Valentines Mani #2: Jungle Funky French

This wasn't what I had in mind when I sat down to do a second valentines mani- it just happened. It's a super sparkly animal print funky French that had tiny pops of pink (it looks purple but it's pink) inside the cheetah print. I used metallic pink hexagon glitter to and outlined it in black to make a cheetah print. Underneath this is a white French tip, covered in Metallica by Wet n Wild, with an unnamed silver glitter on top of the silver part. Then I added a black zebra. It's fun, sparkly and is definitely a contender for actual Valentines day nails.

Valentine's Day Mani #1!!

Ahhhh.... Valentines Day... One of my favorite holidays because I love pink and hearts! Hopefully, I'll get flowers for that vase I got for Christmas (wink, Kevin!! ;) so here is my first mani for Vday! I painte on 2 coats of Blazed by Wet N Wild, and a coat of LCD by Sally Hansen HD. I then used a dotting tool to make white dots that touch in the shape of a heart on my ring finger. I filled this in with red striper polish, and used clear coat and a dotting tool to cover the red part of the heart in 1mm red hexagons. I used a black polish to paint on the "T+K" carefully and added black heart cut out decals to match! The T+K stands for Tina plus Kevin! Tina plus Kevin Forever! ;)

Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday Dupe Franken

So I got a lil mad scientisty and tried to make a dupe franken of Deborahh Lippmann's Happy Birthday polish! I just dumped red,gold, silver, green, blue, pink, and purple metallic 1mm hexagon glitters and green, blue and purple fine glitters into a bottle of clear coat that I never use. I painted just one coat on top of Black Out by Sally Hansen. Its not perfect, as some of the green and blue color of the hex glitter washed away in the bottle; and my dupe franken has fine glitter and not tiny square glitter. Might fool the untrained eye, but hey, it's DIY or die!!!

Green Glitter Fishy Scales

Ya, it could be another kinda animal that has scales, but it's scales nonetheless. I used my bright neon green Franken as a base for my entire nails then slowly and painstakingly placed on iridescent neon green 1mm hexs down. Basically that's it. It's a fun and easy nail art to do that even looks good in the dark!

NYE Mani #2

Ahhh... Much better. A NYE mani worthy of drinking and smooching the night away. I used "School of Hard Rocks" by Essie as a base color.  Then did a suuuper thin French tip in blueish glitter "Nail Junkie" by Sinful Colors. You can barely see it in the picture, but it looks awesome in person. I used a silver striper polish to do these little bursts coming from the corners of my nail bed. In the center of the silver bursty thing, I put a tiny silver rhinestone surrounded by tiny silver hexagons. Wish I could find my camera cord so I could upload better pictures of everything! Sorry!

Gold and brown new years mani

This is the sequel to yesterday's swatch of Bling Dyanasty by OPI. On top of the gold base color, I took the largest dotting tool I had to add random large chocolate brown (OPIs I Brake For Manicures) circles all over the nail. I filled in the empty spaces with the smaller end of the same dotting tool. I let this dry, and it looked cool by itself (sorry no pic!) then went over it with a thin coat of top coat to adhere tiny gold hexagons. I used a dotting tool dipped in top coat to individually place a single hexagon in the center of each large brown dot. On my accent ring nail, I placed a row of gold hexagons along the nail/cuticle line. It takes two coats of Seche Vite to encase the hexagons completely to a smooth finish, but shown is just with one coat. Hopefully I'll have time to squeeze in another new years inspired mani; this one is cute, but not blingy enough to ring in 2012!

Christmas Mani #1

I'm back you guys! Temporarily taking pictures with my iphone until I can find my computer-camera cord!

So I used Wet N Wild's Red Red for the base, the sponged on Snow Me White by Sinful Colors. I coated it once over the whole nail with Diamonds by Sally Hansen. Then used a dotting tool to add random 1mm red hexagons, and sprinkled Sterling fine glitter by Martha Stewart on top. Then 2 coats of Seche Vite to encase the gritty glitter feel!

I'm going to try to upload 2 more Christmas manis before Christmas so wish me luck!! 

Missed you guys!!

Fimo Fruits and Rhinestone Flowers (Pic Heavy!)

I finally got around to using my Fimo fruit slices! I've had them for a really long time and I've been dying to try them out! When I sat down to give me boring white French tips a fill, I had no idea what I was in for...

After my backfill, I drilled the tips super thin, but they were still white tips, so I had to cover them up with some color. I used a combination of blue, green, and pink iridescent hexagon glitters, lightly, just to add some color. The white remains as the base color. I topped with some fruit slices, mostly kiwi, strawberry, lemon, lime, Fuji apple, and watermelon. Then encased with a THICK layer of clear acrylic. (filed, shaped, and buffed, yadah yadah yadah...)

And added some colorful flowers made from rhinestones!

These are the things I used: the pink, green, and blue hex, Fimo fruit slice wheel, and 2 sizes of multi colored rhinestones: 1.5 mm and 2 mm, which I adhered at the very end with a lil top coat (after 3 coats of top coat on each nail dried)

Because I was just applying the fruits to the tips, there isn't much space to have a variety of the full shapes. I used a craft knife to slice some of the fruit in half.

(Carefully)! I did this to the limes, lemons, and the strawberries. It allowed for more fruit to be placed on each nail, and they laid a bit better on the nail too!

 

Here are all the fruits that came in my Fimo wheel (which I got for about $5 at Sally Beauty Supply). The ones I know for sure are lemon, strawberry, kiwi, 2 watermelons, lime, leaves, apple, and Fuji apple. The ones I'm not sure about are papaya, kumquat, and banana. But they are so weird looking that I'm not sure what they look like and I probably won't be using them. ><

Let me know what you guys think!! They are busy, but they are super shiny and the rhinestone flowers sparkle really nicely, especially in dim light. I'm digging it!

Gold and Black Glitter Tips + Cross

I, admittedly a little tipsy, decided last night at 2 am, I was going to drill out my blue green glitter tips off my left hand and replace them with any color combo of my twin bro's picking. He was staying over at our place and was watching TV as I did my nails. He said black and gold so I used my new black hexagons on top of an old acrylic mix from last year that was Martha Stewart's Copper fine glitter and clear acrylic. I dumped a bunch of black hexs into the mix and applied it to my tips.

After shaping and buffing, I applied the black hexs to my index finger in the form of a cross. The center is a small silver rhinestones, with larger black rhinestones on the edges of the lines. I really like this and will probably try again is different colors later on.

 You can see my  thumb here without topcoat because I accidentally forgot my thumb, but thought I'd take a pic anyways for educational purposes. This is what it looks like buffed and before top coat. It looks a little cloudy.

Here's the interesting part of this post: One day, while looking in my black star cut out pot, I discovered a cut out heart. I dumped it out onto a piece of paper and rifled through it. I found about 30 cut out hearts with almost as many center cuts in there! It was enough for my to throw into its own empty container and save for  a rainy day. :) Bonus glitter!

Nail Mail Haul + Reviews

So this is my most recent and final nail art haul from www.banggood.com . They're located out of China, and like I said in my last nail haul from them, you're getting the same stuff you get off Amazon but for dirt cheap + no shipping. This 12 color hexagon set on Amazon is trying to sell for $17!! I got it for $3. 

The tiny jars ha twist on lids, as with most glitter pots, and there was only a small about of spillage. I wouldn't even call it spillage, it was just a few hexagons stuck to the larger container. I swept them off with a paper towel onto my glitter laden carpet and that was that. They are about 1mm (sorry I didn't have my ruler out to show you) and they are small enough to stick on to your nail with top coat and not have it be sticking out off the nail in one corner, also small enough to throw into a glitter acrylic mix (pic in my next post). But large enough to tell they are hexagons. The only problem I have with these is that some of them are straight metallic (red, black, silver, copper, pink/purple) and some are irridecent (pink, blue, purple, green, yellow, and clear/white). The only reason why I don't like that is because I was REALLY hoping the green would be a straight metallic green so I could do red/green/silver acrylic mix for Xmas! But I still have time before Xmas to figure it out or find a new green hexagon. LOL.....

These are 10 colors of striping tape that I also ordered... kind of an impulse buy because they were I think $1.50 for all ten colors? I just thought since I was ordering stuff, and everything takes so long to get here that I might as well stock up on stuff.

I'm not quite sure how I will use the stripe tape, but here you can see that it is very thin, but you can still clearly see it's pretty metallic blue color. As I was just testing the size of the tape on my nail and wasn't planning on leaving it there, I must report that it came off very easily and remained sticky, so if you place it in the wrong spot, it will be easy to pull off and move over.

The tape was so thin and hard to tell which color was which

, I thought while I had everything out during my nail mail photo shoot, I labeled all of the striping tape bags so it would be easy to grab the correct on quickly while doing nails.

And last but not least, a new set of double ended dotting tools (whose handles match my acrylic art brush set from my last haul) a wheel of flat backed pearls, and some 1.5mm and 2mm rhinestones, I thought I swore off rhinestones forever but these were too cheaply priced to pass up- I think each wheel was about $2 for about 24000 stones/wheel. And to answer the question you always ask: how do they hold up under top coat? They don't! Never do that! Rhinestones always look best if they are the very very last thing to apply! Even Swarovski crystals- you don't want to top coat those either! They lose their tiny facets under a layer of topcoat and therefore, lose their sparkle.

Here are my flat black pearls^^. Love them, haven't really seen them being sold before. I got these because my girlfriend Chrissy loves everything azn and cutesy so these are prolly going to only be used on her nails- maybe I'll take the red and blacks though. 

Oh yeah and I also got a pair of tweezers for picking up tiny things like Fimo slices, glitter shapes, rhinestones, etc. They were 79 cents each and they work great!

I hope you guys check out www.banggood.com because they are cheap, good quality, and they have free shipping!! Only took about 2 1/2 weeks to get here, but hey, I didn't pay a penny for shipping :)

Huge Post: Haul, Swatches, Reviews... (Pic Heavy)

This is OPI's "Crown Me Already" from the Miss Universe Collection (the silver and large hex glitter). And the blue is "Across The Universe " by Deborah Lippmann.

OK let's start with 'Crown Me Already': I'm not sure if it was just this bottle, it's my friend Megan's and she ordered it online and she said when she recieved it a little bit had leaked out a bit. Not sure if it was a little think because of the insane amount of glitter, or because of the leak, but it was pretty hard to apply, and seemed to PUSH more polish out of the bottle each time I put the brush back in. I love the glitter, love the sparkle, but it was pretty hard to smooth out the texture, even with Seche Vite top coat. I also used a toothpick to push the large hexagon glitters around to keep my cuticle line clean looking.

"Across the Universe" is a dream glitter polish. It only took 2 medium coats to opaque and despite it being loaded with hexagons, it went on smooth, and had a jelly-like finish. It was smoothed out instantly with only one coat of Seche Vite. This is also Megan's polish. I got to swatch these while dog-sitting her super awesome golden retriever, Lady. Hey Megan!

YAY 3D acrylic! I'll go into details about that further down the page, as this is a swatch review for Essie's "Raise Awareness". It's Essie's breast cancer awareness pink and it is a lil tricky. I did read another review of this polish saying it was streaky and it is. I feel like when I'm painting tips it's even streakier vs. whole nail application. So this is two coats. I love the color, it would be less streaky with 3 coats, but I don't like to have heavy looking tips. I think that this polish would be less streaky in 3-4 months as it ages and becomes a little thicker.

Here is my pink nail drill I just got yesterday from Beauties Factory. Check it out here. I got it for about $25, and actually this is my replacement drill for the one I just got last month and BROKE. Now for this review I would like to make it clear that I BROKE the drill the first time. It did not come malfunctioning. Good news: the BF pink drill has a one year warranty, and this one was sent to me for $10 fee and I got to keep my other drill, it's cable, and drill bits. As for it's power: it goes up to 20,000 RPM (super fast and powerful) but so far I haven't had to use it at it's max speed; it does the job on medium. I've successfully filed a nail I had to put on today, and carved out the moon tips from my squared off nails. It did a fine job, my tips are sharp and more defined that with my previous battery powered drill. See above, the moon tips in my Essie "Raise Awareness" pictures. The only down side I have seen with this drill so far: it gets pretty warm in my hand after long use, and once it has overheated and slowed down. I turned it off for about 5 minutes, and was able to use it just fine again. I would reccomend this to any beginners for use on home acrylic application. And these are my acrylic brushes that I got JUST for doing 3D kawaii japanese nail art!!! and this 12 color set of acrylic powder. The colors are pretty random, but I'm not too picky about that right now these are just for practicing 3D stuff. I only paid about $2.50 for the 5 brush set (free shipping) and $6 or so for the acrylics also free shipping. It only took about 2 weeks to get here from China, and they are good enough quality to do a few little bows and flowers.

The website is here and it's insanely cheap for decent quality nail stuff like rhinestones, glitter, etc. So you should DEFINITELY check it out. Free shipping from China to US and came in a super decent amount of time. The comtainer that the acrylics came it was a little dusty (as shown) but I just dusted it off with a paper towel after I saw how yuck it was in the photo. None of it was spilled in shipping, but it was just a little dusty with powder. The brushes are super cute and the bristles are a nice soft sable hair for acrylic application, and they clean as well as my expensive ones from Sally's.



Well, if anyone read this whole thing, kudos to you, and I hope this was helpful for someone!