Dia De Los Muertos...

Can you guys believe it's already October?!? So, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I was raised in Mexico. One of my favorite times of the year (and one of the times I miss the most) is the fall, especially Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Kind of morbid, I know....but I miss it for the folklore and artistry of it. I have this strange little collection of Day of the Dead stuff (coasters, paper mache dolls, candles...you name it).

It's technically not until November...but I wanted to practice it to make sure I know what I'm doing when I try to do this for real.

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No Flash

 I originally was gonna do a pinata on my pinky, but after like 5 failed attempts...I gave up. Boo!!! October is my favorite month for nails, there are just so many different ideas I want to try and I can't wait to show you guys.

Thanks for looking!!

Tutorial: Penguin

Happy Sunday everyone! Thank you to Aimee for this tutorial request. I was already wearing Kiss Soft Purple (it came from the nail art pens and I just decanted into an old SV bottle).


How pretty is this color?!

 Supplies:

-Acetone
-Dotting tool
-Small, thin brush (this came in a set of art brushes I got at Michael's)
-Heart Rhinestones
-WnW French White Creme
-WnW Sunny Side Up
-Sation Black
-SH Insta Dri Top Coat

I use a Ziploc bag to pour out all the np I will be working with. I poured out about 3-4 drops of the white onto the bag. With the brush I drew the outline of the body

I filled in the rest of the body with the regular brush (I tried to fill in in with the thinner brush, but it was really streaky).

The edges weren't so clean afterwards. I already had a coat of TC before I started so I dipped my brush into acetone and cleaned up the edges. That's really how I get all my lines cleaned up. It's much easier to clean up lines when there is a layer of TC, the color doesn't smear.

Next I poured a drop of the black on to the bag and with the smallest end of the dotting tool (for the eyes)

The smallest end works the best:

I used the brush to make the beak and feet. I just did 3 horizontal lines. 

I applied another coat of TC and cleaned up the white from my fingers with my regular clean up brush. I applied one of the heart rhinestones on my pinky. 

Here is the end result again:

Hope everyone is enjoying their Sunday! :)

May the Fourth Be With You...(womp womp womp)

Okay so as I have mentioned before, I'm a big Star Wars fan. So today being May 4th/Star Wars Day, I did another SW inspired mani. I mean come ooonn...who doesn't love Star Wars?!? (Please, don't answer, haha!)

I was originally going to just do R2D2 on my middle finger, but once I did...it was too plain. I think I might have gone a bit crazy with it in the end. I hate when that happens!! :(

Here are the colors I used: SH Celeb City, WnW Black Creme, WnW Blue Wants to be a Millionaire, OPI Fiercely Fiona, and Cover Girl Disco Dazzle.

Thumb:

I went for light sabers for this. I taped off the lines to make the actual beams of the light sabers. I then dotted where the handles would go.

Index:

This was Jango Fett from Attack of the Clones.

Middle: R2D2. I freehanded the lines and just cleaned them up with a thin brush. There were way too many lines to try and tape this off. This was the first time I actually did this, and it worked really good. I considered doing a tutorial on how I did it, but since I wasn't sure if it would even work (and not smear the silver), I decided against it. I will do a tutorial one day (put that on my to-do list).

I left my ring finger alone because this was at the point where I realized my mani was wayyy too busy. Otherwise I was going to try and recreate the Death Star on this nail. My pinky was supposed to be the "stars". I'm still mehh about this one.

I found this online, how cute is he?!?

Overall I like the mani, I seriously can't get enough of the silver/blue combo. I feel like a superhero when I wear it, lol.

Anywho....happy Star Wars Day! It's my not-so-secret guilty please and I don't care who knows it!! Haha :)

What's your secret guilty pleasure?



Happy Belated Easter!

Happy Belated Easter everyone! I looked literally for an hour for my cables last night to upload these after we got home from all the Easter festivities, but they were nowhere to be found! I finally found them this morning in Bella's bag. Anywho, I had a more elaborate mani planned for Easter, but I'm glad that I went with something more simple. This is Sally Hansen Jade Jump. It's a part of their Spring 2011 line. This is the only one that I got from the collection (The others seemed dupeable. The only one I kind of regret not getting is Chartreuse Chase).

Ok, so I know most Insta-Dris are one coaters, and I'm sure this one would have been too...but it wasn't. I'm not sure if it was because a ton would come off the brush (I kept moving it off the brush so it applied very streaky) or the fact that I applied it too thin/thick (because of the brush problem). It looked fine after 2 coats though :) A while back I saw this on Chloe's Nails and decided to try it. I used craft scissors and cut a piece of Scotch tape and lined up the two strips to make the zig-zag pattern. I applied one coat of Lively Lilac..and voila! I accented the egg with pink rhinestones (I'm running low on them so I will soon have to invest in more). I did an thumb accent, but I ended up not liking it too much. Here is goes:



This is the one downside to working with rhinestones. I didn't get a decent pic of my thumb, but it was full of bubbles. It really irks me that the surface is not smooth. :( I ended up taking it off and just painting it JJ.

Bella had a great time. She got 4 Easter baskets (one of the perks of being an only child/only granddaughter on both sides). She ended up dumping one out and shoveling dirt in it, lol

What did you for Easter??

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day everyone! I have been dying to try Emerald Sparkle and today is the perfect day for it.
In my head this was really gonna look cool, but it's a total fail:

The stones are way too big for what I was going for, so you can't really tell that it's supposed to be Earth :( I think maybe if I would've used the little multicolored balls the overall look would have been much better. Oh well! At least the color is gorgeous. Here are a couple of shots of Emerald Sparkle by itself.

I'm off from work today so I'm spending all day with Bella watching Spongebob. We planted a few little palm trees a couple of weeks ago and we're gonna go clean up the few plants we have in our backyard. Those are my Earth Day plans. What are you planning to do??

My Favorite Pair of Shoes

I have a thing for Converse! I'm on a mission to own as many colors as I can, so far I'm up to 6 pairs, but the teal ones are by FAR my favorite of them all! A while back I did a Chuck mani on MUA

My nails were much shorter back then (this was in December I think). The closest color I had to match my shoes was OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui. SSFS is a gorgeous blue, and I love it...but it doesnt quite match the color of my shoes. Then alooong came Sally Hansen Blue Me Away. It is a perfect match!! So I decided to recreate this mani, I even added an additional accent.

The white tip on the ring finger was done with Scotch tape. For the laces and black trim I used Sally Hansen Nail Art pens like these, and just applied rhinestones to the lace holes. For the thumb I used my dotting tool and freehanded the star with OPI Simmer and Shimmer.

I'm even having a separate pair of Chucks custom painted. I can't wait for them to be ready so I can show everyone! This took me a while because I was watching DWTS...yes, still Kirstie FTW! The cleanup took a while because blues are just a total PitA to remove, they stain horribly! I'm sure you can see it in my cuticles. my accent nail is actually horribly stained :( Oh well, I still love you BLUE!

Thanks for looking :)

The FORCE is Strong in This One!

Happy Friday! This week has seriously dragged on! After some family drama all afternoon yesterday, I needed some ME time when I got home. I knew what I was going to do for this mani, but I wasn't too sure if it would work out since I had never used matte np. I heard a bunch of good things about other brands, but I really haven't seen too much feedback on the Hard Candy matte np....but this is all I had. One of my BFF's always gives me ideas on what to do on my nails (Hi Kelly, I know you're reading this!) and out of left field she suggested I do Star Wars because she knows I love it. I thought....what a genius this girl is. Her original suggestion was R2D2, which I will one day try and do. But I came up with this instead:

I used WnW Black Creme. I'm not really sure why there's glitter though. I think it's because of my previous Show it and Glow It mani. It reminds me of Sally Hansen Midnight in NYC in these pics. UGH..I should've gone with that one! Don't you hate when that happens? I didn't want the other nails to look too "blah" so I put the rhinestones....for stars maybe? Then with a really thin brush I freehanded Darth Vader's face. The eyes were made with a dotting tool. Working with matte is pretty hard. It kept drying on me because I wasnt working fast enough and it would get all streaky so I constantly kept wiping the goopy brush. I can't imagine having to do this on all my nails! Star Wars...why must you be so awesome!?!?!

Thanks for looking and HAPPY FRIDAY!!!

Pink Wednesdays

I saw this on Chloe's blog (she does some amazing stuff, btw) and was super excited. I LOVE pink and this is a great way to get through some of my untrieds.

Here is the breakdown of Pink Wednesdays (taken from their page):
"Once Upon A Time….
A couple of nail bloggers decided to let their love for the movie Mean Girls manifest itself in the form of  wearing pink manis on Wednesdays.
In the movie Mean Girls, “The Plastics” always wear pink on Wednesdays. And while we’re not mean girls at all, we loved the idea so much that we tweaked it a little and made it our own.

 And thus Pink Wednesdays were born!"

Click here to read up on it.

I used Wet 'n Wild Black Creme (1 coat) and OPI Show it & Glow It! as an accent. I finally used my little heart rhinestones (aren't they cute?) I looove pinks! What's your favorite pink?

An Apple a Day...

Zoya is awesome aren't they? I got these during the latest promotion of BOGO on their 3 new summer lines. I got Tanzy, Kimmy, Rica, and Apple from the Sunshine and Tamsen and Sooki from the Summertime collections. This is Apple:

Apple is described as a luminous yellow-toned apple green packed with gold metallic sparkle. At first glance I thought this was a really sheer jelly. I figured that it would take about 3 coats to get completely opaque. After the second coat, I was happy with the outcome. I thought the gold sparkle would not be as apparent, but it really is. This is not one of my favorite colors (on me, at least). So, what better accent than an apple :)

The green on the apple is Nina Ultra Pro Leaf Me Alone and the stem is OPI Suzi Loves Cowboys.

Happy Sunday everyone :) Thanks for looking

Meet My Minion

Happy Friday everyone!


Despicable Me is by far one of my favorite Disney movies recently. It's just such a cute movie and being a parent...well it holds a special meaning because for all of us that have children...well we know just how much they can change our lives. Bella has this movie on constant rotation and I love sitting down and watching it with her. We call her our minion sometimes...which inspired today's mani.

Everyone....meet Stewart, my minion for the day:

Earlier in the week I mentioned I had a failed attempt at doing a mani, this is it. My problem was I was trying to tape off his suspenders. I started off the same way and STILL I failed. So again, I was about to give up. I gave it one last shot, this time freehanding the design and I must say I like how it came out. I have a bit of OCD and usually not having straight lines (this is why I rarely do tape manis) would really have bothered me. But...it's clothing, right? It can't be perfect (._.) For the base I used China Glaze Blue Paradise. I got this by pure mistake (or was duped into it actually). I went to Sally's the other day and I saw a semi-full Tronica display. I didn't bother to look at the labels because I assumed that they were all Tronicas (I was in a rush). When I got home, I saw this one is obviously NOT a holo, and was going to swap it out, but I actually really like this color. It does make me mad when Sally SA's do this though..if you don't have it...take the display out!! UGH! It does make a good "denim" color though :) Here is a closeup of him:

The base for Stewart is OPI The "It" Color. I used the dotting tool that has the really thin striping brush on the other side for all my lines. It's a perfect width to make thin lines, yet it's not too long. I've tried using the striping brushes with the really long bristels, and it's a total FAIL every time. The np rolls down the bristles in one big glob :( His eyeball and mouth were done with OPI Suzi Loves Cowboys. Mmmm...brown jelly :D I used those really big pearls from the wheel I said I would never use for his eyeball and dotted the silver with SH Celeb City. The black is all WnW Black Creme.



I could watch this movie over and over....ahhh to be a kid again! What's your favorite kid movie?

Happy Friday everyone :)

Peace & Love

Happy Wednesday! I have been playing with this idea in my head for a while. I TRIED to do a another mani, but I need a whole lot more time for it. I think that will be my weekend project. (Stay tuned for that one). One of my favorite pieces of jewelry ever is a necklace that I have that has a dove (my favorite) and a blinged out peace sign. It's very similar to this one. I combined this idea and my favorite tee and came up with today's mani:

Index:

BM07 stamped with Konad black over MAC Obey Me

Middle:

WnW Black Creme with silver dots from bornpretty. I LOVE that Black Creme is a one coater! My "&" sign came out a bit lopsided :(

(Edit)

Ok, so here is a quick tutorial on how I did the ampersand. Since I had only done one coat of Black Creme, it was pretty much dry by the time I got to my middle finger (I did this finger last). With my dotting tool I scratched on to the nail where my design would be to use it as a guide. I then traced about the length of where 2-3 balls would go at a time (so that it wouldn't dry) and just pasted one little ball at a time. This one nail was actually alot faster than I originally anticipated. I found that when the balls started to dry, they actually dried as a "string". Once I was done with the design, I went back and just lightly repositioned the "strings" to where I wanted them to go (as they were easier to manipulate because they were already stuck together) instead of trying to move them around as I was placing them on the nail. Then I applied 2 coats of SV to "seal" the design in.

Ring:

Dotted heart using Milani Red Sparkle over Zoya Kelly

Pinky:

MAC Obey Me

I'm in a very Beatles mood today :)

Everytime I wear Kelly I remember why I love it so much! It's just sooo pretty.

So....here goes one from the vault:

It was Christmas-time, can you tell???

Thanks for looking!