Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Braided Nail Art

I am seeing this new braided nail art technique popping up on Youtube. I thought it looked like it might be fun to try. I, in no way, am claiming that I came up with this idea.  I am just sharing my results. All of the videos I have watched did a full manicure with the technique. I didn't, for two reasons: I don't have time during the week to do that kind of labor intensive technique and I think it is way too much for all of my nails. I chose to just do accent nails.

This is in the shade:


This is in sunlight:


Now, this was very easy to do, but HOLY COW is the polish thick when you are all done. I think I will wear this tomorrow, but I will probably take it off tomorrow night. That is, if it doesn't just peel off my nails on its own! It makes my nails look acrylic and since my nails are natural, I prefer them to look that way :) Thanks so much for stopping by!

Polish I used:
Jessie's Girl All Things Girly and Mermaid Lagoon
Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Silver Sweep

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Sunday Nails

I always do a full manicure on Sunday mornings. This is the one day I make time to do my cuticles and nail treatments. The rest of the week, I change nail polish as I feel like it :) Never on a particualar day. Today, I decided to not do the normal brighter summer colors I would usually do this time of year and actually try my OPI Just Spotted The Lizard.
OPI The Amazing Spiderman Collection Nail Lacquer, Just Spotted the Lizard
 I got it when it first came out, but to me it is more of a fall color, so I haven't used it yet. It is the only one of the Spiderman collection colors that interested me and I really wish it looked as good on my nails as it did in the bottle. Of course my pictures are awful, I really need to figure out how everyone else does such great pics of their manicures!! This polish is so sheer! I am thinking I may see what it does layered over another polish in the future.

I did three coats of base color. Then I stamped just the tips (this was my first time using a french manicure stamp...little tricky to get lined up right) with Konad black special polish and Red Angel plate 101. Finally I used Seche Vite for a top coat.

 This picture was done inside. You can 'kinda' see the coloring shifting from green to gold to blue. I can actually see it better here than I can in real life! lol



These next two pictures are done in natural sunlight. It was hard to get a good picture in bright light because that is when the superfine microglitter shows up.


All in all, I like this nail polish. Not a huge favorite of mine. I am hoping that the new China Glaze Bohemian collection colors are better than this one. I don't see myself reaching for this one alot.
Thanks for visiting and stop by again!
If you have any requests, suggestions or feedback, I would love to hear it!

**edit**
Okay, so after wearing this nail polish for a few hours, I have to edit this post. I have decided that this polish DOES have a cool effect that I wasn't seeing before. I guess I was hoping for the colors to all show when just looking at it, but I realized that when I move my hands I do see all of the colors that show in the bottle. I should have videotaped it, but will try to show you with these two pics:

This one is just when looking straight at the nails in natural light. There is no flash, they are just so shiny that they pick up the small amount of light coming through a window. They are goldish-green.
Now, when I tilt my hand forward, they totally turn teal blue. I kept my pinky up to show the difference, ignore that it is out of focus. lol
So, I am beginning to like this polish more after further examination.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Some of my past designs...

Here is some of my early nail art. The Christmas one is from this past year, but the others are from when I first started doing nail art. Pardon the horrible pictures. I promise that I will get better at that.

Green nails with black tips and polka dots:

4th of July:

China Glaze For Audrey and black water marble w/ CG Fairy Dust:

Watermelon nails with CG Fairy Dust:


CG Ruby Pumps as base color. Handpainted Santa & Rudolph. Snowflake glitters on other nails:
Again, I promise I will take better pictures in the future. These were just pics that I was taking to put on Facebook and Pinterest before I decided that I wanted to start blogging about nail art :)

Thursday, July 19, 2012

WELCOME!

Welcome to my new blog. I am hoping to share lots of fun beauty tips with everyone. I love doing interesting things with my nails and I want to be able to share them with all of you. I will soon be adding a gallery of my past designs for inspiration. I also want to share reviews of various beauty products and the latest and greatest things that are hitting the market. So, again, welcome to my Nail File!