Spotty nails

The inspiration

Found this one on Reddit and thought it would be a fun and easy one to try.

Straight forward enough, right?  The only problem is that I have no dotting tools!  I ended up using a toothpick, a Nintendo DS stylus, and a screw.  Ingenuity at work!

Here's how mine turned out.  Fancy!  Colors used: Wet n' Wild Wild Shine Metallica, Confetti Belle of the Ball, Zoya Noel, Spoiled Toad-ally Amazing, and Spoiled Jewelry Heist. 

Valentine's Nails!

The inspiration: Valentine's Nails from CherrySue, Doin' the Do

The inspiration!

This manicure was done totally with paper clips, which I love.  I do not always have the money to invest in fancy nail tools, so I really like it when I find household items that can be used to create pretty nails.

The best part?  It actually works!

It took a little bit of playing around to get the hearts to look right, but once I got the hang of it, they ended up looking pretty good.  The curved part of a paper clip really is the perfect shape for creating hearts.

Nail polish used: Wet 'n' Wild Crystalic (blue base), Wet 'n' Wild Candy-licious (pink dots), Essie A-list (red hearts). I tried some yellow hearts (Sugarray Yellow), but they didn't show up well on the blue, so I covered them up although you can still kind of see some of the yellow in this picture.   I did my thumb and pinkie as statement nails with a base of Wet 'n' Wild Candylicious with two coats of Revlon Sparkling.

I also smudged my ring finger nail while taking this picture, but hey, documenting the imperfections is part of this blog too!

Clean Nail Tips

The inspiration, via http://whitebison.wordpress.com

I've been putting a lot of work into learning how to make super clean lines when doing nail tips.  Recently, I've decided to use binder hole reinforcers to keep things straight and clean.  I got the idea from all the blogs suggesting use of the reinforcers for half moon manis.  I've never had good luck using just tape for tape manicures, and I was hoping using the reinforcers would keep things a little simpler.


The results:

First attempt (top), using Zoya Austine and Zoya Freja. 

Second attempt (bottom), using Confetti Belle of the Ball and Confetti Purple Reigns. 

Overall, this technique seems to work in theory, but it certainly isn't as simple as it looks.  First, your base color absolutely needs to be dry.  I would recommend letting it dry for at least 20 minutes.  Second, I recommend first sticking the reinforcer to the skin on your hand before sticking it to your nail, which makes it slightly less sticky and less likely to pull your polish off.

The tricky part is getting the sticker to lay totally flat.  As you can tell from my pictures, if the sticker is even slightly sticking up, it results in lumps and bumps.  But I do think this is totally doable for the average person, with some practice.

Pansy Nails

Sometimes I see really beautiful nails that seem too difficult to do myself.  I assumed that was the case for these pansy nails.  The picture didn't come with a tutorial, so I thought I'd give it a try myself.

First, to assemble the colors! I used Sugaray in some mystery yellow (I'm sure it has a name, but it's in Korean), Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mint Sorbet, Confetti in Purple Reigns, and Confetti in Wedding White.

First, take the opportunity to pee.  Otherwise you're going to be asking your significant other to hitch up your yoga pants in a half an hour.  Hypothetically.  Use your favorite base coat (I use Sally Hansen Double Duty), and coat nails with two colors of your base color.  I think a light blue or other neutral color would work just as well as a green.

Next, put two dots of purple on your nail. They should either be touching or close to touching.  I just dabbed the dots with the end of my polish brush.  They don't need to be perfect!

With white, place one dot connecting the two purple dots.

Around the bottom of the white dot, add three more dots.  One to the left of the original dot, one to the right, and a third dot that sets lower, but is on top of, the original dot.  Again, I'm just using the end of the polish brush.

This is the tricky part.  With the end of your polish brush, add a very small purple dot near the top of your original white dot.  Use a toothpick to drag the polish while it is still wet to create a starburst effect.

Lastly, put a yellow dot, partially obscuring the purple starburst.  Ta-da! Pansy nails! This gets a bit tacky, so make sure you let your flowers dry totally before you add top coat.

This is pretty time consuming, so I chose to just do two statement nails per hand, and did some simple dots on my other fingers.