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!

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. 

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!