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.

Fall Colors: Revlon Autumn Spice & China Glaze Riveting

When I thought about fall mani ideas, these two colors seemed perfect!

I kept it simple and used two coats each of China Glaze Riveting and Revlon Autumn Spice plus some tiny gold studs.

Fall Owl Nail Art with Sinful Colors Nirvana

Look at how cute these owl nails are!!!

I even did a video tutorial on how to do them which is over on my Facebook page and my Instagram.

The base is Sinful Colors Nirvana topped with Hit Polish Patina, a great fall glitter with copper and teal.

Monday Mani: Different Color on Each Nail

In the past, I've mentioned Monday Manis at Polish-Aholics Anonymous on Facebook. Well, they've been coming back!

This week, the voted in theme is to have every nail be a different color. We agreed that it only needed to be each nail on one hand, not all ten digits.

I had a few ideas in mind and had a hard time narrowing it down.

I ended up going with a mani using only (well, mostly) ManGlaze polishes. Starting at the thumb, the colors are Santorum, Fuggen Ugly, Fatty's Got More Blood, Nawsome Sauce, and ILF. The dots are Barry M Gold Foil. 

When I did this mani, I used the matte sandwich technique to help it last longer.

I applied two coats of each matte polish, then one coat of Rica Glossy Glam. Let dry. Then apply one more coat of your matte polish. I wore this mani for only two days, but I only had a tiny chip. That's good wear time for a matte mani and for me as well! I'm super hard on my nails.

And here's a bonus pedi I did.

June Nail Art Challenge, Day 15: Father's Day

Today's challenge was sorta tough for me. I searched Father's Day Nails on google for ideas, but I got a lot of manis featuring ties (something neither my husband or dad wear!) or sports (which neither are super into).

In the end, I decided to use my Cheeky CH49 stamping plate which works because my husband loves pirates! He's dressed as one for Halloween a few times plus on Talk Like A Pirate Day he makes a special themed dinner for his clients at work (he work at a group home) and talks like a pirate.

The base color is Butter London All Hail the Queen. The stamping color is some sparkling brown Sally Hansen that I got on clearance for 10¢ at Kmart who's name I'm too lazy to look for now ;)

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:

Revlon Autumn Spice

Let me just say that I love this color! It's been a major lemming since I first saw Scrangie swatch it.

I finally got my hands on it about two weeks ago.

I used two thin coats for this mani. It chipped easily on me, but all polishes have been lately. The smell isn't super strong either so that's nice.

Whimsical Ideas by Pam Just Add Milk

3 coats Whimsical Ideas by Pam Just Add Milk

Base of Wet n Wild French White Creme

Art done using Migi nail art pens

Matte Graveyard

I did some simple graveyard nails using all matte polishes.

Base China Glaze Stone Cold

Gravestone ManGlaze Fuggen Ugly

Trees Sinful Colors Leather Loose

Grass Sinful Colors Rise and Shine

Roses Layla Fire It Up

Details Sinful Colors Cold Leather

Sinful Colors Leather Loose

Sinful Colors Leather Loose from the new collection. This is 2 coats with no base or top coat.

Beachy Nails with Zoya Godiva

I know this has been done before, but I just had to do my own beach nails with Zoya Godiva.

Crab is done mostly with Zoya Sookie. Starfish is Sinful Colors Orange Cream. It's hard to see but I did footprints on the ring finger and a heart with A + J in the middle on the pinkie finger. I did those using Essie Brooch The Subject.

Neon Animal Print

Base coat: Cosmo Girl Wild Thing (pink) and Essie Brooch the Subject

Leopard print was free handed using Wet n Wild Black Creme

I stamped on the zebra print with Konad Black and went over some parts that didn't fully stamp.

Cookie Monster

As several of you know, I have a little guy at home! Some days he can be quite the handful. He's teething finally(!), but that's making him super crabby. He normally fights his naps big time, but it's been even worse with the teething.

We were headed out of town for 2 days, and I had a ton of stuff to do around the house (as you usually do before leaving on trips). The husband was off to work, and of course little man was a big crank that day! Well, I called in for back up!

My husband's coworker is a good friend of ours and lives just down the street. Her niece was visiting so I had her come on over to play with the little man while I got stuff done. She was great and wore him out!

He ended up eventually taking a nap so I did her nails as a big thank you.  She asked me to do Cookie Monster nails so of course I obliged!

I started with a base of Wet N Wild French White Creme on all the nails. I used two coats.

Next I added Cookie Monster using L'Oreal Notting Hill Blues and Wet N Wild Black Creme for the details.

The cookies were done with Essie Brooch the Subject and Essie Little Brown Dress.

You can't see it very well in this picture, but her pinkies have exclamation marks while her thumbs say, "Yum yum."

Zoya Godiva

Zoya Godiva is another Pixie Polish that I bought. Like London, it goes on beautifully! I needed 3 coats for this mani so dry time was a little longer. It reminds me a great deal of sand. I'm going to let the pictures speak for themselves.

Godiva is such a beautiful nude that I think it could be worn by those will skin colors and still look great! It could also be worn when you need professional nails, but it's still has a bit of an edge!

The macro is blurry, but shows off the awesome glitter very well.

I plan to do some nail art using the Pixie. In what nail art applications would you like to see Godiva used?

Superbowl nails

I'm back!! Well, sorta. I ended up with a super bad cold, and it's sooo much harder to recover from illness when you have a little one! Before I could just take some Benadryl or Nyquil and sleep it off. Not anymore! Plus I have to be extra careful since I'm nursing.

Anyway, I found this mani I did for the Superbowl that I somehow never posted! I'll be back this weekend with regularly scheduled blogging.

Index: for the 49ers and I used Zoya Sooki and Revlon Gold Coin

Middle: football, and I used OPI Suzi Loves Cowboys and Rimmel French White Nail Tip Liner

Ring: for the Ravens, and I used Sinful Colors Amethyst and Revlon Gold Coin

Pinkie: for the turf, and I used OPI Don't Mess with OPI and leaf green flocking powder from TKB Trading

31 Day Challenge, Part 2!: Day 22, Inspired by a Song

In one of my small nail groups, we've been reminiscing lately and sharing old photos. So I starting thinking about old songs that I could use for today's mani when I finally figured out what I should do!

Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down was one of my favorite songs in high school. I still love it actually! What makes the song even better is that the first time I heard it, I was wearing my Superman t-shirt.

To save myself some time, I decided to paint the Superman logo ahead of time as a decal. It sorta worked. I made the decal a bit too big and when I put it over the blue base, the colors didn't stand out as much as I wanted.  The face and suit were inspired by these Superman nails.

The base coat on the face is Essie Brooch the Subject. The base coat on the other nails is Rimmel Chill.  I used acrylic paint for the rest of the design (other than the logo which was done using Migi nail art pens).

I like how these turned out, but I feel like I could have done a neater job.

Check out some other manis inspired by songs below.

31 Day Challenge, Part 2!: Day 12, Stripes

I've had a lot of fun doing this challenge, but sometimes it been a bit rough with a two month old to find time. So I've been trying to figure out quick manis to do for some of the days. I also wanted to have some fun with my matte polishes (which I love!) and so I came up with today's mani.

I started with a base of China Glaze Stone Cold. I used two coats just to make sure of coverage. I love the shimmer in this grey/black polish.

Next, I drew a line down the middle with Zoya Phoebe, a neon blue matte polish. On either side of that line, I used ManGlaze Fuggen Ugly to add two lines. Those are a bit hard to notice since they are grey like Stone Cold.

Finally I finished off the design by adding two horizontal stripes with ManGlaze Santorum. Santorum is a dark brown but reads black here.

The whole design reminds me of plaid. The best part about this mani? Since I used all matte polishes, it took me 5 minutes total. 5 minutes! That includes dry time and clean up (which was very minimal).

Enjoy the close-up where you can see the great shimmer in Stone Cold

Check out some other great stripe manis below.

Top Polishes of 2012

Several bloggers have been doing lists of their favorites polishes/manis/products. It seems the end of the year always brings these best of or countdown lists. Well, I decided to do my own! It was so fun reviewing through my blog posts and seeing the awesome manis I did over the past year.

I've decided to bring my list up into two different posts: one with just my top polishes and another with the top nail art designs I did.

For today, I have my top polishes of 2012. These aren't polishes that necessarily came out this year, just polishes that I collected this year. I tried to narrow it down to 10 but couldn't quite do it. So here they are in no particular order, my top polishes of 2012!

Candeo Colors Sprouse: A perfect blend of black, silver, and white glitter, a hint of blue, and silver microshimmer. It applies beautifully with no need to dig out or place glitter.

Zoya Isla & Dollish Polish It's A Me Mario!: This is a two-fer! Zoya knows how to do red polish, and Isla is no exception! Dollish Polish really hit the scene this year with her amazing polishes, especially her glitters. The Mario collection was super popular, and you can really see why here!

Zoya Phoebe: Phoebe is stunning neon blue matte polish. I'm a sucker for matte polishes, and this neon one makes it super fun.

Dollish Polish Expecto Patronum: I couldn't help putting another Dollish Polish on this list! I love these milky white polish bases with glitter. Expecto Patronum is jam packed with tons of teal/aqua glitter.

Candeo Colors Jellybean: And another Candeo Colors!!! This one is based on the same concept as the milky base with glitter, except it's a milky light yellow with glitter.

OPI Chop-sticking To My Story & Dollish Polish The Koopa King: Here's another two-fer and another Dollish Polish (I told you it was her year!). Part of the reason why I choose this mani is not just for the color but the combination of colors. Both polishes play of each other nicely without one dominating the other.

Enchanted Polish Across the Universe: I don't even know what to say about this polish! Holo, color shifting, and named after a Beatles song, drool!

 Smitten Polish EMERAHGERD CANDY CORMS: I really am obsessed with these milky bases. This time we have another white with candy corn colored glitter.

Nicole by OPI Khloe Had a Lam-Lam: My favorite polish of all time. Hands down. I love green, dark colors, and dusky tones. This polish has it all including a great formula. If only it wasn't that weird Nicole by OPI bottle...

ManGlaze Santorum: I bought this color on the suggestion of a friend, and I'm so glad I did. ManGlaze makes the best matte polishes around. Santorum while being a totally gross name is beautiful dark brown matte polish with tons of micro shimmer. Try this one topcoated. Seriously.

Bloody nails

I decided it would be kinda fun to do some bloody nails. I haven't tried the drip method before so this would be a good way to try that too.

I started with a base coats of China Glaze Kalahari Kiss.  I needed 2 coats.

For the knife, I used Sinful Colors Slate for the blade and an accent of Wet n Wild Metallica to add a bit of depth. The handle is done with Rimmel Black Satin.

For the blood, I missed Zoya Sooki with Zoya Isla to give a bit of depth. When I painted on the blood, I wasn't too worried about being precise either since blood dripping isn't going to be perfect (not that I would know! Lol!). I really like how the texture of the blood turned out.

I love this mani! It's super perfect for Halloween. The cashier at McDonalds even noticed and said they were pretty o.O

Hits Glitter Forte 389 Brown

This awesome polish is another gift from my awesome Halloween swap. Hits Glitter Forte 389 (no name that I could find) is a beautiful brown/copper glitter in a sheer brown base. I love the Hits polishes, but since the bottles are so small I decided to layer this over OPI Suzi Loves Cowboys.

The result? A gorgeous brown glittery mani perfect for fall and very suitable for work. Suzi Loves Cowboys turned out to be the perfect base for Glitter Forte 389 as well.