A Plaid Pink Wednesday & 52 Week Challenge: Plaid Nails

I apologize in advance for the sad, horrible state of my cuticles. Winter and acetone (and my horrible nervous habit of picking my cuticles) have taken their toll, and they look like crap! I only realized this after I uploaded the photos off my camera, sorry about that :/
I'm trying to catch up for the manis that I missed from the 52 Week Challenge, because I found out about it and came in late.
I actually did these this morning, and they were surprisingly more annoying than I thought they'd be.

The pink in these is surprisingly color accurate

I like how it turned out, but I don't love it.
My hands were shaky, so my lines aren't perfectly straight. My top coat smeared the design. If I do a plaid mani again, I'd use tape to make the bigger stripes.
I like my idea more than anything and from farther away it looks a lot better honestly.

See? hah

The worst cuticle of them all!

Here's a close up of the accent thumb. As soon as I thought of plaid I thought of pink, black and skulls! I'm really upset that this smeared though. I used the Mash m28 plate with the Konad Special Polish in White.

What I Used:
Base Color: Confetti-Lonesome Dove
Pink Stripes: China Glaze- Pink Voltage

Pink Wednesday-Shoes, Shoes, Shoes!

As I've said before, beside nails and makeup, I also have quite the love of shoes. I think I have well over 100 pairs..which is really bad now when I think about it. Shoes are great though. They make you feel sexy when you're having a bad day. You can go shopping for them and they never make you feel fat. They can really make an outfit. Etc..

To make this shoe mani really special, I added a bling accent nail, which was a major pain in the ass! The thing that really bothered me about this mani was less than 24 hours after I finished the polish just peeled right off! I was beyond pissed!I think the culprit was old Seche Vite that was maybe too thick.

I <333 this mani so damn much! I really have to use that shoe stamp again soon!

This bling accent nail was a major pain! Next time I'm doing it was rhinestones!

 To make this blingy accent nail, first I painted the nail silver with Wet n'Wild's Silvivor.  I worked in sections starting from the cuticle. I did a strip of top coat then placed a row or two of sequins on it before it dried. I used a toothpick to pick up the sequins. I also did a gradient of sorts, starting with 2 rows of a transparent opalescent color, then two rows of an opaque opal color and then three of a purple holo color.

I hope that makes sense. Next time I do it I'll try to make a tutorial.

There's some pink in there, so I think it qualifies for  Pink Wednesday :)

What I Used:

Base Color:Wet n' Wild Cancun  

Stamping:

Color: OPI DS Signature

Plate:BM213

Red Light, Green Light, 1-2-3.

I don't if you guys can tell, but I kinda love animal prints. hah Here's some more, I was inspired again by WAH NAILS. They really are great for inspiration when you have no idea what do to.

Green: Color Club The Lime Starts Here

Red: China Glaze Heli-yum

Stamp: Konad M w/Sinful Colors Black on Black

To do the green spots over the red I first did a dot of white polish, then the green on top

I loved these so much, but sadly this was before I realized that my Seche Vite was the reason for my nail polish peeling off, and they all came off within 24 hours. :( 

On an awesome note though, due to cleaning up some stuff in preparation for the hurricane that never happened, I found my stash of acrylic paint! I will definitely be trying some new crazy nail art with that asap!

Pink (Tiger) Wednesday, and a Gelish Question.

Rawr!

heh

 I loves me some tiger (..or is it zebra?? ehh... let's just call it animal print)! 

Did a gradient with Finger Paints Outta Sight Orange and added Sinful Colors Creme Pink to the tips really messily and on an angle, it was pretty haphazard really, but I wanted it like that so it would look more like a gradient. Then topped it all with WnW Kaleidoscope, which IMHO blends the gradient and makes it a look smoother.

Still loving the new Bundle Monster plates, and I cannot wait till Fall so I can use the awesome Halloween ones! And by Fall I mean September. hah Needless to say I LOVE Halloween! I love Fall in general, but Halloween... yeah it's my favorite holiday.

I used Sinful Colors Black on Black with BM 2?? (this plate is currently MIA, and I may cry) *Edit:Just found it, along with about 20 other plates!!! This just made my day! Finally cleaning pays off!*

So my Gelish question is this.. I'm thinking I may buy this starter kit from Sally's seeing as how I would love to have my manis last 21(ish) days rather than 2 tops. The UV lamps they have there look pretty shit. I mean battery operated, really?! Anyone have any advice on where to find a decently prices UV lamp, or even on the Gelish system in general?? 

Thank you guys in advance for any help, you're all awesome! :)

So many nails, so little time. *Warning-Hella images*

Seeing as how I haven't posted in so long, I figured I'd make it for lost time with this massive post. Some of these nails I just did for fun, and one wheel I actually used for a party that I painted nails at. Are you ready for this? Take a deep breath!.....

And, go!

Complete with a lovely view of my couch and cell phone.

First up, we have some designs I hand painted, using nail polish and various nail art brushes and paint brushes.

1: Orly Ancient Jade
Flowers- Random white polish, Centers-OPI DS Passion
2: China Glaze Something Sweet
Tips-WnW Lavender Creme
3: WnW Lavender Creme
Tips-CG Electric Pineapple
Seeds/Highlights-Black & White Striping Polish
4: ????
Tips- Milani Fresh Teal; Random glitter polish

Leopard explosion!! <3333!

All done with the Konad M57, and Sinful Colors Black on Black (unless otherwise stated)
5: Orly Luxe
6: Finger Paints Don't Make a Scene, Stamp-???
7: Milani Freh Teal; Spots-Milani Cyberspace
8: WnW Lavender Creme; Spots- OPI DS Passion
9: Color Club The Lime Starts Here, Spots-Color Club Ultra-Astral
10: Estee Lauder Cool Lilac, Spots- Color Club Fashion Addict

NUDES!!! 
hehe
Color- Mabelline Express Finish Blushing Bride
Dare I say my favorite sheer nude?!
11: Random White Polish, Random holo gold glitter (that is MIA right now)
12: Stamp-Konad Special Polish in white
Konad M26
Pink Rhinestones

Some more hand-painted designs I did, I think I got the design from the Wah Nails site, which is great for inspiration!
Both done with a black polish and paint brushes.
13: Color Club You Got a Soul
14: Color Club I always Get my Man-darian

I <3 the shit out of neons, I really need to get more in before the Summer is over!

Both using Finger Paints Don't Make a Scene as a base. 

15: Used a pink feather I got from ACMoore, attached with a layer of T/C, trimmed the excess, and then did two layers of T/C on top. I love this but it's oh so very un-vegan of me.. I already could hear the crap I would get from my friends if I wore this.. I'll probably do it anyway. ha

16: Outlined heart with pink/purple striping polish, filled in heart with T/C and sprinkled glitter. Topped with two coats of T/c of course.

Attempt at sandwiching, all with a layer of color, topped with WnW Party of Five Glitters, then topped with the color again.

17: Oke Doke Hot Tomato

18: Fingers Paints lost the the name ha

19: NYC Luxury Lime Creme

20: City Color No Name pink jelly

21: City Color No Name

Experiments in Mattifying and Glitters

22:Milani Fresh Teal; Topped with WnW Party of Five Glitters; Matted with Esssie Matte About You

23: The Above without Matte

24: Wnw Ebony Hates Chris; Topped with Pure Ice Busted; Matted with Essie Matte About you

25: The above without matte

26: WnW Ebony Hates Chris; Topped with Pure Ice Spit Fire and Pure Ice Cheatin

The black base with Busted on top is so freakin' pretty, you can somewhat see the duo chrome effect here. When it's matted, it takes on a whole other look.

All using WnW Ebondy Hates Chris as a base
27: Topped with Pure Ice Spit Fire and Pure Ice Cheatin; Matted with Essie Matte About You
28: Topped with Pure Ice Spit Fire
29: Topped with Cheatin
30: Topped with WnW Party of Five Glitters
31: Topped with WnW Party of Five Glitters; Matted with Essie Matte About You

I LOVED all of these SOOO much! But then again I have a serious addiction to black polish and glitter in genral, so combine the two, and it's game over! I thought 27 looked especially awesome when matted, it reminds me of an gallaxy you'd see on the Hubbell telescope. I'm definitely going to be painting at least one of these on my nails ASAP.

Well that's it everyone, and boy was that rough.. my hands are seriously cramping from typing so much right now. hah Hope you all enjoyed it! 

It's Still Wednesday Somewhere!

So, it's not technically Wednesday in my time zone at the moment, but I still wanted to get my Pink Wednesday on.
Can we just ignore a few things about this post?
Namely:
-the fact that I have some serious tip wear
-how dry and gross my fingers are
-the lack of proper cleanup on my ring finger
-how sad my little nubbins pinky looks
I did this bad boy a while ago, forgot to take a picture immediately after I did it, but really loved it, was in a hurry (it was finals time) so I quickly snapped a few photos with my p&s. So please forgive all of the above, I just hope you guys like it and it inspires you on some level..

The Return of Hello Kitty!

Smelly polishes and neons, what could be more Summer than that?! I have to say, although these Color Club polishes are super streaky, and take at least 3 coats I still LOVE them! Maybe I'm just a sucker for  gimmick...

I love this stamp so much! I still  cannot believe I got it for free!

Some major fail.

..and a closeup of this awesome color combo. It reminds me of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

What I Used:
Color Club The Lime Starts Here
China Glaze Broken Hearted
Ring Finger- Color Club Yum Gum
Stamp- Sinful Colors Black on Black
Plate-M71

My Little Secret for Covering Tip Wear..

Ok, let's face it.. I'm a lazy person. I procrastinate pretty much everything. So if I can find a way to make my already chipping mani last a few days longer, I totally will. The best way I have found to do this is, obviously turn any mani into a french!

I upped the ante on yesterday's mani with a double lightning bolt (I literally cannot say "double" anything without thinking of this), using Sinful Colors' Secret Admirer. Once again inspired by Nailside!

This was from a few weeks ago, when I killed my pinky :(

I am thoroughly addicted to this lightning bolt tape technique! I have so many ideas for it. I wish I could come up with a genius scotch tape mani idea like this! I think I'm going to make a trip to Michael's today to pick up a set of scrapbooking scissors I've been wanting for ages, and let the genius flow out of me. hah

Mr. Skull again! hah

What I Used:
Color-Hot Topic "Tidal Wave"
Tips- Wet n' Wild Silvivor

         Sinful Colors Secret Admirer Stamp- Konad Special Polish White
 T/C- Seche Vite

Skulls and Lightning Bolts, make my day! :)

Yay! 50 followers!!! *Happy Dance*
...I think I may need to do a small giveaway now! It's not going to be much, maybe a few bottles of polish but I'll try to make it good regardless. :)

On to nails..
I absolutely love Nailside's blog and her lightning bolt nails are the best! Here's a link to her awesome tutorial here, check out the rest of her blog while you're there! For my first attempt, I of course had to include the skull on m28 from my MASH plates! Lightning bolts and skulls! <3!!!!

I added two little red gems from a rhinestone wheel I got from 88 Beauty with a little top coat, for some extra bling.

I cannot for the life of me stamp the single nail design straight. 

I love these so much, I think I need to do some more skull nail art ASAP! Freehand??..hmmm.. 

I have such a love/hate relationship with Hot Topic nail polishes. I love the satin finish and the colors that they come in. I hate the horrible thick streaky formula, and how it tends to "pop off" before the end of the first day of wear (anyone have any good solutions for this?!? I am having horrible problems with my polishes "popping off" in a sheet, like I'm wearing cheap stick-on falsies). Oh and the lack of names of their polishes..but this does give me a good opportunity to come up with creative, witty polish names, and pretend I own my own polish company. ha I have dubbed this one "Tidal Wave", but I guess I would call it a light aqua-ish blue.

With the background of my beautiful bathroom. ha

What I Used:
Color-Hot Topic "Tidal Wave"
Tips- Wet n' Wild Silvivor
Stamp- Konad Special Polish White
 T/C- Seche Vite

Beautiful Freakin' Day = Holo OD!

It's finally super beautiful out here, and not cloudy or grossly humid, so I'm breaking out some holo!
I just got Rated Holographic last weekend at my favorite dusty store, and I had to try it out. I also received the new Bundle Monster plates, so I also had to try out my favorites from the set. Which of course was skulls and tiger (??) stripes. I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, minus a small screw up stamping the skull.

Rawr!

I'm loving these new BM plates!.. even if I only stamped half the skull -_-

Yay! Look at all the holo-ness in these bad boys! 

I only have these two in the Kaleidoscope collection, and I have to say I am semi let down by Rated Holographic". It's definitely way more of a scattered holo, and you need a lot of direct light to really see any of the holo effect. Whereas He's Going In Circles, is beautiful! I can even see some of the linear holo effects in dim interior lighting. Meh, I guess it happens sometimes...

Ohhh Sidenote- I've been using Nail Tek 2 to try and strengthen and grow out my nail, cause they are breaking like bitches all the time lately! I've read some good reviews, and am really hoping this works. I'll keep you all informed...

What I Used:
Colors: China Glaze He's Going In Circles
            China Glaze Rated Holographic
Stamps: BM-223 (Stripes), Sinful Colors Black on Black
              BM-225 (skulls), Konad Special Polish White
           

*Ding dong* Delivery!!

Ok, I must admit there was no actual doorbell involved in this delivery but..Oh-em-gee (hehe)you guys, look what literally just arrived in my mailbox!!!

My brand spanking new set of MASH plates! Ok, so I'm not sure how good these are but from some of the reviews I read it seems they are comparable to Bundle Monster. When I was purchasing the new Bundle Monster set, Amazon recommended these to me...and well I'm sucker for those damn recommendations. Daaaamn you Amazon!!!... You know me so well. x_x 

I'm also a (bigger) sucker for a good deal, and 25 plates for $16.99 plus tax and shipping?!

Count me in! 

AND they are all pretty much dupes of Konad plates?!

No friggin way!!! Doubly count me in!!

..OK well not doubly, but you get the idea.

So far this bad boy looks pretty much the same as the Konad version of this plate I have. 

Eek! So excited for this plate!! Been lemming the Konad one forever! What more can you really need than skulls and unicorns?!!?

From just looking these over quickly, they seem pretty decent.

-Clean etching, which seems like it will stamp well. 

-Full size designs look as though they will cover my whole nail

MASH on the left, Konad on the right. (I really need a lightbox)

It's really funny, even the numbers are the same. .. and yeah my Konad plate is a disaster! shhh..
From a quick side by side comparision, it looks like my Konad plate is maybe etched a little deeper than the MASH plates, and that the design is a little cleaner. But for the price come 'on!

I'm clearly, way too overly excited about this at the moment. Hopefully I will be able to do a "Stamping Showdown" between MASH and Konad soon...ooo now I'm really excited for that too. haha

Hello Kitty Nails, finally!

So I finally decided to upload all the pictures on my camera, and wow there were a lot!!
Today I have the nails I did with my free Hello Kitty Plate from Born Pretty. I totally love Born Pretty! Their shipping does take a while, but their customer service is great and the fact that they have free giveaways all the time is amazing! I currently have some free Hello Kitty stickers en route to me somewhere. These aren't all that different from all the others I have seen, but I wanted to show them anyway. ^_^

Ignore the bottle of lotion in my hand hah

I filled in the bow with a hot pink nail art pen and added a cute pink rhinestone. I stamped a blue kitty on my thumb, but you couldn't really see it against the dark purple. 

My curtains are a little crazy hot pink

The rhinestones are from a wheel I bought from 88Beauty

I LOVE this Hello Kitty stamp soooo much, I almost can't believe I got it for free! It stamps so well, and is too frickin cute! ha I think that Born Pretty may still be giving away 10 free plates a day, so if you're lucky you may be able to still snag a free one. Plus they are always having a new free giveaway, so keep your eyes peeled!

What I used:
Color: China Glaze Virtual Violet
Tips: China Glaze Something Sweet
Stamp: Konad Special White
Nail Art: Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen in Hot Pink
T/C: Seche Vite