Let's Hear it for the Bridesmaid

Good Morning and Happy Friday Eve! Today will be the last post of my bridal/prom series and this mani is aimed at both bridesmaids and prom goers alike. I chose a bold red color as my base, in fact, I chose my all time favorite glittery red, China Glaze's "Ruby Pumps". Let's get right to it shall we? I'm always giddy over anything I do including this polish.

I stamped a white floral design over the red, attached rhinestones to the middle of the two main flowers and silver microbeads as accents.

I definitely had this in mind more for prom than for a bridesmaid - but at my last wedding, my bridesmaids were dressed in red. Yah, don't ask. It can happen, I know I'm not the only weirdo who picks that color. lol

I hope you liked today's nail art designs and my little bridal/prom series. I'll be posting more of these here and there but they will be more versatile and I'll label those that would work for those type of events as well as everyday wear. Also, tomorrow will be another "FishEggFriday" and I'll be reporting in on the durability of this week's "FishEgg Mani" and we'll see just how well I did at making this style "ready to wear" using just regular polish and including before and after photos!  Thanks for reading!!

Pink Argyle!

Good Morning and a wonderful Friday Eve to you!! So I had previously joined pinterest, and one of the boards I created was of nail art I like and want to try out! Today's Nail Art is one that just love for it's simplicity and girly factor. I think I could have executed this one better, but I'm definitely not unhappy with the overall result and my execution will get better through repetition but you be the judge. I bring you Pink Argyle!

You will probably see this one again when I get it worked out so it looks much crisper and cleaner. The pink is OPI's "Pedal Faster Suzi" from the Holland Collection Mini Set. I'm not even going to mention how many coats it took to hide my sunset mani undernearth. I just love the overall look of this one. It's definitely the glitter accent and the jewels that give it the girly vibe that I fell in love with.

I may or may not have a post for you Friday, I'm starting a "fix-up" project on my work space and the initial portion of that requires that I move everything out to do what I need to do. So I might get that part completed today and everything back in and be able to do some more nail art, but then again, I may not get to the Nail Art. I will return as soon as humanly possible tho!!

Fairy in the Flowers

Happy Hump Day everyone!  The week is half over. Today's post is going to be really quick because this morning I'm covering for one of the other mom's at my youngest daughter's preschool. Today's mani is not especially difficult or very challenging, however, it's the one I'm currently wearing and loving.

That's my Gelish sunset gradient as a base "color" for some stamping I did. I was looking to do the fairy since I have her on two different plates and it's just cute.The fairy really only fits on my middle finger and I felt that I just needed something else. So I stamped the flowers on the rest of my fingers, deliberately changing the alignment a little bit on each finger just to keep it from being repetitive and give the impression that she's in a field of flowers.

That's going to be it for today! See you all tomorrow!!

Swimming with the Seahorses

Another late night for me last night. Yesterday, I picked up the new "Hunger Games" polishes that I wanted. I also picked up a few other polishes that have been at the top of my list for a long time now...with all the new polishes I had to try some out.  It was very tempting to make today's post my "Hunger Games Mani" but I'm too tired to sort through my pix and watermark them :( So, it'll have to be tomorrow.

For today, I did an underwater scene using blue gradients and stamps. The gradient was pretty straightforward, then I just stamped bubbles and a few seahorses and yay!!

And just one more because I want to.

I also did a Gelish version of the sunset gradient last night. In fact, that's what took so long. You might notice that in all pictures one of the corners of my index finger broke off.  This meant removing my current Gelish Mani and doing a new one. I decided to go ahead and do another Gelish gradient, the technique is similar to polish but it's a little different and I'll do a blog post about that this week. So the Nail Arts this week will either be over a "sunset gradient" or over dark nail polish colors. I hope you enjoyed today's Nail Art!!

More Bling!

Happy Hump Day everyone!! Today is going to be an exciting day for me. I'm teaching my daughter's pre-school class. Just before the Holidays I enrolled my youngest daughter in a cooperative preschool. All the mothers get together, decide on the curriculum, and take turns teaching the class and running the school.  I love the school and everything about it. I am very much looking forward to class today and enjoy working with the little kids.

I had originally planned to do a nail art that was inspired by the candy "skittles" by using my dotting tool but I am still just so unhappy with it that I've decided to show you something else today. I did these back in the fall - and I still very much like them both. First up is one I call "15 Minutes til Midnight". I chose that name because I set the time on the "nail clock" to that and it can either refer to the "Doomsday Clock" or as a New Year's Eve Mani - depending on when you're wearing it.

The next one is a Fendi Logo design that I did in Red and Hot Pink little faux sticker gems I got from Michael's. For obvious reasons, this one can only be done on a longer nail, but it's still very fun!!

It's pretty obvious from the picture that I used a fake nail for this one because my own nails weren't nearly long enough to do this with. I was just getting started taking pictures of my work on my own hands when I did this photo, so you can still clearly see that I only put the fake nail on ONE nail. It's such a fun design and I really should do another one properly. I have such a bucket list of nail arts I want to re-do and a equally long list of new ones I'd like to try!!  More than enough to keep me busy that's for sure!! 

 I hope you enjoyed one of my first bling'd designs and also one of my most popular! Have a Groovy Beautiful Day!

Beaded Palm Tree

Happy Monday Blogland!! I've got a fresh pot of coffee on and it's time to get to today's Nail Art.

As I have previously threatened, I found some designs to create with my new microbead set. In fact, I went and bought another set to go with the first...just for the variety of colors. For today's Nail Art I only did the beaded design on one accent nail but this could easily be worn on all five fingers. Most of my pictures here are done in my spare time and these days I just don't have as much of that as I'd like. But who does?

On to the Design!

Here's another shot of it, I am still having a lot of difficulties working out getting that Gelish base color to come out "true" in the photos. 

In case you didn't get to yesterday's post...the base color here is Gelish's "Taffeta". It's one of the two colors that comes in their basic kit, and it's the color I prefer to use on a basic french manicure.

What do you think? Would you even attempt something like this if you had the time?

Late Nite Art

Ok, now I'm back to the Nail Art photos. You'll have to forgive me, I attempted to do a Gelish fill in last night after 1 am. Soo very sloppy. :( However, I felt compelled to do some nail art tonight anyway.  Tonight, I'll be doing two nail arts!

The first one is a fishnet stamping design and I took the time to add beads to an accent nail. While editing the pictures, I realized that I probably should have done that with all the nails instead of just the one. It came out better than I originally thought.

The second one is drastically different. I saw on IvanaThinksPink's blog where she did stamping with more than one color. I couldn't resist trying out her technique and woohooo! It came out purty darn nice!!

I am less than happy with both of these - it is starting to show that I have not done nail art in almost a week.

However, I was able to finally make some purchases of Nail Supplies. Most of the things I purchased were basic supplies I was running seriously low on. Monomer and Nail Powder. At this moment I do not offer acrylic services to clients in their home (and right now I'm only doing in-home/in-office appts) I do plan to either offer that or return to the salon full time in the future. That being said, I have only been a nail tech for a few years now, so I need to practice regularly so that I am not rusty and sloppy when I begin doing this service for clients.  My big purchase was a new LED UV lamp. I did buy the higher end model but the difference in price was not so much that it made sense to me to buy the other one and go back later for that one. 

Today I went and got a new haircut.  I'm completely in love with it!! 

Fun and Fruity

Good Morning! I hope you're Thursday is off to a wonderful start. So far, mine is going pretty great. Today's Nail Art is just a little cherries as an accent nail and red over pink french design. I really liked this design so much that I did the french on the rest of my nails and wore it. I really love the color combo - It's my one and only Essie polish left.

I copied the design off my stamping plate but it is not actually stamped. I had stamped it but I thought that it was simple enough that I could do it free-hand - so I did! I actually think this came out better doing it free-hand than if I had stamped it. 

I did pick up some micro-beads yesterday at Michael's but I'm really going to just fool around with them to figure out how to best make use of them and do so in a timely way. While it's awesome that I can sit at home for hours and fuss over a design, I am still trying to "sell" the design and more specifically it's application by me. Which means it has to be done in some kind of timely way or it's just not worth it.  It took me time to get the hang of working with tiny tiny rhinestones, so I'm sure I will figure something out for the beads. I'm just that determined! I did a little hands-on experimenting with it last night and I'll be cruising through YouTube this afternoon to see what I can find. Definitely expect to see designs in the future making use of them!