Fall Leaves- Nail Design

Hello everyone! Happy Fall! Today on the blog we will be creating a simple leaf design on our nails. Also sorry that it has been a while since I last posted, I got a new job at a T-shirt company and I have been busy try to get use to that new job. 

Fall Leaf Nail Design 

Here are the polishes and nail art tools used to create this fall design:

 

 

Base and top coat - CND Stickey Base Coat and Revlon Extra Life No Chip top coat.

Nail polishes- Milani- Quick Teal and  Wet n wild- Glitter orange.

Acrylic paints- Black, red, green, yellow, brown, and orange.    

Nail art brushes- Thin detail brush and a thin stripper brush.

 Fall Leaf Nail Design 

* From now on I want to try and simplify my post, sometimes I fell like I go into to much detail and type way to much for each design.*

Apply base coat, let dry.

Polishes-  

Thumb, index, middle, and pinky- a teal polish.

Ring finger- a glittery orange.

Let that dry.

 

 

 Fall Leaf Nail Design

Paints need for leaves-

Green, light green, yellow, orange (mixed red and yellow), and brown

Index nail design- 

Use a thin detail brush to make a maple leaf shape near the cuticle. Then make half of a leaf on the side of the nail. Once dry, take a thin stripper brush and outline the shapes of your leaves and add small detail by making lines for the leaf veins. 

Middle finger nail design- 

Just like the last nail make a more pointed shaped leaf in the middle of the near the cuticle and one more next to that leaf, make the larger one green and the smaller one yellow. Then repeat that same step as before by outline and adding details.  

Fall Leaf Nail Design 

Thumb nail design- 

This design is similar to the index nail, just make a larger maple leaf with two colors orange and brown. Then make to smaller leaves a red one at the tip of the nail and a green on off to the side of the nail. Once again outline the leaves and add the vine details. 

 

 Fall Leaf Nail Design 

Once you are happy with your fall leaf design apply a top coat to seal in your design and to help it last.

 

Fall Leaf Nail Design 

Also here is the design I did on my right hand, with just the design on the thumb and ring finger nail.  

 

Along with the practice version.

Hope all of you enjoyed this design and have a nice fall.  

See you next time for more nail fun! 

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 New year 2015

Hello everyone! Happy New Year 2015, well almost new year. This is the time when we try to reflect on what we did this year and how we can make next year even better. A lot of people make new years resolutions, some keep them and others do not. As for me, I have never really been one to make any new years resolutions, I just always hope for a better year.   

For New Year's most nail designs have a dark/ black base color and add some glitter and a pop of color. For this tutorial I deiced to stick with that theme, with a black base and subtle bits of glitter, along with subtle bits of holographic polish. 

 Hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year! 

Final 2014 design.

The polishes and nail tools used for this New years design:

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

Nail polishes- Sally Hansen- Hard as Nails- black heart, Color Club-  Mini- Silver Glitter, Color Club Holo's- Harp on, Color Club- Holo's- Cloud Nine, Color Club- Holo's- Blue Heaven, Milani- Holographic Cyperspace, Nails Inc- Sapphire, and Nails Inc- Pink Diamond.

Nail art tools- Small glass jar with nail polish remover in it, to clean off nail art brushes, and a nail art stripper, I cleaned off and used the one that is in the nail art polishes. 

The Skill level for this New Year's nail design is:
  

Beginner/ Basic 

This New Year's design is very simple and great for people that might just be starting off with nail design, or just looking for something simple to create on their nails. This design is simple do to the fact that two of the fingers just being a glitter gradient, and the other consisting of very thin lines.

Now let's begin this party perfect nail design!

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

2. Paint all of your nails a dark color, black or a dark blue.

3. First we will start off by doing a glitter gradient on the index and ring finger. Take your silver glitter polish and the brush that is in the polish, and paint a little bit of glitter, more at the top and a little at the bottom of the nail.

4. Then after you have just a little bit of glitter painted on the nail, paint a little more at the tips of the nail. This can also be done by sponging on glitter with a makeup sponge, but I just wanted to put a subtle amount of glitter, and when you sponge on the glitter it can end up going on a little bit thick.
 

5. For the other nails, the thumb, middle and pinky, we will be making a holographic line design. On each nail you paint thin lines starting from a comer of the nail, each nail I started from different corners to have a little bit of a different look for each nail. To make this design take a thin nail art stripper dipped in a blue holographic polish, or any color, start at a corner of the nail and slowly drag your nail art stripper down.

Here is the thumb nail design, where I stared from the side using a silver holographic polish.

6. For a final touch and a little bit more pop of color. Take a glitter polish that is the same color as the holographic polish and in the corner where all the lines met, dab a little bit of glitter polish. 

Left hand New Year's nail design

As you can see in the final photo, on the thumb I used a silver holographic polish for the line design, then in the corner where all the lines met, I put a little bit of silver glitter polish. The middle finger I used a blue holographic (which is a little hard to tell that it is blue in the photo) and then put a little bit it of blue glitter on the corner. Lastly for the pinky nail I used a purple holographic polish,with purple glitter in the corner.

 Right hand nail design, where I switched the colors around and for 

the thumb used a different blue holographic polish. 

As always once your nail design have dried finish it off with a top coat, to make sure it last though your New Year's celebration.

Hope all of you have a wonderful and safe New Year's and I look forward to sharing and creating more nail tutorials with all of you, in the up and coming New Year!

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.

Ohana Means Family- Lilo & Stitch Design

Aloha everyone! For today's post I will be doing a design on one of my favorite Disney movies Lilo and Stitch. This movie has been out for quite a while, (since 2002) but it has been one of my favorites since it came out. I really like the story line, it teaches you the importance of family, and that even if your family is small and broken, it can still be good.  
Now while I've enjoyed all of the characters from the movie their is one characters that I feel is the most relate-able and stands out the most would be Lilo. I like her quirky personality and that she shows that their is nothing wrong with being different.

Today's design will be based on the outfits that Lilo wears throughout the movie.

- The red Hawaiian dress with leaves printed on it that she wears the most (this will  go on the thumb and pinky nail.)
- The orange and yellow stripped bathing suit (on the index finger nail.)
- Her teal/ turquoises pajamas(on the middle finger nail.)
- Lilo's hula dress (goes on the ringer finger nail.)

   (* As always this can be changed around for a different look, this is just what I did.)

As usual here are the polishes and tools I used to create this design:

Polish: Revlon no chip topcoat, Sally Hansen I heart nail art pen in pearly white,

   NYC- big apple red creme, NYC- Midtown Mimosa, Orange polish, Milani- Quick Teal, Sinful Color- HD Nails, Sinful Color- Mint Apple, and NYC- Fashion Safari.

Nail tools: Glass jar for nail polish remover, used to clean brushes for nail art (found that it is better to us a glass jar not plastic, the polish remover will make the plastic melt), tape and scissors, small nail art brush, nail stripper brush. 

From here on out I decided that I will be adding a level of difficulty before I start the tutorial. From beginner (2 polishes), Intermediate (4 polishes), and Advanced (5 polishes). This will be based on if I think a design I have done is easy for someone to do, somewhat hard/ intermediate and a design that would be hard to do/ advanced.

     Advanced

Due to all the steps in this Lilo design and the difficulty of the red Hawaiian dress and the hula dress, I gave it an advanced rating.   

1. First cut your tape into 3 thin strips, place two on the index finger for Lilo's bathing suit, and one thin strip on your ring finger for Lilo's hula dress. 

 2. Paint your thumb and pinky finger with 2 coats of red for Lilo's red dress, the middle finger will just be a solid teal for Lilo's Pj's, on the index finger paint the parts that are not covered by tape with 2 coats of orange (it's okay if you get polish on the tape.)
Also ignore the light green on the ringer finger (do not paint it this way, just leave it blank for now) I end up not liking it this way.
 

 3. Take the tape off the index finger. As stated in the last step do not paint the bottom part of the ringer finger light green, leaves this blank for now and leave the tape on.

 4. On the index finger paint the part that had tape on it with 3 coats of yellow, you now have Lilo's bathing suit.

5. Now we will start Lilo's hula dress. Paint the upper part of the nail with 1 coat of red for her top.

 

6. With the nail stripper brush and dark green polish, begin to paint under the tape small lines to look like a grass skirt. (I went over the lines 2 times to be opaque enough)

 7. After painting lines with the dark green polish, paint small lines with the light green polish right next to the dark green lines. (I once again went over the lines 2 times)

 8. Now take the tape off the middle. Next add two lines (by slowly rotate your finger) above the grass skirt with the light and dark green polish.  

 9. Where the tape was paint that with 2 coats of tan polish for Lilo's belly. 

10.  For Lilo's head piece take the small nail art brush with the light green polish and start to make lines that look like small leafs. ( I went over the leafs 2 times)

 Do this all the way around the nail. Now you have Lilo's hula dress.

 11. We are almost done. For the final design on the thumb and index finger, we will be creating Lilo's Hawaiian dress that she wore the most. Take the white nail art pen and draw a rectangle, it can be rounded at the top like I did, or have a point. (I found it a lot easier to use the nail art pen to draw the leafs then using a nail art brush.)

 12. Next draw to lines on the side (I know it looks a little weird, but once it is done it will look better, I tried to make the leafs look as much like Lilo's dress as possible.)

 13. Under those 2 lines draw two more lines.

14. The last and final step (wow that was a lot of steps!) With the nail stripper draw a small line with the red polish to complete Lilo's red Hawaiian dress. (I repeated steps 11- 14 three times.)

After your design has dried add a top coat . Now you have a fun Lilo inspired nail design with all of her Hawaiian outfits.

 Here is a close up of the thumb nail.

If you would like a different look you can have all of your nails with Lilo's red Hawaiian dress or even add a cute Stitch to your nails for a Lilo and Stitch design. For a simpler look just have the ring finger or accent finger with one of her outfits, and the other nails with just a solid color.

  Thought I would add this photo of me holding my cell phone with my cute Stitch case. Thought it would look cute with my Lilo nail design, due to me not adding Stitch into the design.

Hope everyone likes this Lilo inspired nail design. Also, remember Ohana means family, family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten. (Lilo and Stitch quote.)

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