Happy Birthday Herbie!

Hello everyone! When you look at the title, you may wonder what I am talking about? It's not the birthday of the Volkswagen Beetle/ Herbie. Actually this weeks nail design is to celebrate My Herbie's Birthday. As of June 30, I would have my 2005 Beetle for 10 years! Ever since they released the Beetle I fell in love with that car, and I have always wanted one. So when I started working, I saved up a lot of money for a good down payment and I purchased my dream car.

  Volkswagen Beetle Nail Design.

 My 2005 VW Beetle/ Herbie.

The nail polishes and tools used to create this Herbie nail design is: 

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

Nail art polishes- Kiss nail art stripper- black and silver.

Nail polishes- Nicole by OPI- A Lit- Teal Bit of Love, Pop-arazzi- The Hue is Blue, Snowman rainbow glitter- frosty, Sinful Color-Let's Meet, Sally Hansen- Hard as Nails- Black Heart, Jane- Bolt from the blue, OPI Hawaii Collection- Suzi shops & island hops, That's Hula-rious, Lost my bikini in Molokini, and Aloha from OPI. 

Nail art tools- small thin brush, extra large and a large dotting tool.

The Skill level for this Herbie nail design is-

Beginner

This, for the most part, is a simple design. The VW logo is easy to create along with the flowers. The only part of the design that is little bit tricky is the Herbie on the thumb, just like any part of the design it really just requires a steady hand.

Let 's celebrate Herbie's Birthday, with this fun nail design!

1. Apply a thin layer of base coat.

2. Paint your pinky, middle,and thumb nail with a light blue polish. Then paint your ring and index finger with a shimmery blue.

3. We will start off with the Volkswagen logo, VW. We will start off by making a W, with your silver nail art stripper. To help yourself out with making the W, make a small dot in the middle of the nail and then draw two lines going down, this will look like an upside down V.

4. Then finish off your W by drawing one line on each side of the nail.

5. To finish the VW logo make a V right on top of the W. If needed you can go over your letters to make them thicker. 

6. Now for the flowers. To give this design a hippie feel to it, take your extra large dotting tool dipped in yellow polish, and place it anywhere on your nail. The more flowers you would like the more dots you can add. 

7. The last step in creating the colorful flowers is to make the petals. Take your large or a medium size dotting tool, dipped into a light pink polish and make five dots around the yellow circle to make a flower. Repeat this step for each color. 

8. Now for the part that brings the whole design together, Herbie. We will start off with Herbie's iconic shape. First, we will draw it horizontally instead of vertically. Take your thin nail art brush dipped in a navy blue, and draw a curved line in the middle of the nail, then to smaller curved lines on the sides. 

9. Next we will make the part where the wheels go. Once again take your thin nail art brush dipped in navy blue, and draw two arches side by side.

10. Then fill in your Herbie. If needed you can always thicken your outline, as you fill in your Herbie to make the shape look better. 

11. Now it's time for the wheels. Take your extra large dotting tool dipped into black and place the dotting tool in the two arch ways. If needed you can always dip your doting tool a few times to make the wheels bigger. 

12. To give the final touches to your Herbie, we will be adding windows. Take your black nail art stripper polish and follow the dome shape of the car, to make a outline for the windows, then draw a line down the center.

To finish off your Herbie take your dotting tool dipped in yellow and make a small head light. Then to fill in your windows, take your thin nail art brush, dipped in the same light blue as the background and fill the windows in. If need you may have to re-outline the windows.

If you would like you can add more details to Herbie, but I just wanted to keep the look of Herbie simple.

As for the index finger nail, I just kept it with no design and just the shimmery blue. The pinky nail, I put a small amount of rainbow glitter. 

As always, once your design has dried apply a top coat.

The Herbie I did on my right hand turned out to be smaller, and actually looks kind of cuter!

If you have a Herbie of your own you can always change the color to match your Herbie. 

Hope all of you enjoyed this VW Beetle/ Herbie nail design!

For the next few weeks I will not be doing a post/ nail design, I will be going on vacation. After my vacation I will be back with more fun and bright nail design for all of you! 

Aloha and see you all soon! 

Let's Try Water Marbling!

Hello everyone! Many of you may have seen a cool looking design that is done on your nails that is created with water, this is called water marbling. You may wonder how this is done, or like me, you want to try this but it looks difficult or just way to messy. 

After a long time of wanting to try water marbling and having someone ask how is that done, I finally decided to give it a try. I will warn you, I did run into some problems myself, but I was able to create some kind of marble effect, so I can still do a tutorial.  

 First attempt at Water marbling, turned out okay for my first try?

Here are the nail polishes and tools needed for this water marble design:

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

Nail polishes used- Revlon Gel envy- Sure thing, Sally Hansen- Hard as Nails - No hard feelings, and Milani- Quick Teal.

Tools used- Let two cups of water set over night or for a few hours to be room temp, tape, and toothpicks.

For clean up- a Q-tip with a precision tip, and acetone nail polish remover.

As for rating, as stated above I feel that I can't give a fair rating due to the fact that I ran into some issues myself. Water marbling I found requires a lot of trial and error! 


Let's give this water marbling a try! 

1. Like with any nail design or just painting your nails, apply a base coat. 

2. Paint all of your nails white. This helps the colors stick to your nails and to be opaque. 

3. Things are going to get messy! To help things be a little less messy, take two small pieces of tape, put that on both sides of the nail, then put a large piece around the nail. Their is also a thing called liquid latex (which I don't have) that can be painted around the fingers, then simply peeled off for easy clean up.

If you want to know more about liquid latex Elleandish (Janelle) has a good review on YouTube about it. 

4. Take your cup of clean room temp. water, or water that is not too hot or too cold. Some people have said to use filtered water and some say tap water is fine. I used room temp. tap water. I also strongly suggest having two cups of water, one for your right hand and another for your left. I only had one and when I went to do my left hand the water was too murky and was impossible to work with. 

*Make sure to have your polishes, toothpicks, and everything close by. You need to move quickly for this and it is best to have everything close.  

5. Uncap both of your nail polishes and leave them uncapped for this step, this helps to create the bulls-eye quickly. Take the first polish that you want to use and make sure the brush has a lot of polish on it that way it will drip into the water. With a fully loaded brush, place it close to the water and let the polish dip into the water, then wait for it to spread. Do this for the next color as well. Repeat this step as many times as you would like, to create a bulls-eye.

I used two colors a purple and teal cream polish, you can use more if you would like. Also not all nail polishes will work for water marbling, you really just have to test them out. I found that cream polish that will drip well worked the best. 

6. Once you have the bulls-eye that you want. Take a toothpick dragging from the center outward works best to make a design. For a beginner like us, you don't have to make a intricate design, you can just drag your tooth pick and make a simple design that doesn't need to be perfect. 

7. Now find a part of the design that you like then dip your finger in. You are actually suppose to dip your finger in at an angle, which I did not do. As you can see I dipped it straight in. Then take your toothpick and remove the excess polish around your finger.

8. Then remove your finger. As you can see even though I didn't do it right is still tuned out.

For each finger repeat steps 5- 8. You can dip them one at a time or dip up to three fingers at a time.

 Here is the final results of the water marble done on my left hand.

As always once your design has dried apply a top coat. As you can see my first attempt turned out okay on my right hand. A few fingers I had to re-dip because it didn't tun out or was not opaque enough.

 The sadness that is my right hand.

For my right hand this was a whole another story, as I ran into so many problems! As you can see, only three fingers somewhat turned out. I don't know what happened with the middle finger, then the ring and pinky finger and at that point with all of my frustration, I just painted a solid color.

Here are some of the problems I ran into (mainly with my right hand.)

- The first cup of water got to murky and would not work at all.

 - I didn't have an extra cup of room temp water, then I had to wait for another cup to hopefully get at room temp. This still was not working well.

 - Sometimes the polish just would not spread.

In conclusion, the actual water marbling steps are simple, the part that is difficult is the process, getting the right polish to spread, the right room temp water, and for the design to come out. With a lot of practice, trial and error water marbling can be done. Also even though I had issues with water marbling I will give this another try!

Hope this tutorial about water marbling was somewhat helpful, even though I ran into some issues myself. Like anything it is a learning process and we can all learn together.

Here is a video from Sara Beauty Corner, she gives a great video for beginners on how to water marble, just in case you need some extra help!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A5onIW9j3Y 

 

See you next time for my next nail tutorial!             

Happy Blogiversary!

Hello everyone! Happy Blogiversary, as of Saturday June 13 I have been blogging for a year now. I started Munchkin's Magnificent Manis as a way to share my of love of nail design with all of you, which I have truly enjoyed over the year and look forward to continuing. I know my blog is not super popular, that is okay, the reason I stated this blog is not only to inspire all of you, but to also inspired myself to create design that would help us all improve and learn together. I would like to thank all of you around the world (it is always cool to see!) that have checked out my blog, and maybe even given some of the designs a try. Hope all of you have enjoyed my nail tutorials, reviews, and nail fun, and I look forward to share more nail fun in the year to come.

Thank you! 

Julep Mystery Box May 2015

Hello everyone! In April I finally decided to get my first Julep Mystery box, and I was very pleased with it's contents and decided to get the following months box. For today's post I will be showing all of you May's box and all the cool stuff inside.

 

The Julep Mystery box

Just like April's box, everything came in a black box, but this month's was a little bit bigger. This box is not part their monthly subscription service, and if you want the mystery boxes each month you have to order them one by one, as they will not be automatically sent to you. 

Julep is a monthly nail polish and beauty subscription box that is sent to your home. The regular subscription boxes (The Julep Maven) for your first month comes with four items: two polishes and two beauty products. I believe after that you get two polishes and a beauty item. The monthly subscription is $24.99 a month or a month free (just pay for shipping) and then three months for $19.99. 

Let's see what's inside May's mystery box!

Inside the May Julep Mystery box.

Brika Clutch

First we will start off with the Brika vegan leather pouch/ clutch. This clutch was made by the artist Avril Loreti from Brika specially for Julep, which was included in every mystery box.  This clutch measures at 9x11 and is great for holding your IPad, or other similar sized tablets. It also has a small zipper pocket on the inside that you can put your charging cord in.

 Julep Lip Gloss with power cell complex

This box also came with two makeup products. I am not a makeup girl, so I feel that I can't give a fair review on these products, but I will tell you what I think of this as a first impression.

The first item is the Julep Lip Gloss with power cell complex in the shade Vivid. On the website it is described as a burgundy shimmer. This is a nice gloss as it is not too sticky, and a nice, natural color which I like. I am unsure if I would wear this very much, maybe every so often.

The retail price of this lip gloss is $20.00.  

Length Matters wow- impact Mascara

The second makeup item is the Length Matter Mascara. This is described as a mascara that gives your lashes length with a lightweight formula that separates, defines, and curls your lashes. As for my first impressions, as a person that does not wear mascara, I didn't like it. It made my lashes feel weird and clumpy and looked like spider legs, but this could be just user error on my part.

The retail price of this mascara is $24.00.

Now for the fun part, the nail polishes!

       Julep Polishes from left to right Brandis, Lilou, Marcella, Chatoya, and Shayla.

Brandis is a turquoise or green creme polish. This polish was almost opaque in one coat, but to make sure the nail was fully covered I applied a second coat. 

Lilou is a yellow lemon chiffon creme polish. This polish was streaky and a little hard to work with, it took three coats to be fully opaque.

Marcella is a pink creme polish. This was another polish that went on well and was almost opaque in one coat, but once again I applied a second coat. This was one of the polishes that they did say was in the mystery box.

Chatoya is a silver platinum glitter topper. This polish I wore over Marcella, this gave a nice sparkle to the pink polish. Although before I applied my usual top coat, this glitter seemed a little dull.

Shayla is a purple full coverage micro- glitter. This was a full coverage polish, it did take three coats to be opaque. I also tried this as a glitter topper over Hazel (a purple polish). This was also a nice polish, once again before applying a top coat this glitter seem a little dull. This was the other polish that they told you would be in the mystery box.

The retail price for each polish is $14.00.

Brandis and Lilou on the nails

I wore Brandis and Lilou last week and it wore very well, little to no chipping through out the week. 

Thumb and middle finger nail- Shayla the purple glitter used as a topper over Hazel, 

Index and pink finger nail- Chatoya silver glitter over Marcella, 

Ring finger nail- three coats Shayla the purple glitter. 

These are the colors I wore this week. They also wore just as well with little to no chipping. 

Once again I really liked the Julep Mystery box. The polishes where nice, but what actually drew me into getting this box was the Brika Clutch. I liked the bight colors and that it would be a nice option to put my IPad mini and the power cord together. As for the makeup, that was the only thing I did not care for. When it comes to April and May's Mystery box, I liked April's box a little more due to it having nail products only.

   

May's Mystery box cost $29.99 with free shipping. On Julep's website it says the retail value of this box is $150.

If you missed my review of April's Mystery box, don't forget to check it out too. 

Review of the Julep April Mystery Box


Hope all of you enjoyed this review of the Julep May Mystery box!

See you next time for my next design tutorial!  

Magnificent Finds- Glitter Problems? No Rub Power Gel Acetone Review

Hello everyone! For this week on the M.M.M blog, this will be a post that I have not done in a while. If you have been checking out the M.M.M blog regularly, then you may remember that ever so often I would do a post called Magnificent Finds, this is when I find a cool or hope to be cool/ great nail product that I do a review on. 

For this Magnificent Find we have a cool product that I technically did not come across in stores, but discovered through a YouTube channel called 'CutePolish', and I thought I would give this a try specially for all of you.

This product is called the Nail- Aid No-Rub Power Gel Acetone Remover for removing glitter polish. As all of you fellow nail polish lovers know that removing glitter polish can be a pain. Although we do love the look of glitter, when it comes time to remove it can be a task.

You do have a few ways that you can remove the glitter. The cotton ball scrubbing method, or the foil method of putting cotton and foil on your nails.

Although these methods work, sometimes it just seems like to much work just to get glitter polish off of your nails. It just seems like their should be a better way.    

Here is the pink acetone gel remover that removes the glitter polish off of your nails.

On the back of the jar their are three simple steps to follow. This gel promises to remove glitter with little effort, no need to rub off your polish, produces glitter free nails fast, won't dry out you nails like most acetone removers do, no spilling, drips, or wasting any remover.

Let's see if this stuff really works!

 

We will start off with a nice glitter manicure, using two nails with glitter on it for test purposes. On the middle finger nail I painted it with a larger rainbow hex glitter and the ring finger nail with a small purple and blue glitter. I did this to see if both remove well, or just one, or none of them. 

I followed the three steps on the back to make sure I was doing everything right. Step one, dip your nails one at a time (it might be okay to do more at one time) in the gel and fully coat the nail with the gel.

Take your nail out, then close the jar tightly. Do make sure to coat the nail with a good amount of the gel. Step two, you have to let the gel sit on your nails for 4 to 5 minutes, do not rub the gel. 

Step three, (I did not show in a photo) take a paper towel, press the paper towel over the nail, and just wipe the nail. Then, once your are done, wash your hands with soap and water to get all the gel off. Also on the bottom of the jar it says to always clean the rim of the jar after each use.  

Let's see the end results, did it work or not? 

As you can see, my middle finger nail with the large glitter, did not remove as well as I had hoped.The ring finger nail, with the smaller glitter, worked out better.   

The No-Rub Power Gel Acetone Remover is a nice alternative to normal remover, even though you do still have to use regular remover. I am unsure if every time I paint my nails with glitter polish if I would use this or just use regular acetone remover. Although this is a nice alternative, it still seems time consuming due to the fact that you still have to use regular polish to get all the glitter off. 

This remover was not drying like normal acetone remover, it does smell worse then regular remover (yes don't be like me and get the bright idea to smell this gel!), their is a lot of product in the jar (4.6oz to be exact) which could last a long time depending on how much you use this.

In conclusion, this product just takes some trial and error to get it to work. I did use this a few times before this review just to see how it worked, and it some what had the same results, this time it did work better with the small glitter.

If you are interested in this No-Rub Power Gel Acetone Remover for now it's only available at Walmart and online. At Walmart it cost $3.88 with tax $4.11.

On No- Rub gel website http://www.norubgel.com/ it costs $7.00.

Also their is a No- rub gel remover for dark polish as well, which I did not purchase.

If you would like to see the CutePolish review I added a link to her video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYz2HSlPMGw

Hope all of you enjoyed this review and maybe even give it a try for your self!

See you next time for more nail fun!