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!