Plaid?

Morning everyone. Hope everyone is having a great Saturday so far. Only four more days til Christmas, isn't that crazy. I feel like time is going by so fast these days. Anyone have any plans for New Years, or your New Years Mani? In the mean time I've had this color combination in my head for a while and finally got around to doing something with it. 

  I'm not really sure what this pattern is, some sort of plaid striping maybe? I can always count on striping tape to really come out clean and interesting. 

I'm pleased with the color combination. The silver gives these guys a festive air even though this light peach is pretty off season right now. 

The shade of orange I used in person is more on the melon side then straight orange but the lighting on these pictures don't really portray that. As an after thought I used the tiny holographic disks to add some additional details to this pretty straight forward design. What do you think? 

Base: Essie Loop Hole

Accent: Revlon Peachy

Cut Outs

I found these craft hole punches at Micheal's for super cheap and was excited to see the shapes they made where perfect nail size. By the way what's this shape called? I'm sure it's got a name it's just not coming to me right now. Anyways I used this particular shape to make a negative in some painters tape and got to work. 

 My nails are getting a bit long, I think it's time for a serious date with my nail file. Side note I asked Santa for a Cult Nails glass file I'll let you know if he come through ;) 

None of these pictures are in very good lighting but the accent color I used is a really lovely dark sparkly purple that pairs very nicely with the gold.

So all in all a very easy manicure but a tad time consuming since tape can always be a little finicky. Interestingly enough The Beauty Department posted this article today about the new Metallic markers that Sharpie had recently come out with and it just so happened that I had recently purchased those myself. Since  I had yet to use them I decided to go ahead and bust them out.  Of course, since I was using a stencil the markers didn't really get a chance to shine but they still worked out quite nice. The down side to using markers over polish is that, for me at least, the marker tended to smear when apply a top coat. This was addressed in the article but they seemed to have no trouble so maybe I'll have to try again. 

Base: Essie Butler Please & Anise Seductive

Some Fan Fun

Well I'm taking a quick break from playing The Walking Dead Xbox game to come post these bad boys so I'll make it snappy. Everyone has one of these right? Well then you can do these:

After letting your base coat dry dip your fan brush in any accent color and gently swipe it across your nails. THE END. Yea super simple but very pretty. I've seen girls use multiple color as an accent it look pretty great but tonight I just decided to keep it simple. I then traced a few of the line with my Art of Silver Milane   nail striper for some added glitz. I finally got my hands on some Cult Nails Wicked Fast and boy am I loving it. I'm still a Seche girl since it's so easy to come by but wow talk about a smooth finish. 

Base : Cult Nails Disciplined 

Accent: American Apparel Lopez Canyon 

Is this Love?

Quick post tonight guys so I'll just get right to the goods. I'm a little upset with China Glaze Sunset Sail which I used as my base because the day after doing this manicure I noticed some really terrible tip wear which you'll notice below. I love the soft sherbety (< not a word) color and it's a nice contrast to the accent colors I used but that much wear after one day is no bueano. Here's a look a fell in love with from Dressed Up Nails that I watered down a bit.

The colors used are;

Thumb- American Apparel Lopez Canyon

Pointer- Love & Beauty Mint

Middle- OPI Jade is the New Black

Ring- Anise Is this Love?

Pinky- NYC Sidewalkers 

Oh and I accidently uploaded a picture of my dog so I left it, mostly because I love her :)

Liebster Award

Something pretty sweet happened to me before I went on my super long brake that included me doing things like :getting my a** kicked with a 19 hour school semester, moving/decorating my beautiful new home and getting the cutest dog in the WORLD [in my opinion of course]. I got nominated for the Liebster Award which is a fun way for new bloggers to share some info about themselves. Thanks to the Katy at Platypus Nails for the shout out and sorry this is so ridiculously late. 

1. If you were put under a curse and turned into a nail polish, what kind of polish do you think you would be? Some really shimmery matte polish I think. I like to think I'm a little edgy and what can be edgier then a really beautiful matte mani?

2. What's the strangest thing that's ever happened to you? Well a few friends and I went camping for the weekend a few years back and while taking a hike with my boyfriend we heard some really crazy noises and a lot of thrashing around. Of course we had to investigate and it turned out to me a huge cow stuck in a ditch! We ran back told our friend what we found and sent someone for the park rangers. Like two hours nine people and a crane later we had successfully rescued Milley who turned out to be one of the Happy California Milk cows that you may have seen in a few commercials. Apparently she had escaped from her ranch that was a couple miles away from our camp site. I know I have pictures of all of us somewhere I promise if I find them I will post!

3. What's on your Christmas list this year? Ha nail polish of course I'm pretty hooked on anything Cult Nails right now so I've asked for a few colors I've been eyeing and a glass nail file.  Ooo I also want Sims 3 Seasons. Yea I'm pretty obsessed with that game, but I blame my boyfriend for always buying them for me. :) 

4. Which books have you read recently, and were they any good? I just finished World War Z and it was AMAZING! If you are even a tad interested in seeing this movie you MUST read the book. I am also revisiting The Hobbit (which is probably my all time favorite book) since I can barely wait til that movie comes out next week!!  

5. What's your preferred method of creating nail art (stamping, tape, dotting tools, etc)?  Tape is the way to go for me. Yes it can be time consuming but if you can just get it lay down in that exact spot BOOM magic. 

6. What was your worst subject at school? BLAH math! I can't even talk about it with out terrible memories washing over me lol but that's all in the past now and boy am I glad to leave it there!

7. If you were given an all-expenses paid holiday to your dream destination, where would you go? New Zealand, I'd really like to go zorbing down their grassy slopes. (Zorbing is when they push you down a hill in a giant plastic ball that has water in it, sound fun huh?!)

8. Do you play any musical instruments? Yes I play the drums all though I refuse to be the house on the block that has the annoying garage band so I've more or less retired my sticks.

9. What color do you have most of in your nail polish collection? Blue surprisingly, my favorite color is purple so you'd think I would say that but somehow it's definitely blue. 

10. Who you do look up to/admire? My mom even though she drives me crazy she is the strongest smartest craziest lady I know and every day I become just a little more like her lol.

11. What's your number one pet peeve? Nail biting. Seriously people need to cut that out! 

ManGlaze!

So a while back I saw a post on Facebook of the cutest nails design and please forgive me because I can not seem to find the link! If you are reading this and you happen to have seen that post send me the link so I can give the girl some much due credit. I immediately fell in love with this nail art design because I love matte polish and it was the perfect design to wear for my five year anniversary with the best boyfriend ever! 

I started with a base coat of ManGlaze Mayo, then using my striping tape to block 

off the tips I topped it all with a coat of Matte is Murder also by ManGlaze. Then as if this wasn't sexy enough I used my BM-02 plate to add a couple of kisses in Essie Loophole. 

Like I said, this mani was born to be worn on a hot date so keep it in mind for your next night out!

Polish Rack Attack!

HI GUYS! So I defiantly fell off the face of the Earth for a long while and I feel terrible about that. With school, work, extracurricular activities,and of course buying and moving into our new house my own boyfriend jokes he forgets my name. On the bright side this serious hiatus has aloud me to do several things one of which is build my very own NAIL POLISH RACK!!! I guess it is more of a shelf but rack rhymed with attack and shelf rhymes with... nothing? Anyways I like many of you have discovered that polish rack/shelves are freaken expensive. Not only are they expensive they are small, at least by my standards. So being the poor yet savy college student (with a mortgage payment) I am, I hit the web looking for some DIY shelves that would do the trick. I came across this post from Dulce Candy Fashion&Beauty blog. The video breaks down what you will need and exactly what to do with it.  Here's my finished project.

Since I added fabric to my backing, I was not able to use Gorilla Glue to fortify the individual shelves. Instead I  drilled tiny nails on both sides into the shelves for support. 

The fabric I used was purchased from Joan's and glued in place with a hot glue gun. I also purchased my paint from Lowe's after realizing that I'm not so good with a spray can. My shelf is a bit larger then the one shown in Dulce's video but that's the beauty of making your own shelf you can make it as big or small as you'd like. So what do you think, is this something you would try to do?

31 Day Challenge-Day 10: Gradient

Don't get me wrong I love a good gradient just as much as the next girl but I wasn't feeling particularly inspired by any color combo so I did something different. I decided to re-do a glitter gradient I'd tried a while back. What do you think?

This glittery gradient consisted of four different glitters: Wet n Wild Kaleidoscope, OPI Crown me Already, China Glaze Fairy Dust, and Orly Shinning Star. For the base I used one very thin coat of OPI Bubble Bath, and finally to help build up the continuity Essie Good as Gold for the tips. All in all I do think it's a very pretty combination, but maybe it's a tad too much for little old me.

Here's the sched: 

31 Day Challenge- Day 11: Polka Dots

Alright alright, after over a week of craziness I've finally been able to settle down and get to blogging. After my short hiatus, I was glad to come back in time for today's challenge. To complement this ninety plus degree weather I grabbed this color combo and got to work.  

Yes that's is my cat. 

As you may or may not be able to tell from the pictures I used ULTA's Concrete Evidence which is probably my favorite grey for two reasons. Firstly, it is SO creamy and easy to apply and secondly, it was free and really how can you beat that?  The frosty green I used is Love & Beauty Light Green. Now I really must go study wish me luck ladies. 

Here's what's coming up next with a little luck I just may be around for it!

31 Day Challenge- Day 7: Black & White

Super quick post today guys. This is what I came up with for day 7.

I finally broke my unused cycle and went with OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls and China Glaze Liquid Leather.

See you tomorrow:

31 Day Challenge- Day 6: Violet

Quick post today guys. Today's color was violet and what can I say about purple shades that haven't been said before? It's a great color and the one I used today is no exception. Let me just say, that I shy away from free had simple because I'm not so great at it. Could I get better with practice sure, but with SO many other nail techniques out there I rarely have to bother. Anyways this is what I came up with.

It's kind of chain-link fence-ish. Right? For the base I used Pure Ice Purple Reign and the striping was done with Folk Art acrylic pain in 660 Metallic Pure Gold and Apple Barrel 20762 Pure Silver. 

Black and white is next so get ready: 

31 Day Challenge- Day 5: Blue

The challenge for today is blue and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to try out this plastic bag or cellophane wrap mani I've seen so much of. These guys came out looking a lot nicer then I thought they would which is nice, and they were a very easy to do. After painting your base coat and allowing it to dry, you will blob on a few drips of you accent color and smear it around with a piece of plastic like a sandwich baggie or cellophane. 

The base coat is Essie's Bobbing for Baubles, and the accent colors are Mint by Love and Beauty and Essie's Good as Gold. What do you guys think? Have you tried this technique before?

Here's what's coming up next: 

31 Day Challenge- Day 4: Green

I decided to post these guys a day early since I posted so late for the Day 3 challenge. I'm loving this ruffian. I wasn't sure how a green on green "reverse ruffian" would look but the shades are so different that I rather like it. 

Here I'm using OPI Jade is the New Black for the base, and OPI Stranger Tides for the oval design. I planed on adding little four leaf clovers this the next day but since I'm in the middle of ripping out my kitchen counters, these guys didn't last long enough to bother. Anyone every do any kitchen remodeling? Boy it is tiring stuff! 

Blue Wednesday is coming up so stick around:

31 Day Challenge- Day 3: Yellow

The thing about this challenge that I will even come to love or hate is that when you have not choice but to crank out a manicure you may have to do something you wouldn't normally wear. Enter in these yellow daisy nails. Don't get me wrong I like flowers just as much as the next girl but until today I've yet to wear them on my nails. That being said, I happen to think these guys are dang cute. 

The colors I used are Revlon Electric for the flower petals, OPI Wooden Shoe Like to Know? for the flower Centers, and Love and Beauty Blue/Mulit for the base. So far I've only used untried polishes for this challenge, so I'll let you know if that continues are not. 

Next is green so stay tuned: