Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!

Easter is coming up and I'm having a lot of fun creating Easter/Spring themed nails!  I love baby animals and I'm really digging soft shades.  To create these adorable baby chicks, I used this tutorial from I Have A Cupcake.

I used a foundation of Zoya Snow White (to make the yellow pop) and two coats of Finger Paints Art Nouv-Yellow.  Finger Paints Art Nouv-Yellow is my most hated nail polish because every time I use it my nails are stained yellow.  But it's one of two yellows in my collection and I wanted to use a yellow with more of a metallic yellow for this design.  For the rest of the chicken I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out, Zoya Snow White, and Zoya Jancyn.

Are you doing any Easter nails?

Week 7: Valentines Day Manicure

Happy almost-Valentines Day!  Welcome to week seven of the 52 Week Challenge, Valentines Day.  I did Sweetheart Candy Nails and I'm loving how fun these look.

For this manicure I used Finger Paints Chrysanthe-Mum's The Word (pinkie), Zoya Kristen (ring finger), Sally Hansen Nailgrowth Miracle Loyal Lavender (middle), Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow (pointer), Zoya Maya (thumb), Zoya Tamsen (text), and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Whirlwind White (heart). I used Nail Art Diva plate From the Heart 1 for the text and M.A.S.H. plate m46 for the heart.  The first time I did this I smudged all the text when I applied Essie's Matte About You top coat so that it looked like the text was dripping blood.  The second time I did this I applied a top coat of Seche Vite before my coat of Essie Matte About You.

Be sure to check out what others have done for this challenge by visiting their blogs:

LizMarie at I'm Simply Complex • Jenna at I'm Still Thinking... • Caitlin at Addicted 2 Nails • Sarah at PrncessSarah02 • Charlotte at Charlotte's Nails :) • Shally at Polished & Not Quite Put Together • Rachel-Karina at Polished Criminails • Liz at Nothing But Nail Polish • Fun With My Nail Polish • Operation: Nail It! • Lauriestrodes Fun With Nails • Square Polish • Only Always Soccermom  • Hurr Did, Nails Did • Olivia Writes • The Dragon Lady • Kaki at Glitter Obsession • Isa at IsaBella's World • Gypsy at Gypsy's Glitter • Jackie at MeMa's Mani's  • Lissa at Lissa's Nail Blog

Cupcakes

For my birthday today I decided to paint myself some cupcake nails.  They turned out all right, definitely not perfect but all right.

Personally, I think they look like cupcakes only if you tell yourself they should look like cupcakes.  If you don't know what they are I think it's a little hard to tell.  I'll try to do cupcakes again sometime to see if I can come up with something more realistic.

For this manicure I used China Glaze For Audrey as the base of the cupcake, Zoya Snow White for the frosting, and Zoya America for the giant red dot (it was supposed to be a cherry). For the colored dots (a.k.a. sprinkles) I used Finger Paints Art Nouv-Yellow, Zoya Robyn, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure I Pink I Can, and Zoya Mira.  Finally, for the cupcake holder lines I used So Easy Stripe Rite White.

Some of my dots are smudged.  They took a ridiculously long time to dry and I kept smudging them (sigh).  I need to practice dotting more so that I keep down the amount of nail polish I have on my dotting tool.

I also learned that this manicure is a little too risqué for work.  Evident ally engineers are supposed to be creative, but conservative.  Who knew?

Coach Patchwork

This week's nail art theme from Facebook's Polish-aholics Anonymous group was patchwork nails.  Ehhh, originally I was not too thrilled for this topic but I love the way the design looks on my nails.

The inspiration for this design comes from a Coach patchwork handbag.  I love the way the colors for this purse go together.  It's bright, cheerful, and makes me smile whenever I look at it.

For this manicure I started by painting my nails with a basecoat (Sally Hansen Continuous Treatment Base & Top Coat), followed by one coat of Zoya Snow White and then one coat of Finger Paints Art Nouv-Yellow.  I used a layer of white below the yellow because it makes this color 'pop' more than if I'd just painted the yellow over my basecoat.

Using tape to section off the area I wanted to keep yellow, I painted Zoya Jancyn over the rest of the nail.  Following the same procedure, I next used Zoya Areej and finally Zoya America.  I wanted to use Zoya Tamsen (one of my untrieds) instead of America but the color difference wasn't noticeable over Areej.  


Since these colors are all so...warm I wanted to distinguish them from one another.  To do this I added black "stitching" with a Kiss Nail Artist Fine Art Pen in Black.  Here's a before and after:

Before "Stitching"

After "Stitching"

My boyfriend said that my nails reminded him of the movie A Nightmare Before Christmas but I think my nails are much too colorful to be compared to such a dark film. 

I swear I moisturize more than it looks like in this photo!

I'm pretty bummed that I have to take it off after only a day and a half of wear but I must look "business professional" for a big meeting and these nails don't fit that look.

I want candy!

This week's theme from the Polish-aholics Anonymous group on Facebook is candy inspired nails.  I'm not big on candy right now; I'm supposed to be on a diet!  Who am I kidding, I'm always big on candy yum yum yum.

When I looked for inspiration for this manicure I looked on Google, where I got many hits for candy corn.  Candy corn, while delicious, I think is better suited for a manicure in October.

I next looked for inspiration on the lovely website Pinterest.  While browsing through Pinterest I ran across these two gems: M&M manicure and M&M nails.M&Ms! - Perfect.

By painting M&Ms on my nails it gave me an opportunity to use some polishes in my collection that I haven't used before, such as Zoya Jancyn, Zoya Sookie, and the Finger Paints polishes.  I've never used Finger Paint polishes before but they applied very nicely.

The colors I used for this were (base) Zoya Snow White, (blue) Zoya Robyn, (red) Zoya Sooki, (green) Finger Paints Chrysanthe-Mum's the Word, (orange) Zoya Jancyn, (brown) Sinful Colors Nirvana, (yellow) Finger Paints Art Nouv-Yellow, (iconic M) Stripe Rite White.