12DoC Dec 9: Snowmen

Well, I got this one done, guys. I only have 1 more final left, so hopefully I'll get caught back up real soon!

Take Two Day 7: Black and White

I did it again. I reserved a post so that I could have the date match up with the day of the challenge. Hey, I like it when things are orderly! Anyway, after a long, long night of doing and redoing my nails, I finally came up with a simple, yet elegant design that I'm really quite fond of. By the time it came time to take pictures, my cuticles were screaming, so I moisturized them as I slept. :P Anyway, I hope you like them as much as I do! 

12DoC Dec 7: Candy Cane

I was so excited for this challenge! I've always wanted to make candy cane nails because they look like so much fun.

As much as I love free-handing my designs, I really wanted the crisp, clean lines to pop in this design, and they couldn't do that if they were sloppily free-handed on. Anyway, I thought it would be cool to show you guys just how much striping tape I used to get these stripes. It looks like chaos!

Take Two Day 6: Animal Print

I'm back on track! So the deal with last night was that I was preparing for my speech class today. All went well, thankfully!

So for today's animal print, I couldn't decide what to do. I typed "animals" into Google and found this gem. They looked so cool that I had to try and recreate them!

Take Two Day 5: Cartoon Theme

This was such a hard design to come up with. I had so many ideas in mind! All the ones I wanted to do have people with peach colored skin. I don't have peach colored nail polish.. So I was stuck at a stand still. Then I thought of maybe doing Pixar's Minions, but I didn't have the right yellow for it. Finally, I decided that I would do some Domos!

I always picture them saying," Om nom nom." But that's just me... Haha.

Take Two Day 2: Flag Nails

Today, I chose a flag that's not as close to my heart as I would like it to be. For those of you who don't know, I'm a redhead, so you'd think I'm hard core Irish. Well, I am Irish, but my family doesn't celebrate anything to do with the Irish culture. I've been taking it upon myself lately to learn a bit more about their culture and history lately, but I haven't gotten very far yet. I do have an unbelievable craving for Irish soda bread, though. :P

I kept this design real simple. I didn't want to try anything too fancy. I'm really happy with how well it turned out. I was afraid that the colors I chose wouldn't look very well together.

Let it Snow Matte Sandwich Manicure

It's snowing!! Usually that's a good thing, but for New Jersey, this is pretty devastating since we were just hit by a hurricane. Anyway, I'm trying to look on the bright side. I thought I'd set the mood today with a little "frosty" delight.

This is my first ever attempt at a sandwich manicure, and to make it even more exciting, my first time using matte nail polish! You have no idea how excited I was to whip out my "shiny" new matte top coat.

TIHC Oct 5: Water Marble

Today's challenge is water marble! I was a little nervous to do this since I've never tried it before. I was right to be nervous. I redid my nails 4 times and I still didn't get anywhere near what I wanted. At least it kind of looks cool..

Alright, it looks really cool. It just wasn't how I pictured it.

The nail polish I kept using wasn't exactly great for water marbling. It kept separating and let a lot of air pockets in. It still did towards the end, but I had given up by that point and let the bubbles stay.

The look I was going for was to make spider webs out of the marble. You can kind of see it because of the shapes I made, but it didn't turn out well at all according to what was in my head. The two closest are my middle and pointer finger.

For this design, I used Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush for the base, and then used Essie Marshmallow (Fitting, right? :P), and Sinful Colors Secret Admirer.

Maybe I'll have better luck with my next attempt.

You can find a list of all the challenges here.

TIHC Oct 1: Horror Movie

So, I'm already late with this design, but I finished it before October 5th's. Whew! It took me so long because I really did not want to do this one. At least it was first. Now it's out of the way!

Anyway, this is my least favorite design ever. It's probably because my heart wasn't into it. I don't really watch scary movies, so even choosing one was difficult. I ended up going with the first scary movie I ever saw, which was "The Ring." I didn't depict everything on my nails, like the little girl. I'm bad enough at drawing people, so I skipped over her. Apparently I'm just as bad at flies.

I keep laughing every time I see the fly. I'm usually okay with my work, but the fly is so bad that it's funny.

However, I really like how I wrote "the Ring." When I googled a picture of the title, it was written creepily. I think I at least pulled that off well.

Up above is the ring. Yes, I literally took my brush and swirled it around in polish that was drying. I should have picked a less opaque white.

For this manicure, I used Maybelline Color Show Onyx Rush, Essie Marshmallow, China Glaze Long Kiss, China Glaze Oxygen, Piggy Polish 6 Impossible Things, Sinful Colors Aquamarine, and Rimmel London Steel Grey (Which isn't grey, so I don't know why it's named that...)

And you can find a list of all the challenges here.

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 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.

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.

Independence Day Nails

Hey, my name is Kaitlyn, and welcome to my new nail blog! Let me start off by saying Happy Belated Independence Day. What better way to kick off this blog than to post holiday related nail designs? I don't know about you, but holidays are my favorite excuse for going all out with my designs. This look was inspired by a picture I came across the other day. I just tweaked it and made it simpler. I hope you all had a happy and safe holiday. More posts will be coming soon! 

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