Glitter for 2013

So, here we are, less than 30 minutes from the new year. Why not post some pictures of my celebratory manicure? I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with my nails for New Year's Eve. I eventually decided on glitter. I figured shimmery nails with glitter tips would be good and festive.

I started with three coats of OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous. For the tips I used some loose silver hex glitter. For my left hand, I was inspired by my favorite nail art blog, The Nailasaurus.

Mine don't look nearly as awesome as her nails do. I'm still happy with them, though. Nice and sparkly! :)

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope 2013 brings happiness and love for you all!

Harry Doctor Potter Who

I had been asking my sister if I could do her nails ever since we got to Tennessee. She's not necessarily the girliest girl out there so she wasn't all that keen on having her nails painted. I offered to paint some designs on her bare nails and she agreed. I asked if she wanted Harry Potter themed nails. (She has always been a die hard HP fan. I've only recently started watching the films.) She said she wanted one hand to be Harry Potter and the other to be Doctor Who. (The Doctor is our newest obsession.)

We started with the Potter hand. It took us a while to decide on what to do. We wanted something simple so we settled on this...

The Harry Potter logo on the thumb and the first initial of each of the four houses; Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Hufflepuff. The colors I used are (from thumb to pinky) Wet n Wild Black Creme, Sally Hansen Rapid Red, Sally Hansen Co-Bolt Blue, OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow, and Black Creme again. Then, we topped it all off with a coat of NYC Matte Me Crazy. She was very happy with it. I love it, too. 

On to the other hand...

I heart heart this hand! (Doctor Who fans will get it.) I used all of the same colors on this hand except for the OPI. For the Union Jack, I painted the nail with the Co-Bolt Blue, then used white acrylic paint and when that dried, painted on the red stripes using Rapid red. Again, we finished with Matte Me Crazy.

We are both so happy with the way these turned out. Yay!!!

My mommy's manicure!

When we decided to come to Tennessee to see my family, I already had in mind to do my sister's and my mom's nails. My sister and I were sitting in the kitchen planning out her manicure and I ended up doing mom's. She wanted to try a tape manicure for the first time. She chose the base colors. They were all Wet n Wild fastdry. Then we taped off half of each nail at a diagonal and painted the second layer.

The colors are Buffy the Violet Slayer (left thumb and right pinky), How I Met Your Magenta (left index), FuchsiaRama (left middle and right ring), The Wonder Yellows (right index and left pinky), 9.0.2.1.Orange (right ring), Sage in the City (left middle), and Teal or No Teal (right thumb, unpictured). The white is OPI Alpine Snow. This was something different for my mom and she really likes the way they look. I do, too. Plus, it was really fun doing my mom's nails. 

Tomorrow, I'll post my sister's nails. *SPOILER* They will be Doctor Who and Harry Potter themed. :D

Cling wrap!

Christmas is over so it was time to get rid of the red and green nails. For this manicure I wanted to try a technique that I hadn't used before. I settled on cling wrap marbling. It's an extremely easy technique with a really unique result. 

I went to Forever 21 today and thought about getting a Love & Beauty nail polish. I left with four. Ha ha. I used one for the base color.

This is Love & Beauty Light Blue. It's a bit on the sheer side so this is three coats. Pretty. :)
Then, to top it off with the second color. OPI Alpine Snow.

A few dabs with a wad of cling wrap and viola! Marble! I love the way this looks. Hubby loves it, too. That means it's a keeper. :)

Christmas and feathers!

As much as I loved my last manicure, by this morning I was already bored with it. That may have had something to do with the fact that I bought a new polish today. Color Club Ho Ho Holly. Hubbs helped me pick this one out. There were several that I wanted but we went with the green. Let me just tell you, this color is GORGEOUS! It's a wonderful cool green with heavy green/blue shimmer. The formula is lovely and the application was very smooth. If all of Color Club's polishes are this nice, I want more for sure. Oh, and another thing. Ho Ho Holly is scented! Crazy, right? I didn't realize until after it dried but it smells a bit like pine.

Anyway, I decided to do a simpler manicure but still using Christmas colors. Naturally, I went with green and red.

Of course, the green is the Ho Ho Holly. The red is OPI Danke-Shiny Red. For an accent, I did a feather nail on the ring finger. I think it turned out really nice.

Christmas Time

I was going to do a Christmas themed manicure a few days ago but we were planning on visiting my family in Tennessee and we hadn't packed at all. So, I decided to just do them while I was here. 

I had this super ambitious idea for my Christmas manicure. I was all, "I'm going to do a different design on every single nail!!!" Then, I remembered that I have ten nails. That's a lot of work. So, I scaled it down a bit. Five designs.

I am so happy with the way they turned out. It was a lot of work and took a little while to do but it was well worth it. The only nail I am not too happy with is the middle finger. I was going for a candy cane stripe look but it didn't turn out that way. My mother says that she likes them, though, so I left it. Over all, I like my Christmas nails. Now, I just have to figure out what I'm doing for a New Year manicure. Hmm...

Water Marbling Play

Before I take off a manicure, sometimes I like to practice different nail art techniques on them. Yesterday, I was working on my water marbling. Those who have tried it know, water marbling can be a pain. It is so easy to screw up, it's messy, and it's unbelievably time consuming. I have yet to master the water marbling technique but I'm getting better.

So today, I did a full-on water marble manicure. I thought I'd go with a Christmas color scheme. I started with a base color.

I used Essie Imported Champagne. It's fairly sheer so I had to use three coats for decent opacity. I love this color. Then, on to the tedious task of water marbling.

The colors I marbled with are the Imported Champagne, Essie Wicked, and OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow. This is my left hand...

...and this is my left thumb. 

Don't mind my middle finger nail there. I may have aimed poorly. I love the thumb nail. It looks like a twisty type of french manicure.

  This is my right hand...

...and this is my right thumb. I love the way this entire hand turned out. I smudged the ring finger a bit but it still looks great. 

I love this manicure. Worth the time and patience it took. I might keep this one for a bit. :)

Jelly Sandwich...mmm...

The other night, I was explaining to my girlfriends what a jelly sandwich was. Glitter polish "sandwiched" between layers of jelly polish. It made me want to have a jelly sandwich for my next manicure. Unfortunately, I only own one jelly (or sorbet, according to OPI) polish. I love it, though. 

The orange is OPI Y'all Come Back Ya Hear and the glitter is OPI Rainbow Connection. I did two layers of jelly, a layer of glitter, two more layers of jelly, and finished with top coat.
 
Aaahh!!! I love it!!! For those of you who don't know, orange is my favorite color. So, although this may not be the most seasonally appropriate color choice, if there is any shade of orange involved, I could care less. :) Also, I love all things glitter and the more colors, the better. So, Rainbow Connection is one of my favorite glitters. It has small, medium, and large hex glitters in almost every color you could think of. There is silver, orange, yellow, blue, purple, green, and red. Lovely. 

This mani will only be on for a few days. Soon, I will start some holiday manis, I think. I'm toying with the idea of a little water marbling. We shall see...

Simple

I shortened my nails today and wanted to do something simple with them. I saw OPI Pepe's Purple Passion and had to try it. It's a beautiful shimmery raisin color.

The shimmer is dense and it dries a bit rough so it isn't as smooth and shiny as I would like. Even with a top coat, it's not smooth. I wanted to have an accent nail but I still wanted simple. I went to my trusty Bundle Monster plates.

I chose this design from BM-210. A coat of Seche Vite over the design and the color is finally smooth and shiny. I'll be adding a coat over the other nails, as well. Pretty pretty pretty. :)

Splatter!

Last night was movie night with the girls. The gorgeous Heather brought over her collection of nail polish to play with. After finding the pictures of my old manis, I decided to do another splatter mani. They are so much fun. Unbelievably messy, though. Still, the end result is totally worth it. Unfortunately, I was distracted when I was doing my nails so I forgot to take pictures during the process.

I started by painting my nails, all but the ring finger, with one of Heather's polishes. Milani Neon in Dude Blue. It's a nice bright shade of blue and the formula was pretty nice. It does linger though, and it stained my skin just a bit. Anyway, on the ring finger nail I used OPI Alpine Snow. The pink is OPI That's Berry Daring. To do the splatters, I just dipped a straw into a small puddle of polish and blew through the other end, splashing to color onto the nails. It's very imperfect and you never know what designs you'll get. Fabulous, right? I wish I had taken pictures before I finished, though. I ended up with nail polish EVERYWHERE! It was all over and between my fingers, on my palm, on my shirt. Everywhere! So worth it, though!

 

Some old stuff.

I was looking through my phone and I came across some photos of a few manicures I've done. Due to being taken on my phone, they aren't all the greatest quality.

This is OPI Metallic 4 Life from the Nicki Minaj collection. This color is great! It's a black base with large and small silver hex glitter. It's a little bit thick but it still looks great.

This OPI It's Totally Fort Worth It. For the design I used my lovely Bundle Monster stamping plates. I got the zigzag design from BM-201. For the heart, I used OPI That's Berry Daring with a little bit of OPI Purple With a Purpose swirled in. Pretty, no?

I got this idea from Pinterest. For the base, I used OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow. Over that, I used OPI Silver Shatter. When I painted it on, I used wavy brush strokes. I wasn't all that impressed with this mani but I do still love the color combination.

This was my first attempt at a "dry marble." I used OPI Purple With a Purpose and Alpine Snow. This is near the top of my list of favorite nail art techniques. I love the way it looks.

My husband and I went to several baseball games this summer with our friends. We are huge fans of the Detroit Tigers. This was a manicure I did for one of the games. I used OPI A Roll in the Hague (orange), Blue My Mind (blue), and Alpine Snow (white). The red was borrowed from a friend and I don't remember what it was called. The tiger stripes came from BM-223. The old English "D" is actually a temporary tattoo. Great, right? You can use any temporary tattoo as nail art. Apply it to your nail just like you do on skin and secure with top coat. I love this manicure.

This is my favorite mani out of the old photos I found. OPI It's Totally Fort Worth It as the base. The splatter is OPI That's Berry Daring (pink) and Planks a Lot (purple). This looks amazing. I think this will be the next design I do. I haven't done a splatter in a really long time.

Until the next manicure, nighties!!!

Because I got bored...

As much as I loved my cute little gingerbread man nails, I got bored and decided to change them. I do that. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my nails so I asked a guy at work what color I should paint them. When I named off the available colors, he chose black and silver. Later, I was inspired by another co-worker's purple shirt. Thus, the color scheme for this manicure was born. I knew I wanted a purple base and some sort of design over top in black and silver.

I went with OPI Purple With a Purpose. As usual, my camera sucks at capturing purples. Really, this color is much less blue. It's a nice royal purple color with a tiny hint of pink and blue shimmer. It's my go-to purple.
It took me quite a while to decide what design to do. I knew I wanted to use my dotting tools. After much deliberation, I decided to do some stippling. I started with the silver.

I used Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri in Silver Sweep. Then, over top, more stippling in black.

A few spots of Wet n Wild Black Creme and a layer of top coat and done! I love it! Now, we see how long this lasts before I'm bored again. :P
 

Early Christmas Mani

So, this weekend my friends and I are competing in a gingerbread house contest for work. This is the third year that we are participating. Last year, we came in second place. It's so much fun and I can't wait. The theme this year is Disney so the designs should be fantastic. Anyway, since this is a Christmas event, I had to do a Christmas nail design, of course.

I started with my FAVORITE red polish. OPI Danke-shiny red from their Germany collection. I was distracted by Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (LOVE) so I unfortunately forgot to photograph my nails with just the red on them. It's just as well, though, because it's hard to capture the beauty of this color. It's just a touch cooler than your classic red. It shimmers so beautifully it almost has a metallic look to it. It is just amazing.

After the red, I chose a Christmas design from my Bundle Monster stamping plates. (I love these things! I still haven't mastered them so they aren't perfect. Be patient with me.) I chose an all over design with a ginerbread man surrounded by holly on plate BM-222. 

I used Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri in Silver Sweep. Adorable, right?? After a whole ten minutes, I decided that they needed glitter.

I chose OPI Save me from the Nicki Minaj collection. This glitter it nuts! I adore it. It's surprisingly dense for a clear based glitter so I actually had trouble applying it thin enough to keep from covering the design too much. It's LOADED with silver micro-glitter and these ultra-prismatic bar glitters. With every movement of your hand, you catch so many colors. Daylight is the best way to view this glitter but the sun decided not to make an appearance today. (Michigan. -_-) I think this combination is just perfect. The red is perfect in contrast with the silver. The gingerbread men are ADORABLE and the prismatic glitter looks like tinsel. Super super super!

 

OPI 2013

I am SO EXCITED! I just saw photos of the newest OPI collections coming out next year. I'm still hooked on the last two collections but these new colors are going to be amazing!

First, is the Mariah Carey collection. I don't know about you, but I love her! She has always been one of my favorite artists. Now, my favorite nail polish brand has collaborated with her to release a gorgeous collection. 

Of course, you can't have a Mariah collection without some super girly colors and a lot of glitter. This collection is also premiering a brand new type of nail polish. It's called "Liquid Sand," which is a matte finish textured polish with sparkle. 

Gorgeous, right? Ugh, I can't wait until NEXT MONTH to see this collection in person!

Next, the spring/summer 2013 collection. Euro Centrale.

Gorgeous shades for spring and summer. A chunky glitter (Polka.com) a few lovely shimmers (A Woman's Prague-ative and OY-Another Polish Joke!) and some pretty jewel tones and pastels. What a lovely collection. I want!

Ooh! 2013 is going to be a great year for my nails. Maybe not for my wallet, though. Ha ha ha!

A little sparkle.

What a long day. I got a lot accomplished, though, so it was a good one. I did a lot with my hands so, naturally, I got a few dings in my nail polish. I didn't want to completely redo them, though. I love this color and I don't own it. Well, nothing covers imperfections and girlies things up quite like a pretty glitter. Especially a flake glitter.

 

Nubar 2010 is a gorgeous iridescent flakie glitter. It doesn't have as wide a range of colors to it as other flakies but it is lovely, nonetheless. 

It is a bit difficult to catch the colors on camera. Straight on, it's mostly a pink/fuschia color. From other angles, it takes on a yellow or green tint.

I love the combination of the Nubar 2010 over the OPI Tomorrow Never Dies. Though, Nubar 2010 looks great on many different colors. I mean, really though, when doesn't glitter make something better? Almost never. That's when.

Nighties! *Muah!*

It's my first blog post!

Yay! I'm really excited to be starting my first blog! The idea basically came from other people. I've had several people suggest that I post videos or photos online of the different manicures I do. I love trying new things with my nails including creative designs or nail art. I also get bored with my nails very quickly so I change them often. I try to keep them the same for about a week, depending on how much I love the color. 

Anyway...
On to the actual manicure post. I should start off with the fact that I am obsessed with OPI. It's rare that they put out a color that I don't love. Every time they release a new collection, I go nuts. Their newest collection, Skyfall, is amazing. The colors are TO DIE FOR! So, today I am wearing Tomorrow Never Dies. 

This shade is a gorgeous purple/blue shimmer. If you look close enough from the right angle, you can see the tiniest flecks of pinkish shimmer.

My camera doesn't handle purples very well so these photos aren't doing this color justice. I would have taken daylight photos but it's dark outside. It's more on the purple side in person. Regardless, I love this color. Hopefully, I can keep it on for more than a day before I cover it in glitter or stamp over it. We shall see...

So, thanks for visiting my new blog! I can't wait until my next post! Until then... NIGHTIES!!! *Muah!*