Glitter Wedding nails

I love weddings; I guess you could say I’m a romantic. I just think it is awesome to be part of someone’s best day. I had an amazing wedding, it wasn’t fancy but it was the best day of my life. For my wedding I got my first French manicure, my nails looked wonderful and for the first time I had a bunch of people ask me if they were fake (for some strange reason I love when people think my nails are fake). I did a very classic (read boring) French manicure for my wedding, but really there are a bunch of different options for classy wedding day nails. Since wedding season is in full swing I thought it would be fun to do some wedding nails. Hope you enjoy J

For my first wedding manicure I decided to do a twist on the classic French, let me just say right now that I love these nails. This manicure used Sally Hansen CSM Shell We Dance?, essie Matte About You,  Butter Fairy Cake, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Strobe Light, and China Glaze Luxe and Lush and Glitter Goblin. Holy sparkles Batman, that’s a lot of glitter!

These nails say “I do”

I love how the matte looks on the light pink and how well it goes with all the glitter, it created such a cool texture and overall feeling. If I were to do these nail again I wouldn’t use the glitter that has the orange in it (Glitter Goblin) it doesn’t look bad but I think it takes away from all the other sparkly glitter.

Perhaps they are too fancy for work

I love doing glitter gradients, they look so cool and they don’t require the same precision that a regular French does. I also really like having the glitter on the back ends instead of the tips; it makes these nails very different while also looking very pretty. So, what do you think? Do you think these nails are good enough for a wedding?

Newsprint nails

I’ve fallen in love. I’m the type of girl that is generally skeptical when people say “you should watch such and such on YouTube” but I listened when my friend Gayle said I should watch Jenna Marbles and she was so right. Jenna Marbles, I have the biggest girl crush on you. I watched every video she had on her main YouTube channel within a week, I found myself talking to my dogs in a Jenna Marbles voice and using foul language all the time. It was like when I watch an entire season of a show in a weekend, everything I did and said made me think of her and how awesome she is. So here is my official recommendation, you should all watch Jenna Marbles and laugh your butt off. My only criticism is that she needs to paint her nails more, that chipped nail look isn’t cutting it, but I still love her.

 I wanted to do these nails for a while but lacked the necessary equipment, if that sentence doesn’t intrigue you I don’t know what will. Since we have the internet and TV, Thad and I don’t get the newspaper, which is very necessary when creating newsprint nails. For these nails I used Sally Hansen CSM Shell We Dance? and an old newspaper I ‘borrowed’ from work.

Newsprint nails

I read about how to do these nails on the interwebs before I tried it myself, most of the directions said that I could use rubbing alcohol or cheap vodka, since I’m way too old for cheap vodka (and I obviously wasn’t going to use Grey Goose) I had to buy rubbing alcohol to do these nails. I think they were worth it. Even though you can’t read most of the words, I used an article about a dog rescue in Minnesota that goes to other states to rescue puppies on death row. I got both of my little girls through places like that, Jules came from Ohio and Millie came from Kentucky, so the article tugged at my heart strings

Can you tell my pointer finger was my first attempt?

The directions I read told me to dip my nail in the rubbing alcohol and then pressing the dry newspaper to it, as you can tell from Mr. Pointer, that didn’t really work. For the other nails I used the much more effective method of dipping the paper in the rubbing alcohol and then put that on my dry nail. After I had perfected the method I tried to redo my pointer finger but it didn’t transfer any newsprint so I guess you only have one shot at doing these.

Ooooooo right hand

I really liked these nails, they were very subtle for me but I liked them nonetheless. I really want to try them again with a page of comics, perhaps I will need to invest in a Sunday paper. J

Leopard Heart Print nails

Thad and I don’t do a whole lot for Valentine’s Day, we like to keep it low key. This year (and last year) I asked for nail polish instead of flowers or chocolates. As I my collection of polish is growing, Thad is having a harder time finding colors to get me, so this year he got me a gift card to Sally’s. Getting a gift card for nail polish is like getting two gifts in one; I love shopping for polish. I didn’t get quite as good of a deal as the last time I had a gift card to Sally’s but I did manage to add three colors to my collection and get more polish remover and cotton rounds.  None of those colors are in this manicure though since these are the nails I had on Valentine’s Day.

For this manicure I used China Glaze Rich & Famous, Fast Track, and Mahogany Magic, Orly Liquid Vinyl, and Sally Hansen CSM Shell We Dance? and All Fired Up. I think they look like mobster wife nails, like I’m married to Ray Liotta from Goodfellas.

Leopard Heart Print tips

There is a little tip wear in the pictures and I think this is mostly because I only put one coat of FastTrack on the tips. Normally it wears super well, but one coat just wasn’t enough. I’m very pleased with these nails, I free handed all the hearts and some of them came out downright awesome. The one on my ring finger was the first one I did and it turned out amazing. J

I impressed myself

I’ve never been good at drawing hearts so I was a bit surprised that these came out as well as they did. I should have done less of the regular spots so they tips weren’t quite as crowded and perhaps more of the hearts so that it looked more Valentiney.

Sad short thumb nail

I have so many ideas for my new polish, I hope everyone had a great Valentine’s Day!

Shany stamping plates

Amazon is an amazing thing, it is also very dangerous. Right after Christmas I was tempted by the Amazon gods and spent $40 on nail stuff (including shipping, for some reason saying ‘including shipping’ makes me feel better about the expense). On January 2^nd I got home from work only to discover a mini Christmas in my mail box, I had four packages waiting for my arrival. I gleefully opened them up and I am now the proud owner of my very own stamping set. I got two different polishes (Konad black and white), a double ended stamper, scraper, plate holder, and a set of 25 Shany plates (numbered 1-25). Needless to say I was super crazy excited to paint my nails.

This post is going to include my first and second attempt at stamping my nails; I feel it necessary to admit at this point that stamping is way harder than I thought. I learned many lessons with my first attempt, spoiler alert: my first try turned out terribly. The plates came in a little box to keep them organized (which I loved) and they all had a blue film over the engraved side to prevent scratching during shipping. The blue film was really hard to remove and I actually have only managed to get it off about 10 of the plates. So far I’ve found one plate that was scratched under the film, it did ruin one of the designs but the design it ruined is the word ‘sexy’ so I’m not too distraught at losing that one. For the first manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Shell we Dance?, and Color Club Status Update.

Starting with my thumb: SH22, SH13, SH13, SH03, SH24

Starting with my pinkie: SH22, SH10, SH03, SH24, SH18

 As you can see from the pictures, I ran into a lot of trouble with the scrapping step of nail stamping. I found that I couldn’t get the scrapper to have even pressure so it left some extra paint in some areas. Speed is very important when doing stamping and I’m not a speedy nail artist, so I had paint drying all over the place. If you are thinking of trying nail stamping I would suggest having a lot of Q-tips handy and remover for cleanup of your tools. I would also warn against putting on your topcoat too soon, I figured I could put it on soon than normal nail art and ended up smearing a few of them pretty bad. As soon as I was done with these I wanted to try stamping again, but as I wasn’t feeling well, it took me a couple of days before I had the chance to repaint (yes I had these jacked up nails for more than one day). For my second attempt I used OPI Rosy Future and Goldeneye.

I used plate SH18 for this hand

It was hard to get the whole nail covered

The adorable squirrel lives on plate SH10

Practice makes a huge difference. For my second attempt I took my time while working quickly (if that makes sense). If I didn’t like how the stamp looked on my stamper, I took it off and started over instead of trying to make it work. I think nail stamping is a lot like everything else in nail art in that the more you do it the better it turns out. I really like the finished product of these nails, the white on Rosy Future turned out so feminine and pretty. Each plate averages 6 designs and the whole plate set was only around $12. I’m really looking forward to using at the heart designs for Valentine’s day J

Reindeer nails

I can’t believe Christmas is a week from tomorrow. I have always loved Christmas; I’m the type of person that wakes up at four in the morning to open presents Christmas morning. My parents had the rule that we couldn’t open presents until coffee was made, that didn’t really slow us down, our presents were usually open before the sun came up. One of my favorite Christmas gifts ever was the year Santa brought me a Barbie and the Rockers Barbie. She was amazing, with bright blue eye shadow and a silver mini skirt. That year we lost power due to an ice storm and our brand new puppy (also a Christmas gift) found Barbie and chewed her hand off in the darkness of the power outage. I was not super pleased with Mollie, but she was so cute I forgave her pretty quickly.

I have wanted to do these nails for a while but wanted to wait to do them closer to Christmas. For this manicure I used Sally Hansen CSM Shell We Dance?, OPI Alpine Snow, Brisbane Bronze, and Last Minute Shopper, China Glaze Mahogany Magic and Luxe and Lush, and Orly Liquid Vinyl. 

Rudolph says hi

After I did one reindeer I knew that doing ten would take way too long so I decided to do different designs on the other nail. I’m really pleased with how the dots turned out on my pinkie, it is the most evenly spaced I have been able to do dots. The middle finger ended up red because my red stripes were so bad I had to paint the whole nails red to cover it up, oops. I absolutely love my thumbs; I painted them pale pink and then used the Luxe and Lush on top. No picture can capture how awesome that glitter is, they are huge irregular flat glitter pieces that look holographic when the light hits them.  It was kind of a pain to put on but I think that was mostly due to the fact that this bottle has the most messed up brush ever.

I have never had a glitter like it before

I’m really happy with these nails; if I were to do reindeer again I would make the black outline thinner and leave more room for his antlers. I enjoy the variety of this manicure; they are entertaining to look at.

The polish in the bottle is Last Minute Shopper

Hope you enjoyed them as much as I did! I’m running out of time to fit all my Christmas ideas in, I need to paint my nails more J.