The Little Canvas

Gingerbread Men Nail Art

11:00:00 AM

I can't believe it's already December 10th and Christmas is fast approaching. My OCD set in while writing this post, and I planned out the rest of my Christmas manicures. I really hope you're going to like what I'm going to do. My manicure I'm painting tonight is amazing in my head, so I hope it transfers well on the nail and isn't going to be a disasticure. I'm not sure about my feelings yet on this manicure. I kind of saw it as a disasticure but probably because it chipped rather fast.

Almost every year, I attempt to build a gingerbread house. Last year I did one, but it took so much time that I kind of gave up half way through and never finished it. I don't think my mom was too happy having a half decorated gingerbread house in her kitchen for the month of December, so this year I didn't bother purchasing one because I knew it probably would end up the same way. So, instead of building a lil house, I thought why not put the little guys on my nails? I took to google for some ideas, and found a really video tutorial where gingerbread men were on accent nails and the other nails were a stripped design. I was lazy and decided to just do plain glitter nails.

Let's take a look. I kind of hate the photos for it. Stupid indoor photography is not an easy thing when you do not have a light box. Although, my next post, the pictures look kick butt for being indoors....you'll just have to wait and see. Please forgive my blech photo skills.

Colors Used:

Sinful Colors - HD Nails
Sinful Colors - Sugar Sugar
Sinful Colors - Snow Me White
Sinful Colors - Black on Black
Sinful Colors - Nirvana
China Glaze - Fairy Dust

I semi disliked how the thumb nail on the left hand turned out. I wish that both my gingerbread men were standing straight instead of the one kind of falling underneath the other one. It still was cute though, minus my mess up on the bow tie of the crooked one. Maybe he's a drunk gingerbread man....we'll just go with that. I used a dotting tool to make my lil guys and added the details with a toothpick.

Those who noticed the nails said that they were super cute. When I look at these nails, all I can think about is my nephew. Now my nephew is almost 4 years old, and he loves my nails. Each time he sees me he goes "Alaina, what's on your nails today?" He then will take a look and go "oh you have blah blah blah". The kid is smart, he even knew what my monarch wings were. When I showed him these, he said "Ohhhh! You have ginger ales on your nails!" That's right, my lil buddy called them ginger ales. I started laughing and said "yes, yes, ginger ales...but they really are gingerbread men!" Later he said he wanted to build a ginger ale house, so I don't think he grasped the concept, but cute lil kid tried.

What do you think of my ginger ales....I mean gingerbread men? Have you done any for Christmas?

Christmas

Peppermint Candy Nail Art

11:00:00 AM

It was so nice taking a quick little break from blogging. I believe I mentioned in my last post that during my time away I accumulated quite a back log of nails to post! All the pictures are edited and they are sitting as drafts on blogger....only thing that is missing is the writing! So here I am tonight in the midst of a mini panic attack writing out a blog post. Panic attack you say? Well I'm in the midst of working on a graduate project, and for those of you who have been there, you know what I'm going through.

It is December, meaning, it's time for some Christmas nails! My list of ideas keeps growing for Christmas manicures, and with my every three day painting routine (which I will not be giving up since it is a huge stress reliever), I am sure I will get through all of them. For my first design of the season, I wanted to do peppermint candies. You know, those little red and white swirl candies that sit in bowls at doctors offices. In my surprise Julep December Box, one of those candies came, so when I saw that, I knew it was the perfect time to paint them on my nails.

Enough of my babbling, let's take a look! I didn't take as many pictures as I normally do because well, at every angle these nails look exactly the same. Not much detail, and after seeing other bloggers freaking out over the Blogger picture limit, I figure I might as well save space where I can.

Colors Used:

Sinful Colors - Snow Me White
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Red Carpet

Can I tell you how many compliments I received on these nails? At work, customers were asking if they were the Sally Hansen stickers or which salon I got them done at. I have to say, the look on people's faces when I say "I did them myself" is probably one of my favorites. Some people have stopped dead and grabbed my hand saying "No way!" It's comical to me, and well rather flattering.

On Instagram, someone asked me if I had used tape to accomplish this. Many of you know how much I dislike tape manicures. Not due to how they look in the end, they look awesome, but because I fail at them. No matter how long I let the polish dry, and how much of the stickiness I remove from the tape, the polish still rips off. It's frustrating, and well, I rather not use it.

These nails were rather simple. After painting on two coats of Snow Me White, I took one of my nail art brushes and started to trace the swirl pattern with Red Carpet. Once my outlines were completed, with the brush I filled in each little section. Added some Out the Door and was done!

For those of you who do not own Red Carpet, you need to go out and find a bottle. This is by far one of my favorite red polishes. It is kind of jelly consistency, but more opaque. Within the red polish are very fine red glitters...it's so pretty.

What do you think? Love, hate? Have you attempted swirled nails before?

I will be doing this design again in the future with different colors. It was so quick and left me with a really cute and fun manicure. Now after staring at these pictures while writing the post, I want to do my candy cane design. I believe today is a nail painting day, so maybe I will....hmmmmm.

See you next time!! <3

Swatches

A Simple Mani with It's a Trap-Eze!

11:00:00 AM

Welcome to my return to the world of blogging!!! I have had such a nice week or so off from the stresses of taking pictures, editing, and posting. I guess it really wasn't stress as much as a hassle, especially since I was hating all my manicures. I want to say a special thank you to Lindsey, Kat, and Jessie for the amazing guest posts they provided during my absence! I hope that I can return the favor in the near future!

During my time off, I continued painting my nails. I really spent a lot of time trying not to flood my cuticles, which I think I'm finally getting the hang of. I became slightly obsessed with glitter. I have a slightly large glitter stash, but I rarely use my glitter polishes since I never can find a need for them when doing nail art. I have learned during my hiatus, that you can still nail art and use glitter with the all amazing glitter accent nail.

In this manicure, I went simple 100%. I purchased China Glaze It's a Trap-eze! from the Cirque du Soleil collection. I wasn't going to purchase anything from the collection until I saw swatches of this polish online! It was so unique compared to other name brand polishes on the market, I just had to have it. I decided to pair it with Sinful Colors Mint Apple with some extra glitter.

Let's take a look! Boo to the blurry indoor pictures! It's going to be a looong winter!

Colors Used:

Sinful Colors - Mint Apple
China Glaze - Fairy Dust
China Glaze - It's a Trap-eze!

Mint Apple is my favorite Sinful nail polish. I believe that this polish was the first Sinful I ever purchased. It's not as light as your average mint polish. It has such a gorgeous shimmer, that in the past I have never paired it with a glitter such as Fairy Dust. When I did, it made my favorite polish even more spectacular! The application is very smooth, and with two coats I have full coverage. My original bottle I remember being a tad streaker, but as Sinful has grown as a company, I believe their formulas have gotten a lot better.

It's a Trap-eze! is an amazing polish! If you love glitter, you will love this polish. Literally, it is beyond jam packed with glitter! The multi colored glitter, including some white flecks, are set in a milky off white, kind of lavender, base. With this manicure, I used 3 coats, and with these three coats, I had an amazing jelly sandwich. Seriously, this polish is a jelly sandwich in a bottle! Some reviews I read online said it was very difficult to work with and dried bumpy, but I did not have this issue at all. Three coats gave me full coverage and dried practically smooth. I have other glitters that dried bumpier. I didn't feel a need to layer it with top coat to smooth it out, just a normal one coat.

In my time away, I have found a love for the simple manicure which I once hated since I always messed them up. Don't worry though, loyal followers, I still will be bringing you tons of nail art, but do not be surprised if there is some simple mixed in!

What do you think? Do you have either polish?? Are you glitter obsessed?

Now it is time to do all my Christmas Manicures! So excited! I have pre-swatched two and they are so cute! Hope you think so as well!

Guest Post

Nailed it NZ guest post - landscape nail art!

9:00:00 AM

Hi everyone, I'm Jessie from Nailed it NZ! It's great to be guest posting on The Little Canvas today - thanks for having me Alaina!

When it comes to nail art, I'm one of the crazy ones. I rarely do the same manicure twice and I will try absolutely anything, just for the challenge. Because of this I have a folder in my computer that has several failed designs that will never make it to the internet!

These nails are a good example of my inner-crazy. I was looking around for inspiration and thought the painting on my wall would be something different!

The painting below was done by my husband's great grandmother, who, as you can see was a very talented artist! We were gifted the painting for our wedding earlier this year, and it's been hanging proudly on our wall ever since! I decided to take inspiration from bits of the painting - my thumbs were the tree in the foreground, my pointer and middle fingers were the trees and the ring and pinky fingers were just hills.

Pack'a'Punch Polish recently made these awesome nail art doodle sheets, which I found very useful for this! Unfortunately messy me destroyed this sheet of paper in just one manicure - I'll have to be tidier next time! I have a book around somewhere that I doodle my more complicated manis in sometimes, but it disappeared a while ago so it's good to have something to use again :).

Nature and I are friends. I love how beautifully imperfect it is; it has such a calming effect on me. As you can see, these nails are far from being perfect, but I'm okay with that!

Here's a picture of both hands, so you can see that I did the same design on both.

The only part that kind of annoys me is on the pointer finger, where the trees shadow runs into the river. It wasn't meant to happen that way, I just painted it on wrong. Oh well...

By the way, I painted it all on with a liner brush. It was actually very messy and not very precise - but as I said before, so is nature! I cleaned up around my cuticles with a thin brush I have.