Animal Mani

The First Snowy Manicure of the Season - Penguin Nails!

9:00:00 AM


 Good morning!  How are you all doing today?  I hope that everyone who is being hit by Snowvember in Western New York are all safe and sound!  So crazy everything that is happening in New York right now!  Could you imagine getting 70+ inches of snow in 24 hours?  And then on top of it, the town 10 minutes down the road from you only has about 1 foot?!  Just so crazy how lake effect snow works!

Well this whole weather event is making our weather quite chilly, cold, and a little bit snowy.  I figured it would be appropriate to do a cute winter themed manicure to match the weather!  What better than a penguin manicure?!

Let's take a look!




Colors Used:
  • Sinful Colors - Bright Lucite
  • Zoya - Ling
  • INM - Northern Lights
  • Finger Paints - Sparkle With Me
  • Black and White Acrylics
I love this manicure so much!  To get the look, I started off with a base coat of a light blue polish.  When that was dry, I sponged Zoya Ling around the cuticle to make it look like a wintery snowy sky.  I added a quick coat of INM Northern Lights to even out the gradient and make the nails really sparkle.

On my snowy nails, I added a coat of FingerPaints Sparkle With Me.  This polish is a part of the FingerPaints Holiday Glitz Kit.  This kit contains this glitter, along with a multicolor glitter, and a silver foil polish.  Sparkle With Me is just a gorgeous matte white glitter polish which has holo flecks throughout.  It reminds me of that fresh sparkly snow you wake up to on a freezing morning.  The polish has a perfect base to glitter ratio, which means I didn't have to place any of the glitters!  They all fell into place perfectly!


For my penguins, I used my nail art brush and acrylic paints.  I may have to make a tutorial for them because they're so dang cute.  I'm going to do them again when Christmas is closer and maybe add a Santa hat on them.

What do you think?  Liking the snowy manicure?  Think it's too soon?

The Holiday Glitz Manicure Kit is available now at Sally Beauty!  Rumor has it that they are on sale, so I highly suggest running out and grabbing them while you can!

Until next time, <3.

FingerPaints

The Beauty Buffs - Metallic - Steampunk Nail Art

8:00:00 AM


Good morning polished world!  How are you all today?  If you live in the Buffalo, NY area, I hope you are all safe and warm after that heavy lake snow.  Goodness gracious, the photos are crazy, and I'm so happy that I didn't get hit where I am!  It's crazy how early in the season it is and already places are getting slammed like that!  What can you do though!?

I also want to apologize that I didn't post alongside the Twinsies yesterday for Twinsie Tuesday.  I did next weeks prompt by accident and had no time to re-create a design for this week.  I will be back next week though for sure!

Today though I am posting with the lovelies from The Beauty Buffs.  This week we are focusing on all things metallic.  I don't have many metallic polishes because I'm not really fond of the finish on my nails.  I was planning on doing a tape design using Essie Nothing Else Metals as a base and a black top, but I loathed how it looked.  That polish was so difficult to apply so it was lumpy and uneven, and since it is a metallic polish, it is very unforgiving if you have one single thing go wrong.

So I went to the drawing board and thought of different nail art that I could do using metallic polishes!  I asked one of my friends and they suggested Steampunk!  I did a quick search online for ideas and found an awesome tutorial on YouTube by Arcadia Nail Art (my internet is not working right at the moment so I cannot link it without freezing my whole computer).

Let's take a look!




Colors Used: 
  • Zoya - Normani
  • FingerPaints - Glitz and Glam
  • OPI - Love Angel Music Baby
Awesome, right?  I started off with a base coat of Zoya - Normani.  This polish is from the first Natural collection, and it is quite amazing.  A perfect base for this type of nail art!  It applied evenly in two coats.

Using some new nail art brushes, I painted on the gears and chains using the metallic silver and gold polish.  Glitz and Glam is part of FingerPaints Holiday Glitz Manicure Kit which I will be posting a review of soon.  It is an awesome full coverage silver metallic polish which stood out perfectly on this base.

Now I do not own a bottle of silver or gold large fleck glitter, so to do the glitter placement on these nails, I dug through a bottle of Ulta Pinata Yada Yada.  I was rather dedicated to getting the most metallic look possible, and the glitter really made that more possible!



I love doing art with metallic/foil polishes on a cream base.  They really stand out and add a whole new dimension to the art!  I'm very happy that my friend suggested this design also, because it was something I never would have thought of in a million years!  I cannot tell you how much I love this design!

What do you think?  Liking the steampunk look?

Do not forget to check out the other Beauty Buffs posts!



An InLinkz Link-up

Until next time, <3.

Bow Mani

Bow Manicure with NYC New York Color NY Princess

9:00:00 AM


Happy Sunday everyone!  How are you??  My weekend is going by way to fast, as usual.  Yesterday I went out with some friends and watched Big Hero 6, which if you haven't seen it yet, you must!  Then I came home, ate some dinner, and attempted to paint my nails and had a disasticure.  That just means I can watch some Revenge and have a late night paint session tonight.

Today I am sharing a manicure I did last Sunday while watching Revenge.  It's a totally adorable cutesy bow manicure which is a re-creation of a design I did earlier in the year.  Totally weird that I decided to do this manicure while watching that show, but hey it works.

Let's take a look!




Colors Used
  • OPI - You're Such a Budapest
  • OPI - My Boyfriend Scales Walls
  • NYC New York Color - NY Princess
  • Black Acrylic
I really need to make a tutorial for this bow design.  It looks so difficult, but yet is rather easy to do!  You start off with a base coat of whatever color your heart desires.  I picked white for this manicure.  When my base was dry, I used a dotting tool and created a dot close to the center of my nail.  Then with the dotting tool, I created two larger oval shapes, then two lines which drag down from the center dot.  It honestly looks awful when it's at this point, it's when the details are added that it actually looks like a bow.  Using a small nail art brush and black polish, out line the bow, and add the details.  Since my other nails were accented with polka dots, I decided to make my bow polka dotted as well.


My favorite part of this manicure was the accented middle finger.  I used NYC New York Color polish in NY Princess.  This polish is a gorgeous deep purple jelly with purple and blue glitters through out.  I used 3 thin coats on my nail, but you really could have gotten away with two.  The glitter placement was perfect on it's own.  It didn't clump or pool in any weird areas, which I was kind of expecting it to do when I noticed that it was suspended in a jelly.  Seriously love it, it's a jelly sandwich in a bottle!

What do you think?  Liking this manicure?

You can currently purchase these NYC polishes at your local drug stores for $1.99.  There are 5 others in the collection which I'm planing on using closer to Christmas.  I highly suggest that you run out and grab as many as you can because I swatched them all on a plate (I need to find my extra wheels), and holy gorgeousness.  When I find my wheels, I'll take a photo of all them!

Until next time, <3.


Bestie Twin Nails

Bestie Twin Nails with Fashion Footing

9:00:00 AM


Good morning polished world!!  How are you on this fine Friday?  It's freezing here!  We had a little snow here yesterday which was kind of pretty!  I love the first few snowfalls of the season, but after Christmas, it can just stop until next winter.

I do like winter though because of all the pretty glitter polishes that are released for the holiday sesaon.  So far, my current favorites are Bling and Mirrorball from Orly.  I have yet to use Mirrorball, but my Bestie Twin Nail partner in crime Amanda from Fashion Footing used her bottle and sent me pictures.  Ever since I've been dying to try it, but alas, the timing isn't right.

I did however get to use Bling for today's Bestie Twin Nail design with Amanda!  For our design this month, Amanda suggested this manicure by mrsbeck12 on Instagram.  At first I wasn't so sure since I'm not the biggest fan of gold, but after having the manicure on for not even a minute, I was in love and never wanted to take it off my nails!

Let's take a look!




Colors Used:
  • Orly - Bling
  • OPI - My Boyfriend Scales Walls
  • Zoya - Maria Luisa
Amazing, right?  I'm so upset that I couldn't capture the true gorgeousness of Orly Bling.  Bling is a darker gold shimmer and microglitter with holo throughout.  I used three coats for full coverage, but I could have gotten away with two.  The sparkle and holo in this polish is just amazing.  Really, I don't have any other words for it other than amazing.  I loved how when it caught the light, the holo and sparkle blinged right through under that white.




Instead of using a gold glitter on our ring fingers, both Amanda and I decided to use Zoya Maria Luisa, which I think accented the manicure perfectly.  I've had this polish for close to a year and this is the first time that I've used it.  I'm kicking myself that I waited this long because it is so gorgeous.  Over the white, it looked so elegant.

What do you think?  Liking the design!?

Make sure to check out Amanda's mani!  Her's is just as awesome too!

Until next time, <3.