Back to School Post 2, Pencil Nails.

Hey guys! I'm sorry about the two day lack of posts, it's been a busy few days! I started back to school (CSU Fresno) on Thursday so I was slammed all day, then yesterday it took me way longer to get my errands done then I thought so there ya have it :P

I did want to share a little tidbit on why I've been busy other than my 2 year old, the old man, the dogs, and school haha, I've been busting my butt the past not quite two months to loose weight and get in shape, and the last 2 weeks I've been working with a trainer as well. Well as of yesterday I was down 24.4lbs in 7 weeks :D I'm super excited about it, and I'm starting to feel really good about my improvements! Now if only my nails would behave!

I had 3 breaks over the past two days (total on both hands) so I'm down to super nubs now! BUT have no fear, Rejuvacote is here!!! It arrived in my mail yesterday from Ninja Polish and because of results I've seen other friends and bloggers have had from it, I'm super excited!

Sorry about the babbling! Today's post is pencil inspired, A friend showed me a picture (and I cannot find the original) just like these and I love it! So I decided to do them too :) I started with the yellow which is Color Club Almost Famous, then the silver which is Finger Paints Easel Come Easel Go, and the pink which is Sinful Colors Timbleberry. I was just careful and did my brush strokes sideways instead of up and down. Each color is two coats.

What do you guys think?

Until next time! Happy painting!

Pinterest Inspiration Week, Day 5, Rainbow Candy Cane.

Hey guys! Here today with day 5 of Pinterest week, only two days left to go! Then my fall semester starts *dun dun dunnnnnn* today's pin is here, and the original posting is here. Now let me say that I thought this was just amazing and after seeing who is was done by it made sense! I couldn't believe I was trying to do one of her manis!

But alas I tried it anyway, even though I'm not that great with stamping *yet*. So for this one I started with two coats of white then added my fast dry top coat, which recently has been the Color Club one that comes in the box sets! It doesn't tend to shrink like SV does, which I love!

Using Bundle Monster plate BM-301, China Glaze Fly, China Glaze Entourage, China Glaze Sky High Top, Zoya Pippa, Essie Orange It's Obvious, and Julep Anne got to stamping. I just swiped the polish on half of the stamp with either color before scraping and stamping onto my nail. It didn't all come out perfect but I was pretty happy with how it came out.

I love this look for summer, it's fun, airy and light!

What do you guys think?

Until next time! Happy painting!

Pinterest Inspiration Week, Day 3, Neon Spun Sugar

Hey guys! Back with day 3! Today's inspiration came from this pin, and the original post is here. I had been wanting to try doing the spun sugar look for a few weeks now but just hadn't found the inspiration to do it, until I saw today's inspiration!

These two colors together are just fabulous! Neon yellow and bright blue! Now being as this was my first attempt at this technique it's not perfect, but I don't think it's horrible either haha! It was super messy, and for some reason the polish globbed (is that a word?) up on my nails quite a bit, but I still had a lot of fun doing them!

I did a base of white to start, followed by two coats of Sinful Colors Neon Melon on all but my ring finger, which is two coats of Sinful Colors Why Not. Then I went about the mess making! There is a good video here if you don't know how it works :)

After all was said and done I finished up with a coat of a matte finish, which is hard to tell because of the light reflecting off of my nails but you get the idea ;)

What do you guys think?

Until next time! Happy painting!

Fun With Striping Tape

Hey guys! Today I have something a little fun ;) I told you all in the last post that I wasn't done with what I called Rainbow Stained Glass Nails, I used some striping tape to create this look with inspiration to my childhood :)

Did any of you ever color paper with random colors, then color black over it so that you could scratch off the black and make designs? Well that's what I was going for with this look! I used one coat of Wet N Wild Ink Well over my already randomly colored nails and striping tape, pulled it all off and finished with a top coat.

It was pretty easy, since this was only my second time using striping tape I did have a bit of a problem with the tape itself, but other than that I was good to go! It's such a fun design that can be as random as you'd like it to be!

In the second there's a Crayola Color Wonder paper that my Monkey Butt (Brendan) colored on that has the same type of effect that the old school way of doing it does :D

What do you guys think?

Until next time! Happy painting!

Rainbow Colored Stained Glass

Hey guys! Here today with a new technique that Sarah from Chalkboard Nails posted just a few days back that she saw on the blog Gorgeois. They are both calling it abstract, but I think it looks like stained glass!

This is super super easy to do, it just takes a little bit of time since you do each color individually. All you do it randomly apply the colors with the nail polish brush, just make sure you aren't using too much of the polish at once and that's pretty much it!

Since I still had my colors out (I'm slacking!) from my rainbow water marble I just used some of the same ones. There will be more to this mani, but you'll have to wait until the next post for that ;)

The colors I used for this are OPI The Color Of Minnie, Loreal Boozy Brunch, Color Club Almost Famous, China Glaze Entourage, China Glaze Sky High Top and Julep Anne.

What do you guys think?

Until next time! Happy painting!

Rainbow Skittles Water Marble

Hey guys! Here today with a water marble :) One a bit different from what I have done before, but I'm sure you guys will like it ;)

For those of you that have been followers for a while you know I've done an all green, all purple, and all pink marbles, as well as a few with multiple colors. Well this one is a bit of all of the above! Rainbow!

I've wanted to do this for a while and I'm not really sure why it took me so long, but overall I was pretty pleased with the outcome. The yellow was gorgeous in the water, but I guess because it's a lighter color it wasn't as obvious on my nail. The reds I had a bit of trouble with too, and I hit the stick on my blue *boo!!* but like I said, overall I'm very happy with how it turned out.

What's funny too is when the old man saw it he said "it looks like Skittles!" he's a smart man ;)

So here is the long list of all the polishes I used.

RED
OPI The Color Of Minnie
Zoya Cyma
Wet N Wild Everybody Loves Redmond
Dr.'s Remedy Balance Brick

ORANGE
China Glaze Papaya Punch
OPI A Good Man-Darin Is Hard To Find
Loreal Boozy Brunch
Finger Paints Circus Peanuts

YELLOW
Color Club Almost Famous
Finger Paints Lemon Sour
Wet N Wild The Wonder Yellows
Zoya Pippa

GREEN
Sinful Colors Irish Green
Sinful Colors Innocent
China Glaze Gaga For Green
China Glaze Entourage

BLUE
China Glaze Sky High Top
China Glaze First Mate
China Glaze Custom Kicks
Sinful Colors Open Seas

What do you guys think?

Until next time! Happy painting!

Neon Summer Starfish!

Hey guys! Here today with some more neon nail art :) This design comes from Sarah over at Chalkboard Nails, she has the tutorial for it here.

This was much easier than it looked, or it least it was in my case :P But it was too adorable not to recreate it! I did decide to use the same color scheme as Sarah because let's face it, she's one of the masters at this kind of thing, so I couldn't go wrong, right?

So I started with a base of Kleancolor Funky Yellow, I did have to use 3 coats to get it so it wouldn't be streaky which is a bit of a pain, but the super bright highlighter neon yellow is worth it! For the starfish themselves I used Essie Tour De Finance, and the blue spot on the starfish are Funky Fingers 220 Volts.

Just like my last mani, the color isn't 100% accurate even though I tried as best I could. Anyone have advice on photographing neon polishes? The pink and blue are color accurate, but the yellow isn't.

What do you guys think? Have you tried any of Sarah's designs?

Until next time! Happy painting!

Neon Circus Nails!

Hey guys! Okay so have you all seen the preview for the Madagascar 3 movie? "Polka dot polka dot afro..." heh, anyway that's what today's nails remind me of! Hence the "circus nails" thing ;)

So this time the old man didn't actually choose what I was doing, he just picked the base pink. Not that I gave him much of an option, I just let him pick one of two of the pinks from the Color Club Poptastic collection ;)

My base color is 2 coats of Poptastic, I then used a nail dotting tool to dot all along the outside of my nail, like a framed mani. I used Almost Famous (yellow), Wham! Pow! (orange), Twiggie (green), Chelsea Girl (blue), and Pucci-Licious (purple).

I wasn't going for a circus look, I just wanted to use some really pretty neon colors, but that's what it looks like to me. I love it! Too bad my camera didn't, this was very hard to photograph, I guess because they are neon colors, I'm not really sure. All of the colors are just a bit more bright in person than they are in the pictures.

I btw cannot take credit for this idea, I saw it in one of my polish groups on FB, but as of now cannot remember who it was to credit them. If you know, post a comment! **Paula Mussi was the originial person who I saw do this :) **

What do you guys think?

Until next time! Happy painting!

The Mans Pick day 2

Hey guys! Here today again with another pick by the old man! I figured I'd give him a week or so to show me his creative side ;)

So for today's mani he picked OPI Just Spotted The Lizard as my base, and he picked Color Club Almost Famous for my stamp from BM-316. I don't know what it is with him and this plate and yellow, *shakes my head* men!

So I used two coats of the OPI, I do really like this polish. I've used it before here, it's got a beautiful shimmer in the sun too! So his idea was the moon image from this plate would look awesome in the yellow over the duo-chrome. Well it's not bad but it's not super noticeable either.  But seeing the super close up of the stamp, I really like the pattern in the moon!

So what do you guys think? He's not doing too bad for a guy so far ;)

Until next time! Happy painting!

The Mans Pick....Hmmm

Hey guys! I hope everyone had a great weekend :) I'm here today with the old mans pick of what I should do **scary music**. Since I just recently got the new Bundle Monster (set 2) plates I've been looking over them and trying to get a few ideas etc. As I said in the last post that I stamped with, I'm still not 100% with it, but I do enjoy it and I'll get better with time :)

So I had him look through the set of plates and he chose BM-316, and he wanted me to do the same thing I did with my giraffe/turtle (heh) mani, where I had every other nail the negative of the other. So then I asked what colors, he said a yellow base and a blue stamp, say what?? Yea I know right? You guys feel my pain ;) So I was like "fine" :P

I started with two coats of Finger Paints Lemon Sour, I'm not a huge yellow fan but I really love this one!! I then used Color Club Cold Metal (from the foiled collection) for the stamp. I did do the negative on one nail first, and it just didn't work, I was having a lot of trouble with it, so I just used the lines instead.

To my surprise it actually looks pretty good!! Other than the fact that I had a break on the left side of my middle finger, which isn't a surprise considering I just took acrylics off. My nails still feel weird btw :P

So I guess the old man didn't do such a bad job ;)

So what do you guys think? And btw are my pictures looking a bit better now?

Until next time! Happy painting!

Giraffe or Turtle?! You tell me!

Hey guys! Here today with what I consider a bit of a confusing post :P

I recently got the new set of Bundle Monster plates in the mail, so I've started to play with them a bit. I'm still a newb when it comes to stamping, but it really is fun. I guess it's just like everything else, practice makes perfect!

I had never done a giraffe print, because let's face it, it's not the easiest thing to do by hand, so when I saw there was a giraffe and the negative of it on BM-313 I was excited!

I started with two coats of Color Club Almost Famous, then I used Sinful Colors Mercury Rising (ugh I'm still mad at them!! and this was done before the whole stealing from our community thing) for the stamp (BM-313). So my idea was to do every other nail with negative image, that way it was the same but different all at the same time.

So why the name of the post? When I posted pics of this in one of the polish groups I'm in on FB a few of the girls said the ones with more brown look like a turtle shell! So of course once I read that I couldn't unsee it from my nails! But honestly it's true, it does! It got me thinking that I might actually do a turtle shell mani now with different colors :P

So what do you guys see?

Second picture isn't color accurate as I'm still having some issues with my camera **grr**

What do you guys think?

Until next time! Happy painting!

Summer Fun Challenge, Fun In The Sun!!!

Hey guys! Here today to regretfully say that it's the last day (or post) of the Neverland Nail Blog's summer nail art challenge *womp womp* BUT I'm super excited to see what everyone has done! Today's theme is fun in the sun, anything goes!

The last few times that I've been in WalMart I've seen this pair of shorts, booty shorts that I would never wear mind you (well if I was skinny yea haha) but still. The print on them is very much me. I'm not sure if you guys saw the post last time where I got my idea from a piece of clothing from WalMart but if not, you can see it here.

For this mani I used OPI The Color of Minnie, Essie Orange It's Obvious, Wet N Wild How I Met Your Magenta, and Color Club Almost Famous. I used a makeup sponge to individually sponge on the colors randomly on each nail, it took a while but I think it paid off! After the sponging was done I used Sinful Colors Black on Black and a small dotting tool to draw on all of my leopard spots, covered with a quick dry top coat and done! Clean up was a bit of a pain because I was like my 2 year old coloring outside of the lines, but it's all good ;)

I'm still experimenting with my lightbox, the light filters, backgrounds etc, so be patient! Hopefully I'll have something set in stone next week on what I like best. The dark color seems to work better than white, so I think I'll be off to a craft store for black card stock!

Here's a pic with flash to try and show you a bit more of the difference with the colors :)

And here are the shorts that inspired this fun mani!

What do you guys think?

Until next time! Happy painting!

Summer Fun Challenge, Hot Hot Hot!!!

Hey guys! Today I have post 4 of the Summer Fun nail art Challenge from Lindsey over at Neverland Nail Blog. I just like last time had an idea that I ended up changing because well, it would have been pretty much impossible since I don't have a mirror polish lol

So for today's challenge I did started with a base coat of white, and did a gradient from yellow to red, the red turned out more pink because of the white base, but I'm okay with that! Yellow I used Zoya Pippa, Orange I used Essie Orange It's Obvious, and the Red is OPI The Color of Minnie. I then used one coat of OPI DS Shimmer (my pointer ended up with a thicker coat) to make my hot gradient sparkle!

I then used ManGlaze Matte is Murder with a nail art brush to draw on the flames, and filled it in with a dotting tool, hence why it's kind of lumpy. I wanted this contrast because I thought it would be awesome! Holo flames and matte black mmmm.

What do you guys think?

Until next time! Happy painting!

FLOAM!!

Hey guys!! YES!! it's true, I'm alive! Almost done for the semester and I am ready for a break!! I've been keeping the same polish on my nails for days at a time, which isn't like me, because I'm so busy!

Quick updates, my contest ends in just a few days!! Follow the link and post your mani! I told all of you about my son having a seizure a while ago, and last week we finally got in to see a pediatric neurologist, he diagnosed Brendan with epilepsy and started him on meds to prevent him from having seizures. Since we started the meds last Friday he has been sleeping better which in my mind is a good sign! We got the call today, and now his EEG is scheduled for May 21, keep your fingers crossed we get some good news!

So onto my nails, sorry these pics aren't in my light box, the family room (where I have it) is all torn up and I'm too lazy to go down there right now, haha. Five hours of yardwork Sunday will do that to ya! So anyway as a belated birthday present from the lovely Amy at I'm Feeling Nail-Venturous she sent me the amazing Floam! Talk about an awesome polish. I honestly cannot figure out how to explain it, it's blue, green and yellow what I guess you could call matte glitters? Whatever it is is awesome! I'm sure some of you know of it :)

This is two coats after TWO full days of wear, and still perfect!! Clean up is a &8^?/ but well worth it!

What do you guys think?

Until next time! Happy painting!