Leopard Print Valentine's Day Nail Art

Happy Valentine's Day!!! Are you doing anything special? We're not. It's a weeknight, and my husband works until late like usual. Oh well!

I did do some fun nails for today inpsired by @mayasnailart.

For my base, I went old school with OPI Canberra'T Without You, but any nude polish would work. I really like this one because of the super subtle gold shimmer (check on the last macro shot).

natural lighting

OPI I Love You Just Be-Cusco

Today's post in my backlog is a swatch of OPI I Love You Just Be-Cusco. I’m not normally a red person, but I got this because of my own connection to Cusco, Peru. 

The tone of this red is stunning though, and I love how it looks on me.

I used two coats for full coverage.

Winter/Christmas Nails 2018: Red and Green Bows

For today's manicure, I went with a simple color block style with a bow accent.

When I starting doing this manicure, I looked a bit like a mess. I should have had faith because it turned out really well and was super easy to do.

For my process, I started with a base coat. Then I painted half of my nail red using OPI I Love You Just Be-Cusco. For this next part, I highly recommend a very opaque polish, especially if you do it how I did. I took Zoya Wyatt and freehanded the block on top. Since Wyatt is so opaque, I only needed the one coat and it covered up my sloppy red block easily.

I finished this mani with these tiny bow gemstones.

Winter/Christmas Nails 2018: Snowman Nails

Sorry I was absent for a lot of November. I was very busy with my small business, and my husband had surgery. Life seems to have calmed down now so I'm back with a bunch of manis for December.

For today, I have these cute snowman nails. I've seen these around Pinterest, and I decided to do them myself.

Products used:
OPI Alpaca My Bags
Funky Fingers Scattered Sea She

lls

Fall Plaid Nail Art with OPI Peru Collection

When I saw swatches of the OPI Peru Collection Fall 2018, I was a bit disappointed in the colors. I studied aboard in Peru 8 years ago, and it was such an amazing experience. The Peru I knew has tons of earth tones of the mountains and valleys but also bright colors of the clothing. I wish we could have some more of those bright colors.

However, I still decided to get 4 of them because sometimes I'm a sucker for names. I used two of the colors to create a fall style plaid manicure inspired by Nails by DanielleT.

For this mani, I used OPI Como se llama? (the Spanish teacher in me cringes soooo hard at this terrible grammer) and Machu Peach-u. 

Halloween Nails 2018: Skulls

I picked up this stamping plate awhile ago and have been saving it for Halloween.

I was peeking around in my Helmer, trying to figure out which polish I wanted to pair with this plate when I found the perfect polish.

For the base of this manicure, I used OPI Skull and Glossbones. I stamped used Funky Fingers Dark Knight and the previously mentioned Born Pretty Store plate BP-146

Birthday Nail Art

Hey all! It's my birthday today which is another perfect excuse for a cute mani :) (Just kidding, that's everyday).

For my birthday, I traditionally use Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday as well as OPI Guy Meets Gal-veston. Happy Birthday is self-explanatory, but the OPI is because I was born in Galveston, Texas.

I freehanded the balloon on my ring finger using Zoya Serenity and some black and white polishes.

OPI Black Cherry Chutney

Black Cherry Chutney is an older OPI polish, but one that is sort of new to my collection. It's a gorgeous super dark purpleish red polish with a shimmer. It's a bit hard to photograph this one, but it's super stunning in person. It takes two coats for full opacity.

Green Mani March: Day 1

So it's been over 3 years since I have posted to this blog. But I've decided to return! I enjoy sharing my nail art and have enjoyed posting to my blog in the past. I'm really hoping to make this a regular thing again.

For my first post back, I'm starting a new series! I'm not sure if I've talked about it here in the past, but I absolutely love green nail polish. It's one of my favorite colors to wear, and I own quite a few shades in various finishes. Not as many as some though :) I tend toward minimalism a bit so I try to keep my collection down.

Since I love green polish and March makes me think of green with St. Patrick's day and spring, I'll be focusing on my love of green polishes this month.

This first mani uses OPI Don't Mess with OPI and Cupcake Polish Delishiously Jaded.

OPI Don't Mess with OPI is a pretty old polish and is from the 2011 Texas Collection. You could use another green creme polish if you wanted.

Cupcake Polish Delishiously Jaded is a gorgeous holographic green polish. It almost covered in one coat too! It also apparently has a blue shift, but I was blinded by the holo.

I used both of these to create this simple mani. The half moon element was freehanded.

If you're reading this, I welcome you back to my blog! I've still been lurking around Facebook and Instagram. I'd also love links to new blogs you think I should follow!

OPI Push and Shove

A bit late, I know but whatever. I wasn't sure I wanted this polish, but I saw it for $4.50 at Sally Beauty so I was good with that :)

OPI Push and Shove is pretty great. I used one coat of OPI Lay Down the Bass plus two coats of Push and Shove. It went on pretty easy for me. You can see some ridges from my nails, but I don't mind too much. I wore it for two days though I did have some wear on it.

I want to play around with it some more by trying top coats or Gelous or a gel sandwich to see how that works for this.