Howdy, everyone! Hope you all have had a great weekend. Mine has been lovely. Had a spa day with the girls yesterday and got a fantastic facial at Trump Tower Spa. Lest you think I'm all rich and fancy, we had gift certificates so my treatment with tip only cost me $12 out of pocket. Woot! It was a good day all around, plus my nails looked fab!
This is one of my favorite water marbles ever! I'm sorry the pics are a little dark. I've got a new lightbox (thanks, Dana!) and I'm trying to work out the lighting situation. Basically, my little lamp ain't cuttin' it anymore, I'll have to look into some better wattage.
Anyway, I started this marble with 2 coats of Orly's Snowcone (on 50% clearance at CVS!!) for my base color. I used Snowcone and Sinful Colors in Snow Me White and New Wave for the marble. This looked a lot like Sodalite IRL and I really loved the patterns that were created.
Thanks a bunch for reading!
Howdy all! Welcome to my new followers, I seem to have picked a couple up over the last couple of weeks. Glad to have you on board!
Today I've got a fun little gradient for you. I saw a similar look earlier this week on Ermahgerd Perlish! and I loved the effect! Check out her post here for the original version. And check out my pics below to see what I did :)
....more after the jump....
Howdy, everyone! How's your weekend? I'm having a decent one so far, despite the fact that I have to work every day. One day I'll have a job that doesn't require weekends, and that will be a glorious day! Ha! I really can't complain too much though. Even working two jobs, I have the time to do my nails...what more can a girl ask for?
Today's manicure is a technique I've been wanting to try for awhile now. Ikat is a dyeing technique used in fabric weaving. The threads are tied off and dyed in a specific pattern before being woven into a beautiful fabric. I took a few weaving classes at SAIC and found that I really enjoyed the whole process. I never got to try ikat and I'm kind of glad because I'm pretty sure I don't possess the patience required to create such a precise weave lol However, ikat manicures are very easy! Here's what mine looks like:
I started with a coat of Peachy Keen by China Glaze, a one-coat peach creme. After that dried, I used a small paint brush and short strokes to create the diamond shaped pattern, making sure to leave the edges a little rough. I used China Glaze in First Mate (a dark navy creme) and Nina Ultra Pro in Blue La La (a denim/turquoise/blue creme) for the darker parts and a white striping polish for the light bits. I adore the way this turned out! I can't wait to try the technique with some different colors. You could use any contrasting colors with this technique, although it seems to work best if your background color stays fairly light colored.
A detail shot:
Such a great visual impact for such little effort...I love it when things work out like that! What do you guys think? Have you tried an ikat mani in the past? Any color combo suggestions?
In other news, my very first giveaway is still open for entries and will be until the 22nd. So hop on over the giveaway post and enter if you haven't already! It's super easy to enter and you could win 3 full-sized Julep nail polishes!
Thanks so much for reading!
Howdy, all! Well, it's finally the end. The 31st day of the 31 Day Nail Challenge has arrived. I'm a little sad that it's over, but mostly I'm just relieved (and a little proud) that I made it all the way through! Today's challenge was to recreate a favorite manicure. I have lots of favorite manicures done by other bloggers. There are so many great ones out there. I knew I wanted to try my hand at stamping some more and I knew I wanted something simple. Let's face it, I'm exhausted after doing all these manis every day! So I chose a sweet stamped manicure from pshiiit.com's blog. I'll include a photo of her's at the end. I'm unable to find the original post for this manicure, every time I try to link back through Pinterest it just takes me to her home page. Here's my version:
I started with one coat of China Glaze in First Mate and then used Wet 'n' Wild's Wild Shine in French White Creme to stamp a swirly heart design on top. This set of stamping plates worked a lot better for me, so I'm finding that not all plates are created equal. I did have some trouble with my top coat on this one. My bottle of Seche Vite needs to be swapped as it's getting kind of gloppy. Here's another view:
And here's the original:
As you can see, my stamp is not exactly the same as her's but I still think it turned out pretty well. I had a lot of fun with this challenge and I'm glad I followed through with the whole month. I'm not in a rush to do it again though lol However, I will be participating in a Halloween Challenge for the month of October. Check back for more info on that soon. Thanks so much for reading!
Howdy, everyone! We're 2/3 of the way through the 31 Day Challenge already, can you believe it? I really can't...amazing how time flies when fun is being had! Day 20 brings us water marbling. Everyone loves how a water marble looks and pretty much everyone hates doing them. I'm no exception. In fact, I'll let you in on a secret...I cheated this time! I figure if I can get the same look from an easier technique then I'm goin' for it! I did a faux water marble or dry water marble (you can read about that technique here) to save my sanity and I think it turned out pretty well. Have a look:
I started with 2 coats of Sinful Colors Jungle Trail as a base color. Jungle Trail is a light grey creme. To do the marble, I used Jungle Trail again as well as China Glaze Secret Peri-wink-le (a light blue creme) and First Mate (a deep navy creme) and Wet 'n' Wild Wild Shine in Sunny Side Up (a sherbert orange creme). After everything dried under a coat of Seche Vite, I went back in with the point of a cuticle stick and Sunny Side Up and First Mate to create the dots. The dotted water marble is a manicure that I've been seeing around on Pinterest (although nothing is ever linked back so I'm not sure who to credit for it) and is such a great easy way to change the look of the marble. I love the way this turned out, everything from the color combination to the pattern is just fantastic!
Tune in tomorrow to see a color inspired mani and thanks so much for reading!
