Cheeky Plate Fun

I had been admiring the cheeky plates for the last few months before I finally caved and bought some.  The beautiful patterns were irresistible.  They look like gorgeous Indian fabrics.

I went with a franken yellow basecoat and used China glaze's shower together for the stamp.

I moved into a new apartment this past weekend and the process has been ridiculously stressful.  The majority of my stuff is still not unpacked and I've had multiple failed attempts to set up the cable.  The blog posts will probably continue to be sparse until I am settled in.  

Have a great weekend!

Happy Memorial day!

In honor of Memorial day, I went for a patriotic mani.  I love the look of different patterns on each nail with a common color theme.  Normally I couldn't pull this off at work, but fortunately it was a three day weekend.
I'm not feeling very chatty tonight, so I'm going to stick with photos and few words.

Here are my red, white and blue nails.

 Here is my right hand.

I hope everyone had a great day filled with sun, picnics and friends.

Sinful red

 I figured the rainbow nails were a little too intense for work. So, I kept the pointer finger the same and worked around that.  The base color is sinful colors Ruby ruby.  Each nail contains a small red hex and a larger red hex closer to the base. I applied the glitter with a dotting tool while the second coat of red polish was still wet.  As mentioned yesterday, the pointer finger has the small and large hex glitter along with dots in various shades of orange.  A dotting tool was used for this.

That's all for now :)

Water marble strips

I've expressed my love for dry water marble before.  I had a few dry sheets around that were made about two weeks ago.  The polishes were a mix of sally hansen and china glaze.  

 I wanted to try some nail art with them so I cut the sheet into thin strips. 

The base is sally hansen green with envy and going green.  About 2/3rds of the nail was painted with green with envy.  I let it dry for about 5 minutes.  Long enough that my finger wouldn't leave prints on the nail polish when I touched it.

I then took the strips and placed them on my nails (polish side down).  I pressed down on the strip and peeled the plastic right off.  It was complete with a coat of seche.

"Shamrock" mani

I'm going to start by apologizing for these photos.  I used my backup camera and they're just not as nice as I'd prefer.  Although these are just clovers from my yard, we can pretend that they're shamrocks.  

I started with a base of sinful colors happy ending.  There were some clovers growing outside so I picked and pressed them.  To press them I placed them between two sheets of newspaper and put that in a book.  I put a heavy object on top of the book for several hours.   It helped flatten them nicely to make them easier to apply.  I put a little bit of a clear top coat on the green before the clovers were put on.  The whole thing was topped with seche vite which made them really smooth.  

The clover turned a little brown when the seche was added.

I used to do this with wildflowers when I was younger.  I think I'm going to have to start that up again this spring.

Opposites attract

I've started to get into the habit of changing my nails almost every day.  Although I'm pretty certain most people would think this is obsessive,  I know anyone reading this blog probably does the same thing....so no judgement here ;)

I'm really excited about this one.  I went to sally beauty today since they were having a sale on china glaze magnetix (which I've been wanting to buy).  If you purchase 2 polishes, you get a free magnet with three designs.  I went with you move me and instant chemistry polishes.

The star pattern works really well.

I painted a broad stripe on each nail with this electric blue franken (which is awesome one its own).  

The magnetic polish was placed adjacent to the blue stripes.  I used the diagonal magnet for the pattern followed by a black stripe to separate the two colors.

I absolutely love the contrast between the blue shimmery polish and the depth created by the tan magnetic polish.  It reminds me of something in ancient Egypt.

Dots, stripes and dashes! Oh my...

I always enjoyed nail art when I was younger, but got away from doing it over the years.  It's difficult with work to keep up a hobby in my free time (I'm sure everyone can relate).  I stumbled upon kitties26 blog a few months ago when I was looking up swatches for some OPI polishes.  This was the inspiration I needed to start up experimenting with frankens and designs.  It's amazing what a large nail-loving community there is on the internet.  MK's blog has had so much helpful information on supplies and mixing frankens...I just wish I would have found it before I wasted way too much money on random glitter.  So, thank you to all of you talented nail artists!

Here is a fun dot and stripe mani.  I love the contrast of the colors and patterns.  Unfortunately my right hand didn't work out quite as well.

The colors used:

1. Ulta- sun-sational

2. Sally Hansen-black out (+ black mica)

3. China glaze-shower together

4.Stripe Rite- black

5. Milani- white canvas

I also used a dotting tool and fine-tip paint brush.