Back to School

Back to School Pencil Nail Art

10:00:00 AM

It's September...and you all know what that means, right?  Back to school time!!!  Where I live, school starts for elementary, middle, high school, and some colleges after labor day.  To, well celebrate isn't the word, so commemorate back to school, I decided it was appropriate to do some nail art!

I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do when I sat down to paint my nails.  I started to think about all the different aspects regarding school.  Chalkboards, paper, notebooks, markers, pens, pencils, desks, math problems, science experiments, buses, oh the list goes on and on.  cutepolish posted a cute nail art tutorial which featured apples for one of her back to school manicures, but I wasn't really feeling it.

Then I remembered an awesome manicure I saw on The Daily Nail which was an awesome #2 Pencil Nail art.  I headed on over to her blog and found that she made a handy dandy tutorial post which made her amazing design look super simple.  Seriously, this girl is a genius with nail art, her blueberry nails are freaking spectacular.  I cannot figure out how she only used four polishes for that manicure.

Anyways, off topic, here's my attempt at her pencil nails!  (My camera is still a little funky, working on fixing the color issues).






Colors Used

  • Base
    • China Glaze - Sun Kissed
    • Sinful Colors - Let's Meet
  • Detailing
    • Zoya - Lianne
    • Ulta - Flamingo
    • Sally Hansen - Celeb City
    • Pure Ice - Kiss Me Here
When I started painting, I didn't know what base yellow I should use.  I was going to use Julep Daisy, but eh I really dislike that polish.  I have owned Sinful Colors Let's Meet for ages now, and it is a beautiful yellow shimmer polish.  For the most part, I really enjoy the polish, but it is rather sheer and takes a few coats to show up.  In order to not waste polish or have white undies, I grabbed my bottle of Sun Kissed by China Glaze and painted on a base coat.  I then used Let's Meet as a sheer top coat, which gave the nails a perfect pencil color.

Once dried, I took Zoya Lianne, a gorgeous shimmer orange polish, and brushed the outer edge of the nail to give the nail the 3d pencil look.  With Ulta's Flamingo, my pretty pink, I french tipped each of the nails.  I did it rather messy because I knew the silver polish was going to cover it up.  Pardon my tips in the pictures, they were a little worn down and touched up once prior to photographing thanks to a fantabulous 8 hour work shift.  Flamingo though, was seriously the BEST eraser color in the world.

With Celeb City, you know the world's most perfect silver metallic polish, I created the metal band of the pencil.  I decided to use two thin coats of this because I wanted the silver to really stand out.  With my striper and dark gray polish (you know the one with the dirty name), I detailed the silver.  Finished with some Out the Door and they were done.

I can't begin to say how much I love these nails.  They really did make my fingers look like pencils.  The one neighbor girl loved them so much, she begged me to paint her nails with them for her first day back to school.  Of course she messed up two of the nails before I could photograph them, but they were still cute, trust me.

On the difficulty scale, these are a 3!  Super simple!!! A little time consuming but nothing bad.  If you don't have any nail art brushes or stripers, then you could easily tooth pick on the details on the metal.  Otherwise, it was all done with the regular polish brushes.

What do you think?  Did you do any special nail art to kick off the school year???

As usual, if you try these out, I want to see!!! Send me a Tweet or post a picture to my Facebook!!  Some of my amazing followers have sent me their nail art, and I cannot express how much I love seeing it!  You guys all have such talent!  Keep the manicures coming!!!

<3


Flowers

Tropical-ish Flower Nail Art

5:02:00 PM

Well hello Polished world!  I hope you all are doing splendid!!

I know I said that my last manicure was the last using neons, but I kind of lied.  This manicure totally has neon polish in it, but due to the base, you really can't tell.  So it isn't all bright and eye searing like any of my other neon manicures like the neon leopard skittles or my random neon leopard print.  It was kind of bright though, don't get me wrong.

This manicure was one I saw on Pinterest (as usual).  It seems that 80% of my ideas are recreations of others ideas.  Makes me feel kind of un-original especially since literally I'm surfing Pinterest and Beautylish on the daily for new ideas.  Good news is though, I have enough manicures to last me for a year!  On my surfing journeys, I had found this pin which was a pretty tropical looking flower over a light gray background.  It seemed pretty simple and I had a similar color scheme, so I had to try it.

Here's how they turned out....I apologize for the tip wear and the blurryish pictures (my camera has not been my friend lately).






Colors Used:
  • Base
    • Pure Ice - Kiss Me Here (seriously hate the name for this dark gray polish....too dirty for my liking lolol)
  • Flowers
    • China Glaze - Hang Ten Toes
    • Julep - Daisy
 I think this may be my first manicure where I did not use a Sinful Color!  This may be a momentous occasion guys!!! haha

For the flowers, I drew them on with a toothpick and colored them in using the tooth pick as well.  I'm sure using a nail art brush would make it ten times easier, but I only own one striper and it has seen better days.  I should probably invest in some since I live, breath, and sleep nail art.  I added the yellow dots and lines with the toothpicks as well.

The nails were not too hard to do, on a scale of 1 to 10, they were a 5.  I kind of disliked the darker gray base.  My mom and everyone else said they loved the dark gray better saying that it made the pink flowers pop more, but I don't know.  It also kind of annoyed me how the flower on the ring finger was so low and not really centered.  I may have mani OCD on this one.  I will have to try this manicure again next summer.

What do you think?  Do you like a darker gray like mine or a lighter gray like the pin?  Ahhh the pin looks so much better than my nails.  Oh well, seriously, trying them again next summer!!!!  Maybe doing my nails at midnight is starting to become a bad idea hahaha.
 
<3 <3

Paint Drip/Lava Lamp Nail Art

5:00:00 PM

Hello Polished People!  How are you all today??  I'm doing well!  Today I bring you my last neon summery creation.  Reason it's the last....well, summer is pretty much over.  It's starting to get cooler out, the days are getting shorter, and sooner than later the green leaves are going to start turning yellow, red, and orange.  Fall is one of my favorite seasons though, so I really am not too upset over it.  I could go on and on about how I love Fall, but that I'll save for another post.

For this manicure, I wanted to use my neons one last time.  A big goodbye to them.  I probably will be wearing them again in the winter when I'm sick of the snow.  I started looking around for ideas and I remembered a paint drip manicure I saw on pinterest a while back.  I started looking and came a cross a few that I liked.

Here's what I came up with....


Colors Used:
  • Sinful Colors - Snow me White
  • China Glaze - I'm With the Lifeguard
  • China Glaze - Hang Ten Toes
  • China Glaze - Splish, Splash
  • China Glaze - Sun Kissed
  • Sinful Colors - Summer Peach
Looks easy, right?  Yeah, not really.  This was a pain in the butt to me.  I saw a few YouTube tutorial videos which made it seem so simple!  All of them said to paint the design onto the nails using the regular paint brush and a few stripers.  It was beyond impossible for me.  The only nail which I was successfully able to do with the brushes was my pointer finger.

Instead of using brushes, I used a toothpick.  I outlined the design and then filled the colors in with my dotting tool.  Time consuming and rather annoying, but they came out rather cool looking!  When I showed Nicole (@PolishMePlease) from Polish Me, Please! and Gabi (@RubyStein79) they loved them.  Nicole said that they looked like lava lamps to her, the reason behind the title of this post.  And she was correct!  The neon colors on the white and my drippy patterns looked like the inside of a lava lamp!

The orange polish (on my pinkie finger) I swear is neon.  Summer Peach by Sinful Colors is an awesome neon orange polish.  For the life of me, I could not get it to photograph well.  The second to last picture was probably the closest I could get to what it actually looks like, and then in the last picture, it played some weird looking trick on my camera.  I love this polish, it was only .99 cents when I purchased it, and it was worth every penny.  To be honest, if it were the same price I paid for my China Glaze Summer Neons, I would have paid it as well.

Have you done a paint drip manicure before??  Do you have any tips or tricks?  I may have to try them again!

If you've tried them, I'd LOVE to see your attempts!  Send me a tweet or post a picture to Facebook! :)

Until next time, have a great one! <3

Guest Post

nAil Art Guest post by Polish Pixelle - Glitter Gradient

6:00:00 PM



Hi ho cherry-o! Ave from Polish Pixelle here with the second installment of our nAil Art guest post series!

Alaina and I had serious blogger ADD when it came to choosing a theme for this month. We decided that we did indeed want to do a theme, and it took us about four days to actually come up with one. We also briefly entertained the concept of porno nail art.... but quickly dismissed it because we both prefer to not have R rated blogs :P

We finally came down to two ideas... glitter, and gradients. At that point we were both so flustered with indecisiveness that we decided to combine the two and call it a day. Thus the theme was born... glitter gradients! The rule being that it had to incorporate glitter and gradients, but could be interpreted in any which way.

I went with a literal glitter gradient. My weapons of choice:


- Zoya 'Wednesday'
- Dollish Polish 'Go Luigi!'

I knew I wanted to incorporate an indie, and this is one I havent featured on my blog yet (although will be soon!) and I thought it would be sweet to get it up here on TLC (The Learning Channel? No. Tender Love & Care? No. The Little Canvas!).

I love glitter gradients because they are super easy and add a bit of snazz to any mani (oh yes, I used the word snazz). I applied the glitter on top of my base color and used a toothpick to add extra glitter to the tips. Easy peasy!




So cute, so easy. Can't go wrong with that combo!

Don't forget to head over to my blog to see Alaina's interpretation of the theme!


Love and glitter,