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!

Designs from the Spring

Hello world! I've finally remembered to update this blog! Since you've been so patient, I have a few designs to share today - two pedicures and a manicure.

A quick and simple design using my new CG Polish - For Audrey

A cute pedicure for my roomie. We both really liked these.

Aren't they cute?

A sloppy fishscale design which lasted a surprisingly long time.

Now that summer - aka flip flop season - is upon us I will try to post much more frequently. 

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 11: Tutorial

We did it! The last day of the challenge is finally here! And I'm happy to say that I'm going out on a strong note. I wanted to do something fun and graphic for the tutorial inspired challenge, and this particular design by @myawesomebeauty kept coming back to me:

I got a buy one get one free China Glaze deal today, so I used my two new (gray and For Audrey mint) polishes to accent the Shower Together base. Here's what I came up with:

I really like how these turned out! They're fun, and a satisfying end to this challenge. I'm glad it's over, as I'm pretty tuckered out, but it was good to challenge myself, and who knows- maybe others will be inspired to try the challenge at some point. Thank you to all of you who stopped by to see my designs! 

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 10: Pop Culture

I was short on time today so I just did a quick and simple on for this  challenge that's been done many times before - The Hunger Games fire. Here's the original pin by Kayla Shevonne
:

And here's my rendition:

Only one day left of the Pinspiration Challenge!

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 9: Pedicure

Wow! There's only one week left of this challenge! Today's was wonderful, since I started doing nail art exclusively on my toes. I found this cool pin by elle-memo and thought it had a fun feel to it. Here is the original pin:

And here is my version:

I thought it would look good in green and possibly give the snow around here a hint that it's time to finally melt.

It's a bit tricky to see the dark green next to the black, but in optimal lighting (or in person) it shows up much clearer. I really like these! 

Two more challenges left! Time to browse my Pinterest board...

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 8: Food

I decided to go with something quick and simple for today's challenge. I found this pin a while back and decided to give it a go. Here is the original pineapple design by poppingnails.tumblr.com:

And here is my version:

They're kind of cute, right? I'll have to try them again this summer.

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 7: Animals

Gah! Sorry I didn't post this yesterday, although I did paint my nails yesterday. The past 24 hours have been crazy! Anyhow, I decided to take a stab at some owls today, inspired by yet another unknown designer from Pinterest (well, at least the site the pin takes me to isn't in English):

Here is my not-so-amazing attempt:

Ah, well. Can't win them all!

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 6: Floral

I wanted to give myself a bit more of a challenge today by trying something new. I have done a lot of floral designs, but almost always use a dotter for those, so I wanted to try something freehand. I found this great design, but unfortunately I couldn't track down the original artist. If you happen to know where it is from originally, I would love to know. But here is the original pin:

And here was my first attempt at this rose technique:

They're fun. Messy, but not too shabby for my first attempt I suppose.

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 5: Grayscale

Today's challenge was quick and simple. I like this simple pointillism design by Quite Polished, so I did a literal interpretation as it was already in grayscale. Here is the original pin:

And here is my version that I did on the fly:

(sorry for the blurriness, I was in a rush)

Simple, easy, fun - I love them!

Happy Painting!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 4: Colors

Today's challenge was an interesting (and messy) one. I decided to try out a tutorial pin from my board for a blow dryer technique. I got a new scarf over the weekend and thought that the colors would be really pretty for this design. Here is the original pin by the Neverland Nail Blog:

Here is part of my scarf that inspired my colors:

And here is the result:

Not terrible for my first attempt, but they're not the most beautiful thing I've done either. But still, the colors are pretty and I finally figured out how to get the paint consistency so that it will spread right. It was fun to try.

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!

Pinspiration Challenge Day 1: Dots

It's here! The Pinspiration Challenge is finally here! I'm excited to get this thing started and I hope you are too.
Well, let's get to it- for the first day of the challenge, we needed to pick a pinterest design inspired by dots. I saw this cute pin a while ago, and thought that this prompt would be the perfect time to do my own take on it. Here is the original pin by Waki Laki:

And here is my rendition:

It turns out my nails are far too small to fit the original design! But I still think this is cute, if not a bit sloppy. And I got to try out my new goldish-green OPI polish!

Make sure to add your designs to the linkup below.

Happy  Painting!

An InLinkz Link-up

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!

It's a Manicure Miracle!

You guys, something huge has just happened. My manicure has lasted an entire week without any noticeable chips!!! This has never happened before. I always pick at my nails, and my polish almost always chips significantly by the 4th day since I use my nails a lot for work and they sometimes get beat up when I play music. But besides the small dent that was basically there to begin with, they look stellar!

I probably should have taken better pictures so you could marvel (okay, I'm the only marveling, but still) at how great these still look. But, here's what they looked like right after painting them a week ago:

And here's what they look like now:

So, what did I do differently? Well, I tried out a new product - Chip Skip from OPI. I was skeptical at first, but goodness, it really works! I have a tiny bottle that came in a sample pack, but I would definitely consider coughing up the money to buy a full bottle of this stuff. It would be especially good for giving other people manicures, since I change my nails rather frequently anyhow.

In other news, I finally bought some striping tape. I tried it out for my pedicure and it turned out pretty well for my first time using the stuff, although I don't have a picture to show you. It's a bit tedious and certainly time consuming, but I know I'm going to have a lot of fun with striping designs in the next few weeks.

Okay, last point of business. This floral design was inspired by pinterest, and that got me thinking of creating a nail art challenge inspired by pinterest designs. Would anyone be interested in doing a challenge like this?

Happy Painting!

January Nails

So, as you may have noticed, I am not the greatest at updating this blog regularly. I am, however, still painting my nails fairly often, so today I have two of my recent manicures to share with you.

For the first time in a long time I decided to do a splatter manicure. Those can be a bit exhausting, but it looks pretty awesome when you're done. These pictures aren't the greatest since I just randomly took them on my phone, but you can get a pretty good feel of what they looked like.

My roommate got me Essie's Lilacism for christmas, and I love it! I saw a design similar to this next one on pinterest and wanted to give it a try. You'll notice some weird striping/smudging which was unfortunate, but I really liked them overall. They were also a hit among friends.

Not too shabby, eh? Right now I have a random manicure with the new OPI polishes I got. They were half off at TJ Maxx! I couldn't pass up a deal that good. Apparently they look like some classic rock album cover. I don't know. I may end up taking a quick picture of them, but they're pretty chipped at this point.

Anyhow, I shall try to post more often! I pinky promise.

Happy Painting!