Getting back into nail art: My Fourth of July Manicure!

Hello loves!! Happy 4th of July! I hope you are having a great holiday weekend if you are celebrating and if your not celebrating I hope you are having a lovely weekend!

So this past week I was in the mood to finally do some nail art, and had even more ambition to do a 4th of July manicure!

I have done any type of nail art in a very looonnnnggg time. So long that I have even forgot how to do a proper dotticure. Hopefully this manicure will inspire me to get back into doing some nail art in the future.

For this design all I knew was I wanted to have my thumb,fore finger, and middle finger, have red and white stripes and my ring and pinkie fingers to be blue with silver stars.

I suck at free hand striping, (even when I was doing nail art more frequently) so I instantly went for some chevron guides I had from a kit I bought at CVS a while back when I wanted to buy some guides for a french manicure I was doing.

So I painted the first three fingers with Wet 'n' Wild's Wild Shine polish in white. I used two coats to make it nice and opaque and even,  I don't think these have names just numbers, but I'm sure you all know the one I am talking about. I then used Julie G's polish in Cabana Boy, which is one of the best blue polishes I own, on my ring and pinkie fingers. It is literally a one coater, but I always go in for a second coat just out of habit.

After letting these colors dry for a good long while, I carefully placed my chevron guides and took China Glaze's Cranberry Splash to make the red stripes. Now Cranberry Splash is not the first red I would of picked, but I realized I actually don't have a red creme polish. If anyone has any recommendation's I would appreciate it greatly!

After successfully creating my chevrons and cleaning up I wanted to place some silver stars I had on my nails but they didn't sit right and looked bad ( at least to me), so I took them off and replaced it with some dots in Celeb City by Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear.

I'm not a huge fan on how the silver dots came out, I like I said I completely for got how to do placement for them!


I am really happy with it overall though. It was a lot of fun getting back into some nail art, and seeing the idea I had in my head actually translate to my nails!

And here is a complementary 'claw' hand photo so you can see all of the manicure.

I hope you guys enjoyed this post and finally seeing some nail art up in here!!
Have a great day guys! I'll talk to you soon!
<3 Nicole

NOTD: Follow the butterflies!

Hello!! Happy Thursday!

Is anyone here a Harry Potter Fan? I am! I prefer the books to the movies, but that's a discussion that would take up a lot of time! Anyway for those of you that are fans know that in the second movie Chamber of Secrets, that when Harry and Ron are following the spiders, Ron says " Follow the spiders? Why couldn't be follow the butterflies?"

 I don't remember if its the same in the book or not and I have no idea where my copy is to cross reference. Today's manicure is inspired by that line. It came to me while I was changing my polish this afternoon.  I wanted something bright but with a pattern. Pulling out my stamping plates I started wanting   alternating flowers and butterflies but then the first set of butterflies ( which looked like little cartoon butterflies)  smudged and all went to pot. So I took it off and tried a different type of butterflie that looks more elegant. Viola! Success!

For my base color I went straight for my China Glaze Aquadelic, the bright blue is exactly what I needed to make this icky weather seem more bearable. Not to go off track here but... yeah the nice weather got me sick. Allergies and a cold all packed in my body together. There are times I feel fantastic and other I just want to curl in a ball! Thanks to Flonase though I am doing much better and think I will live.

Anyway, Aquadelic is an awesome two coat bright blue creme that just makes a perfect palette for a black stamp. Breaking out my Wet n Wild Black Creme, I went to work.

Here's the result!

All of these photos are with out flash, in natural sunlight coming through my window. Its too cold and windy to go outside today :(

The little dots around the butterflies are free handed with a toothpick!

Hope you all like this! Thanks for stopping by and reading!

Talk to you all soon!

Nicole.

P.S. I just noticed that my blog turned 1 back on Sunday the 18th and I never acknowledged it! I'm so excited that my little blog is a year old. I have accomplished a lot and met so many new amazing people and made some awesome friends as well! With out readers or my new polish friends I don't think my blog would of made it to a year old! So Thank you to everyone who has visited-read-and subscribed! 

Valentines Day Manicure!

Happy Valentines Day everyone!!!!

I hope you all are getting to spend it with the one you love even if its your cat!

I came up with this design after posting my Simple Valentines Day French Manicure, I loved having a french manicure but the red was too bright for me, so to tone it down I started with Aquadellic as my tips. I was fairly pleased with it too, most of them are all the same length and I didn't mess it up. So to make it Valentines Day-esque, I stamped two different heart designs from the Salon Express Kit. For the stamps I used Love is a Racket! I do love this color for stamping and my toes, it has such pretty red glitter flakies throughout that just give it that right sparkle!

At this point I thought I was done, topping it off with a coat of SH Insta Dry Top Coat and SV to even it out.

Here is what I came up with!

Okay I love this design the way it was... but I couldn't help myself so I added one coat of Finger Paints Twisted, from the Special Effects Collection. I did take pictures but you can't see the flakies since they are not on a dark background. Which is fine but trust me its so pretty in person.

Now that I have practice my french manicure skills I think wearing one every so often will become a regular thing! French Friday's perhaps? Who knows.

I hope you all enjoyed this manicure. I can't wait to show you stuff from my shopping haul on Thursday! Talk to you all very soon!

Nicole