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! :)

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 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!

Halloween Zombie Flesh Nails

WARNING! THIS POST IS NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED. IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH, YOU PROBABLY DON'T WANT ANY PART OF THIS. For this reason, I'm putting the pictures under a break! So read on if you can handle it. :)

Anyway, hello everyone! I know I'm cutting it pretty close to Halloween for these nails, but I am technically getting them up before Halloween! I wanted to wait until the last week before Halloween to do the really gory stuff. And I wish I could take the credit for this design, but it is not mine! I based it on a tutorial by PackaPunchPolish (WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS ALSO GORY IN A WAY SO DON'T WATCH IT IF YOU'RE EASILY SQUEAMISH I'M SERIOUS) on youtube. I have literally been waiting a year to do this, haha. I didn't do it exactly, I adapted it to zombie flesh instead, so it's extra gross. And since there's a tutorial for it already, I'm not really going to explain what I did, just what polishes I used. And now for the unveiling! Click the read more to see the pictures! This is your last chance to turn back!

Halloween Rotten Pumpkin Nails!

Hello all. :) Halloween isn't Halloween without some pumpkins, right? So I painted pumpkins.... rotten pumpkins!!

(Sorry this picture is blurry! But I wanted a shot of my thumb)

Yes, I know... they're kind of disgusting. But I think they're gross in an endearing way. So, on my index, middle, and pinky nails, I painted one coat of Wet n' Wild Black Creme, and then one coat of Orly R.I.P. On my accent nails, I painted one coat of China Glaze Life Preserver and then one coat of Sinful Colors Cloud 9 to give it some shimmer and add dimension to the color. Now comes the fun part... making them look rotten! Since R.I.P. has a black jelly base, I just took it and wiped as much of the polish as I could on the lip of the bottle, then I lightly streaked it over the orange. Since it's really sheer, it just left these dirty streaks. The best way to replicate this without that specific polish is to mix a little bit of black nail polish with clear polish on a palette or a piece of paper and then streak that over your nails. Or you could even use a darker shade of orange. Whatever you've got! Then I took a black striper polish and painted on the faces wit thin, short, and fast lines. So I hope you like it! Let me know if you try it out. :)

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

Depression Awareness Month Nails

Hello all! So, October is pretty much known for three things: Halloween, having the best weather out of all the months, and breast cancer awareness. But did you know that October is also Depression Awareness month? Well, now you do. Here is a fantastic webpage that should give you a good idea about how prevalent depression is. I personally know people who suffer with depression and I have experienced it myself. It's much more serious than just feeling sad - it's feeling sad, and angry, and exhausted, and unmotivated, hopeless, and helpless. It's thinking you're worthless and that no one can help you. It's becoming uninterested in your favorite things - mine was drawing and painting. Depression is serious and deserves the awareness. So I went around like a fairy wearing my green nails (because the depression awareness ribbon is emerald green) educating people about depression and how to help those who have it! But I'm not going to do that here - just know that people with depression are not making it up and it's not nearly as simple as "just being happier." It is an illness that needs treatment, and it affects real people who need understanding and acceptance. So here's what I did:

On my left hand (thumb to pinky): Sinful Colors Envy and Orly Mermaid Tale, China Glaze Tree Hugger, Zoya Logan, Sinful Colors Innocent and China Glaze Graffiti Glitter, and Sinful Colors Happy Ending.

On my right hand (pinky to thumb): Sinful Colors San Francisco, China Glaze Gaga For Green and Sinful Colors Call You Later, China Glaze Starboard, China Glaze I'm With The Lifeguard, and China Glaze Cast A Spell.

I basically took all my green polishes and used them, haha. Green makes me very happy, and it was helping me represent a cause that is important to me. Sounds like a perfect manicure! So I hope you like them. Thanks so much for your awareness, and feel free to share your experiences! Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

Halloween Witch's Brew/Magic Slime Nails

Wooo, I'm on a roll today! It's just because I've already painted all these designs, I just didn't upload them the day I did them. Sigh, my blog is just a perpetual mess. Anyway, here is my Witch's Brew/Magic Slime (I couldn't decide which name fit it better) design:

I don't think I meant to, but I managed to get all the most obnoxious Halloween colors in it? But I love it!! My base color is Sinful Colors Cloud 9. Then I took China Glaze Grape Juice and dotted it along the tips in a dripping pattern. It wasn't sparkly enough for me, so then I covered it with a purple glitter from Love & Beauty (Forever 21's brand) - I have no idea what the name of it is, because my bottle has no label. But I tried googling it, and I've seen it called Cauldron? Or it could just be Purple Glitter. I'm not sure. If you know what it's called, please let me know. Anyway, over that, I put Icing Love It and Orly Mermaid Tale for some magic bits (glitter, basically). And then, to make it even more spooky, I stamped the spider image from MASH plate 38 with Sinful Colors Innocent on my accent nails. Whew, that's a lot. But lemme tell you... They were so Halloween. They screamed Halloween. So I hope you like them! Let me know what you think. :)

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

31 Day Nail Art Challenge! Day 16: Tribal Print

Oooooh boy, I'm going to make some enemies today (but hopefully not because I know you're all wonderful, understanding people).

So, I'll just get right into the reason I didn't exactly follow the rules for this day. "Tribal" print is cultural appropriation, which is not good at all. Basically, since I am a white privileged woman (part of a dominate culture), it isn't right for me to decorate myself (my nails) with something that is from a minority culture that isn't my own, especially since the whole appeal to tribal print (the fact that it's called tribal print itself is offensive) is just that it is exotic and looks cool. This is problematic because a whole culture and its art and beliefs should not be reduced to some nail art. Not by me, at least. It's a popular trend, but I won't do it. I'm not going to exploit images from cultures that I don't belong to - images that hold meaning in these cultures, but not to me. I won't misrepresent a culture, I won't claim it as a fashion statement, and I'm not going to pretend that I'm part of something that I know I'm not part of. I know that there are people out there that are genuinely part of whichever culture they're representing in "tribal" nail art, and that's fine. Those are the people that should be doing this kind of nail art. Not me. I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying, because I'm absolutely supportive of assimilation of different cultures (the USA is the melting pot of the world afterall, and that's awesome) and learning about new cultures, but this isn't the same thing. This is saying "Hey, I think that design looks cool, so I'm going to paint it on my nails, even though I know minimal information about said design and your culture." I'm going to leave it at that. I hope this makes sense. If it doesn't, I hope you'll find more information in the cultural appropriation link (it's just Wikipedia, but I feel that it's pretty accurate) above, and if you have any questions for me, please ask them. I also hope this didn't sound antagonistic, because that's not what I'm about at all. My aim isn't to say anyone is a bad person for doing tribal print nails. I'm just explaining and educating why I won't do it, so I hope you can understand that. And if this happens to influence your opinions about tribal print in the process, then it's a win/win situation. And thanks for reading all of this, if you did. :)

That being said, I didn't do absolutely nothing for this day. Because it is a challenge, and even though I disagree with the premise, I'm not going to skip it. Instead, I picked a cool stamp from Pueen plate 49:

At first I thought the stamp was similar to Gaelic designs, but it's really not. I started with a base color of China Glaze For Audrey, and then two coats of a nameless Bon Bon polish that I've literally had since I was a kid. It's so old, haha. But it still works, and it's pretty! I stamped with Sinful Colors Calypso, which probably wasn't the best polish to use. It had a weird effect where it was darker on some nails than others? You can see it's much darker on my index finger in some of the pictures. *shrug*

Anyway, thanks so much for sticking around after my little mini-rant, haha. It's important to me, so I hope it wasn't too off-putting. Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

31 Day Nail Art Challenge! Day 11: Polka Dots

Heeeeey! So... polka dots! That's what this design was all about. I had actually been planning this design for months, I just never got around to doing it and then I forgot about it. But when I saw that one of the days was polka dots, I remembered! So here they are:

Let me just say, and I know I say this a lot, but I LOVED these. They were both bright and dark and just overall they were really cute. And the good thing about them is that they look great on both long and short nails! My sister said the colors reminded her of sunsets. Since both of my base colors are really sheer, I just started the gradient without a solid color base. So the two colors are China Glaze Thataway and Sinful Colors Let's Talk. Then, of course, came the polka dots. I used a large dotting tool (maybe a medium one? I'm not really sure - but it was big enough to make those sized polka dots) and Sally Hansen Black Out for the dots. I almost put white dots, but I think it would have made it more springy than I wanted. So black dots happened! I hope you like it. Let me know if you try it out!

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

31 Day Nail Art Challenge! Day 6: Violet Nails

Heeeeeeeeeeeey there! Who's ready for some purple nails?? I know I am! Featuring my friend Jasmine's nails:

These were super awesome, but also a huge pain in the butt. We kept having to re-do the stripes and the skull and it took forever. But I think the payoff was worth it. On her index, middle, and pinky fingers we started off with two coats of China Glaze Fancy Pants. Then we stamped the vertical lines over it with China Glaze Tart-y for the Party and Mash plate 46. On her ring finger and thumb, we painted one coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out and then one coat of Wet n' Wild Fergie Rock n' Roll, which is just the prettiest glitter over black polish. Then we stamped the skull from Mash plate 29 with Sinful Colors Snow Me White. Here's what it looks like on my nails:

Jasmine and I especially liked how you could see the pink shimmer in Fancy Pants under the creamy finish of Tart-y for the Party. It was really awesome! So, I hope you like it as much as we did, and let me know what you think! Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)

31 Day Nail Art Challenge! Day 4: Green Nails

Hey there! Woo, I'm slowly making it through this thing. Very slowly. I really just want to skip around and do some of the designs that I'm really excited about, but I'm going to be good and go in order. Anyway, I reeeeeaaaalllyyy struggled with the green nails. Green is absolutely my favorite color (and I have a lot of green polishes to pick from), but I couldn't think of a unique design for green. So after several different swatches and design tests, I finally settled on these (and I couldn't be happier):

Pardon my artsy-fartsy moment, but I found that my mustache ornament (made for me by a friend) was great for the white balance on my camera.

I looooooove these. I don't wear green that often, usually because it stains my nails. I don't mind that much, but I think I've just taught myself not to wear it so often, and I have to break that habit, because I really love green. Anyway, this is much simpler than it looks! I started off with two coats of Sinful Colors Innocent, and then I simply painted a single stripe one after the other of increasingly darker greens: China Glaze Gaga For Green and Starboard, and Sinful Colors Envy. It took me a while, because usually when I do stripes I use a paint brush and acrylic paint, but this time I just used the polish brush and sheer willpower. If that's too difficult, you can always use tape, a paint brush, or you could even paint the "stripes" all the way down the nail for every layer, so you only have to worry about the top line of the stripe looking good. Anyway, I hope you like it! 

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

31 Day Nail Art Challenge! Day 3: Yellow Nails

Hi there! So, I have to admit... I thought about cheating on this one. I love the color yellow, but it looks awful on me because of my skin tone and I figured to avoid wearing it, I could just paint a few nails for pictures and then take it off and move on to green. BUT. This would not be called a challenge if it wasn't difficult, right? So I'm challenging myself! Yellow nails all the way!! And if I have to say so myself, they turned out GREAT! I love them, they're super sunny and cute, and I haven't taken them off yet because they don't look bad at all. So here is what I came up with:

Isn't it pretty? Yes, yes it is. Anyway, I started off with three coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow and then one coat of China Glaze White Cap. I stamped the little flower on Mash plate 35 with Sinful Colors Snow Me White several times on each nail in random spots, but always making sure that one flower was completely visible. These turned out so cute! I'm still not sure yellow is my color, but these are very bright and I'm enjoying them. So no cheating for me! 

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

Wizard of Oz Nails

Hey there! So I have another very long, pic-heavy post for you. But it's worth it. I decided a while back that I wanted to paint my own Wizard of Oz nails, because I couldn't find too many tutorials or anything that was simple to paint and still represented the movie really well. Mine didn't turn out too simple, now that I think about it. But they still look pretty! And there's always ways to make it simpler if the design is too difficult.

The Emerald City - Well isn't that sparkly? Alright, I used like 7 polishes for this finger alone. So just bear with me, haha. The base color is China Glaze Bahamian Escape. Then I painted the Emerald City first with L'Oreal The Temptress' Power and then with stripes of Zoya Logan. Then I painted the yellow brick road with Sinful Colors Let's Meet. And for the poppies, I just dotted them in with China Glaze Pink-ie Promise, China Glaze Life is Rosy, and Sinful Colors Soul Mate. And finally I painted in the clouds and the brick lines on the yellow brick road with with and black acrylic paint.

Poppies - Poppies are some of my favorite flowers, and I couldn't resist giving them a nail all to themselves. I used a cup of mine that has a poppy design on it as a reference. The base color is China Glaze Pink-ie Promise. Everything else was done with acrylic paints.

The Wicked Witch of the West- Hey, she needs some love too! Instead of doing anything complicated, I just decided to do a witch silhouette. The base color is China Glaze Gaga For Green, and the witch was painted with black acrylic paint. It's much easier than it looks, because you can pretty much just push the acrylic paint in the design you want, if that makes sense. You don't have to be too precise since she's just a silhouette, is what I'm getting at.

The Flying Monkeys - Again, I didn't want anything too difficult. So instead of painting a full monkey, I went with their little outfits. The base color is China Glaze Bahamian Escape, and the rest was done with acrylic paints.

The Wicked Witch of the East - Her stockings! The base color is Sinful Colors Snow Me White and the stripes are black acrylic paint.

Here's a little picture of my workspace. You can see all of the polishes and paint I used - plus a few of my scribbles on paper before I painted it. I don't usually plan it out before I start painting, but this was different because I had multiple ideas floating around in my head for each nail, so I needed to draw them out. And if you look really closely, you can see that I wrote down some Batman characters, because I was originally going to do that before I finally settled on Wizard of Oz. I'm glad I changed my mind! :)

Dorothy - Her gingham dress! This is super simple, even if it doesn't look like it. The base color is China Glaze Dandy Lyin' Around. Then I painted overlapping stripes of light blue with acrylic paint. Then you just fill in the square parts where the stripes overlap with a darker blue (I used acrylic paint for this as well), violá! You have a simple gingham dress.

The Scarecrow - He was always my favorite character! The base color I used is e.l.f. Emerald, which was a little too dark for my taste. But I didn't have a dark green at the time, so it worked! The straw and rope are painted with acrylic paint.

The Tin Man - The base color is Sally Hansen XTreme Wear Celeb City and the heart and lines are painted with acrylic paints.

The Cowardly Lion - The base color is e.l.f. Nude and his main and red bow were painted with acrylic paint.

Even though you can see it in this picture, I guess I didn't get a close-up photo of my other pinky, which was the Ruby Red Slippers - The base color was China Glaze Hey Sailor and I went over it with two coats of Orly Rockets Red Glare (aka my favoritest glitter polish in existence). And there you have it! Wizard of Oz nails. They're sure to catch some eyes and get lots of compliments, because mine sure did! So let me know if you try them out, I'd love to hear from you! Thanks for reading, have a great day, and happy painting! :)