is very wide!  I had a lot of black polish to clean up off my skin!  Fun times.
Here’s the bright colors that I’m wearing:

RED ♥ Zoya Carmen (looks pink over top of my white base!)

ORANGE ♥ China Glaze Sun Worshiper (so bright!)

YELLOW ♥ China Glaze Yellow Polka Dot Bikini (highlighter yellow)

GREEN ♥ Cynthia Rowley Neon Green (un-named)

This mani was fun!  Easy to do on both hands too.  The funny thing is, I had a nail break on my dominant right hand last week, so I recently shortened all my nails, especially on that hand.  Turns out, it was so much easier to stamp on those shorter nails.  I kinda feel like going even shorter now!  I’ve noticed that my nail length has fluctuated a bit since I’ve started blogging.  They have been super long (here) and kinda short (here)… but I haven’t really settled on my signature length yet.  Not sure if I ever will!  I’m not habitual or predictable and I guess I change my mind a lot.  I’m the type of person that manages to do the same thing different every time!  So right now I want short nails.  In a week I’ll probably want them long again.  Who knows!

Check out the remaining themes for July↓  They get verrry interestingggg….. better put my creativity cap on!

23. Music Themed :