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.