happy valentine's day!

i'm not normally a hearts kinda girl. but for some reason i couldn't resist the temptation to have valentine's day themed nails this year. i saw cutepolish's new video and decided it wasn't too too challenging. it's the first time i have attempted to sponge polish onto to my nails. i don't think i have the technique down quite yet, so i'm not totally happy with the results, but i'm not completely discouraged from trying it later on. i saw a video a while back on creating a gradient using a sponging technique and i might try that this weekend. if i dont decide to try harry potter nails, that is. we'll see!


these are all the polishes i used on my nails today. i didn't realize before how much sally hanson products i had. it's really a good quality yet affordable product. i've had the pink bottle so long that the cover had dried on and i had to get my roommate to take off the top for me! but it's still good!

Here's what i did:


and, yes! that is a piper's ad in the background.

here's how i did it:

sparkle and such

i've been terrible so far this year. I have failed to take one picture of wonderfully manicured nails to share. for new year's i did decide to go with the glitter, but not over the top, as such. more important to me this year was to match the nail polish colour to the colour of my shirt. and i amazingly managed to do it. OPI's Blue My Mind matched perfectly! i couldnt believe it. i did a french tip in the blue with a silver fine grain glitter stripe underneath. i coated the whole nail afterwards with a subtle glitter to give it a little bit more interest. wish i had a pic. unfortunatly, i did them in a rush and used a little too much polish so they chipped very quickly. but lesson learned: apply thin coats of polish for a more lawsting manicure!

currently my nails are sporting a super blinged out look. i have a pale pink base coat on the bottom (i forget the specific colour, but it is from sally hanson's extreme wear) and scrapbooking glitter on the top. in person they look awesome. i can't capture the brilliance in the photos. and they also looked way better when i first did them. erg! i gotta stop forgetting about my camera! anyway i'll post the pic regardless:


i really wish i had pink glitter to use on my nails. the silver is great, but i think with the subtle base coat i chose, pink glitter would go together much better. anyone know where i can get some?

anyway, i think it's about time i try my hand at water marbling again... wonder what i'll comee up with this time...

i got bored and painted my nails again

the title says it all! tonight i decided to swap my purple nails for pink, but i wanted more of a challenge. so that meant water marbling my tips. i tell ya one thing though, i will not be trying to use glitter polish in a water marble any more. the polish doesn't spread out evenly with the other colours. i couldn't get the patterns to swirl the right way at all.

tonight i swirled the sparkle with 3 avon colours in shades of pink: cherry jubilee, mulberry, and viva pink. the sparkle i chose was sally hanson diamond strength in colour 5 - diamond. then i swiped some white underneath with stripe rite to seperate the tips from the base. i used avon's adhesive base coat and then applied a thin coat of sally hanson's hard as nails in colour 9 - cotton candy, which is a shear pink colour and hardly noticeable. then i sealed the whole thing with seche vite. i'm ok with the results. but they are not as spectacular as i anticipated they would be. i actually think the picture makes then look better than they do in real life.

this time, i taped my nails to get the french tip and to avoid massive water marbling-related clean up. i gotta say, using the tape is worth all the hassle. i still need to do a little clean up, but it wont be the hours and hours i took me the last time i did water marbling. i still dont like the feeling of tape on my fingers :(