Snowflake with Essie Parka Perfect

It's funny...I wanted to do some type of nail design yesterday with a snowflake, and then it snowed outside! Gave me perfect reason to do the manicure I did. Pretty happy with how it turned out. I am in LOVE with my ring finger and think I'll be using that design a lot more often. It creates such a cool pattern on your nails!

I used Essie's Parka Perfect as my base. In the bottle this color is so pretty, a muted greyish blue with a hint of silver shimmer, but I'm not such a fan of this color on my nails. The formula was pretty hit or miss. Sometimes it went on thin and sometimes it went on thick and gloopy. It did eventually self level, but it took time and needed a little extra work while applying. The shimmer didn't come through at all, and I really wanted it to have that snow glisten effect, so I used Essie Pure Pearlfection (an effect top coat to add a sparkly iridescent shimmer). It's such a pretty effect!  I think this would look so awesome over so many different colors.

On my middle finger I used a black nail art pen and drew a snowflake. I could not, for the life of me, draw a snowflake using my left hand, so I don't have one on my right hand. :( Oh well. I used 6 pieces of striping tape to create the cross pattern on my ring finger. *drool* I used Zoya Pixie Dust London for the grey. The Pixie Dust line is their version of a textured polish. Using the texture on top gave it so much more dimension. It almost looks like I have an embossed nail.

I finally am able to use my light box, but it's not as easy as I was hoping it would be. I still have to play around with the lighting a lot. I do have a lot less glare, but I don't have as much light either. Nothing will compare to taking pics outside, but I'm hoping I can get it figured out enough to have decent looking pictures.

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

NOTW: Fall Colors

This manicure sounded like a good idea, but I'm not very happy with it. Pretty simple, painted a base color, used wavy scissors to cut tape, and then applied another color. This top color dried matte so on two of the nails (thumb and ring) I applied a top coat. Thought it was okay and then I showed it to my husband and he said, "Yeah, it looks cool, it's like a southwest design." Me, ready to defend myself, reply with, "No, it's -- oh man, you're right. Now I don't like it."  And I don't. I hate southwest designs and now that he said that that's all I think about when I look at it. Was planning on leaving this on over Thanksgiving, but now I'm pretty sure that I'm taking some polish with me to NM and changing it...probably tomorrow.

My base color is Essie Miss Fancy Pants. It's a beautiful taupey gray color, and I think it's a great neutral. I must mention too, that it has an AMAZING formula. Easy to work with, dried quick and self-leveled. What more could you ask for?

SinfulColors Get It On, is the burgundy wine color I used on top. In the bottle it looks pretty vibrant, but since it's matte it actually dries much darker. Applying a top coat does help lighten the color, but I still think it dries darker than what you see in the bottle. In the picture it looks much brighter than what it actually is. Not very true to color. :( Pretty good formula on this one also.

What should I paint on my nails for Thanksgiving?

I tired taking the pic in different lighting, this one looks better.  Isn't it crazy how different the same polishes look in different lights?  This one is much truer to color. I think I'll start taking pics in this lighting till I get my lightbox made.

 Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Final Halloween Mani

I tried soooo hard to get this up before Halloween, but last week I was hardly even home; much less had time to post this. I'm kinda bummed anyway because pretty much all my pics on this turned out really bad and so I'm just gonna show one okay pic of the end result and tell you what I did.

Initially on this mani I wanted to do a cat's face on my thumb, but even after practicing multiple times it just wasn't turning out the way I wanted. So, I ditched that idea and just did a witch hat on my ring finger. I still don't like the way the hat turned out in this mani either, but that's what this is all about!  Trying things out and seeing if it works.

On my purple fingers I applied a black crackle over the purple and then I used a hologram top coat that I have. It's really awesome!  The top coat is called Northern Lights by inm. I got it at Sally Beauty Supply.

On my pointer finger I just painted it green and then applied a silver and black glitter. The glitter has several types and sizes.

On my ring finger I used tape to make the point, painted the tip and then used stripers and a dotting tool to complete the rest.

The rest of the polishes I used:

Essie Mojito Madness (green)

SinfulShine Slick (purple)

OPI Black Oynx (black)

China Glaze Black Mesh (crackle)

Sally Hansen Silver Streamers (silver/black glitter)

black and silver glitter stripers by Jordana 

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Frankenstein!

It's Halloween time! I don't know how many of these I will get up, but I'm hoping to at least do three!

Here's my first one: Frankenstein! I wore these nails subbing today and I had so many people do a double take to look and see what was on my nails! These nails turned out so cute and they are so easy to do.

Here's what you need:

• Green, black, and white nail polish
• Black nail art pen (You could use a striper, but it would be harder to do)
• 2 different size dotting tools (or whatever you use to make dots)
• Obviously a base and top coat.

Essie The More the Merrier, Xtreme Wear in White On and Black Out

Obviously, the first step is to paint all your nails green (after base coat of course).

You could do all your nails with a Frankenstein face or just one. Whatever suits you. For the Frankenstein hair you start with the nail art pen and just draw a zig-zag line. It doesn't need to be neat at all, you really can't mess this up. Then just fill in the hair with your pen. I did have to do this 3-4 times to make it opaque. I did notice the black was cracking a little while it was drying which I just touched up. 

For the eyes you start with your larger doting tool and make two black dots. I didn't mean to make mine crooked, but I ended up giving it a crooked mouth too (on purpose) and I think it ended up giving it a little more detail. After the black dots, use your same dotting tool dipped in white polish and create two smaller dots. Then take your smaller dotting tool and place two small black dots to finish the eyes. 

For the mouth you use your nail art pen again and draw a horizontal line (straight or not) and then smaller vertical lines for the stitches. Then those nails are done!

For the remaining nails you do the same thing you did with the mouth to create a stitched look. I just placed mine randomly.

Allow some dry time so you don't smear any of your hard work, apply top coat, and you are finished!

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Epic Fail Ombre! + Why I am Starting This Blog.

Before we get into the nail stuff I just want to mention really quick why I decided to start a nail blog. First of all, I've always enjoyed blogging, but the last few years I haven't done it much due to school, work, my son, you know, life in general. However, I have been finding myself drawn towards doing blogs again. I recently started another blog about how I'm changing my lifestyle to be a healthy one and that blog is ahealthierkatie.blogspot.com.  Since I've become SO obsessed with polish and nail art I decided this would be a good way to document the different designs that I do, what polish I like/don't like and my overall progress (hopefully I will continue to get better with time!). If I end up being the only one who reads this...than cool. But I'm hoping that I will find some people along the way who want to watch my progress too and maybe even inspire a few people.

Okay, let's get started with the good stuff.

I. Am. So. Disappointed. I was so looking forward to doing my neon color ombre manicure and it didn't turn out well at all. I made two mistakes that I think made it an epic fail. This is only my second ombre manicure, so I think a little more practice would help also. The first mistake I made was using the wrong side of my sponge. I cut my sponge and then ended up painting on the longer side of my sponge and didn't realize it till I had already painted 7 of my nails. I wasn't getting any of my top color (purple) on my nails and I just couldn't figure out why! The second mistake I made was cutting my nails too short. I typically wear my nails on the longer side, but decided they were getting too long and so I cut them. However, I cut them shorter than I wanted them to be and I think that made it harder for me because I'm not used to doing nails designs on shorter nails. On some nails I didn't go a great job of covering up all the white either. Practice makes perfect.

Getting the true color of neon colors on camera is hard. I have tried so many different types of lighting and none of them really capture the colors. The colors are much brighter and very neon in real life, so please remember that while looking at the pics.

Now all of this being said I don't think they look horrible, but I don't think they look good either. Part of me almost took it all off because I was so upset, but I spent a lot of time on it so I decided to keep it on. I'll probably only keep this for a few days though before I decided to do something different. I don't know how long I'll be able to look at it and feel okay with it.

For those of you who aren't familiar with ombre designs I'll explain it a little bit for you. It's really just a gradient design with multiple colors. I've seen them done with 2-5 different colors, but in my opinion I think three colors works the best. First you need to paint your nails with a white base and make sure you use two coats. Do not skip this step! The white really helps bring out the colors in the polish (especially with neon colors) and make sure you have a nice thick coat of polish. And I actually want to take a second and talk about the white polish I used. I used China Glaze White on White and I can tell you I really don't know if I'll use this polish again. The end result (forgot to take a pic before ombre) was good, but I really dislike the formula. It was gloopy and uneven and hard to apply and work with. Just because it looks like white out doesn't mean it should be like white out!  I usually use Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On, but I think I'm going to try OPI Alpine Snow next time.

Anyway, once you get your base done then you take a makeup wedge sponge and cut it to the length and width that fits your nail bed. I cut a new sponge to show you since my other sponge I used got all messed up.

Then just paint on your colors that you want to use. Make sure you use a generous amount of polish since the sponge typically sucks some up.

After you filled your sponge with polish you then just sponge it onto your nail. Make sure you apply new polish for every finger that you do. And voila! if you did it right (unlike me) you will have a beautiful gradient design!

Here are the polishes I used:

                    (White)                        (Neon Orange)                 (Neon Pink)              (Neon Purple)     

                     China Glaze                      China Glaze                     China Glaze                 Essie  

                   White on White                Sun Worshiper                    Pool Party           DJ Play That Song

Again, like I mentioned, the colors do not pull well from the camera. The orange is a nice bright neon and the pink is a dark vibrant hot pink neon. Same things goes for the purple, it is very bright and pretty.