What do you do when your gradient is a hot mess?

You cover most of it up!

I started with a base of China Glaze Electric Pineapple, then sponged on Sinful Colors Dream On for a gradient effect. I should have done it the other way around, because Dream On is much more opaque than Electric Pineapple. I didn't like how that looked so I topped it with a glitter franken of mine. When I still didn't like it I made scotch tape V's on my nails and did a thick coat of Sally Hansen Black Heart.

China Glaze Electric Pineapple

I picked up this color at Ulta in January because it was on clearance for $1.99 so I figured, why not? At the time I didn’t have very many bright colors, and I didn’t own any China Glaze either. 

Electric Pineapple is part of the Summer 2011 Island Escape collection, which may be why it was on clearance. Or maybe no one wanted it. Or there was something wrong with it. Either way I like it. Electric Pineapple is a yellow-green creme and it can look more yellow or more green depending on the light. The formula was kind of thin and runny, so I needed to use three coats. I’m sure a coat of white polish underneath would have helped a lot though. 

Overall I like this polish, its not *amazing*, but it’s nice to have in my collection, and I’ve used it a few times with nail art already. Now that summer is coming up I’ll probably be using it even more!

Stippling Tutorial

First you need to paint your nails with which ever color you like. In my original nails I chose a black base, but I like white much better. Then, using a tiny dotting tool (or a needle, possibly a toothpick, I used a #18/0 spotter brush) make a bunch of dots near the tip of your nail, so many that barely any of the base color shows through. You can use nail polish for this, but I chose to use acrylic paint. After that keep working in sections, using less and less dots and making the sections ever so slightly bigger until you reach your cuticle. If you have long nails you could probably stop before the cuticle, or you could just make the sections bigger. I like to do four sections, but you could do more or less depending on how gradual you want the gradient. 

If there’s any confusion please let me know and I’ll try to clarify!

Cult Nails Toxic Seaweed

Can I just start by saying how excited I am to even own this polish? This is the first indie polish that I own and.. gosh its beautiful!

My apologies for the picture, which does not do this polish justice! Toxic Seaweed is a blue-green jelly packed with glitter and red/gold flakies! I honestly cannot stop staring at my nails, and I'm going to be sad when I have to take this off :( Application was great, and what you see is three coats. I only used one top coat but it could probably use a second. 

Cult Nails Toxic Seaweed can be purchased for $10 here. Due to the ingredients needed to make it, this polish is limited edition, so once it's gone, it's gone- which is only more incentive to get this beauty!

Neon Triangles

What do you need when you're feeling down (besides chocolate)? Bright colors of course! I was stuck on what I wanted to do with my nails, then I saw these and I decided I had to do something like them!

I still need some practice with lines, but I really like how they came out! I started with a base of Julep Hayden (two coats) and then drew the triangles with Sinful Colors Dream On. Dream On dries very quickly, which was both a good and bad thing. Good because moving from one nail to another, I didn't have to worry about smudging, but bad because it was very difficult to get an even coat on my nails, which is why it looks thin in some spots. I finished by outlining the triangles with black acrylic paint.

Despite the minor difficulties I had, I really love these. I love the color combo and I like how each nail is different. :)

Funfetti

Confession: I've never had funfetti cake. Am I missing out on something here? I have had cookies that were made with funfetti cake mix, does that count?
Well anyways, I have some nail art that was intended to just be a fun experiment with dots (my favorite) and layering, but it ended up reminding me of funfetti!

With Essie Matte About You

I started with one coat of Love & Beauty Cream (a very shear white) then did three dots each of OPI Bullish on OPI, Essie Orange, It's Obvious!, Sinful Colors Pull Over, Julep Leah, and Sally Hansen Blue Me Away! on each nail. I followed that with two more coats of Cream, another round of dots, then another two coats of Cream. I kind of wish that I had done more layers of Cream between dots to make the layers really stand out, but I still love this!

Charlie Brown

This part weekend I was helping out with my old middle school's production, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I decided it would be fun to do some Charlie Brown inspired nails for the run of the show :)

If you don't recognize this pattern, then you probably had no childhood.
Go watch Peanuts right now to make up for it.

I decided to keep these simple, mainly because it was late at night and I had school the next day. I used my Wet n Wild nail art brush that I mentioned earlier, and just look that the lines on my middle finger (and ignore the ones on my pinky..)! Seriously, it looks like I used tape on that finger!

The yellow is Sinful Colors Pull Over, which is a really weird consistency right now, so it took about 4 coats and bubbled a lot. The black is acrylic paint.

Getting into the art of jewelry making

As I have mentioned previously, I am a jobless student. I also have no homework, and therefore a lot of free time. What to do with that free time? Make crafty things!

I made these using this tutorial. They were very easy and cheap to make! I was able to find everything I needed at Jo-Ann Fabrics.

Nail art brushes that you can find at almost any drugstore!

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm a student without a job, which means I have to be cheap when it comes to a lot of things. Despite my addiction, this also applies to nail polish and makeup. I don't have the money to buy expensive eyeliner, so I figure the Wet n Wild and NYC stuff will get the job done. They both do, in case anyone was wondering, I actually really like the Wet n Wild liquid eyeliner.
So what does one do when these run out or become dry?
Get nail art brushes out of the deal of course!

Here we have two very cheap liquid eyeliners. Wet n Wild on the left and NYC on the right. How do you get a nail art brush? Simply clean the eyeliner off of the brushes, which is incredibly easy because neither are waterproof. I have no idea if anyone has already come up with this but I like to think that I'm crafty sometimes.

Here's the Wet n Wild. I prefer this one both as eyeliner and as a nail art brush, because the brush is nicer and the handle allows you to have more control.

Here's the NYC. As you can see the handle is much farther away from the brush, and the brush is not as thin as the Wet n Wild brush.
I have some nail art that I used my Wet n Wild brush for coming up soon!

Essie Navigate Her

The other day when I posted 10 to Midnight I promised I'd show off Essie Navigate Her with a better picture, so here it is!

I love this green! I wish I had more pictures but unfortunately I didn't have many that turned out well.
But just look at this! It's so pretty! My boyfriend thinks cremes are boring, but I love them. :) And they're not a pain to take off unlike glitter!
This was the first non top coat (Matte About You and Shine of the Times) Essie that I've ever used and I loved it! The formula was great, and what you see in the picture is two coats. Unfortunately a fingerprint made it's way on as the top coat was drying. I had this on for two days and I didn't have any tipwear, which is so crazy for me because I get tipwear on almost everything after a day.
Essie Navigate Her is part of the Essie's 2012 Spring Collection, also called Navigate Her. It retails for $8 and can be found here.

Glitter Gal 10 to Midnight

it was my birthday last Saturday (the 10th) and I got some amazing polishes from some amazing people! :) The first one is Glitter Gal 10 to Midnight. 10 to Midnight us described as a "Smokey charcoal grey base with linear holographic particles". It's my first holo and I was really excited for it when I got it!

A little blurry, but shows off the holo really well!

As you can see, the holo doesn't show up very well in some light, and sometimes you can't see it at all (which is sad because I love staring at this polish)!

Here's how I wore it, with Essie Navigate Her (more swatches of that soon!) on my thumb, ring, and pinky fingers.
10 to Midnight was great to apply, it was opaque in two coats. I did have some tipwear after a day, but that could also by my topcoat (I still need to get a new one).
Glitter Gal 10 to Midnight can be purchased at Llarowe

Peter Pan Collar

Keeping with the black and white theme, I decided to do some Peter Pan Collar nails! I used this tutorial by the beauty department.

I think Peter Pan collars are really cute, but I don't know if I'd be able to pull it off, so for now I'll keep them to my nails.
The black is Sally Hansen Black Heart and the white is acrylic paint.

Stippling Gradient

Sometimes when I'm bored in school I'll just start stippling on the page that I'm taking notes on. I thought it would be fun to do something like that on my nails. I was originally going to do black on white, but I ran out of white nail polish so I had to do white on black. I wish I had done it the way I wanted to, because I think this looks kind of like snow. Oh well, now I know what to do next winter. :)

Also I apologize for the water drops, I had just washed my hands.
I think I may try this again, but with the colors reversed and maybe from cuticle to tip.
The black is Sally Hansen Black Heart and the white is acrylic paint.

Zigga Zagga Zigga Zagga Oi Oi Oi!

German drinking song? Soccer chant? Theatre chant? Either way, it's fun to say, and I think appropriate for my nail art today; Zig-Zags!
I haven't been feeling my best lately and I've been really uninspired, but yesterday I picked up Orly Ancient Jade on clearance at Ulta and I was so excited about my find that I just had to do some nail art!

First I would just like to say that I am in love with Ancient Jade, it applied great and I just love minty/dusty/pastely/greenish colors. I think a lot of swatches online make this look more blue, but just looking at my nails compared to the above picture, what I took is definitely accurate (the other two pictures aren't as color accurate). I did two coats of Ancient Jade. The black and white are acrylic paints.

I went kind of crazy on my thumb because I drew the zig-zag in the middle before I had decided that I wanted to do them off center. I didn't feel like starting over (because it was 1am and I was out of polish remover) so I just went with it. I found that the best way to match up the zig-zags is is put dots corresponding to where the lines turn (see white dots on thumb) and then connect the dots. When I didn't do this it was a lot harder to match up the lines.

Obviously macro photos show off every flaw, so I figured I should throw in a picture of what it looks like at normal viewing distance. I was originally going to do a tribal print but I really like the off-center zig-zags!