Cold as Ice but filled with dreams of Butterflies and Flowers

Wooo!! It's cold here today!! I know some of ya'll aren't nearly this cold but to me it's FREEZING!! I live down here in the Everglades because of the subtropical climate....now where is my subtropical climate??

I haven't done much nail art over the last few months...and honestly, for awhile there I was walking around with BARE NAILS!! oh the horror!! Seriously. Right now I have zero color on my nail but I do at least have a clear coat of Gelish to protect my nails. They got so raggedy I couldn't take it anymore. I just cut them down to nubs and put the clear coat on so I could grow them out again.

I thought I would go ahead and post a few of the pictures of Nail Art I've done when I did it.

World Diabetes Day Mani

Good afternoon! Today is World Diabetes Day today and I had no idea until I saw this post posted by Maria at Cult Nails on facebook this morning. I spent quite a bit of time last night cruising pinterest to get some ideas and inspiration for my next manicure but I was still not feeling it. After seeing that post this morning - I knew I HAD to do it!! I have type II diabetes and many of my family and friends have both type I and type II, so it seemed the perfect thing to do today! I loved my last mani so much, it seemed hard to find something else to follow that up with.

Now, let's get to the pictures! I'm going to start with my indoor shots.

Here's a few more outdoors. I made more of an effort to catch the holo effects here. One day I will master catching the effect. 

I think I did ok catching the effect on the macro shot but you be the judge as to which is your favorite. To do this one, I started with Seche Vite clear coat, then I added Orly's Snow Cone. Then I added a thin layer of Hits' Poseidon. Poseidon doesn't have a strong color - it builds up with multiple coats but I didn't want that many coats of polish here. Then I sponged on a gradient of Hits' Apolo. Finally I stamped on a flower and then used Hits' Hefesta to create the center dot of the flower.  Finally I finished this mani with a top coat of Seche vite. 

How has diabetes affected your life and your family??  

Blue Ombre Gradient

Good Morning fellow nail art fans! I'm back to my obsession with blue and this time I'm really diving in to the color! I have blue ombre gradients that go from light blue to an indigo blue! Of course, I included glitter and shimmer galore because I can't help myself.

This is another one I tried the other night but changed it just a little bit because deep down I was unhappy with the original concept. I originally had the colors going from white to blue to dark blue to indigo and I think that was just too many colors and my nails aren't long enough to give a proper graduation to the color.

I genuinely love love love this gradient and I have a few sundresses this would go fabulous with come summer time!! I hope you enjoyed today's post and Thanks for reading!!

Blue Foil French

Good Morning and Happy Friday. No #FishEggMani today, I'm still a lot burned out on it after wearing it for five whole days. Instead, I'm bringing you a twist on the french mani that I did last night but the pictures didn't come out. It turns out that it's just as well they didn't. I came up with some tweaks to the original thought I had by alternating the colors.

I'm still in love with Orly's "Snowcone" and I was dying to try it as a french. Originally, my thought had been to just do the blue with the foil at the end, separated by the blue glitter stripe. Tonight I had the thought that it would be so much cooler to alternate the foil and the blue.

I'm definitely pleased with how much better these came out than my original design. I've long been a fan of adding color to the old fashioned "french" and dressing it up a bit. Apparently that's really trending these days and that makes me a little giddy to know I've been way ahead of this trend. 

I hope you enjoyed today's fun twist on an old favorite and thank you for reading!

Let me try it one more time!

Good Morning and Happy Hump Day! It's Wednesday and today I'm a little sad. It's my last day being the primary teacher at my daughter's preschool. After this, I'm only scheduled to be "hall monitor/time out" and then the school year will be done. My babygirl is growing up and I'll miss spending my mornings with the other kids too.

Since I'm a little bummed, I decided to post more blue squishy goodness to cheer me up! Yay! Yah, I really am that easy to cheer up.

I stamped this one, but in hindsight, I probably would have done better to use my dotting tool. I just wanted to try out that plate and see how it looked. 

I just can't stress enough how awesome this looks and I have gotten many compliments on these. Ok, one more just because I can and it's awesome.

I hope you enjoyed my blue squishy love fest this morning and thank you for reading!!

Monday Morning Funky Blue

Good Morning. You might have noticed that I didn't make a post yesterday. I was horribly sick over the weekend and just not able to do my nails at all. I'm feeling so much better now and I ran off this am to get to it. Is it sad that I meant to do just one or two but did a whole lot more?? It's also rainy today and will be all week, so I'm very much in a "blue" mood. I'm also totally in love with Orly's "Snowcone" this week too. 

On that note, today's nail art is still my "Gelly Sandwich" with a funky blue pattern stamped over it. 

I love how opaque this blue is here. It definitely gives some serious dimension to the overall design.

And here's one more picture because I really am loving it.

That's all for today. Sorry for missing a day and thank you for reading!! Tomorrow I'll have a more prom themed post for you!!

Easter Designs

Good Morning and a Happy Easter to those that celebrate it!

I have two designs for you today! One was inspired by one of the other mom's at my daughter's school and the other is a culmination of all the things I've done this week. First I'm going to start with the one inspired by Kelly. She's a deeply religious christian gal and a real sweetheart. Her family celebrates the Easter season as a religious holiday only. That is what really inspired me to do this mani.

That one is for you Kelly!!

My second one is the one I did for myself to wear today and tomorrow at the school Easter Egg Hunt. I decided to do a little of everything with this one. I loved the color polishes I chose for the Kelly inspired design so I went ahead and did that again for this one too.

My pre-schooler really likes this one and I did it more for her than for me.  I hope you enjoyed today's designs and enjoy the holiday (for either religion) or if that's not your thing - you just have a great day!!

Wallpaper Butterflies

Good Morning and a groovy Tuesday to you!  This morning I have another attempt at a nail art I saw on pinterest. I really enjoyed doing this one. I have a fab striping brush that is perfect for doing straight stripes. It doesn't work well for anything but stripes but today that's an awesome brush to have! Now on to the pictures!

One more just because I can.

This was relatively simple to do. I painted the nails white, then using a striping brush, I painted stripes on each nail in different colors. Using a stamping plate, I then stamped on a few butterflies. Can you see which one has an upside down butterfly? I did do that on purpose, really I did. 

You'll notice that I'm back to using lone nails rather than my own. I just couldn't bear to give up my Tiger manicure just yet. Hardly anyone has even seen it, so I'm going to wear it a few more days!! 

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!!