new design

when i started painting my nails this evening i had a completely different idea for the design altogether. origanially i attempted to have a v shaped french manicure centred on the tip. fortunately, i soon gave up the notion of perfectly even polish and, instead, got a wonderfully asymmetrical design!


to get this look i freehanded the black tips, using more polish on one side of the nail than the other. then i took my purple striper polish and traced the edge of the black polish. i had to do this a couple of times to make the purple polish stand out a bit more. (although it still doesnt stand out as much as i'd like it to.) to create the flowers i used a toothpick dipped in polish to make small black dots in a circle. then i dotted the purple in the centre. for a little bit more interest, i added a small black dot to the centre of the purple. here's a closer look:



i find freehanding tips so much easier then trying to use those stupid french manicure stickers. all it takes is a bit of patience and a lot of practise! i'm still getting better at it... look at the mess i made on my cuticles! luckily nail polish doesn't stick to skin very well so those mistakes with wear away pretty quickly.

free man!

i wish i had thought of the idea for this nail art myself. i am such a nintendo girl that it is so fitting. my phone even occasionally buzzes with the sound of a 1-up when i get a text!


And this is how you achieve this look:



thanks cutepolish!

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...

christmas nails!

Take a look at the nail art I did this holiday season. I did all the artwork on the spur of the moment and just winged it it really. I painted my nails red and green and thought that was going to be festive enough. But it looked sooo boring. I had to do something more creative than simple colours. So I decided to draw a candy cane. It turned out so well that I experimented with christmas trees, snowflakes and glitter. Each hand is slightly different and I alternated the colour on each hand. Here are some more shots:



Im very excited to do my nails for new years! I havnt decided on a design yet, but I think it will involve sparkle.

black tips and blue sparkle

i know, i know, i havent posted anything in a while. don't worry! that doesnt mean i havent had anything fabulous done with my nails, it means that i have completely forgotton to take pictures before they have chipped. :( I also (rather randomly) moved about 2 weeks ago...

for the last three days i have been trying to decide on what to wear on my nails this time. i finally settled on doing a simple french tip in black underlined with a blue sparkle colour that ive had for a while but never used before. the camera flash really picks up the blue. it is not that intense in real life. i like it anyway.

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 :(

Purple Power

i was totally feeling the power of purple and decided to paint a simple french tip with 2 shades of purple. for the base i used a light purple. it's luxe lavender by avon. i'm not very impressed with this polish. the application was very clumpy and uneven. eventually i got it to look ok, but i dont recommend it. doesnt give me much hope about the grey avon colour i purchaced at the same time.

then i free handed a slanted vertical french tip in a deeper shade of purple: china glaze's tempest. i LOVE this colour! i had no trouble with application, except for my lack of skills. but i covered up my wobbly handiwork by painting a black stripe between the 2 colours. i think the black makes the look really pop. i used the stripe rite black, which is one of the nail art polishes with the rally thin brushes. it makes application really easy. i sealed the whole thing off with seche vite.