Gradient Mani

This is a mani I had done during the summer. I love using the colors pink, orange, and yellow together during the summer. This is the first gradient mani I did. I wouldn't really categorize it as a gradient mani. I would say it's more of a tie-dye kind of mani. Whatever you want to call it, I really liked it. I used Orly - Lemonade, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Sun Kissed, & Essie - Tour De Finance. I painted my nails the Orly - Lemonade as a base and then I sponged Sun Kissed onto it with a make up sponge that I ripped in half so the sides weren't so smooth and then I sponged Tour De Finance on the tips & put a top coat over it so they blended together better.

St. Patrick's Day Nails!

I don't really celebrate St. Patrick's Day.. I don't really know why.. I'm Italian but you know everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day lol.. This year I'm not celebrating either, I have a Sweet 16 that night but I still wanted to do some fun St. Patrick's Day mani's. I'm putting both of them in one post because St. Patrick's Day is tomorrow!

For the first one I just painted my nails green with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Green With Envy (I've never used this before so I'm glad I got to use it with this mani). I painted my ring finger orange with Essie's Orange, It's Obvious from the Spring 2012 Collection. I also put gold glitter on my ring finger using Sephora by OPI Only Gold for Me. Then I drew little shamrocks on the rest of my fingers using Sinful Colors San Francisco using a toothpick, which was a little difficult because the polish is sheer, so I had to keep going over the shamrocks. Here are the pics..

For my other mani I painted all of my nails in Sinful Colors San Francisco. Using a toothpick and a dotting tool I drew a little pot of gold using Sinful Colors Black on Black & Revlon Gold Coin. Then I drew a rainbow using Sinful Colors - Ruby Ruby, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Mellow Yellow, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Blue Me Away, Wet n Wild - On a Trip, & Essie - Orange, It's Obvious.

Hope you guys enjoy your St. Patrick's Day! & post a link if you did any fun St. Patrick's Day nail designs, I love to see them!

  

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Coral Reef

I've been on a pink craze lately with nail polish. I rarely ever wear pink colors but lately I've been loving them. I'm usually more of a blue/green nail polish lover. Of course I can't go into a drug store without going over to look at the nail polishes & while I was in CVS I saw this Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear color that I've never seen before. I guess it's always been there but it never caught my eye until today. I love this color & I think it'll look so great with a tan in the summer. It reminds me of Wet n Wild's Tropicalia but I'm not really sure how similar they are. It was a little streaky on the first coat but the second coat came out perfect. & I can never leave my nails alone & I always have to add something to them so Essie's As Gold As It Gets was sitting in front of me staring at me while I was starting to upload the pictures & I was like oh wait this will look fabulous. This warm weather is making me want to wear summer nails & this look is gorgeous for the summer!

Peace, Love & Lush and My First Half Moon Mani!

I feel like I have so much to say today! I'm patiently waiting for my package from LUSH to come. This is the first time I've ever purchased any of their products. I heard great reviews about the Bubble Gum Lip Scrub & I love anything for my lips & I really needed a scrub so I figured I'd try LUSH since so many people rave about their products. I also purchased the Lemony Flutter cream, which I heard is great for your cuticles. I went to Macy's looking for LUSH because they had a corner set up for the products but it wasn't there anymore. The woman who worked at Macy's said the only place I could find LUSH products was at the Macy's on 34th Street in Herald Sq. Does anyone know if they sell LUSH products in store anymore or if it's just online?

Next I want to talk about 'Peace, Love and Lush'. I just found Bea's blog, which is fabulous. She's campaigning against bullying and 'bitchiness' in blogging and YouTubing, which I think is great. I CANNOT stand when people leave hateful & mean comments to other people on the computer. First of all, just because you're hiding behind a computer screen does not mean it's ok for you to write nasty things just because no one knows who you are. Bloggers & YouTubers put so much time & effort into their work and it's just horrible when other people discourage them with rude comments. 'If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all.' I love reading blogs & watching YouTube videos to get helpful tips & find out about products before I spend money on them to see if their worth it & I've seen so many girls get discouraged from writing and filming because people say such nasty things to them. Us girls have to stick together! Check out Bea's post on her experience with it here: Beabarella:Beauty and Fashion. We don't all have to agree on everything & I'm all for expressing your own opinion, but don't be nasty about it! She created a button also so if you are all for peace & love and against bullying & 'bitchiness' post this button onto the side bar of your blog!

Now onto my first half moon mani! Woo hoo! I did this mani on Tuesday and on Wednesday I went to Sephora and was checking out their new Spring nail polishes and the manicure on the display ad was the one I had on my hands! I was like WHAT?! lol They did a half moon mani using a nude & a hot pink. It didn't come out perfect, but it was my first time.

My ring finger I used Brucci - Victoria's Blue Eyes, my middle finger is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Mellow Yellow, my ring finger is Milani - Tropical Fiesta (this is like the display in Sephora), and my pinky is Essie - To Buy or Not to Buy from the Spring 2012 Collection. The nude color I used was Essie - Brooch the Subject from the Winter 2011 Collection. I did a mani using these colors with a regular french - you can see it here.

Thanks for reading this long post! Hope you all have a great day :)

Valentine's Day Nails #2!

I have another Valentine's Day manicure today! I saw this on YouTube last year & I really love it. I will post the link on the bottom of the page. For this manicure I painted my nails with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White Out. I sponged on Ulta nail polish in the color Fuchsiamania and OPI Pink Friday from the Nicki Minaj collection. I keep using Pink Friday in my manicures. I freakin love that color and it's perfect for Valentine's Day nail art. I think I should go and get another bottle! Then I painted black hearts using a nail art polish. Here are the pics:

& here is the YouTube video on how to do it & where I got the design from:

Valentine's Day Nails!

Valentine's Day is coming up! I don't know about you but I think if you're in a relationship every day should be Valentine's Day lol.. I never really got into the whole Valentine's Day thing but it's so cute for nail art. I have a couple of other nail designs in mind so this is just the first one I'm showing you guys! It's so simple but it's so so cute.. I love it.

I used Pink Friday from the OPI Nicki Minaj Collection and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White Out. To make the heart design I just used a toothpick. If you guys do any Valentine's Day nail art leave the link in the comments. I'd love to see them :)

Sally Hansen Gem Crush - Big Money

When I first saw that these came out on blogs I had to get at least one of them. I was like OMG. I was constantly looking for them in any drugstore I could find. Finally, I found them in a Duane Read in Manhattan and I bought the one that looked the most unique and that didn't look like anything I have. I've had this sitting in my nail polish collection for over a month now and I never used it. I finally put it on and I'm so in love. The amount of glitter is amazing. I was just getting over my whole glitter phase and now I'm like this is why I love glitter so much. I keep looking down at my nails, even my mom loves this color. It has little gold glitter in a clear base with larger round pink glitter. It's just so amazing.

This looks so much better in person. I really love this nail polish!

Day 17 - Glitter

LOVE GLITTER!! I had a hard time trying to figure out which glitter nail polish to use but I just bought this Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear nail polish in Red Carpet. It's a gorgeous red with tiny glitter in it that makes the nail polish look like glass. Omg I love! I wish they had a million colors like this one. I figured I would make it a Christmas design too. I've been wanting to do a Christmas design and I thought this would be a good color to use. Here are the pics: 

 

Here is the link for the tutorial I got the idea from to do the bow: MissChievous Christmas Gift Wrap Nails For the rhinestone I used one of the Hello Kitty sticker decals that are sold at Sephora.

Day 15 - Delicate Print

I tried so hard to get perfect pictures of my nails but you just can't see how pretty these are unless you see them in person. I used Sally Hansen White On & Spoiled by Wet n Wild in Shaken Snow Globe. I love this mani, it looks like fresh untouched snow in the sun. The Shaken Snow Globe is a thick jelly clear base with little holographic glitters (correct me if I'm wrong, I still don't know the correct terms for the different kinds of nail polishes).  

Day 14 - Flowers

My mom got a bouquet of flowers for her birthday about a week ago and she mentioned throwing them out because they were dying. That's when I got the idea to put the petals on my nails for my Day 14 challenge. I think this design looks so Lady GaGa. It's a little crazy but I love that it's crazy. Here are the pictures:

I don't think I would keep these nails on but for the challenge they look pretty cool! CVS was having a sale today on all Sally Hansen products - buy 1 get 1 half off; so I bought two nail polishes. I bought Xtreme Wear in Green With Envy (which is the base coat I used for this) & White On. I also bought two other nail polishes that I just saw in CVS so I'm assuming they're new. They're Spoiled by Wet n Wild in Shaken Snow Globe which is a white and holographic glitter in a clear base (I put it on top of the green in this challenge) and Show Me the Money which are green in gold glitters in a clear base. I thought they would be good for Christmas. Has anyone else heard of this brand? Let me know what you guys think about this manicure!

Day 10 - Gradient Nails

For this challenge I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Lacey Lilac (the top color),  OPI Funky Dunkey (middle color), & OPI Siberian Nights (bottom color). This was my first time doing gradient nails so I'm not sure if I did them exactly right.

Thanksgiving Nails!

Here's an extra post for today. I saw a YouTube tutorial on this & I had to try it! Here are my turkey nails :)

For my base coat I used Forever 21's Love & Beauty polish in Nude. The red was Brucci - Jelly Apple, Yellow was Essie - Shorty Pants, Orange was Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed, the Brown was Orly - Naughty. The black was Art Club Nail Art Lacquer (with the thin brush) & the white was Kiss Nail Art Paint (also with a thin brush). Here is the tutorial I used: Julie G Thanksgiving Turkey Nails

I also saw another really cool Thanksgiving tutorial from Robin Moses, I just discovered her nail art and she's beyond phenomenal. Here is a link to her Thanksgiving nails: Robin Moses Thanksgiving Characters

Day 7 - Black & White Nails

Yay! One week down! I could not figure out what to do for black and white nails. I didn't want to do something boring, I wanted to do something fun. I settled with panda bears. Here's how it came out...

I painted all of my fingers Black on Black by Sinful Colors, except my ring finger. For my ring finger I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Quick Sand. I couldn't paint it black or white because then you wouldn't have been able to see the panda on top of it, so I went with a neutral color. For the white I used Sinful Colors - Snow Me White. I used a dotting tool for the designs and a thin nail polish brush.

Day 3 - Yellow Nails

So Day 3 is yellow nails! I love yellow nails! I think they're perfect for summer. So fun and bright :) As much as I love yellow nails, I only have one yellow nail polish. I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mellow Yellow.  Again I'm using a Sally Hansen polish. I think they're great for a reasonable price. When I put my Seche Vite top coat on I guess there was some orange on the brush from my previous manicure and it got on my yellow nails. You can see it on my pinky and ring finger. I actually thinks it looks kind of cool. I was too lazy to re-do those nails so I just left it.

Day 2 - Orange Nails

So Day 2 is Orange Nails - another color I have never worn. I like neon orange but only in the summer & even that I've probably only wore once. Orange just isn't my thing. But this challenge made me use a nail polish I bought a while ago that I never wore. I put this color on just one finger & took it right off. I didn't give it a chance. It's Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed. I'm a big fan of Sally Hansen, they're not as expensive as Essie and OPI and the nail polishes work just as well. You need two coats of this color to make it opaque, the first coat was pretty sheer. I hate sheer nail polishes, bleh! 

I thought the color was going to be a lot brighter. This is definitely a color for summer and would look so much better if you had a tan. But now I'm going to use this color in the summer. I'm glad I used this for the challenge. It was the only orange I had to so I had to. How do you guys feel about orange nails?

Colorful French

This is another one of my favorite designs. I love a regular french tip - it's classy and elegant.. but why not put some color into it? For this design I used the same colors I used for the shatter design. See how many different things you can do with just a couple of colors? You don't need a million nail polishes.

For the base coat I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in #150 Petal Pusher. The pink is from Forever 21 Love & Beauty - Pink, the purple is from Color Club but the sticker isn't on the bottom anymore so I have no idea what the name of the color is, the yellow is from Sally Hansen - Mellow  Yellow, and the blue is from Brucci - Gianna's "Rockin" Blue. (Please excuse my cuticles, they're a mess right now.) I tried using tape for this design because I've been reading a lot of other blogs that say they use tape and they came out perfect, but obviously they didn't for mine. I didn't try to perfect this either, I just wanted to show you how cool this french design is.

Rainbow Shatter

A little switch up from those subtle nails. This manicure is a little more eye popping. I'm sure some of you have seen this before since the shatter nail polishes have been out for a while, but I didn't have a blog when I first did this mani. I love this mani so much! It's definitely one of my favorites. Here's a picture of what it is:

This is such an easy and fun manicure. I started with my base coat - I use Diamond Shield - then I put one coat of white - I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White - just to make the colors pop more. Then with my dotting tool I dotted colors on my nails in random patterns. The colors I used were:

OPI - Who the Shrek are You?

Brucci - Gianna's "Rockin" Blue

Sally Hansen - Mellow Yellow

Love & Beauty (Forever 21) - Pink
OPI - Black Shatter

The purple I used is by Color Club but the sticker on the bottom came off so I don't know the name of it. This is what my nails looked like before the shatter. They're a little bit of a mess.

It's ok if it's not perfect. It's not supposed to be. And if you get it on your cuticles you can clean it up after, no biggie.