Christmas Mani Round up!

Hello!!!

Hope all of you lovely readers had an amazing Christmas! I know that I did! I am currently typing up this post from brand new desktop computer!!! I asked for one from Santa because I knew that I needed one. I had been using my mom's netbook for a while since she doesn't use it all that often but then it would get frustrating with the tiny mouse pad and very small screen. I would use my dad's computer but he would get mad about the pictures I had to upload to for the blog and how much space it took up even though I keep most of them on a USB drive.

So in todays post I am going to show you the two Christmas manicures that I wore the week of Christmas and on Christmas itself.

This holiday season I got back into nail art and had even purchased a new small set of brushes from Wal-Mart. They are the ones that one can use to paint on miniatures and dolls. My sister saw this and asked if I had a professional brush set and I told her no, so for Christmas she got me the Cheeky Beauty 26 piece professional brush set! I am absolutely in love with it! It even comes with two teeny tiny dotting tools.

Anyway these manicures were not made with those brushes, future ones will. The ones I bought at Wal-Mart. Ok so the first manicure is one that I wish I could of kept on all week long but it chipped way too much and I had to take it off.

The first design was  inspired by the YouTuber CutePolish. I watched several of her Christmas tutorials from this year and last year and went at it. I did a mix of nail art, I had Santa's coat on one finger, elves on other and six reindeer, including Rudolph!

If you want to see her tutorials for all these awesome designs for next Christmas then go to her YouTube page and check them out!

The polishes that I used to create these fun designs:

Santa's Coat: China Glaze Cranberry Splash, Sinful Colors Black Striper, Pure Ice Superstar, and Sally Hansen Golden-I.

The Elves: China Glaze Jolly Holly, Sinful Colors Black Striper and Sally Hansen Golden-I.

The Reindeer: China Glaze Foie Gras, OPI Crepe Susizette, Pure Ice Superstar and Sinful Black Striper. (For Rudolph's nose I dotted Cranberry Splash instead of black. )

Please excuse the chip wear and the horrid cuticles!! I took these photos a day or so after work.

I really enjoyed this manicure I think it got the most attention out of the two! A lot of people liked the reindeer especially.

For my second manicure that I wore and actually wore on Christmas was inspired by an organza bag that we had with all the Christmas stuff. It was gold with gold paisley. There was no way I could recreate it so I decided to take a red base and recreate the gold swirls.

Using once again Cranberry Splash as my base color I waited for it to dry and proceeded to paint on my swirls. Using my tiniest brush from the Wal-Mart pack I got I gently drew the swirls with a very light hand. I definitely thought that less is more with this so I didn't take the swirls to far.

Now that I have my new brush set I think I will be trying these nails again in different color combos!

I hope you all enjoyed this Christmas post! Next up will be my picks from the Top 10 polishes of 2012! I have had that list running in my head since about October! I can't wait to share it with you guys soon!!

Talk to you all very 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.