Paddy's Day Nails - Dots!

For Paddy's Day week this year I sported 2 nail styles for the week. This is the first one I tried. I decided thst for the actual day, this was just not enough sparkle and shine so I did something entirely different the night before (I'll post about that one tomorrow or the next day.) For this design, I just painted a green background and put a whole lot of white dots on top. Loooooove the dotting tool! I did my nails in well under 2 hours this time. Amazing for me!

The background is American Apparel's Hunter (#36504), the dots are just some basic white I have lying around. I think it's Sally Hanson. Any white should work fine. I find they're all about the same. Over the top is a layer of Sally Hanson's Diamond, which is aa clear polish with micro glitter in it. You can't really see it in the picture but it added so much in person. I love that polish. It is my go to polish when my nails just need a little more interest.

I gotta mention the American Apparel line. I've been dying to try their polish for ages. One If the bloggers I follow uses it in almost every design she does and I wanted to see how it stacks up. Didn't think I'd get to try it until the summer when I go away... but there's an American Apparel in the mall now!! Wee!! And it is great! the polish applied evenly and dried super quick. Both times I've used it, I could have gotten away with one coat if I hadn't have slipped up so much in application. Anyhoos, I highly recommend it!

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:

New tools and review

last week i didn't post when i painted my nails cause i didn't think anyone would care about a plain solid colour... kinda boring. but i'm going to post a pic now to show you how well the polish lasted after a full 7 days on my nails. this polish went the distance!

as you can see there is only a tiny bit of tip wear. and i worked for 5 out of the 7 days i had the polish on and let me tell you, my job is not easy on my nails. the colour is opi's suzi says fung shui. i absolutely love it! it came out last year as a part of their hong kong collection. oh, i should also mention that i use a pretty good top coat: seche vite. it definitely makes your polish go the distance. i kinda forgot to put topcoat on one hand of my last design and you could really tell the difference. the left hand chipped waaaay before the right hand. i should've taken pics to show the difference. oh well.

in other news, i made an awesome discovery at michael's yesterday. i went in to buy a fine tip paintbrush to do a special valentine's day design on my nails (to be posted tomorrow!) but i had a look around some of the other sections when i spotted an embossing toolkit. these embosser tools look exactly like nail dotters! and that's exactly what im going to use them for. sooo excited. and they were definitely waaay cheaper than "proper" nail dotting tools. i got a pack of 3 tools with various sized dots for $7. weee. can't wait to try them out.


these are the tools and the new paintbrush i got in their packaging. here's a closeup of the tools themselves:


come back and check again tomorrow. i'll post pics from my special valentine's day polish!

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.