Little Big Planet- Sackboy

Hello everyone! For this week's nail design I have a video game nail design for all of you, Little Big planet inspired. I am not really one that likes to play video games, but this is one of the very few games that I do enjoy playing, due to Sackboy being cute. Little Big Planet is a series of games that has come out in the past few years, this is a plat-former/ level and world creator game. As of last Tuesday (November 25) PlayStation 3 and 4 released it's next Little Big planet game, Little Big Planet 3. To celebrate this new release, what better way than to create a Little Big Planet themed nail design for all of you.    

The main character in Little Big Planet, Sackboy. The final Little Big Planet design.

Here are the Polishes and Nail tools that are used for this Little Big Planer design: 

Top coat and base coat- Revlon Extra Life No Chip top coat, Nicole OPI-  3in1- base, top, & strengthener, and NYC- Matte Me Crazy topcoat (to make Sackboy matte)

Nail art polishes- Color Club nail art- Black, and Kiss nail art- White.

Nail polishes- Cover Girl- glosstinis Blue Hawaiian, Sally Hansen- xtreme wear- White on, Wet n wild- wild shine black, NYC- Fashion Safari, NYC- SoHo, Sally Hansen- xtreme wears- Ocean View, Sinful Color- HD Nails, Sally Hansen- xterme wear- Sun kisses, Sinful Color-Let's Meet, and NYC- big apple red creme. 

* I know it may seem like there is a lot of polishes for this tutorial, but most of the colors you are only using a small amount of. 

Nail tools- Dotting tool, Nail art stripper/ thin nail art brush, makeup sponge, and a small  glass jar with nail polish remover in it to clean up nail art brushes and dotting tool.  


The skill level for this Little Big Planet nail design is:

 Intermediate

This design has a lot of steps, which for the most part are simple. The one that is most tricky, due to it being done free hand is the LBP for Little big plant on the middle finger nail. Also, creating Sackboy can be a little tricky as well, due to the small lines that you need to create for the stitching on the head, and maybe even creating the facial features. 

1. Start off with a base coat.

 2. After your base coat has dried, apply a light sky blue to all of your nails.

3. Next we will be creating clouds (well cloud like). Cut a small piece of a make up sponge, paint a small corner of the sponge white. (White polish not shown in the photo above)

Then dab the sponge on random parts or the nail, it's okay if the sponging does not look very cloud like, this just gives a somewhat cloud effect. Also the clouds for the most part will be covered by the designs that we will be doing.

4. For the start of the design we will start off by creating LBP for Little Big Planet on the middle finger nail. This part is a bit tricky, and you just have to be very slow with this part and careful. For the L take your black nail art polish and slowly create an L shape.

5. Next is the B that will go right under the L. Once again take your black nail art polish and draw a vertical line, then for the curve in the B, I broke this part down into two parts to make it a little bit easier. For the top part of the B, I first drew half a curve lifted up the brush and then drew the second part of the curve, for the bottom half of the B you re-due the last step for the top part.

* I know that drawing letters is simple, but drawing letters with nail polish is a little bit harder that is why I broke down how I created the B and P. 

 

6. The last step for the LBP is the P. This letter is similar to creating the B, with just one curve. First draw a vertical line, and then once again I broke this down to make it simple, I first drew half a curve lifted up the brush and then drew the second part of the curve.  

7. Now we will create the planet on the index finger. Dip your dotting tool into blue polish and create a circle shape, then fill in the circle. Now we will wait for this to dry and go on to the next design. You can also use a nail art brush to make a circle too. 

8. While we wait for the plant to dry, we will work on Sackboy on the thumb nail. Take your brown nail polish and draw a curve at the top, leaving a little bit of blue at the top. Then fill in the bottom half with brown. 

9. Now back to the plant design and making the land formation. Dip your dotting tool into green polish and with a stippling motion create shapes to represent land. 

10. For the simplest design is the splattered paint on the pinky nail. Just take a few different colors and with the brush already in the polish dab different colors all over the nail. I used red, yellow, green, and orange. You can use whatever colors you would like.

11. Now back to Sackboy, time to create the eyes. Take your dotting tool and dip it into black polish and dot it on the face. If needed do this a few time to make the eyes big enough. 

12. Next we will create the peach stitching part above the head and then the smile. Dip your nail art stripper brush into a peach color and draw a curved line above his head.
I did get a little ahead of myself when taking the photo for this part; the smile should have been a separate photo. 
Next we will create the smile. Take your black nail art polish and draw a curved line at the top and then another curved line under that, you can also break the bottom part into two by drawing one curve then lifting up on the brush and drawing the other side if the curve.  

13. Next is the stitching on top of the head and the tongue. For the stitching take your white nail art polish and draw small line on top of the peach curved line all the way across. For Sackboy's little tongue, take your dotting tool or nail art brush and dip it into pink polish and drag your dotting tool or brush down to make a small tongue. 
Once your pink tongue has dried, take your black nail art polish and carefully fill in the mouth. Then once the black eyes has dried, dip your dotting tool into white polish and put a white dot over the black dot for the eyes.    

14. Last but not least is the paint brush with splatted paint. Take your brown polish on the side of the brush and swipe a small brown line.

15. For the bristles, take your peach colored polish and on the side of the brush, draw a brush shape. 

16. Then take whatever color you would like (I used orange) and dab orange all over the nail, then once the bristles of the paint brush have dried paint a little bit of orange on the top.


To Finish Sackboy now that he has dried, take your matte topcoat and paint over just the brown part/ Sackboy. 
With just regular polish I had trouble creating a burlap sack texture, I tried many different ideas that where just not working out. So I decided that just putting a matte top coat over Sackboy would work out.
Also as a final touch I did dab white polish on the sponge over the blue part for clouds over Sackboy's head.

After your design has dried apply a regular shinny top coat to all the nails and the top blue part above Sackboy, do not put a shinny top coat over Sackboy otherwise he will lose his matte look. 

A different look at both right and left thumb nails of the Sackboy design. I borrowed my fiance's PS3 control for this photo, to just show a different way of showing my thumb 

nail design.

Hope everyone enjoyed this nail design that I created for all of you. Just like in the game itself you create different levels to share with all of your friends and other gamers. I thought it would be cool to make a Little Big Plant nail design to go with this game. 

This design is actually one that I came up with, as there were very few (maybe three) Little Big Planet nail designs that I'd seen online. So this design gave me more free range to be more creative, knowing not many people have made a nail design like this.

Once again hope you all enjoyed this cute Sackboy/ Little Big Planet themed nail design!    

See you next time for my next design tutorial! 
       

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! 

 

Ocean View- Tropical, Ocean Design

Hello everyone! If you have checked out my last few blog postings, I have stated that I recently just got back from a Caribbean cruise. I have been pondering a way that I could share the beauty and amazement of the Caribbean Sea with all of you, and of course what better way than having an ocean/ sea themed nail design!

If you have ever been on a tropical vacation to the Caribbean, Bahamas, Hawaii, etc. You know how beautiful the ocean is, from the different shades of blues and greens and just how clear the water is. 

Here is a photo of the Caribbean sea that I took while on the trip to Cozumel, Mexico. 

Also I thought I would show the final design at the top of the post, that way you don't have to scroll to the bottom to see the final design.

Here are the polishes that were used for this ocean view nail design: 
There are no nail tools required for this design.

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

Polishes- (starting with bottom row) Light copper/ light gold nail polish, Sinful Color- Gorgeous, Sinful Color- Midnight blue, NYC- Water street blue, NYC- Cashmere Creme, and Del Sol- Starry Night.
Optional polishes, for index and pinky nail (at the top)-  Zoya- Charla, Sally Hansen- Color Foil- Cobalt chrome, and Color Club-  Mini- Silver Glitter.

The Skill level for this ocean nail design is: 

Beginner to Intermediate

For this ocean view nail design it could be a little tricky to get all the colors to blend, but for the most part this design is simple. 

1. Start off with a base coat (I am now giving the Nicole OPI- 3 in1 a try.) If you choose to use a foil/ chrome polish, do not put a base coat on the pinky nail, this polish becomes streaky if you do use a base coat with that kind of polish.

2. For an optional look you can paint your index finger with a blue polish with green glitter in it (I used Zoya's Charla), and your pinky nail with a blue foil/ chrome polish and a silver glitter polish over that.

3. Next we will paint the sand part of the ocean. Paint one coat of a light copper/ light gold polish. Right now I know the sand color looks light, but we will be adding more coats to this later. 

4. For the Ocean nail design I will just be showing it on one nail. Due to fact that you kind of need to work fast on this nail design to make sure the colors blend together. For each color that we will be adding there is no need to let each color dry, it is best to work with the colors when they are still wet. For the first color of the water we will be painting a blueish green, almost all the way up the nail. When you paint this it does not need to be even, it actually looks better if it is not (as shown in the photo above.)

5. For the next part of the ocean we will create the dark part or the deepest part of the ocean. Take your dark blue polish and paint it up the nail just a little, this will cover part of the greenish blue part but that is okay. 

6. Next we will be sponging on light blue in the middle of the greenish blue polish and the dark blue polish. 

Take your makeup sponge that is cut into a small piece, paint the light blue polish on the sponge, and dab the sponge lightly between the greenish blue and dark blue part. 

Remember to paint each part when it is still kind of wet to get the colors to blend.    

 

7. Then for the shore line of the ocean, take your very light blue (it almost looks white) and with the flat part of the brush and dab all the way around the nail. Then, if needed, take your blueish green polish and blend the light blues together. Also you can take your dark blue polish and blend the light blue polish together. 

After your ocean water looks good, take your light cooper/light gold and add another coat for the sand. Then add a gold glitter to the sand to give a sparkle. 
The trick to this design is just to try to get the colors to blend, it doesn't need to look perfect. For each color that you add if needed you can keep adding the color above or under it to try and blend the colors, just try not to make the polish too thick. 

Once your beautiful ocean design has dried apply a top coat. 

For this look you can always paint all of your nails with the ocean design, or do something like I did with some accent nails. Also with nail designs I get my inspiration from the internet, and I want to give credit for this inspiration to blogen beaute. But of course when I do find inspiration I always try to make it my own, and use that as a base for my design. With any nail design you really can reinvent the wheel, most designs have been done over and over and just made different to make them their own. 

Hope everyone enjoyed this beautiful ocean design, and I am glad that in some way I was able to share the ocean/ sea with all of you through nail art. 
  

See you next time for my next design tutorial!

  

Ooh Coconut, hand/ body scrub update

Hello everyone! For this week I once again have an extra post for all of you. This is more of an update on the hand and cuticle care post I did back in August. For the most part, when it comes to the products that I use for my hands and cuticles even my nails, I use the same thing unless I don't like the products. 

When it comes to hand/ body scrub I have tried a few, with the most recent one that used that was included in my August post about hand and cuticle care, The Premier Dead Sea salt hand/ body scrub. Although this worked good the price was way too high, $30 for the scrub and another $30 for the lotion. So I spent $60 on a lotion that was not good and a scrub that did work okay but was just not worth $30. 

That scrub did last me about two year. I just used it before I would paint my nails,which is just once a week. Before I got that scrub I had used the Yes to Carrot pampering hand and nail spa. Unfortunately, like most products that you seem to like, they no longer make it. 

  Yes to Coconut hydrate & restore polishing body scrub

Now that the over priced Dead Sea salt scrub is gone, I came across this product at Target from the Yes to line that is new: The Yes to Coconut hydrate & restore polishing body scrub. I love the Yes to Carrots super rich body butter, so I thought I would give this a try. On the jar it says that it helps smooth dry and cracked skin. The coconut husk is an natural exfoliate, and their is sweet almond oil that is a natural moisturizer. You use this like any scrub. I take about a spoon full of the scrub rub it into my hands and take a nail brush to rub it in just a little bit better (mainly into the nails), then wash it off in warm water, then dry the hands.    

  Yes to Coconut hydrate & restore polishing body scrub, what it looks like in the jar

From the first time that I opened this to actually using it, even though I have only used this a few times, I love this body scrub! This scrub smells so amazing! If you love the smell of coconut then you will love this because it smells like the real thing. The texture of this scrub is gritty, sand like which I love in a hand scrub. Seeing how it is dry hand season right now it is hard to tell if this does what it is supposed to as for long term use. But when I first used this hand scrub it does make your hands feel very soft. 

For the Yes to Coconut I highly recommend it! I love the Yes to line and find the products that I have tried to worked very well. This line is a natural product which is supposed to be better for you. 

The Yes to Coconut hydrate & restore polishing body scrub cost  $7.99 at Target. 

I have only seen the Yes to Coconut line at Target and Ulta, I am unsure if this is an exclusive for those stores.Though I have found the Yes to line at many different stores that sell beauty products.

Hope this post was helpful, also if you missed the hand and cuticle post don't forget to check that out as well. Click the link below

Hand and Cuticle care 


As always Hope you enjoyed this post/ update about hand care!

See you next time for more nail fun!