Return Of The Nail Art!

I've been pretty busy over the month of January! I've been keeping on track with my New Year's resolutions, filling some custom orders for nails, and helping my husband with his palm trees. In fact, Today I worked on the very plants used in the background photo for this blog and my website!

Who doesn't love a good matte look?

Good Morning and Happy Friday Eve!! I stayed up a little late last night doing this mani and my mani for "Fish Egg Friday". Starting tomorrow, the theme for all my nail art for the next week (if not longer) will be Bridal! What better way to start than with a caviar mani??

That all begins tomorrow, I have not forgotten today's Nail Art!! I have been dying to try a matte stamping design and I finally worked out one that I really really like!! I hope you do tooo.

I am just sooo in love with this look!! That's "Riveting" from China Glaze's Hunger Games Collection. It's second only to "Ruby Pumps" as my favorite polish. Adding the matte top coat was really what made this look for me.

You know I took more than a few pictures of this, so I'm going to show them all.

That's all I have for you lovelies today. Don't forge that this week is bridal week and spread the word to those friends looking to get married this summer! ;)

Trying new things

Happy Friday everyone!! I hope your weekend is off to a great start! I know mine certainly is. I'm very excited to show you today's nail art! I really had trouble sleeping the other night because I was just that excited about how these came out.

I had been meaning to try my hand incorporating acrylic paint in my nail art and I finally got the paint to give it a shot.  I'm still very much in the spring vibe so I started with flowers!

I'm so very happy with how this ultimately turned out. In my mind, I still need to work on forming the flower petals and leaves, but even with the not quite perfection, I'm totally digging this! I'm also loving it that my camera managed to catch a bit of the holo for the accent bits. It's a very strong non-linear holo and that the picture came out very much how it did in person brings me much joy.

This one is in honor of the opening of "Hunger Games" tonight. I did a gradient using my hunger games polish and white and orange acrylic paints to do the flower. The flower is supposed to represent the flowers that Katniss covers her fellow tribute and ally in during the story. I love this one as well and used a gold holo to accent the orange. The holo is not as strong in person as it is for the one above - but I didn't want to obscure anything by usin such a strong holo. 

I hope you enjoyed today's trials and any feedback you have about these designs would be awesome!! Suggestions are always great too ;) 

Hunger Games!

That's right, I said it. Today I have both a Hunger Games Mani and a Hunger Games Pedi to show you. I decided to show a pedi because I actually do some Nail Art on a Pedi too, and it matches when possible. Sometimes a client will go a little wilder on their toes because they are not allowed to be so bold with their fingers for work. Even on those occasions when I am at liberty to "match" like this, I still usually alter the pedi design a little bit to suit toes. See for yourself and tell me what you think?

Certainly not the best shot of my toes ever...but you can clearly see there's a minor difference between the Pedi and the Mani below.

The Colors I used on the Mani are (cuticle to free-edge) "Stone Cold", "Harvest Moon", "Riveting" and finally, "Electrify". I toned it down for the toes and did "Stone Cold"," Riveting" and on the big toe I added a thin bit of "Electrify". They clearly go together but they aren't exactly the same.

Just as an aside, I went back to my Gelish Sunset Mani and stamped a new design on it. Of course, you know I took pix to show and share! The pedi, however, *that* I kept. I genuinely like it and I thought it would be different from my usual plain shade of polish. 

What are your plans for the Hunger Games? Going to see it opening night? Are you reading the books now or have you read them already? 

Gradients on my mind

A Groovy Good Morning to everyone!! I know I talked about posting my "Hunger Games Mani" today but I did the Mani and after looking at the pictures, I'm just unhappy with how it came out. I'll be taking another shot at it really soon, so don't think I forgot about it. I mean, how can I? I have all those amazing polishes just calling my name.

I do however have a design for you today that includes one of the Hunger Games polishes, Stone Cold. I've been almost obsessed with doing gradients lately and I'm just letting that impulse run rampant since it's something I do well. Now, on to the pictures!

I originally stamped the flower on, but even with such a dark color, it came out very faint looking and the bottom 2/3 of the flower was barely visible. So, I just took a fine tipped brush and the actual polish color and darkened it. It doesn't show well in the photos, but I made a center dot from a gold holo polish by Color Club's Art Club. I really liked this color combo and I thought about this specific gradient when I was in Sally's buying the polish. I realized the silver foil I was looking to get for stamping would look awesome with it - that put it at the top of my "to-do-NOW" list.  It vaguely reminds me of the book cover for Hunger Games, at least as far as the color scheme goes. One more pictures because I really love the colors.

I love that colors are bold but not LOUD. I personally love to wear loud colors on my fingers but not everyone does, so I try to come up with designs that fall into that. What do you think? Is it bold but quietly so?