Black, White, and Red Outline Mani with Tutorial!

The inspiration for today's manicure comes from MaagsDinwiddie. She did hers for Valentine's Day, and it certainly would be beautiful for that! I should try to remember that for next year.
For my manicure, I switched the color combos as I wanted to use a red stamping I have that I haven't used often.

I used to do video tutorials and post them on YouTube and Instagram. I enjoyed doing them, but my setup wasn't the greatest plus they take a ton of time! It takes longer to do your mani plus the video editing. However, picture tutorials don't take as much time so I've decided to do them. I'm not sure that I will do them for every mani, but I'm excited to expand my content!

Anyway, here are the steps for this mani.

1. Apply base coat to clean nails. I use Glisten & Glow base coat for all my nails.

2. Apply white polish. I'm using Funky Fingers Gesso.

3. Apply a latex barrier around your nails. I just purchase a big tub on Amazon and pour it into a clean, empty nail polish bottle. I don't always use liquid latex for stamping, but it's definitely needed when stamping with a red polish!

4. Stamp on your image. I'm using Girly Bits Fire Engine Red and a plate I bought from eBay.

5. Remove the liquid latex, and cleanup any extra polish.

6. Add the black outline. I used black acrylic paint for easier control.

To finish: I left this mani dry for quite a while. Red and black polishes tend to smear for me when applying top coat. I used Seche Vite and gently floated it on so as to not smear my stamping (which I actually kind of did on my pinkie).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mixed Finish Half Moon

Happy Tuesday everyone! Just a quick post today. This momma is pooped! My baby has turned into a spider monkey and is climbing all over the place. I'm worn out.

I will have another post for you on Wednesday and Thursday though with some 4th of July designs.

I'm not a huge fan of half moon manis, but I saw some mixed finish ones and really liked the concept.

I started with a base of OPI Push And Shove and let it dry. Next I use paper reinforcement stickers to mark off the moon and painted on ManGlaze Fatty's Have More Blood. It's a beautiful red shimmery matte polish, though the shimmer is hiding a bit here.

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.

Wicked Witch of the East

Just a quickie post inspired by the Wicked Witch of the East

Glam Polish Evanora (two very nice easy coats)

Savvy Ruby Slippers (two coats)

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!

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!

Holographic Christmas Dotticure

I wanted to do a water marble Christmas mani, but time is tight these days and I'm not very good with water marbles so it will take forever!

So I did a simple Christmas dotticure.

The base is Gosh Holographic Hero. I believe it's the new version. I used two colors here. The top photo shows the holographic effect nicely.

For the dots I used Sinful Colors Ruby Ruby (red), OPI Don't Mess With OPI (green), Wet N a Wild Black Creme, and Wet n Wild French White Creme.

Nail Polish Canada 2013 Holiday Nail Art Challenge Week 2: Decorations

This week's theme is decorations. I LOVE Christmas lights. I love them on trees and houses. They have to be one of my favorite things about Christmas too.

Soooo, I put lights on my nails!

I did a free hand French manicure and then added the lights.

Please vote for me here!

Base: Zoya Loretta to smooth out nails and add hint of peachy nude color

Tips: Rimmel French White Nail Tip

Bulbs: black acrylic paint, Zoya Breezi (blue), Zoya Sooki (red), Zoya Pippa (yellow), OPI Don't Mess With OPI (green)

Christmas Leopard Print

I've had this idea in my head for ages so I knew I had to do it as soon as the holiday season came around. It turned out pretty great, if I do say so myself :)

I used two coats each of Zoya Sooki (red) and OPI Don't Mess With OPI (green) for my base. I alternated the polish across all 10 fingers.

I don't have a leopard print stamping image so I freehanded this using Wet n Wild Black Creme and the pointy end of an orange stick. Then I added a thick layer of Seche Vite over the top.

Berry & Silver Skittle

Sinful Colors Berry Charm

Wet n Wild Sprinkled with Love

Nail Craze NC02 stamped with Barry M Silver Foil

Bloody Splatter

Base: Wet n Wild Black Creme followed by Seche Vite to dry. Added Essie Matte About You on top.

Splatter: Zoya Isla and Zoya Sookie

Spiderwebs and Raindrops

I used a base of 2 coats of Rimmel Grey Matter and followed it up with one thick coat of Illamasqua Raindrops. I like the sorta stormy/glistening effect this created.

Then I freehanded spiderwebs using Barry M Silver Foil. The spider was done with Wet n Wild Black Creme and Zoya Isla for the eyes.

OPI Peru-B-Ruby

Today's mani is OPI Peru-B-Ruby. I'm not normally a big red fan, but this color has a ton of meaning to me which is why I wanted it.

Ruby is my birth stone since I was born in July. I use rubytadpole as my name for a lot of places (including Instagram, follow me!). That's where the Ruby in Ruby's Nails comes from.

Peru also has meaning for me and I spent 6 wonderful weeks studying there in 2010. I ate tons of new foods: ceviche, cuy (guinea pig), fresh rainbow trout, anticucho (marinated, skewered, and grilled beef heart), real sugar Coke, choclo (a corn with giant kernels), quinoa, sooo many potatoes, different teas, Cusqueña beer, picarones (sweet potato donuts), alpaca, llama, and granadilla (a fruit with hard seeds in gelatinous pulp, tastes much better than it sounds and looks!).

I lived in Cusco for the six weeks but traveled to the Sacred Valley and fed alpacas and llamas, hiked in Machu Picchu, sailed to the Uros Islands (islands made of reeds in Lake Titicaca), spent the night with a traditional family on Amantaní who dressed us up in traditional clothing and took us to a village dance, and saw countless other Inca ruins.

So that was long....but I wanted to really express to WHY this color is sooo important to me.

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