1 UP Mushroom Nails

Here's a quick little step by step guide of my latest nails. I wanted something colorful and relatively simple and this is what I came up with.

I used a dotting tool to create the polka dots and eyes, the rest was done with a nail polish brush. Don't forget the clear coat!

An Update.

Hello All!

It has been so long. Our life has been a whirlwind these past months. Life gave us lemons, and we tried making lemonade, but sometimes there were just too many lemons. Hehe. Long story short, we had to move and make a lot of financial adjustments, but we're making do and doing much better.

 I just wanted to post what my nails have looked like the past few months, as I try to get back into the swing of things again. Here's to the first of many more posts to come!

Update.. on ME.

I realize it's been a few too many days since I have posted anything. It's definitely been a whirlwind these past few days. My husband rescued an 8 week old puppy, after seeing him thrown out of a car window (while the car was in motion). This poor thing was covered in ticks, stuck everywhere (and I mean everywhere) with fox tails, swollen eyes, and completely malnourished. We are die hard animal lovers, like my biggest dream in life is to have a large property with all sorts for animals. So we took the puppy to the vet, got him treated, medicated and free of stickers and ticks. He has an eye infection in both eyes, which we hope will heal in the next week or so. Anyway, meet the newest member to our little family, Iggy.

Anyway, besides the chaos of taking care of a sick puppy, and preparing our house for him. I also had a job interview yesterday for a part time job that's perfect for me (fingers crossed I get it!), and my Great Uncle came into town. He's my Grandma's only sibling, she's 89 and he's 91, so it was really important to me to visit with them. My Grandma and I have always been extremely close, she lived next door to me from birth to when I moved out on my own at 18. She has had a tremendous impact on who I am today. 

I will be doing my nails tonight (unless my husband rescues another animal, haha!) and hopefully posting it tomorrow. I promise I'll be back to my same old routine soon.

Day 14 - Flowers!

As I have gotten further along in this 31 Day Nail Challenge, the more intricate the challenges get. Because of this I have decided to do my nails every other day, or every few days. Just so I can enjoy my hard works a few days before removing and starting the next challenge.

At this point in the challenge it's safe to say that each challenge from here on out will be a new experience for me. Well besides water marbling, but that was such a fail that I still can't say I have much experience in that one either. Haha. So I took to the web, to research flowers, and how to tutorials. It was NailNerd.com : How to Paint Rose on Your Nails that caught my eye and gave me the know how to do what I had imagined on my nails.

I used Wet n Wild Megalast I need a Re-Fresh Mint as the base coat. Took about 3 coats. I dabbed the flowers on my nails with Pure Ice Gossip! and drew in the details with Sally Hansen, Hard as Nails, Hard-core Party. For the leafs I used Pure Ice Wild Thing, and a un-marked bottle in a grass green color. 

Day 13 - Animal Print!

Hello all. My finger is feeling better, so I was able to remove the stripe nails (Finally!) and move on to animal print. I'm not a huge animal print fan. I like it, but rarely do I wear it. My favorite is leopard, well I also really love peacock feathers if that is considered animal print. Anyway, I am a little more wild when it comes to my nails, in comparison to my wardrobe, so leopard print is actually one of my favorite things to do on my nails (at least at the moment.).

Here's the polishes I used in order.

From left to right: Pure Ice Art in Motion (White), Wet n Wild Megalast Break the Ice, Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Golden-I, Kiss Nail Art Paint in Black and Silver, and Seche Vite Top Coat.

I used the white as a base coat. Then painted the Wet n Wild Megalast Break the Ice on top, let that dry completely. I painted the  Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Golden-I  on a cosmetic sponge wedge and "sponged" the tips and mid section of my nail creating a pearl and gold gradient. I used the Kiss Black polish to draw on the spots with a small sized nail dotter, and used the Kiss Silver to fill in the spots. Lastly the Seche Vite Top Coat to finish 'em off. 

Day 11 - Polka Dots!

As I said in my Gradient challenge post, I decided to give my nails a bit of a rest and add polka dots on to my gradient nails. To see what I did for the gradient challenge click here.

I got smart and made a step by step on a sheet of paper, instead of having to explain the steps I took to create the polka dot look. I have never done polka dot nails. I tried several techniques I found online, and the one I demonstrated worked out way better than the other ones.

I used Kiss Nail Art in Black, and the biggest nail dotter I have. 

Here's my results. I'm super happy with the way they turned out. Tomorrow, stripes! Oooh the possibilities. 

Day 5 - Blue!

My blue options were pretty bleak. In the 90's blue nail polish was HOT, and I kind of burned myself out on blue, so my blue nail polish consists of one color. Milani Neon Dude Blue, which I got on clearance for $2.00! The Dude Blue was used as my base coat. I used Jordana French Manicure White for the flowers, and Wet n Wild Mega Blast I Need a Refresh Mint as the center of the flower. I really need to get into the habit of making a video, or taking photos while I'm painting, to show you how it's done. The flowers are very easy, I took a medium sized nail dotter, dotted 5 dots in an oval shape. Then I took a toothpick drew lines from the middle of the petal to the center of the flower, added a dot of the I Need a Refresh Mint to the center and the flowers were done. The top coat I used is Hard Candy's Matte-ly in Love.

Below is a rose from my front yard, where I take most of my nail pictures. I love this variation of a rose, and thought I would share it too.

Colorful Leopard Nails

I got my nail dotting tools I ordered from Amazon.com yesterday, and I had to try them out. Trying to figure out what design to do with them was the hardest part, but finally I decided on leopard print. I truly LOVE the way they turned out, and the only issues I had was using my left hand to dot on the leopard print. I'm sure that will get easier, the more that I do it. Alright, now onto the fun part.. How I did it!

I started with Jordana 090 White, as a base coat. I only painted on one coat, because it's going to be covered up, so it was unnecessary to have it perfect. Let the base coat dry. I used the widest part of a cosmetic foam wedge, and painting three colors horizontally. Using Pure Ice Splash, Pure Ice Wild Thing and Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Sun Kissed. Then I pressed the wedge onto my nails, while re-applying the colors for each nail. This technique is a bit messy, so you may want to tape up the sides of your fingers to avoid paint on your skin. I have read that some women wet the foam wedge first, I found this to not be as effective as leaving it dry.

Once the gradient paint has dried, it was time to use those new dotting tools. I used Kiss Nail Art Paint in Black, dobbing a little on a scratch piece of paper, so that it's easier and more available to apply to the dotter. There's plenty of tutorials on youtube.com on how to create a leopard pattern. I glimpsed at one of them a few days ago, but really all that goes out the window once you start, you really have to gauge it for yourself. Add 3 to 5 incomplete circles on each nail, then fill in the gaps "spots". I used the same three colors to fill in the incomplete circles to complete the leopard patterns.

After letting it all dry, I used Sally Hansen's Strengthening Top Coat, as a top coat. I'm super happy with the end result, and will be rocking these nails until my Konad polish comes in!

Introduction.

Let me start out by introducing myself. My name is Jamie, born, raised and still reside in Northern California. I'm 29 years old, a wife and one of the many, many people whom lost employment due to this recession. I absolutely love photography, everything about it is extremely exciting to me. I also enjoy painting, crafting, and cooking. Pinterest is a dream come true for a gal like me! It has actually opened my eyes to all the possibilities my nails have! I had no idea how available products are to purchase to create beautiful nails at home, instead of spending 100's of dollars a month. I saw the Salon Express at Walmart a few weeks back, for $9.95, and figured it can't hurt to get it a shot. Well, I've been mildly successful a few times with it, but it advertises that it works with ANY nail polish. While that may be true if you lay down the polish, scrape the excess polish, stamp it onto the stamper and finally stamp it on your nail within, lets say, 10 seconds. Because if it's not rushed it dries and the effort is for nothing. So I went to the reviews, read what polishes work and am now anxiously awaiting the Konad stamping polishes I ordered from Amazon. I'm really excited to try nail stamping with the better stamping polish, especially since I also ordered the Shany 2012 nail art polish stamping too, so now I have so many options! I am a complete beginner to this, so follow me as I learn and discover new techniques and share my findings with you. Also follow me on Pinterest for my latest posts, and nail inspiration. Mind you, I just started the blog and the pinterest account, so please be patient. :)