Cloud Mani

New Years Eve Manicure! - Metallic Clouds - Take 2

9:00:00 AM

Happy New Years Eve!!!!  How are you guys going to celebrate tonight??  Personally, I'm going to be an old lady and Dick Clark's Rockin New Years Eve.  I will also most likely be in bed by 1am.  I'm not a huge party person, and am very much a home body.  I do go out with friends to the mall and stuff, but partying, clubbing...ehhh hate it.

Even though I'll be staying in, I still painted my nails just for the occasion!  Thankfully it wasn't a disasticure either!  I was very nervous it would be seeing as I broke a nail while jumping on a bounce house with my nephew, and had to chop all my nails down.  If this break happened anywhere other than a bounce house, I'd probably be really angry.

For the manicure, I wanted to include silver, gold, and black, as these are the colors that stand out to me when I think New Years Eve.  I remembered the metallic clouds/scalloped tip manicure I did a few months ago and loved how much the metallic looked with a cream polish in the middle.  It was one of those manicures I could not stop looking at.  I decided to try that look again with these colors.

Let's see how they turned out....





Colors Used:

  • Sinful Colors - Black on Black
  • Silver
    • Sally Hansen - Celeb City
    • Sinful Colors - Queen of Beauty
  • Gold
    • Sally Hansen - Golden I
    • China Glaze - I'm Not Lion
Sparkly, metallic-y....totally screaming New Years Eve if you ask me!  Achieving this look is rather simple, and requires no nail art brushes what so ever. Begin by painting on a base color of your choice.  When your base is dried, take your second polish and place the brush half way up the nail.  I let the polish pool  bit to make a rounded edge, then pull towards the tip of my nail.  I then do the same thing a little lower to give the scalloped/cloud look.  When this coat is dried, repeat this step with your third polish.

I'm happy I decided to layer glitter over the gold and silver polishes.  You can't really see the silver glitter over the silver, but you can see the holo specks of I'm Not Lion over the gold!  I just love how they turned out!

What do you think?  What are you sporting on your canvas' for New Years Eve?

I truly hope that everyone has a SAFE and blessed New Year!  Emphasis on the safe, please do not drink and drive, and be cautious of others on the road!  See you all back here in a few days <3

Favorites

The Favorites of 2012!

9:00:00 AM

The year 2012 has come to a close, and so has an amazing almost year of nail blogging.  I cannot believe that in February I will be hitting my one year anniversary on this blog!  I was thinking of holding off on doing a post such as this until then, but between now and then, I'm sure I'll have dozens of new manicures fighting to be my favorite. 

When I was tagged on Instagram to pick my favorite manicures of 2012, I went through all my posts and just was amazed at how much I have grown.  My nails are longer, my pictures are clearer (for the most part), and my lines are a lot smoother and neater.  My most recent accomplishment is not flooding my cuticles.  After looking through all of them, I narrowed down my favorite manicures to the following six.
I kind of hate how I set this up on Instagram because they all were my favorite but the roses were like the center of attention....so now I guess I'll rank them.  

Here we go....my top 6!


1.   Pandas! - I did these guys for the Black and White day on the challenge I so lovingly quit.  I need to pick back up on that eventually.  I love doing animal nails, and these guys were just so adorable.  I loved the accent nail of paw prints....I really think that made the manicure what it was!

  1. The Natural Leopard Spots - done again for the challenge, this was my first leopard manicure done with actual leopard colors.  Throughout the year, I have done numerous neon leopard spotted manicures, which I loved, but this one was my favorite of all.  I think it was because of that glitter accent nail.
  1. Dotted Flowers! - This was a manicure I copied from Nicole over at Young, Wild, and Polished.  This manicure was one of my first successful attempts at dot flowers.  The glitter, the dots, the flowers, everything was just perfect with this manicure.  I was beyond thrilled that I was able to achieve this manicure, especially since Nicole is a dotting master, and well I'm far from!
  1. Red Roses - Aren't they pretty?  I love painting roses on my nails.  It's one of the easiest flowers for me to do!  These ones were just so large on the nail and looked almost like a stained glass pattern in real life.  I have a tutorial post for these I just haven't gotten around to posting them!  I'll be doing that sometime before my one year anniversary! I swear!
  1. Birthday Cupcakes - The blue, the glitter, the cupcakes, need I say more?  I loved them!
  1. Santa! - I've done leprechauns, gnomes, and a bunch of animals, but these guys were just so adorable! 

So, those were my favorites, let's take a look at what my top 3 (okay top 4 because I think the views for #3 are due to google) posts were according to page views!
1.  Converse Nails - my neon, rainbow shoes!  So adorable.

2.  Metallic Clouds/Scalloped Tips - my first successful attempt at the "cloud" manicure, or what others call scalloped tips.

3.  Grape Nails - Grapes and grape vines...first time using my nail art brushes!

4.  Retro Polka Dots - Retro dot manicure on Sinful Colors Mint Green = love.


 What do you think?  Are any of these your favorite or did you have something else??  

I cannot wait to see what 2013 has in store for me and this blog!  Hopefully I will continue to impress you guys and maybe even inspire a few as well!  Since this was a special post I wasn't originally going to do, tomorrow I will still be bringing you my New Years Eve manicure...then from there, unless I have something urgent to say, I will be posting every three days again!  Until then, <3!

Winter

Snowflake Nail Art

9:00:00 AM

It has finally become an appropriate time to post this manicure!  I painted these in the beginning of December in hopes that we would get some snow, but alas, snow never came.  I tucked them away once I started all my Christmas nail art and planned on saving them for the day when the snow finally came.  And finalllyyy, it was this week!!  We ended up with a white Christmas which I do not think has happened in a few years.  My mind might be a little fuzzy, but I clearly remember last year having a green Christmas.

Last night we got hit with a snow storm that left us with a foot of snow!  I love it, call me weird and crazy, but it's just so pretty!  The pine trees tonight were all still covered from 24 hours earlier and it really was a winter wonderland.  If New Years Eve weren't right around the corner, I'd be grabbing my nail art brushes and re-paint this manicure just to celebrate the snow! 

Let's take a look! Guess where these pictures were taken....it may or may not have been outside of Sally Beauty during the .5 seconds of sun.





Colors Used:
  • Sinful Colors - Precious Metal
  • Sinful Colors - Snow Me White
To get these nails, I painted on 3 coats of Precious Metal, my favvvorite "metallic" polish.  It was sold as part of the Sinful Colors Metallic collection so that's why I put metallic in quotations.  To me, it is not a true metallic polish since it doesn't have that frosty, metallic look.  The glitter flecks in it give it a sort of metallic-y gleam I guess, so that's why it may have been included in this collection.  I'm a sucker for blue polishes, so I had to purchase it, and for 99 cents, how could anyone go wrong?  It's a tad sheer, but builds up nicely in three coats, and leaves you with a gorgeous dark blue, glittery, shimmery nail.

To get the snowflakes, I painted them on using one of my nail art brushes and Snow Me White.  I didn't like how the snowflakes looked on the nail with nothing in the background, so with my dotting tool, I added some white little snow-dots. 

What do you think?  Have you done snowflake nails yet?  Did you get hit by the snow storm?  Do you own Precious Metal and love it as much as I do?

It seems I have entered the nail art funk again.  I tried to do some superhero nails and had 3 disasticures, but have some really awesome magnetic nails on right now.  I'll be posting them after the New Year!  I'm hoping my funk goes bye bye and I'm able to create a pretty New Years Eve manicure!  If not, then you will be seeing a Year in Review post from me on NYE!  Until then, have a good one! <3

BigDaddyBeauty

BigDaddyBeauty.com Sweepstakes!

2:41:00 PM

I'm sure a lot of you are going "Huh?" right now at the title of this post!  Big Daddy Beauty is a wholesale supplier which sells lots of amazing beauty supplies...my favorite, China Glaze.  For example, a bottle of I'm Not Lion (my favorite glitter polish) is only $4.00 on their website!

Well, the website is holding a sweepstakes where one lucky winner will receive a $500 shopping spree!  Amazing right?  Think of all the China Glaze's you could buy with that much money!!!  Second place will receive $250, and third place $100.  To enter, click here!  Please read the rules before entering, I believe you have to be 18 or older!  No purchase necessary to enter!

Good Luck!!!