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?

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 :

OMD Rather Awesome Challenge: Day 4 Black n White- Dreamcatcher

I have a quick post today for day 4 of our OMD Challenge….  It’s the Fourth of July in the US and I have plans to continue the celebration with some wine spritzers and cheeseburgers. 😀  I’ll make sure to keep my wits about me though- I still wanna squeeze in time for my next OMD mani later tonite!

The day 4 theme of our challenge is Black & White and I went with a dreamcatcher design.  I love dreamcatchers and I own a zillion of them… but it wasn’t until I saw the Polish Alcoholic’s dreamcatcher tutorial a few weeks ago that I became truly inspired to try it out!  Here’s what I used:

OPI Alpine Snow ♥ as my white base color

NYC Black Lace Creme ♥ with a detail brush for the dreamcatcher design

Zoya Carmen (red) ♥ with a dotting tool to make the ‘beads’

Pure Ice French Kiss (blue) ♥ with a dotting tool to make the ‘beads’

(I had to add a hint of red white n blue for the holiday!)

Hard Candy Black Tie Optional ♥ as a black n white glitter topper for my other nails

Hope you have a great day and are enjoying some nice weather in your neck of the woods!  See you tomorrow for SKITTLES DAY!

View the other black n white designs here:

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??

Rainbow Nails

The theme today is RAINBOWS!  It’s day 7 of the 30 Day Nail Challenge for April and I’m happy to use a bunch of polishes all at once!  My AVON order just came in this week so I’m psyched to try out my new yellow, green and blue!  Here’s what I used for this nail art:

Zoya ♥ Carmen

AVON ♥ Orange Creamsicle

AVON ♥ Inspire

AVON ♥ Garden Green

AVON ♥ Forget-Me-Not Blue

OPI ♥ Dutch ‘Ya Just Love OPI?

NYC ♥ Black Lace (and a striper brush to apply the accents)

Hope you’re all having a great weekend!  My weekend has officially plateaued- now that my nails are done I really need to start preparing my federal taxes.  What a downer!

Patterned Native American Nails in Red

I’m excited that today is day 1 of April Nail Art Challenge!

Julie from Short And Sweet In Texas organized this month-long nail painting extravaganza!

The theme of Day 1 is RED.  So here’s my red manicure:

I used four different red polishes and a dotting tool to make the native american pattern.  To avoid having the glossiness distract from the design I then topped it off with one coat of my MASH matte top coat.  This was pretty easy to do… but because of lighting I couldn’t get a good pic!  It’s one of those manis that looks better in real life … we’ve all had them before! lol  Here’s the red polishes I used-

OPI ♥ Grand Canyon Sunset

Zoya ♥ Carmen

Orly ♥ Naughty

AVON ♥ Ruby Slipper

If you are interested in joining the nail art challenge – it’s not too late!  Just paint your nails and post them online!  It will be fun!   Here’s the info.

VIEW THE OTHER SUBMISSIONS HERE!!!!