Monday Mani: Decals using Water Marble Decals

Today's Monday Mani theme is decals. It's such a great theme because they are SOOOO many things you can do.

I decided to go with water marble decals which seem to be popular lately. The idea is that you do your regular water marble.

Instead of dunking your finger in, you let it dry for a long time (I did about an hour I think) and gently lift it out, letting it dry on paper towel.

Then you can cut the decal and apply it to a semi sticky base on your nail.

I see tons of advantages to this: less waste (I used one go for 4 nails), less mess, time saver (I marbled more nap time and finished my nails during nap), and more accurate (you can redo the marble over and over again without redoing your whole nail plus you can cut the exact part you want to use instead of hoping you're dunking right!).

Onto the mani!

I used China Glaze Kalahari Kiss as the base for my thumb, ring, and pinkie. I also used it along with Zoya Pepper and O.P.I. Chop-sticking to My Story for the water marble decal.

The brown glitter is Hits Glitter Forte 389 Brown.

Finnish fabric inspired mani

When I've for time or I'm bored, I love to browse Pinterest for new mani ideas. I don't just mean manis posted by other bloggers. I love to browse fabrics, designs, and color seeds for other inspiration. This particular mani was inspired by a Finnish fabric I found on Pinterest.

It was really easy to do too! I used Zoya Skylar plus Wet n Wild Black Creme and French White Creme. Then I just randomly placed on the polka dots and added top coat. Done!

And my poor hands are now done completely to nubs. My middle finger received some serious damage and had a low side tear. It just kept getting worse so I cut it off, hence the strange shape.

Zoya Bevin Roses

My tea bag patch just wasn't working. The corner of my nail was super weak and it just wasn't holding so I'm down to nubs. I still have a tear low on the side that I'm trying to keep patched, but that's not working well.

I love flower manis. I don't know what it is about them, but they are just so beautiful!

I decided to use Zoya Bevin for the base of this in order to continue my quest of reusing polishes.

The roses are mostly Zoya Sooki though I mixed it with white and black to add details.

I'm playing around with lighting. These photos were taken at night using direct and diffused artificial light. I gotta play more, but I still think I'm a fan of natural light.

And bonus! Here's a pedi I did. The purple and blue are Zoya Kieko and Zoya Breezi respectively.

4th of July Part 2: Flag skittles

This is my second 4th of July mani and the one I'm currently wearing. I wanted to get both ideas so you'd have time to do your own nails before the holiday. My sister-in-law and her boyfriend are visiting today through Sat and Sunday is my birthday so I'm gonna take a little break :) I'll be back with a post on Sunday or Monday.

I just went simple again, though I wouldn't consider this my best work. My star is a bit wonky and I think that's because I used polish instead of acrylic paint. I just don't have luck using white polish for art.

Here are the colors used:

Wet n Wild French White Creme (star design)

OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls (white polish base)

Zoya Sooki (red flag stripes)

Rimmel Blue Eyed Girl

Savvy Ruby Slippers

4th of July Part 1: Leopard Print Skittles

Hello! I wasn't sure how I was gonna squeeze in any 4th of July manis since my birthday is coming up and I have family coming, but it's a holiday! I fricking love doing holiday manis! They are so fun and everyone really gets in the spirit.

I decided to go simple for both to make things easy on myself.

I started with a base of Wet n Wild French White Creme on all nails. On my index and middle, I added one thin coat of Glitter Gal Light As A Feather.

On my ring and thumb, I created a leopard print using Zoya Sooki (the perfect red) and Revlon Royal.

June Nail Art Challenge, Day 30: Zoo animals

Last day, woot woot! I have to say it's been totally fun and I'm glad I did it this month. July is going to be completely busy as in the just first few days alone my sister-in-law (who used to live in Ireland until her visa expired but is going back to the UK in the fall for school) and her Irish boyfriend (red hair and full beard, totally awesome!) are visiting for the 4th and then my birthday is on the 6th. On the 8th, I start a very part-time job as a personal assistant/mother's helper. The 3rd weekend of the month is a massive family reunion for my maternal grandfather's family and a Wisconsin polish meet up. Plus TONS of minor things in there. And August is just as busy! Whew! 

So for today's mani, I turned to my trusty friend Google and found an awesome tutorial for super cute elephants from Adventures In Acetone.

The base color is Rimmel Blue Eyed Girl. The elephant is Rimmel Grey Matter. His ears are Zoya Shelby. The rest of the colors are acrylic paint or polishes I custom mixed.

And here's a collage with all this month's designs!

June Nail Art Challenge, Day 21: Aboriginal

When I first saw the theme "aboriginal," my mind immediately went to those dotted paintings. As I'm a huge history nerd (one of my majors in college), I needed to Google and find out more.

Aboriginal refers to natives from Australia. The dotted paintings that so many think of are a newer form of art amongst the Aboriginals. They art form is called Papunya after the region of Australia where it started in the 1970s. Yep, it's new!

You can see my inspiration photo (courtesy Google) and resulting mani below.

The base is Sinful Colors Ardoise. The details are Zoya Riley and Wet n Wild French White Creme.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Happy holidays everyone! For those of you not in the US, Memorial Day falls on the last Monday of May. It is a holiday to commerate our soliders who have fought and died for this country. It also is a big BBQ weekend and basically a kick off to summer.

Since it's such a patriotic holiday, I got my toes and fingers in the spirit!

For my nails, I used Zoya Sooki, Revlon Royal, China Glaze Fairy Dust, white acrylic paint for the French line, Konad White, and Bundle Monster BM14.

For my piggies, I used Zoya Chyna and Zoya Liberty plus I repeated the stamping from my fingers.

Swirly Aurora

I love having all the polishes I have (215-ish) and the choice that comes with it sometimes. But other times it can be overwhelming. I'll take peek through my polishes, seeing if one catches my eye. Then I spot one, mull it over, put it back, browse some more. Repeat. Except with a little one, I can't waste precious free time deciding what polish to use!

Enter my new best friend: Random Number Generator. Seriously. I keep all my polishes listed in a spreadsheet. So I just entered my numbers, and BAM! today's polish.

Zoya Aurora is such a gorgeous polish. I needed two coats. It's got this lovely holographic glitter. When I was taking photos, I found the colors would lean a bit purple-ish in some spots too. Very cool.

The swirly bit is a water decal that I purchased from Born Pretty Store. It adds something, but still let's Aurora shine through.

Easy. Gorgeous. Minimalist.

Springy yellow gradient

I've had the idea for this mani floating around for a while. I just haven't gotten around to it, but since it's finally spring (even though we got snow overnight....) I thought I'd finally do it!

I did a base of Illamasqua Load on all my nails. On the ring and thumb, I added one good coat of Dollish Polish Hylian Princess. I REALLY loved the mani at this point. Not that I don't love the outcome, but I just loved that so much more. I may end up sporting that some time soon.

Anyways, then I did a gradient of Zoya Pippa over that and stamped using a Bundle Monster plate (bad blogger! I'll put the name later) and Konad White. The flowers are super subtle and honestly the gradient looked better with out them.

Cherry Blossoms Redux

I decided to recreate my very first mani that I posted on this blog over two years ago. The concept was good (cherry blossoms), but I definitely could improve on the execution, clean up, etc.

I really wanted to do a lighter base with something like China Glaze For Audrey but stuck to the original spirit of things.

The new mani uses a base of Rimmel Blue My Mind.

For the original, I used only nail art pens in black, red and white. This time I used brushes and dotting tools. The vines are Essie Little Brown Dress. For the cherry blossoms, I dotted using Zoya Shelby. Then I mixed Shelby with a bit of Wet n Wild French White Cream and dotted on that. Finally I added dots of French White Cream and top coat.

Here's the mani all on it's own:

St Patrick's Day: water marble and holo goodness

Here's another St. Patrick's Day mani that I did. It's also my last one so it's fitting that I'm showing you today.

I continued with my "theme" of not doing traditional designs but rather just sticking with green polish (which I LOVE!).

I've got Nfu-Oh 66 on my thumb, index, and pinkie fingers.

On my middle and ring fingers, I did a base of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. I water marbled on top of that using OPI Don't Mess With OPI, SpaRitual Eye of the Beholder, and a tiny bit of Zoya Bevin.

Valentine's Day: Pink and Grey

Just a quick post today. I have company coming over today, tomorrow, and Monday plus we're going out tomorrow and Sunday! Hence the crappy cuticles because I've been cleaning, though my husband did do quite a bit last night while I was sleeping as a Valentine's Day gift.

Rimmel Grey Matter

Zoya Shelby

Wet n Wild French White Creme

Valentine's Day: Cupid

I plan on trying to do as many Valentine's Day manis as I can before the day! I might post a few after because I have soooo many ideas!

This is the mani I'm currently wearing, but I have another that I did earlier this week that I'll post over the weekend. Then I'm hoping to fit in two more: one for next week and one for the actual day of (or rather the day after since my husband works on Valentine's Day and we're gonna go out the next day while my amazing mom watches our wee one).

Anyway, onto this mani! I've mentioned the Baby Center group before, and our threadly challenge was to do nail transfers. They could be simple store bought stickers/decals or you could make your own using the freezer bag/parchment paper/page protector method. I chose to make my own using the advanced stamping method.

I used all Zoya polishes for this other than my stamping polish. I started with a base of Zoya Dove and added the hearts/dots using Zoya Sooki (red), Zoya Shelby (pink), and Zoya Kieko (purple).

To do the stamp, I started the process like normal using Konad Black and Cheeky Jumbo 3 (European Romance). I left the stamp on my stamper and let it dry for a bit. Then I carefully filled in the hearts and let that dry. Next I added a thick layer of top coat and let it dry for probably about 2 hours. After applying my base coat on my nails and letting it dry a bit, I gently peeled my stamp off the stamper, trimmed it, added top coat to my nail, applied the decal and gently pushed it down! Whew! I cleaned up the edges (very easy with acetone and a small brush since it's all nail polish), and added more top coat. It sounds hard, but it was pretty easy!

With having a baby, this was easy to do since the process could be easily spread out. I definitely plan on using this technique more!

Valentine's Day: Leopard Skittle

I've been really wanting to do a Valentine's Day leopard print, more specifically a heart shaped one. I decided to skittle it up on this mani.

A friend of mine lent me her gel system to use as well so I did a gel sandwich (gel bad coat and cure, regular polish and top coat, dry overnight, gel top coat and cute). I'll post pictures later to show you a wear test :)

I used two coats each of Zoya Keiko (purple) and Zoya Shelby. For my ring finger, I used three coats of Glam Polish Unicorn Sparkles! The black accents were added using Wet n Wild Black Creme.

Zoya Jules skittles

Base: Zoya Jules, two coats

Freehanded chevron with Wet n Wild Black Creme and added square black studs

Pastel Galaxy

I don't know if any moms read my blog, but if you are a mom you just migth have heard of the Baby Center website. They have tons of information about babies and kids plus several chat boards. One of the boards I belong to has started a nail board that is going very strong! (Shout out to my BHB ladies!)

What's great about that is that we understand time restraints since we are all moms. We're all super supportive of each other which can be rare both in mom groups and the nail polish community. It's a neat little haven.

Anyway, we've decided to do weekly challenges. We get one theme for the week. Again as moms, getting a whole week to do a challenge works great! This week's theme is galaxies. I've done regular and Northern Lights ones. Today I decided to go with another "new" one and do pastel galaxy nails.

I followed a few different tutorials for this one and made it my own. It's not as pastel as other pastel galaxy manis, but I like some of the pops of dark colors.

I used a crap ton of polishes too:

Base is two coats of Sinful Colors Candy Coated.

I added the galaxy using Wet n Wild French White Creme, Barry M Blueberry, Zoya Pippa (yellow), Sinful Colors Fig, A-England Lake of the Lake (purple holographic), Zoya Pippa (pink), Revlon Minted (mint green that was mostly used to tone down purple base as Minted was pretty sheer), and Nubar Absolute (very lightly sponged to add the shimmery effect).

Zoya Chyna

I got Zoya Chyna with the Zoya deal too. I'm not a super big fan of red, but after asking around decided to get this one. It looks okay on my hands and I'm not sure how often I'll wear it on them. BUT it looks great on my toes so I'm sure I'll get good use out of it that way!

Zoya Normani

Tomorrow, we'll heading out of town for the wedding (well, reception since they had a destination wedding) of two friends.

I wanted to paint something simple yet beautiful on my nails. I always wanted to lean more neutral. I saw this idea and was going to use a tan as the base. HOWEVER, I just got my Zoya order in and *knew* Normani would make a great neutral base without being boring. I was right :)

Zoya Normani went on great in two coats. I wouldn't recommend two because then the coat would be pretty thick and so it would tak longer to dry plus be more likely to chip.

I used China Glaze I'm Not Lion for the glitter. After topping with NYC In A New York Minute and letting dry, I added Essie Matte About You.

Black ombré stripes

Colors used: Wet n Wild Black Creme, Rimmel Grey Matter, Zoya Dove, and Rimmel French White Nail Tip Liner