Dandelion nail art inspired by a tattoo.

Well hello there, and happy Monday! Hope your weekend was good, it was sort of rainy at the start here in NY but got better.

Today starts my much needed two week vacation from my overly frustrating and stressful job! I can't tell you how excited I am! Right now as you are reading this I am currently preparing to leave for Florida tomorrow morning! I will be gone for the whole week and plus some. I do have blog post planned for every other day until I get back. Plus I will be doing updates on my nails because I am going to be testing out some Sally Hansen Salon Effects  Real Nail Polish Strips! I am planning on putting them on today so the updates will start tomorrow!

I decided to wear the Sally Hansen Nail Strips because it would be much easier then trying to decide what type of design or stamp to do, only to have it ruined a few days into my trip. Since I am only bringing a carry on with me I don't plan on packing any polish. Also it will be a great way to see if these really work, I've used them in the past but never got to keep them on long enough to see if they lasted the 10 day claim on the package!

So on to today's post. Today my nail art is inspired by my best friends tattoo she got about a month ago. My best friend who I also consider my sister is a new mom to a gorgeous 9 month old baby girl and she was going through a rough patch and getting her tattoo was a way of getting through it. I won't go into any details about since its no ones business, but the tattoo itself is gorgeous.  It is a dandelion that has its seeds blowing away in the wind and turning into birds. It also has a saying on it but I'm more interested in the dandelion turning into birds. I too am actually considering getting a similar tattoo this year, no saying just the picture.

So since my amazing blogger friend Alaina over at The Little Canvas just happened to do a dandelion nail art post, I used her tutorial to get my dandelions perfect. If you haven't seen her picture by picture tutorials of some of the nail art she does you need to click the link above to check her out!


So I started with a base color from Colormates called Stormy Weather. Its the perfect blue-grey polish that has some shimmer to it, it was the perfect background for these dandelions.

Once the base was dry using my thin striper brush and Wet 'n' Wild's Black Crème I followed Alaina's steps to achieve the perfect dandelion stem, then with another nail art brush one that was more flat and shaped to a point I dipped that into Pure Ice Superstar a  white polish and dabbed off the excess just like Alaina says to and created my fluff ball dandelion and the seeds  that were drifting away.

Now to add in my own twist I went back to my black thin striper and dipped the tip into the black and created a few bird outlines for where the seeds turned into them and they were free to fly away!. Once they were all dry I added my top coat and I was done.

Please excuse the pink hue on my middle finger and on the end of my index, the polish I had on before was a very bright pink that stained a little.

Each picture has been taken in natural (cloudy) light with no flash. Out of all the free hand nail art I have done which  is a quite a bit this is my favorite of all time! I seriously love this manicure so much I kept this on all weekend until today! This is also the first free hand that I have done that I didn't mess up using my non-dominant hand! My right actually looks like my left its unbelievable!

I hope you guys enjoyed this post and this nail art! If you want to recreate blowing dandelions don't forget to check out Alaina's blog which is linked up towards the beginning of the post!

So until I have an update on the nail strips or Wednesday when the next scheduled post goes live,
have a great day!
<3 Nicole

OPI Pink Friday, With a bit of stamping and some explaining.

Hello! Happy Friday! I hope that your weekend will be sunnier than mine! The forecast is for it to rain all day today and into tomorrow morning. Sunday will be a nice day but I have to work that night so I won't be doing to much :(

So I feel like a Starburst, you know how in the Starburst candy commercials they call them a contradiction... yeah that's how I feel lately. I know I said I was going to do the Summer Challenge... I don't think that its going to pan out :( and I know I said I would continue with the Sprinkles collection from Nails Inc, I have two more of those to swatch still. So I feel like a contradiction saying one thing then doing another...

I don't like contradictions or people who present them... but I guess I could say its being  hypocritical right? I hate that too. Anyway I'm sorry and I thank all of you for who take time to read my blog and dealing with my randomness. I think that's just how it might go for a little while until I get myself organized better.

Okay so enough of the pity party for one in the paragraphs above, I DO have some exciting news to announce! My Nails. My Polish has hit 100 followers on Twitter!!! When I saw that last night I got super excited! I told my mom about my little blogs land mark and she just went.."ohhh". Its okay she doesn't follow the whole social media thing and how important it is to bloggers like us! Anyway though a HUGE thank you to everyone who follows!

Now if I could get 100 likes on my Facebook Page??? Could we see that happen? Maybe even 10 likes as a more realistic goal right now. My little page only has two likes :(

Okay okay so on to the polish, that's why you all came here for right?

So today I am going to show you a fun bright manicure that I hope will melt away the rainy blues.

I started with 3 coats of OPI Pink Friday from the Nicki Minaj Collection. I have the mini version of this polish but I might have to get the Nicole by OPI version from the Kardashian collection.

I then stamped some pretty flowers  using Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme And Pure Ice Superstar from the Salon Express Stamping Kit. I seriously need to get either the Shany 2012 plates on Amazon or The Bundle Monster 2012 plates or the Cheeky ones, Which do you prefer??

Pink Friday is such a pretty baby pink color. The first coat was a little streaky and if your not careful you definitely get brush drag, but that could also be from the tiny little OPI brush. Upon Second coat I had opacity but it was still a little streaky so I went for a third. I am definitely going to say that Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme and Superstar from Pure Ice are my go to drug store stamping polishes. I have never had a problem with Black Creme and this was the first time using Superstar for a white stamp.

So that's it for this Friday post. I hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget to hit the BECOME A FAN button at the top of the blog to like my Facebook page!

Thanks so much and talk to you soon!
Nicole

Neon Flowers!

Hello! How are all of you lovely readers doing today?

Can't really complain to much on my end, just the same old stuff that's worth complaining, work and the weather. Customers at work lately have been down right mean. If you follow me on Twitter you may have heard me rant about it. The weather has been so hot! It has been in the 90s for the last week and the humidity just makes it all the more worse.

So today I decided to do some happy nails, well at least ones that will make me happy! I had in mind to do a tutorial for baby shower nails since my BFF/sister is having her shower in less than a month. I just haven't decided what exactly I want to actually do. The first thing I KNOW I needed to do was to practice my nail art. I haven't done any real nail art since Easter. I was inspired by Alaina from The Little Canvas and her Under The Sea Nail art, which you can see if you click her blog name. Alaina is AMAZING at nail art, and I can only hope to get as good as she is! While your at her blog you should see these awesome Gnome Nails she did too!

I wanted to do something simple and easy, so I began with two coats of Pure Ice's Superstar. Superstar is a fantastic creme white polish, I actually bought a back up of it yesterday at Walmart. It is super smooth and two coats creates the perfect starting point. I highly recommend it if you have access to the Pure Ice brand.

This is two coats and no top coat, also taken with the flash on my camera.

So hunting around for my box of toothpicks, which have mysteriously disappeared. I finally found a bobby pin that wasn't useful anymore and bent it to make a duel ended dotting tool. First I took China Glaze's Hang Ten Toes, and created the flower petals on all five nails, in random areas. Then I took Foie Gras from the Hunger Games Collection and dotted that in the center. Finally I took Orange You Hot and made a second set of flowers in the space left over and then again creating the center with Foie Gras.

All of the photos below were taken in natural sunlight.

Hopefully this manicure will jump start my brain into doing more nail art! If my lovely readers have any idea what I should do for my baby shower manicure please leave a comment below! Hope you enjoyed this!

By the way My Nails. My Polish has a Facebook Page now! It would mean so much to me if you would click the "Become a Fan" Button up at the top right hand corner of my blog! And if your not following me on twitter there is a button for that too!

Until next time!
Nicole.