Valentines day is just over a day away! I've got 3 different designs for that special day :)

1st look:

The pink is Essie Fiji. Then the pink glitter is OPI from the Katy Perry collection. This is simple and tough all at the same time. The hard part is cutting out the heart shape. I used normal scotch tape. To get the heart I folded the tape in half to cut it out (just like in 3rd grade) but how do you pull the tape apart?? 

I folded the ends over to made tabs so I could pull the tape back open after making the heart. Then put it on your nail (like a stencil, when they are fully dry of course) and there you go!

Whats great about this is you can do other colors! Tomorrow I'm doing red nails with gold hearts.

Next!

This design is cute because it looks like the tops of hearts and a little like tulips too!

For this design you would use those round reinforcement stickers (if you don't know what I'm talking about look at my last post on half moon manicures) Just put two of these together to make this look. Here's what it looks like with the stickers:

And again, you can use any colors you like. For this I used two sinful colors and Essie fiji. You can find all these at walgreens. Essie runs a little high at about $8. But sinful is usually really cheap, like $2.

And lastly:

Again, sort of mixing hearts and flowers. If you aren't into the all pink and red for valentines you could do this! I used a deep bluish grey. Then a white nail art brush for the blades and red nail art brush for the hearts. This one is a little tougher and requires a little more technique. But try it out, and if it's not what you want, that's what polish remover is for! (seriously I go through that stuff so fast)

Hope you all have a great Valentines day this year! And let me know how your nails turn out!

I'M BACK!

  I'm finally back! Thanks to my soon to be niece Sarah telling me I need to get back to blogging!

I will try to be much better about keeping up with the blog in 2013. 

With that said, I'm starting with some pretty awesome nails, take a look:

I am in love with half moon manicures and have done many different versions but I am in love with this one.

The best part is, these half moon mani's are super easy.

Step 1:

Paint your nails with base color.

I used an OPI gold and just put it on like regular polish and let it dry.

Seriously, don't go on to the next step until you are super sure your nails are dry or it will get messy.

Step 2:

You will need to get those little stickers you use to fix ripped note book paper:

They are cheap and will last you for many many mani's. Plus if you're a student they may come in handy.

You are going to put these on your nail like this:

(yes, I know, my nails are already different, don't judge)

Step 3:

Once you've got the sticker on you can put on your next color, I used green. Well two greens actually. I don't have a dark shimmery emerald green so I took a deep Forrest green and put a bright shimmery green on top to create to color I have in this mani.

And there you go! You can leave it shiny or do what I did and use a Matte top coat on the lower part of the nail (green for this mani)

I think having the green matte adds more contrast and makes the manicure look way cooler.

Try it out and let me know how it goes!

leopard print nails

Sorry for the hiatus, been a busy month, but what better to come back with then leopard print!

leopard print is very simple, I've also done it with a red accent nail, which I really like. I also did alternating with red and leopard on every other nail which I also loved.

As far as doing the leopard print, start out with a nude or gold, which ever you prefer. Use this as the base color. 

Then use a brown or bronze, the color I used here is a bronze color by OPI. You don't need the nail art brush for this step, just blot on some dots with the corner of your brush, and they can be different shapes and sizes.

Lastly you use a black nail art brush and just sort of go around the bronze. What's great about leopard print is it's always different, it's ok if you aren't perfect with this and it will still turn out great! You can see in the picture how all the spots don't look the same. I also added a few plain little black dots if there was too much nude showing through in some places.

And there you go! Super simple and super cute!

Freddie Mercury nails

Today is Freddie Mercury's birthday, every year people celebrate Freddie for a Day and dress a Freddie and raise money for the Mercury Phoenix Trust. Today I dressed as Freddie, but I also had to do some nails of course.

Anyone who know me knows I'm a BIG Queen fan, but an even bigger fan of Freddie. I love that man, I find him so inspiring and am still in awe of his talent every time I hear a Queen song.

Freddie also had some great outfits, and that is where in inspiration for my nails came, so here's how they turned out:

Below the nails I added pictures of the various outfits I used as inspiration. The silver sequin unitard, the yellow jacket from the Wembley show, his outfit from "It's a hard life" music video, the harlequin unitard and of course the crown.

This took lots of different colors and thin brushes, ps- I did these in an hour, which I was pretty impressed with.

Hope you all enjoy, and if you can please donate to the Mercury Phoenix Trust so we can find a cure for the terrible disease that took this wonderful man and talent from us, the link to donate is below.

http://www.freddieforaday.com//en/Donate

Van Gogh Starry Night nails

So, I did these nails during the spring. Here is what they looked like:

and then the thumb:

I really don't even know how to explain how to do these nails. I just looked at the painting (via google images) and pictures of other takes on it with nail art and just had lots of colors, thin brushes, and lots of time.

So even though I can't give specific instructions, I thought these were cool so I wanted to share, hope ya'll enjoyed :)

News Paper nails

News paper nails are really simple and really cute. Here's what they look like:

So again, this is super simple. I used grey, and grey gives it that newspaper look but you could use any light color that the ink would show up on.

So step 1: paint your nails grey (or other color).

Step 2: let your nails dry completely

Step 3: dip your nail in rubbing alcohol, do one at a time. Then put a small piece of newspaper (I suggest cutting up pieces) on your nail. Make sure the newspaper gets completely wet from the rubbing alcohol. Hold it on there for 15 seconds and you're done!

Take off the newspaper and the ink will be left on your nail. Be sure to put a top coat on so the ink doesn't end up rubbing off.

I used a Beatles article, but it really doesn't matter what you use. This is quick and easy for people just starting out with nail art! Hope you enjoy!

Hunger Games nails

The Hunger Games came out on DVD yesterday, so I thought I'd show some Hunger Games nail art.

In the book it is mentioned that Katniss has flame nail art, even though it's not in the movie tons of people have been doing the fire nails with their individual take on what they think it would look like.

So here is the end result of today's nails:

I've done flame nails before and every time I've had the flames coming from the nail bed but I figured I'd try the flame coming from the tip of my nails today since I hadn't tried it like that yet. I also did the mockingjay for the first time.

So I started out with black. ***Quick note, when you are using a dark color like black, always put on a clear base coat first to prevent your nails from staining.

After the black I used China Glaze Riveting from the hunger games collection.  I tore off a little piece of make up sponge and used tweezers to hold the piece of sponge and just dabbed the orange on. Here is what my nails looked like after using just Riveting:

There is a nice shimmer to Riveting which is perfect when making a flame. After that I did the same thing (using the make up sponge) with China Glaze Electrify (also from the hunger games collection).

Electrify is a thicker glitter polish so I concentrated this color more on the tip then had little bits go up like sparks jumping at the top of the flame.

And that is all for the flame.

For the Mockingjay I used OPI Designer...De better. I started 3 times on this. The first too I took off with remover. I used the thin nail art brush to create the mockingjay and pulled up a picture of the mockingjay on google to go off of.

I only did the mockingjay on my left hand. Every other design I have done my left and right hands are the same, but I liked the idea of only one mockingjay, plus it would be hard to do on my right hand, possible, but hard. So I just did flames on all my nails, and here's a look: 

The flame design is very simple and the sponge really helps give the right look for the fire. You don't have to use tweezers to hold the sponge, I just found it easy that way since the piece of sponge I tore off was so small.

So there you have it, Happy Hunger Games everyone :)