LOVE-ly Manicure #5

A little less traditional  approach to the Valentine's Day manicure today. No pink, red, or hearts today! It's all black and lace today! You can take this as an "anti-Valentine's Day" or as a darker, more sultry manicure.

I might add a rhinestone or stud next time. What do you think?
Polishes used: Zoya Willa, Imogen, and Purity

Summer Fun Challenge--Day 8 (last day)

Lindsey at the Neverland Nail Blog is so incredibly creative.  I love her blog so very much and about 3 weeks ago she announced The Summer Fun Challenge.

Sadly this is the LAST day of the Summer Fun Challenge:(  What will inspire me to do crazy things to my nails???  I guess I'll have to wait until I come across a new doable, fun, inspiring challenge.  Alas, here is the final challenge-inspired manicure...


Day 6: Fun in the Sun!
Lindsey describes "Fun in the sun!" as follows, " bust out those bright colors and crazy patterns, anything goes today!"  So I thought, why not do a pretty, elegant, classic pattern but juxtaposed in bright, neon, summery colors?  I took this idea and ran with it to create...

 (nearly) NEON lace!

This fun manicure was created by painting my nails with Zoya Purity after they were appropriately prepped with a base coat.  Then I did a variation of my hand-painted lace pattern (tutorial here) to make it  have a scalloped edge.  The lace was painted using a fine paintbrush and Zoya Paz.  I really love this.  While I was painting I decided to leave my ring finger as an accent nail to create a little balance and to prevent an overwhelming manicure.  


There you have it.  Last one, and among my favorites.  My favorite manicures I created were... 

Grill Master

Pool Party

Are We There Yet?

The Big Blue

and today's manicure.

Check out what some other polish lovers created: 

Valentine's Day Nails #5

Welcome to Valentine's Day inspired manicure week!

I will showcase my favorite valentine's day polishes, nail art, etc.

Valentine's Day Nails #5

Valentine's Day manicure #5's inspiration is...

Lace

Today we have a delicate manicure inspired by a beautiful, girlie, and sexy material.  Lace has the ability to take on a variety of persona, depending on the context;)

I created this beautiful manicure using a white polish with an fine brush for the design.  Then, I topped this manicure with one coat of Zoya Jane to make it more subtle, any french manicure shade will do this.  

You can purchase Zoya Nail polish from their website for $8 each.

See the tutorial for a hand-painted lace manicure here.

Vintage Lace Manicure

Confession: I enjoy doing nail art, but because I look younger than I am I try to stay away from nail art that can seem "juvenile."  I am forever impressed by the nail art that I see from amazing nail artists.  It's such an amazing art form.  I'm not against wearing nail art, I just prefer to have elegant, classy nails that enhance my style.  You may think  I'm boring, and that's ok.  We're all entitled to our opinions:)

Here is my favorite "go-to" nail art.  My hand-painted lace manicure.  I've done a tutorial on this mani before and it is definitely one of my favorites.  Enjoy:)

What is your FAVORITE nail art design to wear?

Hand-painted Lace Tutorial

Many of you remember this post featuring  my hand-painted lace manicure.  I have received a few requests for a tutorial on this manicure so I put one together the other day.  This post does contain MANY PICTURES and the tutorial will be mostly picture with little commentary. Tutorial, go!

When I originally posted this manicure it was done with greigey taupe and white.  While this is my favorite combination for this manicure, this can be replicated with anything from neutrals, to bold hues and beyond.  For this tutorial I changed the colors for 2 reasons:

1. it's easier to see black & the contrast would be picked up better on my camera

2. I used a french manicure brush (see above) and I wanted to show you that you can do this with everyday items you have at home.  This is a manicure EVERYONE can do, not just the person with 1 million nail art tools:)

This is what you will need:

-base/background color

-another color of polish to create your "lace"

-small old makeup brush or paintbrush (mine was from this brush kit with for $1.99)

-skewer, toothpick, or pin to make the fine lines

-topcoat

 Optional:
-basecoat

-remover pen for cleanup

***I apologize for any blurry pictures, I was having trouble focusing my camera in macro***

Step 1: Prep your nails, use your basecoat, etc. Let dry completely. 

Step 2: Paint your nails in your base color.  I used Sinful Colors Easy Going ($1.99).  Make sure you achieve the desired opacity in as few coats as possible.  I used 2 coats. Let dry completely.(I apologize for my chipped nails--this mani was old)

Step 3: Get your fine brush.  Unscrew the lid of your layering polish and scrape the polish off the brush onto your brush.  My layering polish was Sinful Colors Black on Black ($1.99).

Step 4: Pick which finger you are accenting with this design (if you were REALLY ambitious you could do this to all your nails...) and draw a backwards slight "c" shape on your nail.

Step 5: Draw another line closer to your cuticle with the same shape.

Step 6: Starting near the middle, but not exactly centered, draw a backwards "j" shape.

Step 7: On the left side of your nail make another backwards "c" shape.

Step 8: On the opposite side (the right) make a "c" shape following the curve of your "j" you made in step 6.

Step 9: Your last stroke with your fine brush will be by making an "n" shape at the tip.

Step 10: Put your fine brush in remover to remove the polish and pick up your skewer/toothpick/pin.  Pick polish up off of the brush and onto the very tip of your implement.

Step 11: Begin in the middle and draw squares, "t" shapes, lines, or "x" shapes.

Step 12: Continue doing this between the thick lines in the center of your nail.

Step 13: Continue making these fine lines on one side of your nail, then the other.

Step 14: Make your fine lines between your backwards "c" shaped lines. *You can stop here and skip to step 16 if you are looking for a half-moon lace manicure.*

Step 15: Make the remaining hatch marks on your lunula (the semicircle area near you cuticle where you paint contrasting colors for a half-moon manicure)

Step 16: After it completely dries. Finish with your favorite topcoat.  This not only helps your manicure to last longer but it also tends to even out the texture.

Voila!

There is absolutely no right or wrong way to do this design.  Make it your own by changing the design to suit your taste.  And it's better than nail strips because you can do the colors you want.  I would LOVE to see what you come up with!  If you end up doing this link, facebook, or email me your picture! I cannot wait to see where you take this:)

Handpainted Lace Manicure

First, I must admit that since I'm rather new to this entire nail polish world I am not very good at nail art.  Sure I took a couple of art classes in high school (10 years ago) and I would like to say that I wasn't too bad at it.  But for some reason when it comes to painting fingernails and toenails everything ends up looking like it was done while riding a donkey down the Grand Canyon!

Second, I do not own any spiffy nail art tools.  No stamping plates, dotting tools, brushes, decals, strips, or filmo slices here!  I would definitely jump at any opportunity to try ANY and ALL of the above listed tools, but nails on a budget (yay med. school) sometimes don't allow for such things:)

I am basically left with my meager polish collection and a cheap ($1.99ish) NYC makeup brush kit that I bought to destroy with polish.  Up until today, my nail art attempts have been too embarrassing to post (although I have chosen not to spare you of my sad attempts at cool manicures).

Without further ado, my classy, hand-painted lace beauty:

I am VERY pleased with the result of this.  It may not be perfect, but it's progress!

What kind of nail are have you had success with (sans tools)?  What other kinds of nail art would you like to see me attempt?