Ready for some Football?

Hello everyone! It's that time again for the Super Bowl! If any of you nail lovers also like football, then you may already know that the teams that are playing this year are the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks. 
To celebrate the Super Bowl, for this week I decided to create a Super Bowl themed nail design for all of you.  

Final nail design- 2015 Super bowl nail design

Here are the nail polishes and tools that are used in this Super Bowl nail design:

Top Coat and Base Coat- Revlon Extra Life No Chip top coat and - Nicole OPI-  3in1- base, top, & strengthener.

Nail polish- Sinful Color- HD Nails, Jane- Bolt from the blue, Sally Hansen- xtreme wear- White on, NYC- big apple red creme, NYC- Brownstone, and Sinful Color- Midnight blue.

Nail art polishes- Kiss nail art- White and Silver.

Nail art tools- Tape and scissors (not many tools at all other than the nail art polishes)

The Skill level for this Super Bowl nail design is:

   Beginner

This nail design for the most part is simple, with the use of tape as a guide for the team colors and simple designs for the field and football, makes this design good for beginners. The only thing that can be a little bit hard is trying to get the lines straight for the field and the football.

Now let's begin this Super Bowl nail design!  

1. As always start off with a thin layer of base coat

2. Paint your thumb and pinky nail green for the grass, the ring finger brown for the football. For now leave the index and middle nail blank, we will do that next.

3. Next we will be making the design for the two teams. Cut four thin pieces of tape,then place the tape on your hand a few times to make the tape less sticky, you don't want to take up your base coat. Then place two pieces of tape on your nail, one across the tip and the other on a slant (like the photo above.)

4. Once you have placed the tape on the nail. On the index nail paint a navy blue on the top and a green in the middle for the Seahawks. On the middle finger paint a silver on the top and a white in the middle for the Patriots. 

5. Once you have the colors opaque enough take the tape off. You don't need to let the polish dry. 

6. If needed you can fix the area that you just painted a little bit wider (which I need to do.) Then take your navy blue and paint the tip of the nail.

7. Then take a silver polish and fill in the last blank space. I found it a little bit easier to use a nail art stripper/ polish, this helped to try and get the lines straight. Now you have the design for the Seahawks.

    

8 &9. For these two steps repeat steps 6 and 7 for the Patriots design.

10. Next we will make the football field on the thumb nail and pinky nail. Take your white nail art polish/ stripper and slowly make a thin line at the top and bottom of the nail. 

11. Then once again make small thin lines on both sides for the yard lines. Once you finished the thumb nail, do the same thing on the pinky nail.

12. Last but not least is the football on the ring finger. Take your white nail art polish/ stripper and at the top and bottom of the nail make two thin lines, then fill that in. 

13. To finish off the football, we will make the stitching of the football. Once again take your white nail art polish/ stripper, draw a small line in the middle, and draw a few small lines over that line. 

One your Super Bowl ready nails have dried, apply a shine top coat on all the nails except the ringer finger nail or the football nail. For the football apply a matte topcoat, for a more football look.  

For this design, whichever team you are routing for you can paint your index and middle both either the New England Patriots or the Seattle Seahawks. 

Hope all of you enjoyed this Super bowl nail design. This is a great way to show your team spirit at the Super Bowl parties you attend or if you are lucky enough to go to the game.

See you next time for my next design tutorial!    

It's Freezing Outside- Blue glitter gradient

Hello everyone! For this weeks post I wanted to create a winter themed nail design for all of you. It has been another cold and snowy winter (at least where I live) and I thought I would show all of you a simple blue glitter gradient design, to help all of you get through this cold winter with some cool nail designs.

 Final winter/ freezing nail design, left hand

 Here are the polishes and nail tools used to create this blue glitter gradient nail design:

Top coat and base coat - Revlon Extra Life No Chip top coat and - Nicole OPI-  3in1- base, top, & strengthener.

Nail polishes- Sinful Color- Cinderella, NYC- Water street blue, JulieG- Blueberry Fizz- texture, Color Club- Halo's- Blue Heaven, 
Cover Girl- Boundless color- Disco dazzle (this polish you can't find in stores, this is an old polish that I have that is still good, but you can find ones that are very similar to this in stores.)
,and Color Club-  Mini- Silver Glitter.

Nail art tools- Makeup sponge for gradient

* I decided to retake the nail polish photos. I have been using a different set up to take photos of the polishes and the final nail design, that hopefully looks a little bit better. 

The Skill level for this blue glitter gradient nail design is:

Beginner Basic

This is a very simple nail design that is great for beginners. This design consist of just painting your nails a solid color of light blue, then sponging on a little bit darker blue, then adding glitter with large and small glitter pieces, then for a final touch add a little more glitter on the tips of the nail.

Now let's begin this winter/ freezing nail design! 

*Just a tip, it is best to work quickly to try and get the two colors to blend together as best as you can.

1. Start off with a thin layer of base coat.

Last week when I did the post about the Zoya dream box, I actually broke my index nail on my left hand at work. Unsure if you can tell from last weeks post and this week, I had to cut my nails a little bit shorter then I usually do. But luckly I was able to save most of my nail, even though at first I thought I broke it in a bad spot.  

2. Paint all of your nails a light blue, except for your ring finger this will be the accent nail. On the left hand I paint the ring finger with a blue textured polish and then the right ring finger nail with a blue holographic polish, just to change things up a little bit.

3. Next take you makeup sponge and cut a small piece of it, then paint a small bit of the sponge with a little bit darker blue polish. 

4. Then take your sponge and dab the polish on the nail, the tip of the nail should have more polish/ be darker, then the color should almost fade into the lighter blue, by dabbing less polish on the nail the farther you go on the nail.

5. For this step you do not need to wait for the blue polish that you just sponged to dry. You take a glitter polish that has small and large glitter pieces in it and right away polish over the blue that you just sponged on. This can help to blend in the color. 

6. For a final touch take another glitter polish that has small glitter pieces and paint the just tips of your nails, for more of a frosty look. 

Left nail design with Julie G- Blueberry Fizz textured polish on the ring finger. 

Right nail design with Color Club- Holographic- Blue Heaven on the ring finger.

Once your nail design has dried dried finish off this look with a top coat. Now you have a beautiful winter theme nail design, that will hopefully take away your winter blues, well at least until the weather gets warmer. 

 Hope all of you enjoyed this winter/ freezing nail design and try to stay warm for the next few months of winter we have left.

See you next time for my next design tutorial!

Got Dry hands? Working hands cream

Hello everyone! This is an extra post that I have been meaning to do for a while now. Now that it is winter time dry skin can be a big problem for many of us. Especially when having dry hands can be a pain, literally. When it is extra cold outside it seems like even all the extra lotion you have been using is still not working. 
I was recently looking up some lotions and creams online, specifically for brands that are good for extra dry skin. Then I stumbled across this cream called O'Keeffe's Working hands cream. After looking up what the product does and some reviews, I decided to pick this product up.  

When the weather gets very cold, even the products that I have mentioned in my hand and cuticle post, the Yes to Carrots body butter on it's own still does not seem to help when it normally does. My knuckles get very dry, and crackled, and just hurt very bad. The working hands cream I actually picked up for my finance' to try on his dry hands, his hands get really dry and cracked. But once it got really cold out and my knuckles started to dry out again I figured I would give this hand cream a try.   

       The O'Keeffe's Working hands cream in the package, kind of. 

I opened this before I thought of doing a review on it.  

The back of the packaging with the directions

This hand cream according to the directions on the back says to apply this sparingly, that a little goes a long way. To apply this cream throughout the day, mainly after washing hands or bathing, and the best time to use this would be at bed time when it is most effective. Also if your hands are very dry it is best to use this before bed and three times daily for about a week. 

This hand cream works wonders! It really does what it says for very dry hands. After using this for only a few days it helped my dry knuckles to no long be dry and cracked. I use this with the Yes to Carrots body butter,and Burt's Bees Lemon butter cuticle cream at night. In the morning for the first few weeks I would still use the Yes to carrots body butter then through out the day I would put the Working Hands cream on my knuckles. Now I just use the Yes to Carrots body butter in the morning. Even though my hands seem to be better I still put this hand cream on to help that problem from coming back.

          The O'Keedde's Working Hands cream is a very thick, non- greasy, and orderless. That really works on dry, crakced, and splitting  hands!

I highly recommend this product if you need something a little extra for your dry hands. 

I still use the Yes to Carrots Body butter in the morning. At night I use the Yes to Carrots Body butter, Burt's Bee Cuticle cream, and the O'Keeffe's Working hands cream just on my knuckles and very dry spots. Then before I do my nails I use the Yes to Coconut body scrub. I know this may seem like a lot, but this is just what I use to try and keep my hands looking nice. I will most likely just be using the Working hands cream in the winter time,when my hands tend to dry out the most.

You can find this at any drug store like CVS pharmacy, Rite Aid, and Walgreen's.

I found this at Rite Aid for about $6.49. My fiance and I have both been using this for a few months and their is still a lot of product left. 

Hope all of you found this post helpful and hope all of you check out the usually M.M.M Friday post about nail design!

Aurora, Dream- Zoya Dream Box

Hello everyone! Sorry for the lack of a post last week. I unfortunately brought in the New Year sick, and didn't feel up to doing a post. I work on my nails and blog post the weekend before then post that Friday. 
Anyways for this week, I ordered some polishes around Christmas time from Zoya, and have been very excited to try out these polishes and show them to all of you. 
On Zoya's website you can get Dream Boxes that have three different colors. When I ordered this back in December 2014 (a month ago) you could build your own Dream Box, by picking out any three colors from the Zoya polishes. But I just looked at the web site and unfortunately I do not see the ability to make your own Dream Box, just the pre-made boxes. Maybe this was something special for the holidays, but hopefully they will bring that back.

Here is the Zoya Dream box

The Zoya Dream box like any package comes in a brown shipping box. But the way they put all the items in was a little weird. The box above was flat and you have to put it together, and the bow was in a bag, also their was another white box that has a matte finish to it and has a magnet on it to open and close the box (this is the box that you put the polishes in.)

The matte finish that the three polishes come in.

The small box that Zoya put the polishes in.

This Box, as stated above, came with three polishes of your choice and a small bottle of the Zoya nail polish remover that is supposed to be a really good nail polish remover. This box also came with two color brochures of their 2014 Spring and Fall collection.  

 Zoya 3- 1 nail polish remover. Remover, cleaner, and prep. 

This is a small bottle 2 fl. oz/ 60ml

 The Two brochures of the Spring and Fall collection, each brochure has swatches 

of all the Zoya polishes.

Now the part I am sure you all have been waiting for, what colors did I pick! The three colors I picked were:

Dream- This polish has been out for a while now, this color was part of the 2013 holiday collection. Dream is a dark blue, scattered holographic polish, that has a jelly like formal.

Aurora- This is another color that has been out for a while now, It was part of the 2012 holiday collection. Aurora is a purple, with scattered holographic polish, that also has a jelly like formal.

Nori- Is part of the 2014 Pixie Dust collection. Nori is a blue textured polish that has holographic hex glitter. I unfortunately heard that Zoya will be discontinuing the Pixie Dust collection, which surprised me because I figured this was a very popular collection. But hopefully they will bring this collection back. 

 The three polishes in the box, this is a nice box to store your polishes. 

Of course I had to give at least two of the polishes a try. So I tried the two I was most excited about, Dream and Aurora. These polishes are amazing! The colors look so beautiful, and they go perfectly together. The blue and purple with the holographic looks great!

I did have to apply three coats of polish, the first two coats where very sheer, but by the third coat it looked great. I have been eying these two colors for the longest time and I am not sure why I didn't buy these much sooner. If you love holographic polish that is very shinny, you will love this. I highly recommend that If you don't already have these two beautiful polishes in your collection, to pick these two up. 

          Dream and Aurora with a flash light shined at the nails. This polish looks great in sunlight or a bright light. 

Natural light by the window. It's a cold gloomy winter day, so I tried to capture the beauty of this polish as best as I could with natural light.  

The Zoya dream box cost $30 on Zoya.com (I chose free shipping), the individual polishes of Dream and Aurora cost $9, and Nori the Pixie Dust cost $10. These polishes are a little bit more pricey, but if the polishes I feel are more unique, I will pay a little more for them. If their are three polishes that you want, I think the dream box is more of a value then buying them individual, plus you get a small bottle of remover as well. 

As for the wear of theses polishes, I wear my polish for about a week (Saturday- Friday, for seven days) with a base and top coat. I found that these polishes did last a good while before chipping. I do always get some kind of tip wear no matter what polish I use. As for these polishes, on the second or third day I did see minor tip wear that was very easily touched up. When it comes to wear on the more pricey brands like Zoya, OPI, etc. I personally don't see much of a difference from the cheaper brands. I think really they chip around the same amount. I also touch up my nails every other day to every day (depending on the chipping.)   

 Hope everyone enjoyed this Zoya dream box and polishes.

See you next time for my next design tutorial!