Halloween Nail Art! Blood Splatter!

Gosh its been forever and a day since I have done nail art! Honestly I still love nail polish very much. I'm always looking at the newest colors and collections, but my love for nail art kind of fell out. I remember last doing nail art I believe for my birthday. Sadly between work and not being home much really squashed any time I had to sit to do nail art. It hurts my heart because its all I used to do back in the day! 

Did you know I haven't painted my nails in the last two weeks. I've been bare nail all this time. 

So the other night after seeing all the lovely Halloween nail art that all the other amazing Nail Bloggers were creating this season, it made me want get back into it. I decided on a blood splatter mani. I remember doing one I believe the first Halloween my little blog celebrated. It was Dexter inspired as well, white base with red blood splatter. I think even at that point I didn't know you could use a straw to get the splatter effect. 

This time around I wanted to make it more gruesome. I love horror movies and special effects makeup so it was only obvious. 

I started with a nude base color. I chose Cover Girl Forever Fawn which is fairly close to my skin tone. Without something on top of it, it definitely gives me mannequin hands! 

Once two coats of that was dry, I grabbed some plastic straws and cut them in half. Then I took Sinful Colors Ruby Ruby a nice blood red jelly and created a small puddle on a piece of paper. 

Now splatter manicures can be messy so I made sure that I had a few sheets of paper towels, or newspaper covering my work surface. I also had on hand some nail polish remover and Q-tips for clean up. You will get this all over your hands, especially if you miss your nail when doing the splatter part. 

Then I dipped one end of the straw into Ruby Ruby held it not super close over my nail but far enough away that it would create an awesome look. I then blew a short burst of air into the straw and prayed it hit my nail! 

Lets take a look at how I did! 

Here is my left hand. I absolutely love how this manicure turned out. It really looks like I messed up my nails in some sort of accident or that I brutally murdered someone! As you can see by my middle finger I was way too close to my nail when I blew into the straw and almost covered the whole nail. I think my index and pinkie fingers are my favorite because the splatter effects looks just right! 

Now here is my right hand. Trying to do any nail art with my non-dominant hand is insanely hard. I give major props to those who can do nail art on both hands and have it turn out amazing! The splatter effect is less but still looks pretty gruesome. 

And here we have an awkward thumb shot, out of both my thumbs my right one looked better and I was very happy with it. 

After the splatter was dry I used my all time favorite top coat Julie G Jet Set to seal everything in. 

If you liked this manicure, let me know in the comments below and also tell me what your favorite thing about Halloween is! Was it a costume? All the scary shows on TV? Let me know! 

I'll talk to you all tomorrow! <3 Nicole 

Recreating one of my favorite nail arts!

Hi!

So I hope if you live in the northeast your are done digging out from Nemo! We didn't get nearly as much as they said we were supposed to which was good, but what we did get was more than enough! I am SO ready for spring!

Today I bring another manicure that you can most definitely wear for Valentines Day on Thursday!

One of my favorite nail bloggers has to be The Nailasaurus! Sammy is an amazing nail art artist! I always see all her nail art on her Instagram and then go over to her blog to check out how she did it!

When I saw this nail art she did, I know I had seen it before and I think it actually goes along with a song but for me it was just something different for Valentines day!

On Sammy's version she painted her nails red and did the nail art with white. For my version I used Hard Candy Sky as a base color and Sinful Colors Ruby Ruby to create the design.

Here are the photos of my recreation! Here is a link to Sammy's Original post!

This was a lot of fun to do and to pay homage to one of my favorite bloggers! Of course when you see Sam's Original post hers is just simply perfect. I do have to say though this challenged me on keeping my hand steady with my nail art brushes! I can't wait to see another design that challenges me like this did. The actual heart on my middle finger was the easiest thing to do, the little heart bleeps where the toughest. You couldn't go too far down or to far up and you had to really picture a heart monitor. Repeating these steps on my right hand was even harder as it always is, but it wasn't terrible which is surprising for me!

I hope you guys like this post and I have two more valentines day inspired post for you!

Oh and if Sammy the Nailasaurus happens to see this... I just want you to know that you are an amazing blogger and nail art artist and hope one day that I can get my nail art anywhere near as good as yours! <3

Nicole

Red Cheetah Nails. Rawr!

Hello! Happy Thursday!

Today's post is inspired by the concept of the Jelly Sandwich. I've explained what a Jelly Sandwich many times here on the blog, take a look at this post here if your not sure!

Taking the concept of the jelly sandwich I decided to try encapsulating a stamp instead! Same general idea just using a stamp in place of what would be glitter. It also makes me think of the amazing nail polish jewelry out there in the world!

Starting off I used one coat of Sinful Colors Ruby Ruby, a brilliant red jelly polish that is readily available in drugstores and now even Walmart, that's where I got mine from! Of course you do need to start off with a base coat before your polish so you can protect your nails. I recently purchased Orly Bonder about a month ago and have been using it in every manicure I do and it is wonderful! The coolest thing though is I've even gotten my mom to start using it, and now that she is retired (what a lucky duck) she is testing the waters on different color polishes too!

Bonder is a rubberizing base coat, at least that's what its described as being on the bottle, it dries super quick and definitely makes the polish smooth and stay on longer ( not that I keep my manicures on for longer than 3 days anyway).

OK so back to the manicure. Once the first coat of Ruby Ruby is dry, I took Wet 'n' Wild Black creme, my holy grail black polish for stamping, and stamped the cheetah/leopard print from the Salon Express Kit. Normally at this stage you would be done, add a top coat and bam, but no I went and added another thin layer of Ruby Ruby once the stamp was dry. It does dull the stamped design just a little but that's okay its what we want, the black creme is still very much see-able but it looks like its encased in the nail!

I tried this with a few other color stamps and white actually would of looked really cool, it gave a very subtle effect but not what I wanted. Once your top layer is dry add you top coat and you are done!

Take a look at the pictures if my long winded response confuses you!

Okay so I hope you liked this post! Stay tuned for more soon!

Nicole  

A couple of dotticures!

Hello!

Hope you all had a fantastic weekend! The weather here in good ole New York was half crappy half amazing. Saturday it stormed and sunday it was filled with plentiful sunshine. It's also forcasted to be sunny and fall like for the rest of the week!

So for today's post I thought I would bring you two manicures where I finally incorporated some simple dots. Who doesn'tl love dots. I miss doing nail art, I stopped because life wasn't allowing me the time to do it :( but now I have some time so I want to get back into it.

The first 'dotticure' was one I wore the other day but then had to change the next day because one of my dots smeared off even tho the mani was supposedly dry!

I used Essie's Raise Awareness as my base color and then used Sinful Colors To create the dots. I love this red from Sinful not only is it bright but it's also a jelly polish which is great for those jelly sandwiches us nail addicts love to do. I think this manicure would be perfect for valentines day next year or you could substitute the red dots for a darker pink and you can have a great manicure for October for Breast Cancer Awareness! I know I'll be showing you what I wear since I have a fundraising bake sale in the beginning of the month!


The next manicure is the one I am currently rocking as I am writing this post. For this one I used China Glazes Hang Ten Toes and for my accent nail I used Sinful Colors Rainstorm. Then I alternated the dots, using Rainstorm over the pink and Hang Ten Toes over Rainstorm. I will do a proper swatch of Rainstorm soon. You actually could get away with one coat of Rainstorm it's just that pretty!

Ok on to the pictures!