Halloween fun!

There were so many designs I wanted to try for Halloween! So each week (with the exception of the week of my birthday) I did a new design! Here's how they turned out.

Chalk Board Nails

Of course the first thing I had to do after testing out my new matte top coat is a chalk board/chalk look. 

I know I say this every time, but I loved this look! My nails look awesome!

After doing the base coat and a couple coats of black, I used my Pinky Picasso nail polish pens to do the "writing." Then I used my matte top coat and viola! Chalkboards!

Matte Top Coat!!!

I finally splurged and bought myself a matte top coat for my nails! After some quick research on the interwebs I decided to go with Essie Matte About You. It seemed to be the most dramatic mattifying effect, which is what I wanted.

For my first look with my (not) shiny new top coat I decided to do black on black. Ba-BAM!

Left hand

A-mazing! I love the texture difference!! I used pretty much all the tricks I have to get all the different designs. Stamping plates, striping tape, dotting tools, those circle reinforcement stickers....all my tricks.

I used the pattern on the right from this one.

I used plates BM-319, BM-223, and BM-221 (for more info on the plates and where to buy them see my Circuit Boards! post).

I used the top center pattern from this one.

These are the circle reinforcement stickers I mentioned.

And I used the right pattern from this plate as well.

I painted my nails black first, a couple of coats. Then I painted on the matte top coat. Watching my nails slowly go from shiny to matte was like magic! I waited for that to dry (mostly, I am so impatient) and then did all the designs, obviously also in black.

Right hand

No top coat to finish these babies off like I usually would, because that would defeat the whole purpose of the two different textures. These were definitely fun. :D

Toes and Mishaps

So in this post I am going to show you some of my....not so great attempts. I know it seems silly to show off my less than perfect nail art, but I want this blog to be real. Although I will admit I do have a talent for this, I still mess up and have try out a new technique a couple times before I get right. And sometimes even I have an idea that I think will be awesome....but it isn't. So here are a few of my lesser nail art designs...except the first one, that one is awesome. ;)

I did my toenails with super cute french tips!

And then I used my Pinkie Picasso nail art pens to do the flower details on the big toes. My toes are freaking adorable.

When those needed to be redone I did cherry blossoms, which turned out, ehhh, so so...

 So I'd done this design on my nails before I did it on my toes and it looked far better on my nails. These just ended up looking like weird blobs.

See, way cuter on my nails. I did use a lighter brown for the "branch" part. I also just noticed that all my nails are weirdly rounded

Seriously, look at them, rounded tips do NOT look good on me, yich.

Which goes to show how important it is to find which nail shape is best for you. I personally prefer  the squarely rounded.

Next up was my first attempt at zebra stripes! I think they might have looked more zebra-y if I hadn't chosen super hyper colored nail polish...

 

The orange was supposed to be less orange and the "yellow" is actually green that just ended up looking neon yellow because of the base color. It really is just an all around mess, haha. For once though my natural shakiness and inability to draw a straight line worked for me!

For my next not so hot attempt..... I was actually trying to copy a picture I saw on pinterest and failed.

So this is what I was trying to copy.

This is my pinterest fail. Haha, it just did NOT work.

This is the other hand, it also looks less than fine.

So there you have it! Nobody is perfect, even me.  

Turquoise

I love turquoise jewelry. I love turquoise, it's just so gorgeous! I found a new technique on Pinterest that (1) looked really easy and (2) looked exactly like turquoise, so I had to try it!

After the base coat I used Sinful Colors Professional Nail Polish Enamel: 950 Savage for the turquoise color.

Then to get the "turquoise effect"... You filled a disposable container with room temperature water. Then drop a couple of  drops of black nail polish into the water and then spritz the surface with rubbing alcohol. Slowly dip the nail into the pattern you just created and BAM turquoise nails! I recommend taping around your nail or coating your skin in vaseline as it does get a smidge messy.

So when I did these nails I had no plans yet of starting a blog to chronicle my nail art so I don't have any pictures of the steps it took to get these nails. So here is the tutorial I found on pinterest; http://www.pinterest.com/pin/533324780845040652/

I topped this job off with the gel top coat...because it is awesome and I wanted it to last a while. :D

Pow! BAM! Whack!!

I did comic book inspired nails for the SLCC FanX back in April. I am proud of how well they turned out!

I used the following polishes.
White - Wet n Wild Shine Nail Polish, 449C
Black - Wet n Wild Shine Nail Polish, 424A
Blue - Pure Ice - Celestial 775CP
Yellow - Sally Hansen Hard as Nails, 610 Hard Lemonade
Green - Rimmel London 60 Seconds Nail Polish, 830 Camouflage
Red - Hard As Nails Extreme Wear Nail Color, 160 Cherry Red
Silver - Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear, 220 Celeb City

Plus of course, clear base and top coats.

I started with a couple coats of white, then using a dotting tool (in this case it was a large head pin stuck into the eraser of a pencil) I did the black dots. I did get help doing the dots on my right hand. Being right handed I'm not the best at painting with my left hand and all the dots looked more like smudges. :-S

Using a fine tipped brush I did the colorful parts. Then using a different color I added out lines to some of the jagged shapes. And then I used a super fine dotting tool I did my best to write the words. (The Pinky Picasso nail polish pens I got AT FanX would have made is SO much easier.) Some turned out really well, like POW and POP, others....looked better from farther away, haha. Over all though they turned out exactly how I pictured them in my head so I was happy.

Sorry for the poor quality, anyone who knows me knows I shake like a leaf in the wind, so my pictures are sometimes a little fuzzy.

I did a gel top coat on these ones so they would last longer, using a UV light made specifically for curing gel polish. It worked really well. Helpful tip though, make sure your nail polish is 100% dry before applying the gel top coat. Once the gel top coat is cured everything is sealed up and no air will get to the polish underneath. I made that mistake with these nail unfortunately so they only last a few days. Eventually the polish underneath started to crack and sort of bubble.

It didn't look bad, and I doubt anyone else looking at them would have noticed. But if anyone is like me, once there is one chip I have to pick off everything! I do NOT recommend this btw, haha, it's not good for your nails. Whenever I pick/peel my polish off I almost always damage the nail and have to trim them. So if you can resist the urge! Your nails will thank you.

Circuit boards!

I have been waiting forever to do these nails!! I finally got the nail stamping plates I ordered from Bundle Monster.

I ordered the nail stamping kit off amazon for under $5. I got the SHANY Stamping Nail Art Set. There are TONS of different brands and types of kits. I just picked a cheaper one that came with the stamper, the scraper, and the holder thingy (yes, that is the technical name). :)

And for this look I used Bundle Monster plate BM-145. The stamping plates are awesome. You can buy them in sets or individually from Bundle Monster. They are a little cheaper if you buy the whole set, but there were a few that I really wanted and I didn't want to buy several sets (the ones I really wanted weren't all in the same set). So I just bought the individual plates. Completely worth it though, I LOVE them!

There are some companies that sell the plates that insist you have to use their special nail polish in order for the stamping to work. And of course their "special" nail polish is more expensive. Admittedly my experience with these plates so far is extremely limited, but if you are patient and expect your first couple of tries to not be perfect, any nail polish works. I've used newer and older colors, and by that I mean freshly opened polish vs polish opened months ago. It all worked just fine.

Now on to my nails!

First I painted my clear base coat, and then I did a couple coats of Revlon Nail Enamel: Posh.

Seriously. They look awesome. I LOOOOOOOOVE them!!! :D

Then I used Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear, 220 Celeb City with the stamping plate. Finished it off with a clear top coat and I was done!

The stamper and the plates are super easy to use, pretty messy, but easy. I will hopefully in the future post a video on how to actually use it all.