Color Combination- Yum Candy!

Hello everyone! For this week I wanted to keep things simple. Every so often I just like to paint my nails a solid color, but of course, I don't just paint them in a boring way. So for this week I will be doing another color combination, a kind of combination that reminds me of candy.


As always, I like to include the polishes I use even if I am just doing a color combination:

Nail Polishes:  Revlon Extra Life No Chip Top Coat, Color Club- Daisy Does it, Color Club- Wing Fling, Color Club- Metamorphosis, Nicole by OPI- A Lit- Teal Bit of Love, and Wet n Wild- Glitter orange. 

For this week I wanted to keep in theme of bright and fun summer colors (even though unfortunately summer is coming to an end.) But I don't see anything wrong with painting your nails bright colors year round. 

For this color combination I used three of the colors from the Color Club 2012 Take Wing Collection. I started off by painting my thumb with Daisy does it a bright sunny yellow, then the index finger with Wing Fling a bright neon pink, and the middle finger with Metamorphosis a green or teal color (it just depends on the light sometimes it looks more green like in the photo above.) Then the other two colors I used that where not from the same collection are Nicole by OPI- A Lit- Teal Bit of Love (a bright blue) for the ring finger and Wet n Wild- Glitter orange (a bright orange) on the pinky finger. All of these colors where a little shear and required three coats to make each color to be opaque, but after three thin coats they turned out great.

  

This collection had six colors total the other three I did not buy were Fly with Me (a lime green like color), Sky High (a bright blue), and Sparkle and Soar (a bright orange, very similar to the color I used above.) Unfortunately I don't think you can purchase these in store, but you may be able to find them on line at Color Clubs website, Amazon, or Ebay. I originally found the three polishes that I got from this collection at Mejer. I really like color clubs polishes, but I have only been able to find these polishes every so often at Mejier in the area where I live at. As stated above, I substituted the two colors I didn't buy with an OPI and Wet n Wild color. Which I have recently still seen in stores, which if you can't find the Take Wing Collection you can always substitute these colors for another brand .

Hope all of you enjoyed this Yummy candy looking color combination!

See you next time for my next design tutorial!         

   

Magnificent finds: Cutex's Cotton Ball Holder

Hello everyone! today I have another Magnificent find to share with all of you. Have you ever just painted your nails and just messed up on one nail, or you just painted all of your nails and you look down at your toe nails and realize, I really should have taken off my toe nail polish first before doing my finger nails. Now you don't have to worry any more about messing up your manicure. 

I recently stumbled across this product at Meijer called Cutex's Cotton ball holder and thought it was pretty cool. I thought I would buy this product to see how well it works.

  Here's a Photo of the cotton ball holder in the package.

The simple instructions on the back of the packaging

The Cutex's cotton ball holder

I final got a chance to test this cotton ball holder out on my toe nails. My toe nail polish usually last longer than my finger nails, and I just don't keep up with them like I do with my finger nails. The Cutex's cotton ball holder seemed to work out okay for me. I ended up putting two cotton balls in the holder because when i just put one in it, did not seem to work as well (not sure if it was just the cotton balls I was using.) Also as you in see in the photo above, I wrapped the holder around my toe to remove the polish, and for my little toes, doing it this way seemed to work best.

Over all I do like this product. Before I found these holders I always used a sandwich bag over my hands (yes just a plain unused sandwich bag!) to prevent my finger nail polishes from getting messed up when removing my toe nail polish. So this is a different alliterative to what I have always used. 

So far I have only seen this at Meijer for around $2.00.

Hope everyone enjoyed this find and maybe even give this a try yourself.

       

Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride- Tropical Design

Aloha everyone! Once again I have a tropical themed nail design for all of you. I have really been in a tropical mood lately. Back in 2004 I went to Hawaii with my mom and brother, and I just fell in love with the place! Everything about Hawaii is just so beautiful and amazing. Along with how beautiful Hawaii, is the people that live there are also very nice and welcoming, and they treat everyone like you are part of their family (family is a big part of the Hawaiian culture.)  
One day very soon I hope to visit Hawaii again (I want to go back very badly), hopefully one day I will be able to visit all of the islands to see what beautiful scenery each island has to offer. Unfortunately right now there has been a few tropical storms that has hit Hawaii, I have not heard recently if there has been any damage or if anyone has gotten hurt (hopefully not.) Hopefully everyone and their families are safe. I would hate to see such a beautiful place be destroyed by a storm.

      Thought I would share this digital painting that I created in Photoshop 

a few months ago of a tropical sunset.  

Here are the nail polishes and tools I used for this tutorial:

 Nail polishes: Revlon Extra Life No Chip top coat, Color Club nail art in Black,

Sally Hansen- xtreme wear- White on, an orange polish, NYC- Midtown Mimosa, Revlon- Scented parfume- Not so Blueberry, and NYC- Water street blue

Nail tools: Just a makeup sponge (very few nail tools for this tutorial.) 
Also a precision tip Q-tip for cleaning up the side of your fingers.

The skill level for this tropical design is: 

 Intermediate

       
I decided to give this design a intermediate rating because I think this design has both somewhat hard parts to it and easy parts. For the more difficult parts, I ran into some trouble trying to get the gradients on the sponge to blend together. The easy part was creating the palm trees.   

1. Start off by painting all of you nails white, this will help all of your bright colors to pop!

2. Next take your makeup sponge and paint on 4 strips of color, and make sure to put a lot of polish on the sponge. Due to you painting on a sponge it will adsorb a lot of the nail polish. I first painted on purple, then yellow and orange for the sky, and the blue was supposed to be the water. 

 

The sponging technique I end up using was a little different than I have normally seen it done. I ended up cutting the sponge into 4 small pieces and individually sponging on the colors. This seem to work out better for me when I was trying to blend the colors together. But you can try which ever technique out and see which works better for you. 

 3. Now take your sponge and dab on the blue polish half way up on the bottom part of the nail (I will be showing the 2nd sponge technique that worked out for me.)

4. Next take your small sponge and paint that purple, then dab the purple half way up on the nail. Try to over lap the colors to start to create the gradient.

5. Now take another piece of sponge that you cut into a small piece and paint that yellow, again dab the yellow half way up the nail. Once again try to over lap the colors. Also, for some reason the yellow and orange I used started to make the white polish under those two colors come off and look a little weird, but the blue and purple worked out just fine.  

6. After you sponge on the yellow, finish off the gradient by sponging on orange. (Repeat the same steps as 3-5, they are all the same steps.)  Also if needed you can repaint you sponge with more polish and dab more polish to make the colors more opaque.

7. Now that you have finished your gradient sky (the blue was suppose to be the water, but I went up to high, so I decided the whole gradient would be the sky.) You may have noticed doing the gradient sponging is very messy. This can easily be fixed by taking a precision tip Q-tip dipped in nail polish remover, and removing the extra polish from the sides of your fingers.

8. Next, we will start to create the palm tree on a small island or hill. Take your black nail art polish and draw a small curve on the side of your nail and fill that in (Just like the photo above.)

9. Now we will create the trunk of the tree which is just a curved line. Once again, take your black nail art polish and draw a curved line.

10. The final step we will be creating are the leaves for the palm tree. Take your black nail art polish and draw 2 curved lines (they should look like arrows). Repeat this step 2 more times, then when you get to the top your leaves should look like a V. 

This is what your final palm trees should look like. Once your design has dried finish off this tropical look with a top coat.

Here is another photo of the tropical design. (For both of these photos I rotated the image that way all of you can see the way that it should be viewed.)

 Another extra photo of me holding a sea shell, thought it went well with the tropical theme.

  

Here is an extra design idea that all of you could try as some other options. Before I did my final design I felt that I needed to practice first. At first this was the design that I was going to do, but then I then decided to paint all of my nails with the sunset and palm trees, which ended up being the design I liked the best. (The 2 nails with just a black palm tree and leaf was just me practicing painting with my left hand.)

Hope everyone enjoyed this bright and colorful tropical design. Also, if anyone wanted to know why I titled this post Hawaiian roller coaster ride, that was a song that is in the Disney movie Lilo and Stitch (as you all know if you look at my Lilo post, I love that movie!) and when I created this design that title came to mind. 

Aloha and see you next time for my next nail design tutorial!

Nail Care

Hello everyone! Welcome to my second post for today on the subject of nail care! As stated in my 1st post about nail and cuticle care, their are more to nails than just painting them, you also need to take care of them as well.  

Once again I just want to start off my saying this is just the routine that I do to take care of my nails. I am not necessarily saying it is the right or wrong way.

Nail Polish Removers:

I'll first start off with one of the nail polish removers I like to use, the Sally Hansen Kwik Off polish remover. This polish remover has a sponge on the inside with 3 holes in it. 
I like this nail polish remover because it is a faster way to remove your polish, but this remover doesn't always remove all your polish. Sometimes if their is still polish left behind, I'll just take a cotton ball and remove the rest. The down side to polish particular remover is that in a short amount of time the remover inside get's dirty kind of fast. I tend to go through a lot of these, and every few months I have to buy a new one. 
 - Sally Hansen Kwik Off polish remover cost $2.19.

The 2nd polish remover I use if the Sally Hansen Kwik Off polish remover doesn't take off all my polish is the Up & Up dispenser pump. Right now I have a Meijer brand remover in this bottle that seems to work out. (I also did a review on this magnificent finds- dispenser pump) 

The last polish remover I use is the Up & Up acetone polish remover. I use this for removing stubborn glitter polish, and for clean up around my nails (this remover seems to remove the polish around my fingers better and quicker.) I don't like to use this that often due to the fact that it can leave my fingers feeling very dry.  

 - Up & Up acetone polish remover cost just $0.97 (very cheap!)

This is a glass jar I use to put the Up &Up acetone remover in to clean my nail art brushes while doing my nail art. At first I made the mistake of using a plastic jar, which melted due to the acetone. I got this small glass jar at Hobby lobby for I think around a $1. 

For nail polish thinner I use Beauty Secrets nail polish thinner. At first, I heard you can just put polish remover in your polish that has gotten thick, but I later found out that is a bad idea. That would mess up your polish in time. So I found this a Sally Beauty and thought I would give it a try. It seemed to work out okay, though at times it still seems like my polish is a little thick even after putting a few drops in.

 - Beauty Secrets nail polish thinner cost $4.29 at Sally Beauty stores.

For removing extra polish on my nails that the Kwik Off remover 

doesn't remove, I just use basic UP & Up cotton balls (I love Target!) 

For cleaning up the sides of my nails and cuticles I use Q-tips precision tips cotton swabs. (trust me these are needed, I tend to be a little messy when painting my nails and I get polish on the side of my fingers.) 

 Here's a photo of the precision tip Q-tip, this is great for getting polish that gets on the side of your finger and on the cuticles.   

 - Q-tips precision tips cotton swabs cost $2.99 at Rite Aid.

Nail filing and clipping:

The next items I use is for when I cut and file my nails. This kit is the Ms. Manicure set I bought years ago at Walmart (so I don't remember how much this was, and if they still even sell this anymore). I have also added a lot of different ideas to this, not all of the stuff shown was included in this. I also don't always use all of the items in this kit. 

When it comes to cutting and filing my nails, I do this once a month. I am not too sure if I really cut and file them right because every month when my nails start to grow out they start to feel very sharp. So I wont be going over how I cut and file my nails, just the tools I use. 

The first items I use when cutting my nails is that very large Trim nail clipper, I bought this in the hopes that when I cut my nails it would cut a little smoother. I also, at times,  just use a normal size nail clippers (the 2nd one in the photo). The 3rd and 4th nail clippers I use to cut hang nails or loose skin on the side of my fingers (gross!) For some reason those two are better for cutting hang nails (yes I use baby nail clippers, to get on the sides of my nails.) 

Next I file my nails. I first start off with the Sally Hansen La Cross Crystal nail file as this is supposed to be better for filing your nails by preventing cracking and breaking. Next I use the Kiss 4 way nail shaper (it has different grains, Medium 600- dark blue, Medium fine 400- light blue, Fine 240- light pink and Extra Fine 180- dark pink.) I usually just use the light blue and one or both of the pink sides. Then sometimes I use the purple Ms. Manicure metal file on the edges of my nails near the side of my fingers.

 - The Kiss 4 way nail shaper cost I think around $2.00.

 - The Sally Hansen La Cross Crystal nail file cost $8.99 at Ulta.

 Here is the other side of the Kiss 4 way nail shaper.

The next and final file I use is the Trim buffing block this has 4 sides to it to even out, smoothing, buffing, and shining. I usually just use the even out and smooth sides. Yes I do use a lot of nails flies when I file my nails, I really have no reason other than some of them seem to smooth in my nails better. But I know I really could lessen the amount of files I use. 

- The Trim buffing block cost $1.87 at Target and Meijer. 

 After I put on the Sally Hansen Instant Cuticle remover, I use ether a orange stick or this weird looking cuticle push shown in the photo above. This cuticle pusher is Trim's cuticle pusher and it also came with a small pink nail file as well. 

- The Trim cuticle pusher with buffer cost $4.48.

Last item in this kit that I use is this purple brush and sometimes this green baby looking brush to clean out dirt or anything that gets under my nails. 

Extra nail care items:

For one of my extra nail care items I wanted to include the Revlon extra life no chip top coat. I have tried out many different topcoats and have only really like 2 that I have tried out. When I first started to grow my nails out I used Sally Hansen No Chip Acyclic top coat. it seem to work very well for many years then I am not sure what happen, if that changed what was it the top coat or what happened. So I then decided to give this top coat a try and loved it ever since. 

Also included in my many steps in my nail and hand care routine is touch ups. Due to where I work at I get a lot of tip wear (probably more then others), which means I touch them up every other day to everyday (depending on how much my nail polish has chipped). I sometimes just touch up the tips with top coat and other times with both polish and top coat. Uselessly on a good wear week my nail polish last about a week.      

 - Revlon extra life no chip top coat cost around $5.00

Hope everyone enjoyed these 2 post about hand and cuticle care, and nail care. Maybe even give these products a try yourself. See you next time for more Magnificent nail art! 

Hand & Cuticle Care

Hello everyone! For this weeks post I wanted to do something a little different/ special to somewhat celebrate my birthday with all of you. This week I will be doing 2 post 1 about nail & cuticle care and the 2nd post about about nail care. As all of you know, their are more to nails than just painting them, you also need to take care of them as well. 
I have always found these kinds of posts interesting just to see what other people do and use for their nail care routine, so I thought I would share with all of you my nail, hand, and cuticle routines as well.

I just want to start off by saying this is just the routine that I do to take care of my hands and cuticles. It may not necessarily work for everyone,but feel free to give these products a try.

I will 1st start off with the product that I use before I paint my nails. After I take off my old nail polish I use this Premier Dead sea salt hand scrub. I just use a spoon full of the hand scrub and put it in my hands, rub my hands together, then take the small orange brush and rub the hand scrub on and under my nails, then rinse the hand scrub off with warm water and then dry my hands off. 

This hand scrub works well but is way too over priced. I bought this at the mall for $30, and it also came with body butter for $30 as well (that I didn't really like.). This is just way too much to spend on hand scrub and body butter. Unless you really like the product I do not recommend buying this due the price. Next time I will just be making my own hand scrub that will hopefully work just as well.

The next product that I sometimes use (I usually use this before I cut my nails) is the Sally Hansen Instant cuticle remover. The directions on the back tell you to squeeze on to the cuticles, wait 15 seconds, then gently push the cuticles back with a cuticle pusher. Then wash your hands with soap and water right away because it says on the box not to leave this product on for no longer than 1 minute. 

I do like this stuff, although at first I was unsure because it just seemed to make your cuticles feel really weird, so I was unsure if I was using it right (maybe I was not leaving it on long enough?) 
- Sally Hansen Instant cuticle remover cost $4.99. 

 Another cuticle product I absolutely love! Is the Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream. On the back of this product it says that this all natural, nourishes weak nails and softens dry cuticles. For this cuticle cream you just massage a little of this product into and around all of your nails.

As stated above I love this cuticle cream, it smells really good like lemonade and has the consistency of chap stick. I use this product every night and it really does work well. Before I  started to use this I had a problem with dry skin on the side of my nails (especially on the sides of my nails on my right hand.) Then, once I stared to use this around my nails every night, they became much better (I still sometimes have this problem, but not as much.) 

- Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream cost $5.99.

Last but not least is another product that I love, The Yes to Carrots Body Butter. This is another product that is supposed to be natural. This is a very thick lotion, that all you need is a small amount of. If you do end up using a little too much it can be a little greasy, but all you need to do is wipe some of it off and rub it in. The body butter does adsorb into your skin very well and if you use a small amount is not greasy.

This body butter works really well especially if you have dry skin. I use this body butter in the morning and at night after I apply the Burt's Bees cuticle cream. Sometimes due to where I live, in the winter months I use this lotion a little more just to help my hands from drying out and cracking. 

- The Yes to Carrots Body Butter cost $9.99.   


Also, the body butter and cuticle cream last me about a year, and the hand scrub and cuticle remover about 2 years. This is due to me only using a little at a time. A little goes a long way!  

Hope everyone enjoyed this hand and cuticle post and maybe even give these products a try for yourself. Also, don't forget to check out my post after this one on Nail care. 

Life's a Beach- Tropical Design

Hello everyone! Hope everyone is having a good summer, enjoying all the BBQ, swimming at the water park and the beach, and just enjoying the warm weather. For today's design I will be sticking with a similar theme like the Lilo nail design I recently did. A fun summer/ tropical  themed nail design.

This design will be based on my favorite thing to do in the summer, go to the beach and go swimming. 


As always here are the polishes and tools I used (You can always change the colors of the polish for a different look):

Polish- Revlon Extra Life No Chip top coat, 

(Optional polishes used: Color Club- Daisy Does it, and Del Sol- Starry Night)

Cover Girl- glosstinis Bahama Mama, Cover Girl- glosstinis Blue Hawaiian, Revlon- Gold Coin, Sinful Color- Midnight blue, NYC- Midtown Mimosa, NYC- big apple red creme, Sally Hansen- hard as nails- White on.

Tools- Glass jar with nail polish remover in it (for cleaning nail art brush), dotting tool, 
small nail art brush. 

The Skill level for this beach design is:

Beginner

Due to only 3 of the nails having a simple design on each of the nails and the other 2 nails just having a solid color on it, I gave this a beginner rating.   

1. Start off painting all of your nails (except the ring finger) with Bahama Mama. 

2. Next, paint your ring finger nail half way with Gold Coin (this will be the sand on the beach), leaving the top part of the nail blank for now.

3. Paint the top part above the gold with Blue Hawaiian (for the water), paint this as if you where doing a french manicure. 

4. Also on the middle finger paint the bottom half of the nail with Gold Coin (this will also be the sand on the beach). 

 5. Along with step 4, paint your thumb nail the same way, with Gold Coin on the bottom half (for the sand).

6. Next we will be make flip flops (or sandals) on the sand.On your ring finger take your dotting tool with Midnight Blue and create a dot, then drag your dotting tool down to create the bottom part of the sandal. I did this 2 times to create a pair of sandals. 

 

 7. After the blue polish has dried take your nail art pen and draw 2 upside down V's on the sandals for the straps. 

8. On the middle finger nail we will be creating a sunrise. Above the gold sand, take your dotting tool with Midtown Mimosa (yellow) and create a small oval for the sun. 

For an optional step you can add a glitter yellow over the solid yellow to give it a sparkly look (I used Daisy Does it.) Also, you can add glitter over the sand as well (I used Starry Night to give a subtle shine.)

 9. For the final design we will be make surfboards in the sand. Take your small nail art brush and White On polish start at the top or bottom, create a point on the top and bottom, and move the brush down on each side (make sure each side is curved.) I did this 2 time to create 2 surfboards. 

10. After the white polish has dried we will be adding a small bit of detail to the surfboards by adding 2 lines. Take your small nail art brush and big apple red creme polish and draw 1 vertical line on the surfboard on the left, then draw 1 horizontal line near the bottom of the surfboard on the right.  

Also, for another optional step, you can once again add a glitter polish to the sand ( I once again added Starry Night to give a subtle shine.)

Once your design has dried add a top coat. You now have a fun a simple beach design that you can wear on your next beach adventure. 

Another photo of the beach design, so you can see the way the design should be viewed.

(This is my right hand)

Photo of my right hand, on my thumb I deiced to put just 1 surfboard on my thumb nail.

Hope everyone enjoyed this summer beach themed nail design and enjoy the rest of this summer. 

See you next time for my next design tutorial!