Skittles for Nat

My sister's "adopted" 13 yr old daughter informed me last week that I would be painting her nails for her today. And as we typically do for her, the reply was "Okie dokie".
I guess she was in a Skittles mood, because she was hoping I would show up with skittles for her.
I didn't have Skittles, but I said we could do a Skittle manicure. A Skittle manicure is one where the nails all are painted differently.
It took quite a while, but Nat finally picked a cherry based design, and all the colors we'd use.

Simple Polka Dot Lace

I've been lax lately. I have been keeping up painting my nails, but haven't been taking pics. And frankly, the paint jobs I've been doing have been rather basic, by my standards. 

So for the beginning of this week, I decided to go with a brightly colored lace like manicure. 

The color is actually a neon coral, but looks hot pink in these pics. 

I painted a diagonal of black at the inner edge of my nails. 

 Next, using my larger dotting tool I placed evenly spaced dots along the diagonal.

I then placed coral dots within the black dots, using a smaller dotting tool. I also put a couple dots in the black space.

I wanted to do a arch of dots over each dot, so on my pinky I decided to do this completely free form. As you can see, it didn't so much arc over each dot as it just sagged. So sometimes it doesn't always go as planned. 

 I decided to try a different approach, so I first placed dots in the space between the larger dots.

Then to make the arch, I placed dots over the top of the larger dots, which worked out well and gave the look I was going for. Yay!

Cherry Blossom nails

Did a simple cherry blossom manicure today. Nice neutral colors, and a very pretty feminine look. 

Looks even better after I cleaned up the edges of extra paint :)

These are a few of my favorite things!

Decided to do my nails today with three of my favorite things: polka dots, rainbow & bright colors. 

This is a simple manicure with a high level of pop. It is bright, fun, and cheerful. I love it! 

Nothin like Chucks

Those that know me even slightly know that the likelihood of them finding me wearing tennis shoes of any sort, if I am not on my way to, in the middle of, or returning from a hike, is a slim chance. But, being that I am now living in Idaho, it makes sense to try and be a little more relaxed, a little less "me" on occasion. (I have to say a friend of mine told me this weekend she was THRILLED to see a picture of me posted to FB with no makeup, ratty clothes, and hair in a bun. It's not that I'm always put together, just that I'm not usually totally undone). Anyways...
So, because I still don't OWN any tennis shoes, I figured the best way to start would be with my nails. Maybe comfy looking nails would help encourage me to purchase tennies.

These nails are really simple to do, and look adorable! 

I started with nails colored in a variety of colors, that are Chuck appropriate.

Next are white french tips. I painted these on freehand, but if you want a little guidance, use a rubber band as a guide. Stretch the rubber band over your nail, and paint everything below the band. Then just gently lift up the rubber band and there you go! After applying the white tips, I used a quick dry clear coat so I could move onto the fun detail quicker.

After the white has dried, using black striping polish I drew a line for the detail on the sole.

Using my white striping polish, I placed six tiny dots on each nail. These I am using as my guide for where the laces get drawn.

Draw thin lines between those dots, like playing connect the dots for the laces.

I finished off with little glittery silver dots for the lace holes. Finish with a quick dry top coat and then you're done!

A dot dot dot

I have been a total slacker lately. Not necessarily in regards to painting my nails, but in posting the pics of them. No reason for it either, other than I'm a slacker :) 

I had seen a manicure similar on another blog, and liked that it looked like more work than it was. So I decided it was my turn. 

I painted all nails except my ring finger with one coat of Sinful's Snow me White, and one coat of Tokyo Pearl to give the solid, pearly white color. 

My ring finer is Pure Ice's Wild thing, with a coat of Rimmel's Cocktail Colour Cutie Colada. 

All very inexpensive polishes. 

One my nails were dry, I poured out a small pool of black wet n'wild polish that I get around Halloween for $1.

Using my small dotting tool, I began to make clusters of 4 dots in rows. I started in the middle of each nail, then did the cluster above, then the cluster below, and then those on each side. Don't worry too much about spacing, it's ok if they aren't perfectly lined up. Almost all of my clusters ended up being slightly wider than they were tall.

As you can see with the closeup of my thumb, not all dots are the same size, and not all clusters are the same shape. It's ok, that won't be as noticeable with the next step.

Pick however many colors you want for the dots, and pour a small glob of each out. In reality, it is probably best to do one color at a time, otherwise your drops will start to dry, and they'll "string" as you try to leave dots. Then you'll have to pour out more polish. I did them all at the same time because it looks better for the pic. I ended up pouring out more of each color. (I believe in reusing as much as I can, so those old bills are used as my color pallet :) gotta make them useful for something!)

Randomly place dots of each color in the center of the black dots. You can keep the colors in order, or make them completely random, as I did.

This would be a lot of fun to play with variations...make the center dots in each row all one color, or make the center dots black and the base dots multi colored. 

Natural Turquoise Nails

One of the manicures I've seen done by other bloggers that I have wanted to give a try is a natural marbled stone look. In particular, I wanted to try emulating turquoise. I couldn't decide which shade of the color I wanted to use, so I chose to do an ombre effect. When in doubt, pick all the colors!

Right hand

 

Left hand

To get the black polish to have that lacy look, I did a modified water marbling. On my pinky fingers, the turquoise is so dark it is hard to get a pic to show the black well.
While it may look like it took a long time, once the base color was fully dry, the black marbling was a very quick process. Clean up took a lot longer than the polish application. It took less than 10 minutes to do the marbling.
I really liked the effect, but wanted a little more "oomph" to it. So I decide to add a little bit of gold streaking, since turquoise often has copper streaks in the marbling.
To get streaks that are not predictable, I pulled the cotton off the end of a cotton swab, and left some of the fibers trailing.

And here is the result:

I love the addition of the little bits of gold. It is very subtle, and gives the outcome an overall more natural look. Definitely a fun look.

I think my favorite turned out to be the lightest color on my thumbs. I like the contrast.