Little Ghostie Nails

Hi all! Here's my first Halloween design for this year. It's subtle and requires absolutely no work other than painting a base color and putting a sticker on. :)

I thought this sticker was absolutely adorable and it looked really great over a dark color! I thought the sticker was white, but it turned out to be slightly translucent. A fantastic surprise!

My base color is China Glaze Howl You Doin', which came out in their 2013 Halloween collection. It's a beautiful, deep plum base with orange and purple glitters in it. It definitely looks almost-black indoors, but you can see the glitter once you go outside and it's stunning. I decided it was just witchy enough to put the sticker over. :) The nail sticker came in a small Halloween pack that I got from Five Below. I don't have the packaging any more (my bad), but here's what they look like:

Surprisingly the sticker lasted for several days until I was ready to take that design off! Anyway, I hope you like it! There are more designs to come, and they are much more complex. Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

Story time!

Hey there! Yes, it's story time again. So, I had planned on keeping this blog updated and whatnot, blah blah blah. But right after I said that, I found out that my SD card slot on my computer decided to stop working. After many fights and home remedies with the SD card slot, I have decided that it's never going to work again ever. So. That means that I can't get the pictures off my camera, because there's no way for me to plug it directly into my computer. And yes, I'm planning on getting a card adapter, since my USB ports work just fine. Unfortunately in the meantime, that meant that I just couldn't post since there was no way for me to get my pictures. I had accepted this fact up until now, because it's October. And you know how much I love my Halloween nails. Plus, my birthday is in a week, and I just need to start posting again!

My solution for this problem is that I will be posting several Halloween designs, but the only other camera I have is my iPhone 5S. Sigh. So the pictures won't be the best, but they're better than no pictures? I hope? I've already worn a few Halloween designs, so I'm going to be posting them tonight and in the next few days. Since my birthday is in a week, hopefully I'll get some money for a card adapter and we can return to our regularly scheduled blogging. :)

Thanks so much for reading and keep an eye out for the Halloween designs! Have a great day and happy painting! :)

- Faith

Struck By Lightning Nails

Hi there! I have a really cool design for you today! It's one of my favorites that I've ever done! :) It's based on the movie/book Struck by Lightning by Chris Colfer. If you haven't seen the movie, it's incredible. Do yourself a favor and watch it. It's a lovely film, and the book is just as amazing. Chris Colfer is probably one of the most talented men of our time, and I'm always eager to support him. So I painted my nails, inspired by his wonderful book!

Woo! I love these so much. I think I did a pretty good job of getting the images from the book and the movie right. :) Dare I even say they're pretty cute as a back to school design? Ha!

Thumb: Sinful Colors Snow Me White (base color), Sinful Colors Soul Mate (pink stripe on the side), China Glaze Secret Peri-Wink-le (blue horizontal stripes), Sally Hansen Mello Yellow (lightning), and black acrylic paint for the words.

Index: Sally Hansen Mello Yellow (base), Sally Hansen Celeb City (silver stripe), Sinful Colors Soul Mate (eraser tip), and black acrylic paint.

Middle: China Glaze Starboard (base), and white acrylic paint.

Ring: China Glaze Bahamian Escape (base), Sally Hansen Mello Yellow (lightning), and white acrylic paint.

Pinky: China Glaze Secret Peri-Wink-le (base) and black acrylic paint.

Topcoats: Seche Vite (glossy) and Essie Matte About You (matte)

I hope you like them as much as I do! I also hope you check out Struck By Lightning and the book that goes with it, because Chris Colfer deserves it and his work truly is incredible. Thanks so much for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

Back again... and Mermaid nails! :)

Hello everyone! It's been a looooooooooong time. An indecent amount of time. And for that, I am so sorry. Really, I tried to keep up with it, but I've had some mental health problems over the summer (after the crazy semester from hell at school), and I just kind of... stopped caring about my nails. I did still keep them mostly painted, but I've neglected my cuticles and I didn't do any nail art whatsoever. This is something that I never wanted to happen, ever. I love painting my nails and blogging with you guys, and I was always afraid that I would just stop one day and not start back up again. Well, after a long summer and some time to get back up on the metaphorical horse, I'm back! Another semester in college is going to be starting for me next week, and I decided it was time to nip this little mood in the bud and get back into the groove of things. :) So. I have a few more things to say and then I'll show you some mermaid nails! :)

1) If you have been keeping track of my 31 Day Nail Art Challenge posts, I am sorry to say that I'm not going to be continuing that. It honestly was a mistake of me to try and take that on, because I just wasn't that dedicated to it from the get-go. That being said, I have a few designs in a folder on my computer that I did complete for the challenge, but never posted. So I'll post those, but they won't be part of the challenge, because maaaaan. Forget that challenge *z-snap*.
2) And this brings me to my next point. I have several designs that I never posted from back in March-May. I will probably post some of those, because I like them and they're still nice designs... they're just a few months old, haha. So you will probably see those for the next few posts before any actually recent designs.
3) And finally, as you all know, I obviously have a problem with how long my posts are. I talk too much. As such, I'm going to try and keep them AS CONDENSED AS POSSIBLE in the future. For real. For designs, I might just say what polishes/stamps/paints I use and maybe elaborate a teeny tiny bit (an example will be below for the mermaid design). For reviews of polishes (such as indie polishes and swatches and things like that), those will be longer. But I honestly have to get a grip on the length of my posts, it's ridiculous.

With that, I just want to thank all of you for being patient with me, and for being amazing in general. :) You're wonderful and I am excited to come back to blogging because you all make it fun! And now, on to the nail art~~~~~~~~~ WOOOSH

Meeeermaaaaiiidssssss! I love mermaids, I think they're great. And they're the perfect summer manicure!

Base color: China Glaze Keep Calm, Paint On

Stamp colors: (gradient - from cuticle to nail tip) China Glaze Fancy Pants, Spontaneous, and Tart-y for the Party

Stamp: Mash Stamp Plate 39

Glitter: Orly Mermaid Tale

I really like for the scales to stand out, so I picked Keep Calm, Paint On as my base color because it's very pale and accepts other colors well. And the scales are all colors that look great together. The whole look is very shimmery and the glitter (only painted around the edges) gives a lovely rainbow pop on your nails. It's a subtle design but it's very eye catching! :) I hope you like it as much as I do!

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns, and let me know what you think of the new way of doing these posts. As in, do you prefer me to type everything out and keep my posts longer, or would you prefer me to list my supplies and keep it simple? I'd love to here from you about this. I just want to thank you again so much for reading, it absolutely means the world to me! Have a great day, and happy painting! :)

Belated Valentine's Day 2014 Nails - Gold Heart Studs

Hey everyone! So, I think the title of this post says it all, right? No need to explain? No...? Well, basically this week has been my "homework from hell" week. Coupled with last week, which was ANOTHER snow week here in Georgia. It's kind of scary, to be honest. It was below freezing every day last week and now it's 70 degrees out. The weather is doing weird things. So, because of the crazy weeks, I did not get to paint my nails for Valentine's Day (or as I fondly refer to it, Singles Awareness Day) until the 14th! And then I went out with my friends and my mom and watched Winter's Tale in theaters (can you say best holiday ever? Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe in the same movie? Mmmmm yes indeed) and then I haven't been able to post my manicure all week because of the homework from hell. But they're here now, so don't worry. I'm afraid they might not have been worth the wait, haha.

So for my base color, I used China Glaze Ahoy!, which is one of my absolute favorite CG polishes ever. You may not be able to tell in my photos (taken sans light box because I was in a hurry), but I think it's extremely flattering on my skin tone and it's just such a rich, glistening pink. I love it more than any other pink in my collection, hands down. I then paired it with some big (well, they were big on my teeny tiny baby nails, but they're probably medium sized for other people) gold heart studs that I got from Five Below. I had to bend the studs so they would sit flat on my nails, but they still ended up falling off within two days. But that was probably because I didn't bend them enough. Thankfully, I didn't lose them and they're still in good shape, so I can probably reuse them! :)

So I know this was super simple and a week late, but I still hope you enjoyed it! Let me know what you think. Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

KBShimmer "Clown Puke" Swatch

Alrighty, another indie! KBShimmer Clown Puke. Woohoo! I LOVE THIS ONE. So much. It was on my list of polishes that I need for a very long time. It's perfect in every way - So I'm super excited to show you my swatch! You know the drill by now, I'll show you the swatch first and then talk more about the polish afterward. :)

This is one perfect coat of Clown Puke over two coats of Essie Mint Candy Apple (I also tried it over my universal glitter base color, OPI Gargantuan Green Grape, and I didn't like it as much! So MCA it is.) This indie is loaded with glitter of every size in every shape - hex, square, circle, stars, hearts, you name it! And they're in every color!! My favorite glitters were the giant circle glitters, which you can just barely see one on my thumb in the first picture. It's so good. And like I said, this is one coat. It's so full of glitter. I had to do minimal placing of glitters as well, they just kind of fell where I wanted them to go. And the formula is fantastic, of course. Despite the sheer magnitude of glitter in this polish, it isn't thick at all. So basically, I give it a 10/10, would wear over and over again because it's perfect and beautiful.

I received this polish for Christmas, so my opinion is honest and hopefully it convinced you that you need this polish. Everyone needs it, for real. And if you feel that you need it as badly as I did, you can purchase it on KBShimmer's Etsy shop and their website.

So I hope you enjoyed! Thanks so much for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

Subtle Purple Filigree Stamping

Hey there! I feel like I'm posting so much right now, even though I'm not. It's because we've literally had the whole week off from classes due to the lovely weather right now - The joys of living in Georgia. So I get four snow days while the state shuts down. In all seriousness, we are just not equipped to handle this weather, and the ice is terrible still. So we have our reasons for freaking out.

So since the weather is so cruddy, I've got a really subtle, dark design for you. But hopefully this design is not cruddy. ;)

(with flash)

So for this design I started with two coats of China Glaze Up All Night (this color has recently found its way into my collection, and it is STUNNING) and then I stamped the filigree stamp from Cheeky's Jumbo Plate #8, the Princess Charming plate, with China Glaze Love's a Beach. That polish is a neon shimmer polish, but it's sheer enough that it made the stamp look purple over the blue! It was very subtle, which I LOVE. I love how the slightly different stamp shade is just visible enough to pique someone's interest, and then they have to look closely to see it, and I just love it. Is that conceited of me? Pffft, nah. 

So that's it! It was super simple, and I hope you like it! Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

31 Day Nail Art Challenge! Day 23: Inspired by a Movie

Heeeey! So for this challenge, I’m actually using the nails I wore when I went to see Thor: The Dark World. That’s inspired by a movie, right? J So this design, in my opinion, is not the most original Thor nails. And it’s not necessarily designed for Thor: The Dark World either. They’re just Thor and Loki nails, because I enjoy them both more than you would believe. So let’s get into it!

On my left hand I painted Loki because he’s my favorite. Don’t get me wrong, I like Thor a lot, but Loki’s such a good character and I am absolutely fascinated by his amorality. So on my thumb (not pictured here, but you can see it later on in the post) and ring finger, I painted two coats of Essie Good as Gold. On my index, middle, and pinky fingers, I painted three thin coats of Sinful Colors San Francisco. It’s such a lovely color, but so, so sheer. Then on my thumb, I painted “Loki” with San Francisco. On my ring finger, I painted a coat of a fine gold glitter (a random striper polish), but I think this design would look much better with some chunky gold glitter. I don’t have any. L And just because I wanted to keep the design simple, I painted Loki’s helmet on my middle finger with Good as Gold and some black paint with a tiny baby paintbrush. It’s adorable. And then I moved on to Thor!

On my right hand, I wanted to match my Thor nails to the style I painted Loki with, so on my thumb (again, not pictured, but you'll see it I promise), I painted two coats of Wet n' Wild Burgundy Frost. Then on my index, middle, and pinky fingers, I painted two coats of Wet n' Wild Denim Chrome. And on my ring finger, I painted two coats of Sally Hansen Celeb City and one coat of Essie Set in Stones. And for the designs - on my thumb I painted "Thor" with Celeb City and on my middle finger, I painted Mjölnir (or you could say Mew-Mew like Darcy in the movie) with Celeb City, Burgundy Frost and some black paint. 

And here's what they look like together!

There's those pesky thumbs!

So I hope you like them! I actually wore these to the movie premier, but I never posted them. But they fit the challenge perfectly, so hope was not lost and I finally got to show them to you. So let me know what you think, I'd love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

31 Day Nail Art Challenge! Day 22: Inspired by a Song

Hey all! I have an idea for a new series of nail art that I want to do (and I’m excited to get started on it) but I realized that I really need to finish posting all of the 31 Day Nail Art Challenges before I can start on a new thing. So it’s going to happen, I’m in the last stretch!!

So for today, I have the “Inspired by a Song” challenge – I chose “Cough Syrup” by Young the Giant. I dunno, I guess I just wanted to have a good cry while I painted my nails. But I also thought it was descriptive and I liked the design I came up with for it.

I knew I was going to paint some more detailed designs, so I wanted a neutral background. I painted two coats of Orly Déjà Vu on all of my nails, and then I used acrylic paints for all of the art, just because it was easier to shade with craft paint than with nail polish. On my thumb, I painted a drum for the line “A wet world aches for a beat of a drum.” On my index, I painted a spoon of cough syrup for the line “One more spoon of cough syrup now.” On my middle finger, I painted the words “Losing my mind” for that very same line, haha. I used different shades of a pinkish-purple to make it look like a gradient, even though there was no actual blending involved. On my ring finger, I painted a zombie and a realistic heart for the line “These zombies in the park, they’re looking for my heart.” And finally on my pinky, I painted a “Splash of the sun,” which unfortunately looks like a sad sunny side up egg. I intended for it to look like a splatter spot sun, but it’s the thought that counts. J

So that’s it! I hope you like it! Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! J

Polish Me Silly "Freckles" Swatch

Heeeeeeeey, look at me go! After not updating at all for two months, I'm starting to get back into it. Mostly because I have a million pictures piled up on my hard drive that I need to sort through and edit, so by default I'm having to blog as well. But at least I enjoy it. :)

So today I have an awesome swatch for you - Polish Me Silly (formerly known as Lush Lacquer) Freckles! My friend Payton got me this indie polish for my birthday (waaaay back in October - see how behind I am?) and I practically wore it the second she gave it to me. So even though these pictures were taken a while ago when it was fall, the colors are better for winter and spring. Just like with my other swatch/review thingies, I'll show you the swatch first and then talk about the formula afterwards.

This is one coat of Freckles over three coats of OPI Gargantuan Green Grape - And yes, that's GGG. It's just the blue version, not the green version. I might do a comparison of that someday, because there are definitely two versions of GGG. 

Alrighty, on to the formula and my thoughts about Freckles. First of all, Freckles has tons of small neon blue, green, pink, purple, orange, and highlighter yellow glitters packed into it. And the formula is awesome! It's not too thick, and it has great glitter payoff. I think this polish is really unique as far as the glitter goes - I know plenty of indie brands have some form of neon glitters, but this is my first time experiencing one, and it was interesting to find that the glitters are actually transparent and ultra-thin, just like neon nail polish. They're made of a different material than regular glitters. I liked them a lot! The only problem with these glitters is that you really can't put them over a dark color, because then they'll be dull and a few different shades of swamp. So I tested Freckles over a few bright colors, and I found that it works best over white, very light blue, pastel green, light purple, and bubblegum pink (I specifically used Gargantuan Green Grape, OPI You're Such a Budapest, Fresh Paint Honey Dew, and OPI Chic From Ears to Tail). You only need one coat for a perfect spread of rainbow freckles on your nails! I give this a 10/10 would wear again and again and again.

Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

31 Day Nail Art Challenge! Day 21: Inspired by a Color

Hellllooooooo~~ How's it going? :) So, if you're familiar with this challenge, you know that this prompt is notoroious for being ambiguous. What does it mean to be inspired by a color?? It could be any color, so what's challenging about it? Well, it was challenging. Because you know me... I automatically went to the turquoise polishes. But then I thought... No. This is a challenge, I can't go to my go-to polishes. So I went with a different color, one I don't wear very often. Inspired by the color of the glitter polish I used:

Periwinkle! It's so pretty. I painted two coats of China Glaze Secret Peri-wink-le on all of my nails and then painted one coat of Essie Stroke of Brilliance on my thumb and ring finger for a glittery accent. Simple! So I hope you like it. :D

Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

31 Day Nail Art Challenge! Day 20: Water Marble

Yes, I'm still doing this challenge. I'm so over it, haha. But I'm going to finish it! Anyway, I thought this day's challenge was going to be the most difficult for me, and I was right. I am AWFUL at water marbling. Just awful. It never works out, and I just end up wasting a lot of polish. But I did eventually get the polishes I chose to work, and I actually have two designs for you! My sister also wanted a water marble, and it was just a pain in the butt. At least it was pretty!

My sisters nails - I started with a base color of Sally Hansen Lava, and then I water marbled with Lava and Sally Hansen Pacific Blue.

Pardon the little cut on my cuticle in this picture, I got a little happy with the cuticle nippers! And also pardon the old water mark - these pictures were taken and edited like three months ago, haha. 

On my thumb and ring finger, I painted one coat of Fresh Paint Nebula, and then I covered it with a coat of Sinful Colors Scene Stealer. Wearing a glitter accent is a nifty little trick to avoid having to water marble on those two fingers, haha. And on my index, middle, and pinky fingers, I started with a base coat of China Glaze Pink-ie Promise. Then I marbled with Pink-ie Promise, China Glaze Life is Rosy, and Fresh Paint Nebula. Unfortunately for me, Nebula didn't marble as well on my nails as it did in my test swatches. So... It looks kind of wonky. But I liked it! My water marble had character. So I hope you like it! Let me know what you think of it. 

Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting!

Pipe Dream Polish "Pink Elephants and Lemonade" Swatch

Hello all! I've got an indie polish swatch for you today to start off the new year! :) I put several indie polishes (and a ton of other mainstream polishes too) on my Christmas list this year, and I got several of them, so I'll have swatches of all of them sometime in the next few weeks! But for today, I'm sharing one of the polishes I was most excited to wear - Pipe Dream Polish Pink Elephants and Lemonade.

According to the description at Pipe Dream Polish's store, Pink Elephants and Lemonade is "made up of medium and small hot pink and deep yellow matte glitters in a dusty turquoise crelly base." That is definitely an accurate description, because the base isn't really jelly - it's actually pretty opaque. But not so opaque that you can't see the glitters from the first coat if you do more than one coat. So I'll show you my swatches first and then I'll talk about the formula and my thoughts afterwards:

(two coats, indoors)

(two coats, indoors)

(two coats, flash)

Alrighty! So, I'm absolutely in love with this polish for tons of reasons. First things first: The colors! It isn't a secret by now that I love turquoise, and there's just something about turquoise and yellow and pink glitters... It spoke to me on a personal level. It's a unique blend, in my opinion. And let's not forget the name - Pink Elephants and Lemonade. It just reminds me of that song from Dumbo. "Pink Elephants on Parade," anyone? Anyway, the pink and yellow glitters are matte and they're surprisingly subtle. It just gives such a nice polka-dotty look to the polish. I would give this a 10/10 on color, because it's just so darn cute.

The formula... is awesome! No fishing required for those beautiful glitters! And the base is opaque enough that you don't need underwear or more than two coats. I think you could even get away with one coat, if you like that sheer jelly-look. You would have to paint it veeerrry carefully for one coat, though. It is a little streaky to begin with, but two coats evens it out perfectly. Some other awesome things about this formula are that it is super fast-drying and it's chip-resistant! Now, I don't actually know if it's either of those things, but from my experience with it, it dried so freaking fast. It was like Seche Vite fast. This isn't always a good thing, because a few times when I went back over a spot I had already painted it tended to drag a little bit - but like I said, a second coat evens it all out and leaves a gorgeous finish. It's also chip-resistant for me. I say that instead of "long-lasting" because I only just painted it on two nights ago, so I can't actually know that yet. But polish doesn't last long on my nails at all, and this hasn't chipped yet! I don't even have tip wear, which is just insane to me. I'm so impressed. So it's definitely an awesome formula. It was a little bit thick at first; I did add a little thinner to help move things along, but not much - just enough to make it buttery.

So overall, I love this polish. LOVE IT. It was a great price ($8 on their Etsy store, although it is on sale currently on their bigcartel store for $7), even though I didn't buy mine (I got it for Christmas from my wonderful mom :D). I'm not being compensated at all for this review/swatchfest, I just wanted to share it with you all. This indie polish holds a special place in my heart already, and I have a feeling I'm going to wear it a lot in the spring when it gets really rainy here in Georgia. It kind of reminds me of April rain showers, actually. It's dusty and muted, but the pink and yellow glitters look like flowers. So I hope you all enjoyed this looong review, and let me know what you think! I do have eight more indies to show you, so if there's anything specific that you would like me to talk about when I'm reviewing, let me know. I also have the three custom polishes I made for my friends and my sister - but I have to swatch those and fix up the pictures before I talk about them. Did you notice I changed my water-mark? That's something I want to work on this year - better quality pictures! 

Anyway, thanks for reading, have an amazing day, and happy painting! :)