Little Twin Stars-Paper Tape Nail Art

Wow, I can't believe half the year has gone since my last post... :P  In a way a lot has been going on, but in some ways not, and I was just not in the mood/creative state of mind...

A couple months back, I was at a Japanese-y stationery store, and I found some cute paper tape that looks like newspaper. So, I thought it would be nice to re-do my "rose bouquet wrapped in newspaper" nail art that I did a while ago here.

For those who don't know what "paper tape" is, it's actually called "Washi Tape" (which literally means "Japanese Paper Tape"), and it's mainly used for gift wrap or decoration. The stickiness isn't that strong, so it's easy to remove and re-position. That being said, it has its pros and cons for nail art.

Anyway, last week I visited my local Sanrio (Hello Kitty) store, and they had some character "paper tapes" for pretty cheap. I always wanted to do a Little Twin Stars design, so I bought a roll of that. Then I found a roll with Cinnamoroll with unicorns (two of my favorite things), so I bought one of that also.

So, I decided to try out the Little Twin Stars design this time, since it's almost "Tanabata", which I did a nail art for it, a while ago here. I know that Kiki and Lala are brother/sister, but the boy-girl-stars combination reminded me of "Tanabata."

The first pic is my left hand, with the big fat star on the ring finger. The second pic is my right hand, with the fat curly crescent moon on the ring finger. This time I actually used a light layer of Gelish gel as the base, and the base color is my go-to Vinylux in "Cream Puff." As you can see, I cut up the tape to use different parts of it on my thumb and middle finger. The right thumb is actually two pieces because Kiki and Lala were separate. I made a big fluffy cloud on my pointer, using Essie's "Stones N Roses" and layered on Sally Hansen's Xtreme Wear in "Perky Pink" to add a little sparkle. The colorful glitter around the horses is Deborah Lippmann's "Happy Birthday" which I've used a few times before. For the moon and the star, I used the Hello Kitty nail polish from Sephora in "Banana Cream", and added a little glitter outline to make it more defined. On the pinkies, I just stuck on a nail sticker that I got in a goody bag from a nail show.

As I mentioned earlier, the paper tape isn't that sticky, so it's really easy to re-position it. The bad(?) thing about it is, it could start curling outwards and peel off easily... :(  So for my top coat, I decided to use a non-wipe gel top coat that also came in the goody bag from the nail show. Even then, I put on several layers just to make sure that it was secured. I even had to flash-cure, push down on the edges that were sticking up, and then complete-cure it. Hopefully this will make my nail art last long, but we'll see how it goes.

As you can see, the pink clouds kind of got "wrinkled", I think because the nail polish was too thick and didn't completely dry when I cured the gel top coat. It's happened to me before, and it sucks, but overall I'm really happy with how it looks. The hardest part was drawing the moon and star, especially drawing the moon with my left hand... :P  I thought the moon would be easier to draw than a star, but I still had difficulty.

Well, I still have my Cinnamoroll/unicorn "paper tape", so maybe next time I'll think of a design using that... :)

Snowy Love Nail Art

It's been a LONG while since my last post... :P

Things have been hectic... A lot of things have been going on, good and bad... And since my nails have been bare for quite some time now, and I finally got a little breathing room, I thought I'd do a quickie nail art for winter/early-Valentine's?... My right thumb nail was peeling, so originally I wanted to do something with glitter, since they are so hard to come off. ;)

For my birthday, my friend gave me this pink glittery nail polish from The Face Shop, and I thought it would be nice to use it. But I also wanted to add a little more dimension and try to portray a little winter-ness, so I decided to layer on OPI's "Snow Globetrotter." This picture is a little blurry (probably because of all the glitter, and I did it at night... LOL), but I used the pink glitter polish as a gradation from the tips, and on the ring finger (it's hard to see) but I made it into a heart using the corner of my nail.

Then I added the big chunky glitter of "Snow Globetrotter" in the 'negative space' and did a second coat with the smaller glitter over the entire nail. Of course, as always, my base was CND Vinylux's "Lavishly Loved" to keep the nude color of my nails.

I'm not sure if it's because I used TOO much glitter, but certain areas have started chipping after less than a week... :P But overall, I really liked the design, and it reminded me of the time I used regular polish to mimic clear nails. (I did this before I even got my nail license, and I even fooled a store clerk into thinking they were actual clear nails.) ;) But it made me want to try doing the "mock clear nails" thing again... The only thing is that it looks much better if your nails are a little bit longer, and it's been a while since I've actually grown out my nails past my fingers... LOL Well, something to consider in the future, I guess... And I think I'll need to come up with a new design for February, but I think that will depend on what happens in the next couple of weeks... :P