Day 7: Apple Nails

Here it is, the most well known fruit of fall! I saved this one for last on purpose. Apples are delicious (especially in pie). I should have made apple pie nails, but I'll save that for another day.

There are soo many apple nail designs online, and they're all the same. I didn't want to go with flow this time around. What's the fun in that? I figured one way to spice apples up would be to add polka dots... again! I told you I like polka dots. Haha.

My favorite part about this manicure has to be the colors. They're so bright and cheery (and delicious). I almost wish I could be wear this design when I go apple picking. That won't be for a couple weeks, though.  :(

Granny Smith apples are my favorite, so I decided to give that apple the bigger nail, aka my thumb. I really love how well it turned out. I think I did a better job on the green apple than the red apple.

For this manicure, I used China Glaze Oxygen as the base. Usually I never specify how many coats of nail polish I use. That's because I always use 2 coats, no matter which color it is. I felt like I should mention that for the China Glaze Oxygen, I had to use 3 coats because the color was so sheer. The first 2 coats I did were thin, but the last was thick because I was getting impatient. If you use this color, you may need to use 4 coats.

 For polka dots, apples, stems, and leaves, I used China Glaze High Roller, China Glaze Entourage, China Glaze Electric Pineapple, Piggy Polish Lemonade 5¢, Zoya Meg, and China Glaze Mahogany Magic.

Day 6: Grape Nails

Whew! I'm relieved that I made it before midnight. I promise I didn't forget. I wasn't supposed to work tonight but ended up filling in for one of my coworkers. I had enough time to paint and take pictures of my nails before work, but not enough time to upload them and make my post.

Anyway, welcome to fall! I've been doing mainly summer fruits because, let's face it, there aren't a lot of fall fruits. I'm glad I finally made it to them, though.

I absolutely love how I chose to do my nails, but I did make one obvious mistake. I didn't think about which way I was going to photograph them, so I painted the grapes upside down. Oops... That's what happens when I'm in a rush, I guess.

At least they look good sideways, right? :P

My favorite nail is the accent nail on my ring finger. Grapes are nice, but I am pretty obsessed with polka dots. I think that finger turned out pretty awesome.

The idea for these nails came from all the different colors of grapes there are. I think I covered all of them!

For this manicure, I used China Glaze Gothic Lolita for the base of 4 of my nails and some of the dots on my accent finger. I used China Glaze Oxygen for the ring finger base color and the "white" grapes. The rest of the colors are China Glaze High Roller, China Glaze Urban-Night, China Glaze Entourage, and China Glaze Mahogany Magic. The stems of the grapes were originally brown, but the color didn't show up too well against the purple, so I used Zoya Meg to really make it pop.

Day 5: Peach Mango Smoothie

You're probably wondering why I named my post after 2 fruits and then called it a smoothie. Well, today I had peaches planned. I had a really cool idea to try, but I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. Gradient peaches! Well, when I finished my nails, I asked my brothers to guess what fruit I had done. They both guessed mangoes.  I was up in arms. They were peaches! There wasn't any green in them!!! Then after looking at them for a while, I realized that they could pass as both peaches AND mangoes. I guess that's cool. Then I called it a smoothie because of the way all of the colors are swirled together. Yum. :)

Peaches are my absolute favorite fruit. I can't get enough of them! That may be why I love this design so much.

When I looked on Google for inspiration, I quickly found out that no one has ever made peach (or mango) nails. What a shame! Peaches definitely deserve some time in the spotlight. Mangoes too, I guess.

You're probably wondering how I even made these peaches. I'll be honest, I took the difficult route. Instead of searching for a round sponge of some sort, I took a makeup sponge and tried to cut a shape as close to a circle as I could. That only took forever, and it wasn't even circular.

I decided that I would attempt to transfer the terrible circle shape to my nails and see where I could go from there. So I sponged it on and it looked really weird. I did another layer and tried to overlap a bunch of the colors, but it still looked pretty bad. I took one of my brushes and painted the light blue all around to make the edges sharper. That did the trick. I then added some stems and leaves and voilá! Peach mango things were born.. Haha.

 When I figure out a better way to make these nails, I will be sure to make a tutorial for them. That would be a lot of fun to do, and I certainly wouldn't mind having delicious peaches on my fingers again. And hopefully I'll be able to get better pictures of my nails. I'll admit that these pictures aren't the best. I'm trying with what I have, though. I was going to take some more pictures when I woke up, but it was dark and rainy, so hopefully next time.

The colors I used for this were:
Base
China Glaze Aquadelic

Peaches
Piggy Polish 6 Impossible Things
Piggy Polish Damsel in This Dress
Piggy Polish Lemonade 5 ¢

China Glaze Dress Me Up
China Glaze Riveting
China Glaze Long Kiss

Stem
China Glaze Mahogany Magic

Leaves
China Glaze Entourage
(I really didn't like how light the green turned out to be, so I added some
Zoya Meg right on top. It turned out perfect!)

Day 4: Orange Nails

Orange you glad I didn't do bananas today? Hahaha. Anyway....

Today's design isn't as complicated or detailed as the others have been, but I still really like it. I think the simplicity of it makes the colors pop more. I realized was I was putting my watermark on the photos that I could have added a bit more detail to the peel (like white dots for texture), but oh well. They're still nice in my opinion!

I didn't have much inspiration, so I decided to look at a few designs. I picked up a few ideas, but didn't really recreate any. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do with an orange wedge.. However, I did notice that no one had taken advantage of using the shape of the base of their nails for the wedge! I found that shocking, so I went with that.

This is my second attempt at this manicure. This first try turned out horrible, and even that is an  understatement. I decided to completely start over and it made such a difference. I really like how well it came together.

I also really like how Halloween-y the colors are. It's really a nice introduction to fall. :)

For his manicure, I used Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush and Piggy Polish Damsel in This Dress as the base colors. Then for the rest of the orange, I used Piggy Polish Lemonade 5 ¢.

On a side note: I've been using my nail polish so much that I have almost all of the colors memorized. Haha.

Day 3: Strawberry Nails

I was pretty excited to do today's fruit. I LOVE strawberries. They define summer for me. I just can't get enough of them.

So, I thought I'd keep the design simple. I felt that going over the top would ruin the effect I was going for, which was making my nails look good enough to eat. I think I achieved that status with this fruit.

The only problem I ran into this time around was how vibrant my red was. When I was trying to clean up the excess polish from around my nails, it turned my fingers red. It was a mess! Thankfully I got most of it. There are stubborn spots still slightly visible, though.

I tried to get fancy by outlining the leafy part on my ring finger with gold. The green polish I used has so many sparkles in it that you can barely tell. I probably should have gone for a darker green. I still love how it turned out, nonetheless.

 For today's mani, I used China Glaze High Roller as the base. Then I used Zoya Meg, Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush, and Orly Instant Artist 24K Glitter.

Day 2: Kiwi Nails

I originally had a different fruit in mind for today, but I decided to bump tomorrow's design to today, and today's to tomorrow. I hope that makes sense! Anyway, the reason why I decided to do kiwis today is because I did so horribly the first time around that when I redid my nails, I felt so accomplished that I HAD to post them today.

Aren't they just wonderful? :D

Kiwis are one of my favorite fruits, so of course I was excited to do this design. Since I got it right this time, I took the pictures before my nails even dried. They still aren't dry! I'm typing this right now with wet nails.

I'd like to give credit to cutepolish for the idea. She made a wonderful YouTube tutorial that you can find here. She explains everything so nicely. I suggest you go check her out!

For this nail design, I used Zoya Meg for the base, and Piggy Polish 6 Impossible Things and Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush for the details. The first time I did this, I started off using a different white. It turned out to be so sheer that I ended up covering it with my trusty Piggy Polish. Whatever you do, don't use Essie Marshmallow. It's a recipe for disaster!

Like always, I painted my nails before I went to bed. I checked to make sure my fast drying top coat was dry. I spent half an hour getting ready for school for the next day, so you'd think that would be just enough drying time so that it wouldn't smear, right? Wrong. I woke up to a lovely mess this morning. Luckily, it was on the hand that I don't photograph. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time in the morning to fix it. I ended up going to school with that mess. Eeek!

The pictures above and below were what my first attempt looked like. Notice how big the white part and the black dots are compared to my second attempt? I definitely made them too big. I just can't believe I walked around campus with them. Also, I decided to use a different color to make the design pop. Now that I look back, I'm not really a fan of the color as a kiwi. I'll save that orange for Halloween.

Day 1: Watermelon Nails

When I was deciding which fruits to choose for the week long challenge, the very first one that popped into my mind was watermelon, of course!

When I was rummaging through my nail polish collection, I realized that I didn't own any bright pink. I'm not a fan of reds, pinks, oranges, and yellows, so I own mostly cool colors. 

Now, instead of running to the nearest store to buy a bright pink, I remembered that my coworker gave me a few bottles of nail polish that her daughter never used anymore. One was a vibrant, but sheer pink. I decided I would see if layering it over one of my lighter pink shades would suffice, and it did! Look at how gorgeous and bright that pink is.

I'm happy with the way this design turned out. My inner perfectionist is screaming that my lines aren't perfectly straight, though. I know I'll improve in time, but for now, this is the best I can do.

If you take a look at the seeds in the watermelon, it almost seems like they're smiling at you...

For this design, I used China Glaze Dance Baby and Revlon Just Tinted Desire for the base. Then I used Zoya Meg, Sinful Colors Show Me The Way, Piggy Polish 6 Impossible Things, and Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush.

Fruit Week!

This past week, I was trying to come up with a way to increase my number of posts in a short amount of time. I realize that I could post something every day, but I usually like to keep my designs on for a few days. That also gives me time to come up with a new design. I finally decided to do a themed week. And what theme did I choose? Fruit!

Since today (September 22nd) is the first day of Autumn, I thought it would be a cool idea to start off with summer fruits and end with fall fruits. I haven't seen nearly enough fruit themed nails, so I'm hoping to encourage a bit of creativity here! I'll even be designing nails for some fruit that haven't ever been featured on the internet before, so this should be interesting.

Wish me luck! I'll be starting this hunger- inducing journey on Monday.

-Kaitlyn

Rainbow Stripes

So at 11pm on Thursday night, I decided that I HAD to change up my nail design. By that time, I was completely exhausted and wanted to go to bed, but I figured sleep could wait. I really wanted to do a design with all the colors of the rainbow. The thought of making thin and neat stripes out of the 8 colors I had in mind made me groan. Then a thought hit me. Why do I have to make my nails neat? I can paint them messily if I want to! And so I did. Here is the result..

 I think they didn't turn out too bad. The idea was to make them messy, so I kind of dig the disheveled look.

I saw my cousins today at a family reunion/ baby shower and the first thing one of them said was," Niiiice, gay pride nails!" That wasn't what I was going for, but sure, why not. Plain jane rainbows are boring anyway. ;)

The day before I did this design, I became absolutely fed up with my nail polish remover. I decided it was time to buy 100% pure acetone. It's the best product I have ever used in my life, and I would swear by it if it weren't for one small, yet obvious problem. If you take a look at my pinky finger in the picture below, you'll notice how dry and wrinkled my skin is. That is from the acetone. Unfortunately, I didn't notice until 15 minutes ago when I was putting my watermark on my pictures. Looks like I'll need to buy lots of hand lotion.

For the record, my skin is longer that dry. Thank goodness for Vaseline!

Here are all of the colors I used in order from the base of my nail to the tip:

Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush
China Glaze Gothic Lolita
Sinful Colors Aquamarine
China Glaze Aquadelic
China Glaze Entourage
Piggy Polish Lemonade 5 ¢

Piggy Polish Damsel in This Dress
China Glaze High Roller

And for the base, I used Piggy Polish 6 Impossible Things

Whew. That was a lot of polish.

Gradient Stripes

I created this look just for Sarah's nail art contest. Since my favorite colors are purple, blue, and green, I decided to go with warm colors to make it a bit more challenging. It took me a while to come up with this design. I wanted to go with something simple, so I ended up painting different designs on every nail until I found one that I liked. I absolutely love the way this mani turned out. I've had several comments that this design would be perfect for Christmas. Looks like I'm a few months too early.. Oops!

 For this mani, I used China Glaze Long Kiss and Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush for the base colors. Then I used Orly Instant Artist 24K Glitter for the rest of the design.

Red and Black Gradient Nails

Chalkboard Nails is having a nail art contest ending next week, and I am going to enter in it! I am still trying to come up with a design, however. I was playing around with base colors last night and ended up choosing red and black. I am absolutely in love with how well they turned out, so I put off coming up with a design just so I could take pictures of it. Aren't they lovely and dramatic?!

For this design, I used China Glaze Long Kiss and Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush.