Sling Manis

Well, it's been three weeks now since I dislocated my shoulder and let me tell you that it is boooring not being able to use both arms. Especially in the summer. So I attempted a couple manicures while keeping my arm in the sling.

This design matched my dress for another wedding. I'm actually pretty proud of this considering I had to keep my right arm stable the whole time.

This one turned out cuter and was a good summer design. The colors also matched my outfits for most of the week which was quite fun.

It sounds like I can finally get out of the sling and back into the normal swing of things. Well, I should really avoid swinging, but uh, you know what I mean. 

I did a pedicure last night and spent way too long trying to remember how to do water marbling for a manicure today. Both turned out decently, and I'll post pictures soon.

Until then...

Happy Painting!

Wedding Season Nails

Hey there, nail enthusiasts of the net! I have some fun ones today. It's wedding season, and with that it meant it was time to get a new dress. Of course whenever I go shopping for a dress I take into consideration the kind of nail art I can do to accessorize, and I found such a fun dress to inspire my art.
My cousin got married this past Sunday and I did a mani-pedi to go along with my dress:

(I'm the one on the right)

I snapped some pictures quickly while waiting for the ceremony to start, so these are not the best of pictures (and I proceeded to pick of the paint the next day- bad habit, I know), but they turned out pretty great!

Pretty fun, right?

It's a good thing I like my pedicure, since I'm probably going to be keeping it for quite some time.

I have bad news.

I dislocated my right shoulder yesterday and the doctor I saw thinks I tore a ligament or cartilage. I'll find out in a few days when I see the orthopedic specialist. Either way, My dominant arm is down for the count for at least a few weeks. I guess I can work on using my non-dominant hand in the meantime, but unfortunately I won't be able to do any nail art (or anything else I like to do for that matter) for quite some time. You have no idea how frustrated I am about that. But I will try to post sometime in the next month.

Until then-

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 3: Geometric

I'm excited about this one, you guys! My nails turned out really well for today's challenge!

It was hard not to just do my own thing for this on since I love color blocking, but I found a cool pin to take inspiration from here. This is by a French blogger, it seems: La Paillette Frondeuse. Here's the original pin:

And here is my interpretation:

I added some more stripes and changed the colors to match my wardrobe this weekend. I love them! I'll be sad to take them off.

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 2: Stripes

Day two of the challenge is upon us! I decided to give my fingers a break and give myself a pedi for stripe day. The pin that inspired me is actually the first pin I pinned to my nail art board! This is the original pin credited to pshiiit.com:

And as you'll see, besides making this a pedicure, I also changed the colors to pastels, and changed the number of stripes.

I got impatient and put on striping tape before the base was dry, which actually hasn't happened to me yet, so I unfortunately had some leaking.

I like them, though! I'm glad I finally got around to trying this design out. I mean, that is the point of the challenge after all...

See you on Friday for the Geometric challenge!

Happy Painting!

May I have your attention, please...

As I said in an earlier post, I have an announcement to make!

Drumroll, please.....

*cymbal crash*

I'm hosting a new nail art challenge for the month of March! As some of you may know, I get a lot of my inspiration for my designs through Pinterest. Sometimes I try to replicate designs precisely, other times I simply like the general vibe of a design.

Pinterest, in my opinion, has really helped make nail art a popular trend. Most people with at least some interest in nails will try something they see on Pinterest at least once, and most nail art bloggers have a nail art board.

So why not celebrate all of the wonderful designs on Pinterest? We can discover more artists, try something new, and actually recreate those pins we pinned oh so long ago.

The only rule is that you must credit the original designer in each post, as well as link to the original pin.

So, are you interested? If so, please help spread news of this challenge around. I will host a link up so we can stay connected and admire everyone's work. I think this will be fun!

And to add some more pizazz to this post, here's one of three designs I did over the weekend. I'm getting better at using my striping tape!

Happy Painting!

An earnest attempt at striping

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently bought some striping tape. This weekend I decided to try it out for a manicure. It took a LOT of patience and I learned a thing or two along the way.

It's a bit tricky to tell with this lighting, but I used black, charcoal gray, light gray, peach, and white. I'm actually quite pleased with the way this turned out considering how difficult it was to apply the tape with one hand. 

Yeah, I think I ended up prepping, painting, and cleaning up for about three hours. Ridiculous, right? Well, part of that time was me being distracted by Netflix, but I've realized that in general it just takes me forever to paint. Is that true for you guys as well? Any tips to speed up the process?

Stay tuned for an exciting announcement next week! Until then...

Happy Painting!

30 Day Challenge: Inspired by a Tutorial

We did it! Well, maybe. I'm perplexed. Some people think this is the last day of the challenge and others are going with 31 days. I don't know.

I'm getting this out a day late since I ran out of time after finishing this design yesterday. I was going to do an apple tutorial but then pulled out my China Glaze Peachy Keen and decided I wanted to used it, so I did my own take on this tutorial by Jennifer Marcus.

Kind of cool, right? It's sort of like a tribal print, which I'm generally not too great at, but I like a few of these. It's hard to tell, but the light color is a pink from Sinful Colors.

Because I was going out in public and didn't want to look weird with only one hand painted, I went for a full on manicure. With the exception of my pinky (which was basically a lost cause), I actually think I like how my right hand turned out better than my left.

The lines are far from perfect, but compared to some of the earlier challenges, I think I've come a long way. This challenge has been difficult and tiring, but awesome practice and really fun as well. So, perhaps in a few days I'll throw in the 31st challenge, but until then, I want to thank those of you who have liked my posts and commented. The feedback means so much to me and has been very encouraging. I'm excited to see what everyone comes up with post-challenge!

Happy Painting!

30 Day Challenge: Glitter

Okay, so you guys know I wasn't looking forward to today's challenge. I don't think I've worn glitter polish since I was in Junior High. I'm just not a glitter girl. And I decided to only paint one hand because of that. However, I was really pleasantly surprised with how much I liked today's design.

I also tried using glue today to prep my cuticles since I'm so sloppy and pretty much always flood my cuticles. It worked like a charm! My cuticles are in really bad shape, though, so they still don't look great, but once they're healthy again and I figure out a quicker way to apply the glue, I think I'm really going to cut down my clean up time. 

It's kind of hard to tell from the photo due to the mixed source lighting, but I used a very nice soft pink as the base. I've had this polish for a while but haven't actually used it until now. It looks kind of preppy with the other colors and the design, which I'm actually totally digging. It helps that the glitter polish I used is really dense and a single color. I may even use it again. Okay glitter fans, you've won me over this time.

Polishes used:

Sinful Colors Easy Going

Kiss Nail Art Paint Silver Glitter

Kiss Nail Art Paint Black

Finger Paints White

Happy Painting!

30 Day Challenge: Stripes

Hey there, polish enthusiasts! I've been down for the count the past 10 days due to a severe back injury of some sort (we're not sure what caused it/what's entirely wrong yet), hence the delay in posting. Before my injury, however, I was able to do 2 quick designs for the stripe challenge.

The toe design is kind of boring since I was running low on time. I'm not sure what you'd call this- it reminds me a bit of a bug. Or perhaps an excel spreadsheet, haha. Unfortunately I can't recall which polishes I used (pain meds make me forgetful).

I like my manicure that I did on the fly much better. I wanted something a bit more intricate than my toes, but didn't have a ton of time, and I wanted it to match my outfit. The picture quality isn't amazing since I took this picture in the car on the way to a family reunion "extreme picnic" with the women in my family (I wore a blue and yellow dress, if you happen to be curious). This one turned out pretty great, I think. I used a yellow striper (can't remember the brand) and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Blue Me Away. Which, by the way, even with my base coat it was a pain to try to take off. I still have a blue stain on a few fingers- so word to the wise, use a really good base if you use this paint.

I'm headed to the doctor tomorrow to figure out what's going on with my back, so hopefully I'll be back to painting again on a regular basis sometime soon. I'm excited to see many bloggers doing the 30 day challenge again, and I also found a cool new challenge that I'd like to try once I finish this one.

Happy Painting!