Watermelon nails!

I have been dying to do this design for weeks. The last time I planned to do it, I broke one nail completely off and had to cut the other ones short to match, and I think this design really needs a little bit of a longer nail to really look good. It took a while to get it right, but here's the final result!

The base colour is Exotic Pink by LA Colors, and the tips are done with Palm Tree and Voodoo by LA Colors as well as white by Tivoli, and the black is a nail polish I got in a pack from Claire's. I had a lot of trouble getting a good photo of the pink colour, it's actually slightly more intense than it comes out in this picture. I wish I'd a slightly more reddish pink to do the base with, but this doesn't look bad either.

On a side note, I'm having a lot of trouble using the brushes I bought. The nail polish clumps up on it, and it doesn't go on with a nice even coat like I'd like. The white I ended up just using the brush in the bottle, and the greens I had to do a couple layers to get them looking good. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, or if it's because I'm using polish instead of acrylics, or if the polish I'm using is poor quality, but in any case I get the feeling that this is much harder than it needs to be.

Next week I have to do more tame nails for a couple reasons, but the week after I'm going to start the 31 "day" challenge! I'm really excited, I'm already starting to make plans. If you haven't seen it before, this is what I'm talking about:

My first product review!

So, this week I am off visiting The Boy on the other side of the country. I knew I would want to refresh my nail polish, but I also didn't want to carry around a lot of different colours. This presented me an opportunity to try out a product I've been curious about for ages: Sally Hansen Salon Effects nail polish strips. I chose the colour "I Love Lacey", and I am very pleased with the results!

The final result was quite impressive. I spent maybe a quarter of the time that I normally would painting my nails, and of course the design is way more intricate than anything I could ever do. Putting them on was a lot easier than I was expecting, too. If I had the opportunity to use this again, I most certainly would! That, however, brings me to the negatives.

First of all, the sizes available really did not fit my nails. This isn't really a new thing for me, I've always had issues with fake nails and such when it comes to finding the right size for each nail. I ended up having to make the thumb, pointer, and middle finger strips smaller, and the ring and pinky fingers are too small. This problem isn't really enough to keep me from using these again, mostly because I was expecting it. What will keep me from using these again is the price. After taxes they cost me about $10, and you only get one use out of the package. That is way more than what I can afford. So, unless I can find them seriously discounted, I won't be buying them again. Even though I love them. A lot.

Well, that's about it for me. I hope the week has been treating you well!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Doing a design for Valentine's day turned out to be a bit of a disaster for me.

Saturday night I made my first attempt. I had a design in mind that would use some of the bundle monster plates that would be very holiday-appropriate. Red background, some lines and hearts over top of that in white, and then a black kiss in the corner. I thought it would be nice, but it was doomed from the very start. First it took me two hours just to do my base coat because I kept screwing up two fingernails. Every time I repainted them, I got impatient and touched them before I should have. When I finally got the base coats finished, I spent another hour stamping on the designs. Once I finished my left hand, I examined my work and......it looked ridiculous. I took it all off. I didn't have the heart to start all over again, so I called it a night.

Sunday I tried again, this time with a completely different idea. Boyfriend had suggested doing x's and o's, and that inspired me to do this design for Valentine's day:

The base coat is cayenne pepper from LA Colors, and the design is done in Kiss Nail Art Paint in white.

This is not my best work. In case you can't tell, those are supposed to be x's and o's on the tip. My polish was a bit too dried out, so I was having trouble working with it. Also, I think this design would be a lot nicer on longer nails. Overall though, I like the idea. It just needs a bit more tweaking.

In other news, I am considering doing the 31 day nail challenge. Well, it would end up being the 31 week nail challenge for me, but I think it would be fun. I have a few more designs I want to do first though, so if I do start this it won't be for a few weeks.

Just a little bit late...

I did my nails last weekend. Took the pictures, planned the blog post, and......things happened. Better late than never right? Here's the design I just took off yesterday:

The base coast is Tivoli in white, and the stamped design is Konad special nail polish in black. I painted the tip on using Sephora's Queen of Everything and Kiss Nail Art Paint in black.

This was my first time using nail stamps, so it definitely wasn't perfect. I managed to smudge the design on the bottoms of a few fingers when I put on my top coat, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with the result!

What I'm not super happy with is the image plates I got. After seeing the Bundle Monster plates on several different nail blogs, I thought I'd buy some because I'd really like options for designs I can do that won't take hours upon hours to get right and the price was right. As much as I've had enough time lately to waste time experimenting and doing things wrong, as exams and such pick up I'm going to need my time for other things. However, I should have done a little bit more research before buying. I chose the 21-plate set because I liked the selection of designs and because 21 was more than I would ever need so the 25 seemed even more excessive. Turns out that the 21-set has the old designs that are smaller than your average thumbnail. Such is life. Thankfully most of the designs I like can be extended using the stamp multiple times, so I'll keep using these in the future!

Brushes with disaster

I had all kinds of wonderful things planned for my nails that would use my brand new brushes. My preferred design was a peacock manicure that would use the fan brush to make a feather effect. If that failed, I wanted to do a variation of these nails. After a series of unfortunate events, I ended up doing neither.

First of all, I noticed that my strengthener had gotten quite thick, to the point it was becoming a bit difficult to use. Having seen many people add water or nail polish remover to their polishes to dilute them, I decided to give it a try. I carefully added a very small amount of water, sealed the bottle, shook it to mix it up, and....disaster. The strengthener became filled with tiny bubbles and did not seem to dilute at all. I made a mental note to buy a new one when I had a chance and managed to get a fairly even coat on each nail.

With that completed, I decided to attempt my peacock nails on my thumb nail. They did not work AT ALL. I tried a different variation on my pointer finger, with equally disappointing results. So I removed the polish and attempted to reapply the strengthener. After at least a dozen failed attempts to get an even coat on my thumb nail, I realized that it was a lost cause, took the strengthener off all of my nails, and left them bare for the night.

The next day I bought a new bottle of strengthener and attempted to do my back-up design, which requires leaving unpainted triangles on the bottom of your nail. I was not very good at making these triangles look even. To be honest, I gave up fairly quickly on that one because I was already frustrated from the previous night's difficulties. I finally settled on doing this design, because it was pretty simple and I could still use my brushes. Here's the end result:

The base coat is LA Colors "Morning Glory", and the design is done with Sephora's "Queen of Everything". I enjoy the bold pattern, though if I do this again I might consider using a light purple or pink for the design to see if that looks better.

My stamping set came in this week, so expect to see a few of those designs coming up!

I have decided I would like more followers, so you can now find me on Bloglovin!
Follow my blog with Bloglovin