Green to blue gradient

I've been seeing lots of gradients around on other nail blogs and it's made me want to try one on my own nails again. The first tutorial I saw (which I now can not find for the life of me) used a small piece of sponge to dab two different colours up and down the nail. It worked, but it was generally really difficult to make a smooth transition from one colour to another. For today's gradient I tried out swirling the nail polish together on some plastic wrap and then stamping the whole thing on my nail. I decided to try a green to blue gradient so that I could do an accent nail using a blue and green glitter polish that I haven't tried out yet. Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

The gradient ended up being a little more subtle than I originally intended, but I still like the colour combination. The only downside is that it took a LOT of polish to get the blue to show up. I must of used about half a bottle of each colour. Thankfully I used cheaper polish, which is probably why I had to use so much of it, so if (when) I do this again I'm going to try a polish that I know is a bit thicker.

The colours I used for the gradient are LA Colors "Palm Tree" and "Splash", and the glitter is "Cosmic" by Jordana. I love this glitter, I'm definitely going to have to use it again!

Bumblebee from Transformers!

I love doing my nails, but it can be really hard to come up with ideas for what to do time and time again. A few days ago I mentioned my lack of inspiration to my boyfriend, and his response was "You know what would be cool? Black and yellow stripes. Like a bumblebee. Oh, like the transformer!" So, these nails come to you courtesy of inspiration from my boyfriend. 

This was my first time trying to use striping tape where it wasn't just a straight line across the nail. I'm always in awe of The Nailasaurus and her ability to make impressive designs using striping tape. I did my best to follow her tutorial, and as you can see I haven't quite mastered it yet. I think it was a good first attempt though! I'm also disappointed that the autobot logo smeared a bit when I put the top coat on, but thankfully you can't really see it from a distance.

For the striped nails I did two coats of Joe Fresh's Onyx, laid down the striping tape, and painted a thick coat of Sally Hansen's "Lightening" on top. For the accent nail I did two coats of Sally Hansen's Lightening and then used Konad Special Nail Polish in black to paint the autobot logo.

Decorated french manicure

Back in December my mom gave me some nail stickers as a gift. I've been waiting for a good reason to use them as they're a little bit too fancy for everyday wear, and I figured the wedding I'm going to this weekend is the perfect excuse. One of the nail stickers I got was clusters of jewels and pearls and I thought it would look great with a french manicure. The jewels stick out quite a bit so I'm a bit worried that they won't make it through the night. I've got some serious nail bling going on though!

I used the Kiss french manicure guides to do the tips, and I'm a bit iffy about them. On some nails, my pinky especially, it ends up being pretty much straight across rather than a nice curve. I guess I'll just have to get better at free-handing it. Also, what looks like bubbles around the jewels is actually glitter! I took a picture with natural light to try and show the decorations a little bit better.

For these nails I did a base coat of Rimmel's "French Lingerie", then did the tips with Sally Hansen's "White On". The stickers are from Daiso, a fantastic $2 store that has anything and everything in it. I've already gotten some compliments on these nails, and I only left the house for about 30 minutes. I love them, let's just keep our fingers crossed that they'll last!

Sugar spun nails

I've been seeing sugar spun nails around a lot, so I decided to try them out. I'm still job hunting (yay...) so my nails need to be subtle and professional so I can be ready for a job interview any time, just in case. I stuck to more neutral colours and I liked how it turned out!

Painting these nails was a bit of a nightmare though. Not because it was hard, this actually was super easy and quick to do. The issue was I was impatient and didn't wait for my polish to totally dry before I added more layers. I went to cook dinner and ruined three nails in the process. When I went to fix them I realized that on two other nails the polish had either come off the tip or pulled away from it. I was just about ready to give up and take them all off, but thankfully another layer of top coat managed to hid the missing tips and painting the other three took no time at all.

I took a picture with the flash on to try and show the colours a little bit better, it's not the picture but hopefully it'll do.

The colours I used were Sally Hansen's "Gray-T Escape" and "White-On", L'Oreal's "Eiffel For You", and Sephora's "Queen Of Everything".