Fall catch up post!

I finally interrupted my autumn crochet frenzy to post all the nails I've been doing lately!

Cool geometrics with ombre

I used TruGel Marshmallow, Gelish Tiger Blossom and Gelish Black Shadow. 

 I've been looking forward to doing these for a long time now. ComicCon Nails! 

I used Gelish Hot Rod Red on most of the nails for a perfect 1940's look. Then for the accent nails, one had to have Captain America's shield of course, and the other is Peggy Carter's signature red hat. 

For those nails I used Gelish Midnight Caller and Gelish Night Shimmer with touches of various colors for the artwork. 

 Peggy's hat!

 And there he is. I hope he was just as hunky in real life! I can't wait to hear about it!

Its that time of year people! My favorite nail holiday...

HALLOWEEN!!!

I used: TruGel Marshmallow, Finger Paints Rococo Orange, Gelish Black Shadow, ASP Sparkler and Gelish Waterfield. And a bunch of dotting tools! 

And here are some lovely fall frenchies. I love how they turned out. So pretty! 

I used Gelish Bashful, Gelish Arctic Freeze and some Konad stamping polish. 

Thanks for reading, 

See you Monday!

Fall Frenchies. And diamonds.

 I really honed my french tip skillz this week! 

 This first one is just a basic white on clear here. The fantastic part is Heather's gorgeous natural nails! Can you believe those???

Next we have some edgy black with some stripes and diamonds. Very cool!

I used Gelish Black Shadow and TruGel Marshmallow with a bit of stamping on the thumb. 

 And here is the Funky French for the week. Owls!!!

I used a few coats of Gelish Bashful as a base color instead of a clear to keep it looking natural but also to mask some nail damage and add a bit of sparkle. Then I used ASP Ego with Gelish Mint of spring accents. And some black, white and orange for Mr. Owl of course. 

my third French of the week!

This one is a little different. I started with two coats of Gelish Bashful again (because I like it) and then painted the tips with Gelish Artic Freeze. Then I added a bit of sparkle with Gelish Vegas Nights on top and finished with a touch of chunky glitter on her accent nails.

Thanks for reading, 

See you Monday!

French Tips, Rhinestones, Glitter and HOT PINK!

 Don't you wish that was describing just one manicure?!? 

I know I do!

This was a fun nails week. from basic, to complex I really love all these manis. 

The first is on the lovely Kim, whose nails probably even look great after 3 hours of gardening with no gloves. But still, I may have helped a little ;)

For this standard French Manicure, I used Gelish Arctic Freeze and Simple Sheer. Always classy. 

 These nails are a little more complex but I love how they turned out. AND she let me use rhinestones! Yahoo! 

For this Mani, I used Gelish Party at the palace (love!) and Gelish Arctic Freeze. 

I hand painted the lace and dots and topped it off with some extra sparkle. Courtney has lovely nails so it was pretty easy to make this look fantastico!

It was really hard to get a decent picture of this lovely ivory and gold mani. The camera just doesn't do justice to how pretty it turned out.

I used OPI My Vampire is Buff, Gelish Meet the King, Gelish All that Glitters is Gold and some old grocery store gold polish that stamps really well.

While it looks intricate, stamping is actually one of the quicker nail art techniques. And I think it was perfect for this manicure. 

I should have named this post "Pretty Hands and Nails" because seriously, look how nice her nails are! Thanks Andrea!

 Last but not least is my mom's mani for the week. HOT PINK! What a fantastic end of summer color! 

Sometimes we just need to go bold! 

I used TruGel EZ Flow Electric Purple for this. 

When you go in the sun, this color has the faintest sparkle to it that really gives it something extra. I'm LOVING it!

Thanks for Reading, 

See You Monday!

Hearts and Rainbows!

What's better than hearts and rainbows? Glittery hearts and rainbows! Yay! 

But seriously, between the hearts, rainbows, glitter and puffy clouds, this was one of the funnest manis I've done.

My artistic strengths certainly do not lie in hand painting so don't look too closely at the details, just soak in the whole affect, ok? My good friend, Anadine was very patient and trusting to let me do this. Thank you! 

I used: Gelish Vegas Nights, Gelish Simple Sheer, and Gelish Arctic White. 

Thanks for Reading!

See you Monday

Strawberries!

Sometimes a mani turns out way more fantastic than I imagined. 

Today is one of those days! 

First, I painted the nails using Gelish's Arctic Freeze, Gossip Girl and Go Girl. Pretty simple so far. I then used a dotting tool to paint the polka dot nails using Go Girl on top of the Gossip Girl nails and top coated it. Then the real fun started! 

Scroll down to see a tutorial of how I did everything. 

 Here are my trusty tools. I've tried quite a few different brands of stampers, scrapers and polishes but the best is always Konad. Thank you Amazon! 

As far as stamping plates go, I love all the brands I've tried. I buy them on Amazon, Etsy, straight from the companies...they're all great. The two I used today are Mash-75 and Winstonia 118.

 To make the large strawberry, I quickly blob on some green and hot pink stamping polish and scrape it off before it dries. 

After that its pretty simple to just pick up the image with a rubber stamper and apply it to the nail. 

(If you've never tried nail stamping, there are about a bazillion YouTube videos you can watch)

Now for the strawberry print nails! 

The pattern on the plate is just a simple outline, which would have been pretty cute, but I thought I could do a little better than that. 

 Once the stamp dries on the stamper, I used a teeny tiny brush to color it in with the two polish colors I already used on the large strawberry. It doesn't need to be totally perfect but theres no hurry either.

 Next I used a basic topcoat (don't use anything fancy or the image might be too stiff to use) to generously cover the entire image and let dry completely. 

 Then I carefully used a pair of tweezers to lift up all the edges.

And then lift it off and place it face down on the nail and cover with topcoat. It needed a bit of cleanup around the edges but that's no big deal. 

Thanks Mom! Love you! 

See you Monday!