Gobble Gobble- Happy Thanksgivng

Hello everyone! Happy Thanksgiving! It's that time again when we all get together and have turkey, ham, stuffing, mash potatoes, mac and cheese, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and many more yummy thanksgiving foods. Other then enjoying time with family and friends we  also think about what we are thankful for. What are you most thankful for?
As for me I am thankful for my family, friends, and my fiance that has been there for me and very loving and supportive with everything I do. Also I am thankful that I decided to start this blog. This has been a way that I can show my creativity and love for nail design with all of you, and a way to improve and learn and little something along the way ( along with all of you!)

       The final look at the Thanksgiving nail design

Here are the nail polishes and tools used for this Thanksgiving nail design:

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

Nail polish-  Color Club nail art- Black, Wet n wild- wild shine black, L'Oreal- Tangerine Crush (very small amount of the black and tangerine crush polish), Sally Hansen- xtreme wear- White on, light copper/ gold polish, NYC- Fashion Safari, NYC- Brownstone, Sally Hansen- xterme wear- Sun kisses, NYC- big apple red creme, and Sinful Color-Let's Meet

Nail art tools- small glass jar with nail polish remover in it for cleaning nail art brushes, a small thin nail art brush (The DL professional 10pc nail art brush from Sally Beauty, I numbered them from 1 largest - 10 smallest, this one I've numbered brush 10.), and a dotting tool. 

The skill level for this Thanksgiving nail design is: 

Intermediate 

This design has a lot of steps to it and does have quite a few small details to it, which is why I decided to give this design an intermediate skill level. 

1. Start off by applying a base coat. 

2. Once your base coat has dried, apply a white coat to your thumb nail, a light cooper/ gold to your index and ring nail, and then a peach color on your middle and picky nail. For this step you can really paint any neutral color you would like. You can always paint all of your nails with a light gold or peach and paint your thumb nail white. I chose to paint my thumb nail white for the turkey to help the colors pop, just to change things up a little bit I alternated between light cooper/ gold and peach.  

* For this design I went back and forth between each nail, as I let parts dry. That's why it may seem like I am skipping around some.

3. Once again after your solid colors have dried we start the fun part of the nail design. We will first start off with making a tree on the ring finger nail. Take your black nail art polish / stripper and draw a curved line on the side of your nail.  

   4. Next draw a few more curved lines for the tree branches.

5. Then keep adding more lines for the tree branches until it starts to look like a tree. We will let this part dry and come back to add the small leaf buds. 

6. Next we will create leaves on the index nail. Take your small nail art brush and first dip it in orange nail polish then create a leaf like shape on the sides of the nail, then clean off your brush with nail polish remover and do the same thing for the red and yellow polish. Do this until their is only a little bit of the light copper/ gold polish background showing. 

7. Now we will go back to the tree on the ringer finger nail. We will be creating the leaves on the tree, due to it being fall I made the leaves look like buds because in fall their is not many to no leaves on the trees. Take your dotting tool and create small leaves or dots on the ends of each branch. 

8. To add a little more to the tree you can add more leaves with a different color. First clean off your dotting tool with nail polish remover and once again dip your dotting tool in yellow polish and make small dots next to the orange ones.

9. Once again we will go back to the index finger nail to finish the leaves. We will be creating the veins on the leaves. Take you black nail art polish/ stripper and draw small vertical lines on each leaf.

10. For more veins on the leaves draw two more lines on the sides. Then after that you can draw two more above those (not show in the photo above, refer to final photo of needed.)

11. For the middle finger nail we will also be creating leaves, but this time they will be a different shape. Take your small nail art brush dipped in orange nail polish and make a V shape on the side of the nail.

12. Repeat last step two more times then at the top make a point. Then on the other side repeat the same thing to create a leaf on the other side.

13. For an optional look, I painted a yellow over the bottom leaf and red over the top leaf. Once that is dry add the veins to the leaf by drawing a vertical line and lines on the side of the leaf, for this part follow the outline of the leaf, for the bottom leaf make seven lines. For the top leaf make six lines. (not shown in the photo above)

14. While we wait for the middle nail to dry, we will paint leaves on the pinky nail. For this nail I decided to do a mix of both of the shapes of the leaves, one yellow leaf like the leaves in step 12 and one red, orange, and yellow (which is had to see in the photo, it is on the other side of the red leaf) like the leaves in step 9. Just like before fill up most of the nail with leaves only leaving a little bit of peach polish showing.

 

15. Once the leaves dry once again add the veins of the leaves, by taking your black nail art polish/ stripper and drawing a vertical line, like in step 10 draw draw four more lines on the sides for the veins of the leaves. (not shown in photo above)   

16. For the thumb nail we will be making a turkey. The turkey I end up making was cartoon like, you can make your turkey cartoon like or more realistic it just depends on your style. First we will start of by making the head, I ended up using a dotting tool for this, if you want you can also use a small nail art brush. If you choose to us a dotting tool, dip the large end of the dotting tool into brown polish and with a stippling motion create a circle, then fill it in. 

17. Next is the turkey's body. Once again if you choose to use a dotting tool, first if needed you may need clean off your dotting tool. Then dip the large end of the dotting tool in brown polish, with a stippling motion create two curved lines on the side then fill in the body. If needed you can also use the smaller end to help fix the shape. 

18. Now we will be creating the bright feathers on the turkey. Take your small nail art brush and deep into a coral color polish (I used Tangerine Crush) and make a triangle like shape with no point at the top, on the top of the head and on both sides.

19. Repeat step 18 until the whole turkey is filled with feathers. The other colors that I used was yellow for four of the feathers, and orange for three more feathers. As always, you can paint the feathers whatever color you would like. After you are done with the feathers we need to make the beak. You can use your nail art brush or dotting tool for this. I used the dotting tool and made a small upside down triangle. 

20. Then after you are done with the beak we will create two eyes. First clean off your dotting tool, then dip the large end into white polish, and make two dots above the beak.

After the white dots for the eyes have dried, clean off your dotting tool. Now with the small end of the same dotting tool dipped in black polish, make two dots inside the white dots. Once your Thanksgiving nail design has dried apply a top coat. Now you are finished with this cute Thanksgiving nail design.

 Just an extra photo to show all of you the turkey design on my left and right hand. I rotated this photo so the turkey on the right side is actually my left hand, and the left side is 

actually my right hand.  

Hope everyone enjoyed this Thanksgiving nail design,and hope all of you have a good Thanksgiving with lots of yummy food and, the most important part, enjoy the time with your families and friends!

See you next time for my next design tutorial! 

 

Purple Frenzy- Glitter Gradient Design

Hello Everyone! For today's design I wanted to keep it very simple. I know that some people like to keep it simple and not always do a really wild design (like I often do). So for those people, today I just did a solid color, with a textured polish on one finger nail, and then sponge on a glitter polish over the solid color to create a gradient glitter design.  


Polishes and tools used for this design:

Polishes: Revlon Extra Life No Chip top coat, - OPI nail envy- nail strengthener/ base coat, 
Sally Hansen- No hard feelings, L'Oreal- textured polish, Too dimensional, and Sinful Color- Frenzy.
Nail tools- Make-up sponge (or cosmetic wedge.)


The Skill Level for this Glitter gradient design is: 

Beginner/ Basic

This glitter gradient design is very simple, all that is required for this design are just two very simple steps of painting all of your nails a solid color an adding glitter to the tips with a sponge. 

Just a side note:

As you may have notice on the polishes I use, I added a nail strengthener/ base coat to the list. If you have been following the M.M.M blog I have stated that I don't use a base coat. So after a few months of doing research I decided to give Opi Nail envy for sensitive and peeling nails a try. My nails have the problem of peeling way to much at the tips of my nails (they have different formulas for different nail issues.), I heard a lot of good reviews about this, so I thought I would give this a try. The only thing that was holding me back is the price: It costs $17.95 with tax $19.03! (you know how I feel about spending a lot of money on polishes) Hopefully this works well, I will keep all of you posted on how this product works out for me. 

Here is the Opi nail envy, nail strengthener in the box. 

I bought this at Ulta for $17.95

Anyways, now to the fun part the nail tutorial.

 1. Apply your base coat.

2. Paint all of your nails a light purple except your ring finger. 

3. For an optional different look paint your ring finger with a darker purple textured polish. Another method is that you can paint your all your nails light purple for a gradient glitter look. 

4. For the last and final step. Take a make-up sponge and cut it in half, then take your glitter polish and paint the sponge with a liberal amount of glitter polish (if needed to you can repaint your sponge and dab the nails as much as needed.) Then dab the tips of your nails with the sponge (make sure their is more glitter near the tips of the nails), then keep dabbing the glitter until you get half way down the nail (when you get the this point dab only a little bit of glitter polish.) When you are finished the bottom of your nail should have no glitter on it, and their should be a lot of glitter at the top of the nail that almost fades into less amount of glitter. 

Once your nails have dried, finish this glitter gradient look with a top coat. When it comes to textured polish you are not suppose to add a top coat, but I normally do anyways. I just make sure not to put to much top coat on because if you do decided to put top coat on a textured polish and you put too much it can smooth-in out your texture polish. 

 Purple Frenzy, Gradient glitter design.

As with any design you can always change the look. Like with this look you can use what ever color you want with any glitter or textured polish. So have fun mixing and matching colors to create any cool color gradient glitter design. 

See you next time for my next design tutorial!

  

Color Combination- Matte Me Crazy

Hello Everyone and Happy August 1st (wow summer is going fast!) For today's post I will be sharing a finish that has become very popular for the spring and summer season, the matte finish. Usually when it comes to spring time you think of bright, shinny pastels and for summer, bright, shinny, vibrant yellows, pinks, blues, etc. Though with the matte finishes it flattens and makes the colors some what duller, which would seem like the opposite of what people would like for summer color trends. 

For the past few months I have seen the matte polish finishes showing up quite a bit in stores, (a lot of brands make a matte topcoat.) The matte topcoat that I have seen the most  is the Sally Hansen Big Matte topcoat. Also, I have recently seen that Sally Hansen Insta- Dri polish now comes in matte. So after a few months of deciding if I wanted to give this matte finish polish a try, (I was unsure if I would like this finish, I really like shinny glitter polishes) I looked around at the store and seen that New York Color also has a matte topcoat, so I picked that brand to try.


Here are the polishes I used: 

     New York Color-  Matte Me Crazy topcoat, L'Oreal- Tangerine Crush, and Milani- Quick Teal.

For this color combination I decided to use two bright summer color polishes to see if it would still give that bright summer look with out the shine.

 In the photo above I left my right hand with no matte top coat and shiny (the hand at the bottom), and my left hand with the matte topcoat (the hand at the top) to see the difference between the two.

As you can see the matte topcoat can turn even the shiniest nail polish matte.

Before I tried this matte topcoat I was really unsure if I would like it (like I stated above, I like shinny finishes.) Also I was unsure if  the bright nail polishes would still look as vibrant even if they where matted. 
After I tried out the New york color- Matte Me Crazy top coat on these bright colors I do really like this topcoat, the topcoat went on really well in 1 coat, their was just a few spots that I had to go over again because their was still some shine to the polish. 
I feel that even though the polishes are made to be flattened and dull, your nail polish can still have a bright summer feel with out the shine.

I give this a happy Polish, I really like this topcoat.

If you would like to turn any of your nail polishes matte, you can find New York Color- Matte Me Crazy topcoat or other brands of matte topcoat at Meijer, Target, CVS, and any store that sells nail polish. 

 I got the New York Color- Matte Me Crazy topcoat at Meijer for just a $1.79.