All about Plaid

PLAID!!! Here is another simple nail design:



I just did two out of the five nails here but you can paint all five of your nails. I used a red polish as a base color (Love red polish...like LOVE). Then using a pale purple i made a stripe toward the side of the nail not straight down the middle. Then using black nail polish I made two thin stripes on the side of the purple and then across the nail. You can use any color combination you like with this design.




Hope you guys enjoy!

The Painters Dream

I am an avid acrylic painter, and I often use my body (mainly my hands and feet) to help in the painting process instead of just using a brush and/or a palette knife. Because of this, I am constantly getting paint stuck in my cuticles and staining my nails to the point where not even nail polish or paint thinner can remove the stains or the paint in my cuticles (and I cannot cut them since I keep them so well maintained for the most part). As such, I find that covering up the issue with white nail polish and a little design always helps, even when the paint shows through (acrylic paint can be very nasty to deal with!). This past weekend I was doing a rather dark and dismal painting, so I needed to use a great deal of black and charcoal grey, resulting in particularly gruesome stains on my nails. Eek!

This look was obtained by applying one coat of Revlon's White on White (since my nails are stained, no base coat is needed), followed by a vertical stripe of Essie's Aruba Blue, four splotches of Nail Hardener's Jessica's Wedding Bells, and a rightward diagonal stripe of Nail Hardener's Chris's Green Belt. This was all topped off with two coats of Sally Hansen Maximum Growth plus Quick Dry Top Coat.

Happy painting to those who also paint, and I hope that my little trick helps you too!

Afterlife Architecture

A little while ago, I went with my family to the Museum of Native Americans (I'm not quite sure if that's actually what it's called, but that's the sort of information and art that they have on exhibit at all times), and decided to take some photos of the interior architecture. One of those photos really inspired me last week to try something funky yet dark on my nails.

Here is the photo:

I wanted to capture a bit of the architecture of this building on my nails in more of an abstract way, so I came up with the idea that you see above. This look was obtained by first applying one coat of NK's Calcium Gel, followed by a single coat of NK's Metallic Noir. The right upper corner of the nails were swiped with one coat of Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Xtremewear's Wet Cement, while the bottoms of the nails were swiped with one coat of Nail Hardener's Jessica's Wedding Bells. The finishing touches were put on by horizontal quick strokes made with Revlon's White on White along the upper left region of the nail and a vertical stripe of NK's Metallic Noir between the white strokes and the grey triangle on each nail. This was all followed with two coats of Sally Hansen Maximum Growth plus Quick Dry Top Coat.

I hope that you all like the photograph, and the look it inspired! Have a good week everyone!

Sparkle Baby Shine

Here is another fun yet classic spin on the French manicure, which I really like for every-day since it has a bit of spunk and sparkle added to it. The plain French manicure seems like more of a business look, but that may just be my opinion. This sort of a fun look is so simple yet unique, because you really can do anything with it. You can use any sort of rhinestones and any number of them in any placement to get your own look. Those are my favorite designs really, ones that you can play around with a bunch of times without doing too much different.

To get this look, first apply one coat of NK's Nail Moisturizer (base coat). If you need to, use French tip guards with a rounded style so that you get a more natural-looking French manicure. Use Sinful Colors Professional's Snow Me White for the tips (I used two coats), and NK's French Rose for the full nail (I used two coats, but you can use only one coat, depending on how pale you want your nail to look). After all of this has dried, I applied two silver rhinestones and one pink rhinestones (all circular) to my ring finger nails in the shape of a small triangle. I do not remember the exact brand of the rhinestones or the glue I used, but I will tell you all of that in a later post. As many of our other looks (and as I mentioned earlier), this is a very flexible look. We go for a more simplistic look just to show you all, but sometimes we do go a little crazy with patterns of rhinestones and such, especially when our nails are super long and we're going to a party or something of the sort. To finish off the look, though, apply two coats of NK's Blue Diamond Top Coat for a super shiny finish.

Happy nail-polishing everyone!

Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky

This look is a really nice option for you if you have a wedding or a formal occasion to go to and you don't want to do the usual solid color nails or the typical French manicure. I especially like it because it's really simple to expand this look to a pedicure too. The pale pink makes this a very chic look, and the silhouette-type flower gives it a bit of a French ballerina feel to it. I don't know if anyone else gets that sort of feeling to this look, or if it's just me, but I think it's a cute sentiment.

To get this look, first apply one coat of NK's Calcium Gel, followed by two coats of Essie's Neo-Whimsical. In this design, only one finger was used for the flower, but you can alter this to have more than one finger to have the flower or put multiple flowers. It's a really versatile design actually. For the flower, I used Sinful Colors Professional's Black On Black and a very thin brush to do a multi-stroke flower, which means that the flower is not made out of linked strokes; most of the strokes are separated by a hairline space just to get a sort of flower silhouette rather than an actual super detailed flower. After the flower dries, apply two layers of NK's Blue Diamond Top Coat.

Have a good night everyone!

Colors of the Sun

I don't know about all of you, but we seem to have a bit of trouble finding a nail polish brand that makes super durable polishes that can really withstand the elements and working with our hands. No matter how expensive the polish or how many coats we apply, we seem to really struggle with keeping the polishes and the designs on our fingernails for longer than three days without chipping or cracking occurring. One of us spends a great deal of time in the Caribbean though, and decided to show the other two of us her stock of Del Sol nail polishes. She told us that they're really good for summertime because they can withstand the coarseness of the sand and all of the roughness of the beach. This has become one of our most favorite nail polish brands now, for two reasons: the colors are super durable, and you actually get two colors in one tube!

This was a very easy look to get since the focus is not on any sort of design; the focus is on the amazing color-changing properties of the polish (in the sun only). To start, a layer of Nail Tek was applied, followed by two coats of Del Sol's Reckless (originally metallic white, and then turns metallic pink in the sunlight). This is finished with two coats of NK's Blue Diamond Top Coat. And that's it! It's just that simple to get this awesome look that's so perfect for the summer!

I hope you all are having a spectacular summer! And I hope that you will go to the Caribbean and head over to Del Sol to check out their ridiculously cool products!

Tip the Black Spot

This past weekend I went to Long Island for my cousin's wedding. It is the last of that series (three in total) of cousins, meaning that is the last wedding (hopefully) of my three cousins from one of my aunts. I was really nervous about my nails, because I didn't want to do the usual French manicure, since I knew that basically everyone would have that (or red nails), and I needed something that would still match my dress and everything else I was wearing for the weekend. I tend to veer towards black for a lot of family occasions, since it's so classic and chic. I decided to put a fun spin on the typical French manicure and spice things up further by adding some gold glitter to match my white and gold jewelry. My dress was black with white details so that was perfect in total.

To get this look, I applied a layer of NK's Calcium Gel, followed by using French tip guards to get perfect tips, which were two layers of NK's Metallic Noir. I removed the tip guards and applied two horizontal layers of N.Y.C. Glossies' 215. After letting all of that dry really well, I applied one layer of Wet 'n' Wild's 435E and two layers of Sally Hansen Maximum Growth plus Quick Dry Top Coat. The drying time for this look was a bit extensive since there were so many layers involved. It's surely not something I would do if I was strapped for time!

All in all though, it was a beautiful weekend, with a fabulous wedding and gorgeous attire and nails worn by all! I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and am ecstatic for the newlywed couple. I wish them all the best and a happy congratulations!

Puma Punku - The Door of the Puma

Last weekend I had to go to Ohio State University for a couple of tours of the school. I really enjoyed myself, despite the fact that I'm either a city girl or an island girl, depending on a bunch of factors. Ohio is so different from NYC; I know that that's truly an understatement, even though I was in Columbus, Ohio, the capital and a major city in the state. It was a decent place; I can't really imagine myself living there in the city or anything, but I could see myself going to that school. It was a really new experience for me to even visit a school. I was only there for like two days, so I guess that's the closest I'll get to a real business trip for a while. It was so exhausting! I wanted to do a nail design that showed some skill and spunk, without being too pompous, so I decided to match my nails to the shoes that I was going to wear the day of my tours. These pumas are from last year's spring/summer collection, if I remember properly. I got them for like $8 though haha! I love doing that!

This look was really simple since I only really had to focus on the puma and the type on the two nails on each hand. After applying one coat of NK's Calcium Gel, I used two coats of Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Xtremewear's Twisted Pink. On my pinky, ring, and pointer fingers I used a thin layer of Nail Hardener's Jessica's Wedding Bells to do the rotated diagonal swipes along the centers of the nails. I used Revlon's White on White to do the puma and the type with a very fine brush that I got at an art store. This was all followed with two coats of Sally Hansen Maximum Growth plus Nourishing Nail Color Quick Dry Top Coat.

I hope you all like this design and are inspired to do interesting things with other logos too! Happy college shopping to those students who are spending much of their summer doing just so!