Wintery/Holiday Nail Art

It's kind of last minute, but I finally got around to doing my "holiday" nail art...

Getting inspiration from my sister-in-law, and the nail magazine I got from Japan, I decided to do some plaid/argyle designs.

















The base is essie's "Masquerade Belle" and I used a white striper to make the white lines and diamonds. My gold striper wasn't working right, so I decided to use Sephora by OPI's "Rags to Rhinestones". I actually wanted to make green stripes with "Absinthe Makes the Heart" but the base came out too dark, so I had to give up on it...

For my toes, I wanted to do a "snowy winter" theme:

















The base is Nails Inc.'s "Baker Street". I put Nubar's "White Polka Dot" to mimic snow falling. I put a large snowflake on my right big toe, and Sherlock's blue scarf on my left big toe... (I had to, since the polish IS called "Baker Street"...) ;)  (The base is OPI's "Alpine Show".) I put a matte top coat over everything, to kind of mimic the snow's texture.

Next month, I'm going to the ISSE Beauty Show in Long Beach, so before that trip, I will have to think of my next "project"... ;)

happy birthday

This month is my birth month, so I wanted to do something special... ;P

I wanted to try out the "galaxy" nail art, and I got a sample bottle of "Happy Birthday" by Deborah Lippmann from Sephora, so I thought I would incorporate that too... ;)

I found some really cool polishes to work with... The base is Zoya's "Storm" to mimic outer space. The ring finger is the Deborah Lippmann's "Happy Birthday". The galaxies are made by Essie's "For the Twill of It" and Sephora by OPI's "It's All About Me". The thumb, I thought I'd make a heart with Sephora by OPI's "Bibbidi, Bobbidi, Pink!". Then, to recreate the stars I coated the entire nail with Nubar's "White Polka Dot".

I thought it came out pretty nicely... Using the make-up sponge to do the galaxies was pretty easy to do, and free-handing the heart turned out better than I thought. ;) (The color-changing "For the Twill of It" is perfect for the galaxy...) Next time, I might add some "brighter" stars and "twinkles" with some white polish. :)

random nail art...

Last month, I was able to take a week's vacation so I went back home, and decided to do my mom's and sister-in-law's nails while I was there...

My sister-in-law loves coffee, so we decided to do a coffee themed nail art.

I did a "mock latte art" on her thumb, so it kind of looks like a "latte heart"... She wanted something with donuts, so we did a tan one (with Zoya's Pixie Dust "Godiva") with some pink frosting and sprinkles... The rest of the nails we just did some simple marbling.

As for my mom's nails, well....I don't really know how to explain it....except that she wanted to put EVERYTHING on her nails... She likes animal prints, so I tried to do a zebra print, and some leopard spots on her left hand... I think the leopard spots came out ok. Her right hand, she wanted to put all sorts of stickers....so I just obliged... :P

As for me, I did a quickie mani/pedi yesterday, because I was thinking of going all out for next month (which is my birth month)... ;)  For the mani, I used Sally Hansen's "Big Money" and tokidoki's "Savana"... For my pedi, I went with Coral + Tiffany Blue and used Sephora by OPI's "Blasted Silver" over them.

yummy cupcakes!? ;D

 I saw a nail design in a Japanese magazine, where they made a strawberry shortcake design, and used textured nail polish to represent the cake part. So, that gave me an idea to try out a cupcake design using the same premise...

I made the frosting with acrylic, separately on a nail form, and glued them on my nail afterwards. I used OPI's Liquid Sand in "Pussy Galore" and "What Wizardry Is This?" for the pink and brown cake. The white/yellow cake is by Zoya's Pixie Dust in "Godiva". I used a rhinestone as a "cherry" on the chocolate frosting, and Nails Inc.'s "Sweets Way" and "Topping Lane" for the sprinkles on the vanilla and strawberry frosting.

I wanted to incorporate some cherries in the design, so I used some nail stickers on top of Sephora by OPI's "Havana Dreams" and some white polka dots. (I still need some practice with polka dots... ;P )

Overall, I'm satisfied with how it came out, but of course, there's always room for improvment. :)

 

Tiffany's are a girl's best friend...

I found a cute mani on Pinterest, that was inspired by the Tiffany and Co.'s packaging color, so I thought I would try it out for myself. ;) Apparently, China Glaze has a shade called "For Audrey" based on her movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's"... But my local beauty supply store's stock looked a little "sun-faded", so I decided to try their "Aquadelic".

I wanted to add some Tiffany jewelry designs and I needed a metallic polish, so I decided to use OPI's "DS Radiance". I went with their Locks Series, and their Beans Series. ;) I added some stickers and rhinestones and there you have it! I had to re-do my left thumb design, because the ribbon came out too thick, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. ;)

My next project: trying a cake/cupcake design with the textured nail polishes... :)

finally realizing my imagination...

So, my last manicure was kinda disappointing, so I thought I would try out something that I've been thinking about for a while...

I first did my pedicure, which was kind of spur-of-the-moment design. I wanted to use the Nails INC "Kensington Palace Gardens" because it was such a nice coral color. I wanted to use a contrasting color for a nail design so I used Sephora by OPI "Mermaid to Order" to make a little heart. I thought about using it for the other toes too, but I thought I would just put white polka dots. I've never done polka dots so my dot count is a little off... ;P

Then, I decided to put my imagination into fruition... I've always thought that the Victoria's Secrets bag was cute as a nail design, so I thought I'd finally try it out. I was surprised that I couldn't really find any previous nail designs on the internet, so I kinda just went with my own...

My teacher said I should've made it curve a little more on the french part, so that will be taken into consideration next time... ;) Making the stripes and the bow was pretty hard... But overall, I'm kinda liking it, and with a little more practice with drawing with my left hand, I should be able to get my right hand's design even with my left hand's... ;)

not my best work.... but practice makes perfect, i guess... ;P

So, I had this concept for "Strawberries+Ice+Cream" nail art.... (get it?, haha... :P) 

So, I did "Strawberries & Creme" for my toe nails...

I was going to put the "cap" (the leafy part) of the strawberry, but I got lazy so I put a flower sticker that kinda looks like a strawberry flower...

So, now my hands, which proved to be a little trickier than first conceptualized... (But it was probably because I didn't plan it out properly...)

This is my first attempt, with Nails Inc.'s Sweets Way and Topping Lane... I wanted to do like a marble/swirly effect, but it did not come out as expected...

I was pretty disappointed with it, so the next day, I decided to re-do the ring fingers, and just simply do one color... So here is the "revised" version...

The polish is Hello Kitty's Pink Sprinkles which seems to be a better match for my theme... ;P  I did do all my nails in gel, but since I had to re-do the ring fingers (and I didn't have time to pull out my gel gear again), these were done with just polish and I used Nail Inc.'s Kensington Caviar Gel Effect Top Coat, which looked just like gel when it was dry... (However, I managed to smush them while in the shower, so there you go, the downside to using regular polishes...) (- -;)

So these are not my best executions, but I'm going to see my dear niecey in a few days, so let's see if she gives out the same squeal as last time... ;)

Easter nails

So I actually did these last week... I decided to skip St. Patty's Day, and go ahead with Easter nails! I did my toes first, I used the Polka Dots series from Nubar nail polish, to create the "speckled eggs" effect. (I actually used both the white and black, to create a little more dimension...)

Then, I did my fingers on another day; it's a gel polish base, with regular nail polish colors, and the Nubar Polka Dots series. I added some Easter theme nail stickers, and voila! It came out better than I thought it would... ;P 

My favorite reaction to my nails was from my three year old niece, when every time she saw my nails she squealed, "Nails!!! (>▽<) "  (literally, she made that face...) ;)



so here's to a new me!

At lot has happened from the end of last year...

- I broke up with my boyfriend of 10+ years...
- I went on vacation to Australia to visit my friend...



 

real live koala!

sydney opera house

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, I'm trying to get back on track, and get back into my nail art... here's a simple one I did for Valentine's Day...

 

 

So, here's to many more cutesy nails!  ♪(*^^)o∀*∀o(^^*)♪