Black, Purple and Yellow Gradient Nails

T.G.I.F!!!! I can't tell you how happy I am that it's finally Friday! This week has been super busy at work and I am really ready for a break, how about you? I wish I had something exciting, or even interesting to talk about but I can hear work calling me and it's not going to shut up until I take care of it! With that said, I hope, in the near future to begin posting more interesting reading for you as opposed to just listing the polishes used and poppin' in a few pictures! I also really want to do video tutorials! They take a lot of preparation though and one of those prep steps involves cleaning my room and I am totally dreading that!

 

I keep seeing these gorgeous gradients all over IG and they make me drool so I decided to do one of my own! It turned out pretty good, I like the color combo, I just hate that my white undies are showing! In hindsight, I could have used the yellow underneath but I hadn't picked out my gradient colors at that point! The white undies is OPI Alpine Snow and the gradient colors are Avon Sunshine, China Glaze Gothic Lolita and a England Camelot. Then I slapped a coat of LA Colors Sassy Sparkle on top. I really wished I had taken pics before I put the glitter on it because I liked it better without it. I really need to get CG Fairy Dust or INM Northern Lights so that I can have a TINY bit of sparkle without overwhelming the design!

 

Sorry it wasn't an enthralling read but at least you got what was important, right? Love you all - mwah!

The Lazy 15 Mani #11 - Fireworks/Bonfire Night

Helllloooooo Monday! I've got a good feeling about this week, how about you? My husbands birthday was yesterday and for a few weeks he is 9 years older than me - tee-hee! Then my oldest daughter's bday is on Wednesday and she is going to be 6! Then my bday is Dec 11th and then Christmas, whew! It's a crazy time for us with all of that and Thanksgiving as well. Neither my husband nor I get birthday or Christmas presents this year as we got ourselves iPhones and that was not cheap! :)

 

This was kind of a crazy mani and I used a ton of different polishes as well as my new nail art brushes I ordered from ebay - yay! It took a month to receive them from China but they finally got here safe and sound as well as some glequins, yay! Okay, without further ado, here is the mani! I'll list the polishes after the pics because there's so many! :)

Here's the list!! Lancome Noir, Revlon Royal, OPI Alpine Snow, Bettina Art Deco Yellow and Glamour Flame. LA Colors Sassy Sparkle and a teal glitter (no label). Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Pronto Purple, Pure Ice French Kiss, Sinful Colors Dream On, Nicole by OPI A Million Sparkles, and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Celeb City. 8 of those were in my untrieds so yay for that! :)  See you all on Wednesday!

The Lazy 15 Mani #5 - Galaxy Nails

Okay, so I have to admit that this challenge had me worried! I have never done a galaxy mani before and it looks so complicated! But with a good video tutorial and some patience, I don't mind how it turned out at all! I will admit, however that this was my second try. The first time I tried to be too "perfect" with my design and you just can't do that with this one. You have to let go and trust that it will turn out right in the end because as I was doing this I didn't think it looked very good. I pushed through anyway and when I was done and stepped back from the process, I was actually surprised that it really looked like a galaxy!

 

Have you tried out this mani yet? You really should, it's fun and you'll be surprised at the cool results you'll end up with!

 

The polishes used were as follows:

 

Maybelline Color Show - Blue Freeze

NYC Long Wearing - French White Tip ( I actually preferred this to my OPI Alpine Snow for this mani because it wasn't as opaque and you don't want big, obvious globs of white on this mani!)

Sally Hansen Hard As Nails - Hard Lemonade

Sally Hansen Diamond Strength - Fuschia Bling Bling

Wet 'n Wild Wild Shine - Tickled Pink (I mixed this and Fuschia Bling Bling together to get the perfect pink!)

NYC In A New York Minute - Water Street Blue

L.A. Colors - Sassy Sparkle

 

Now go forth, check out the other challenge entries and try out this mani for yourself!

Hidden Rainbow Mani

Can you believe it? I'm posting again, yayyyy! I had so much fun with this mani. I finally got my striping tape and had to try it out. I also used a cool rainbow effect I found that gives you 6 of the 7 colors of the rainbow (poor, poor indigo!) by only using 3 polishes! WHAT? That's right, if you want to know the secret, check out Simple Little Pleasure's YouTube video. I could seriously lose hours watching this girl do nail art! One of the reasons I love her so much is that she actually talks during her video. I can't stand videos with no talking and awful muzak playing *shudders*!

The polishes I used are Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Frutti Petutie, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lightening, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Freeze! and Wet 'n Wild Black Creme. after sponging on the rainbow with a tiny piece of makeup sponge (I used a tiny corner for each color), I put down a top coat and let everything dry COMPLETELY! Then I put on some striping tape and put down one thick coat of Black Creme and once I removed the tape I had a gorgeous rainbow! A couple of must-know tips for working with striping tape are to remove the tape immediately after you're done polishing that finger!! Also, it really helped me to have all of my little strips of tape cut and hanging off of the edge of the table ready to go.

I was so ticked off that I fudged up my index finger by bumping it on the table and then my topcoat issues ruined the whole dang thing. I tried to use my gloopy one first and it left big dents and wouldn't spread so I tried my el cheapo Wet 'n Wild topcoat that I got for free to smooth it out, big mistake. That topcoat sucks. It never dries and it isn't very shiny so I was left with a bubbly dull mess, *SIGH*. Oh well, you live and you learn, now I only use that topcoat for applying rhinestones and fimo cane!

Citrus Punch Mani

Hello everyone! I am so sorry for not posting for 3 days, life has been cray cray! Between work, the baby and everything else, there just wasn't enough time in the day to get everything done but I missed you guys so much!!

I'm very excited about this mani, it's my favorite that I've done so far. I ordered a whole bunch of nail bling off of ebay and part of it was some adorable fimo cane. This stuff intrigued me to no end so I had to get some. Then when I found this sweet shade of yellow from Sally Hansen Hard As Nails called Hard Lemonade, it wasn't too much of a jump to come up with this mani. I added on some tips with Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Frutti Petutie which is a very bright, beautiful pink. What do you guys think?

Please forgive the awful bubbles, I'm having topcoat woes! I really love Sally Hansen InstaDry but it gets all gloopy before the bottle is half gone and for $5.99 a bottle I don't want to be buying a new bottle each week so I need to do some research. I've heard excellent things about Seche Vite and a blogger friend just uses some restore-stuff (technical term there...aherm) when it gets thick so I may give that a go!

I think I love fimo cane! I also gave my 5 yr old daughter a fimo mani with little animals and it looked so sweet on her tiny little fingers!