Day 4 - Green Nails

Oh. My. Goodness. This day has almost killed me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the color green. But after redoing my nails three, yes, THREE times and hating them all? Yea…ya kinda start to hate it.

So. Here is Day 4 - Green Nails.

Pure Ice’s “Free Spirit” and some white acrylic paint.

Oh, and when I went to set up my lightbox to take the pictures for this post, my battery was dead. So that's why there's some wear on the ring finger(that's day two) and why this mani irritates me. :P

Good – 2( Forgot to do with with Day 3)

Meh – 1

Blah -1

P.S. Does anyone else have problems with Seche Vite cracking or shrinking? I feel that the cracks on my thumb are from the acrylic but it's deep....Hmm...

Watermelon Ice Swatch

By the husbands prompting, I did a spur of the moment painting and it ended up liking the color a lot.  So we’ve got a swatch to do!

Obviously, you have your base coat.

This color is a sheer one so instead of trying to wait for four or five coats to dry, I started off with Sinful Colors Snow Me White so that the pink would show well. One coat of that and two of the pink.

Pure Ice Watermelon Ice is the color and it went on very well, not very streaky and it’s new enough that there was no clump-age. (Yes, I do use made up words)

Finish that with a coat of Seche Vite and we’re good to go! 

Date Night Sparkles

Hey Lovelies!

So the other day, my Hubby and I went on a date and I figured "Why not try something new with my nails?". So...I did and I ended up using 8 polishes total. 0.o

I've never really done the whole "most-fingers-one-way-and-one-accent-nail" thing and I was really curious to try it. So I looked at my dress that I was gonna be wearing and figured something off that. It's a real cute burgundy color that's A-line and ends above the knee. It has kind of a rectangle/triangle-ish design in it so I looked for something similar in my nail plate. (Yes, this involved nail plates.Yay!)

So I started out with a new base coat, Pure Ice - Bottom Line Base Coat, and did a base color of E.L.F.'s Metal Madness which is a charcoal black with holographic sparkles in it. I really only had to use one layer of this because it covers so nicely so that was wonderful.

Now for the nail plate. I stamped Bundle Monster 210 in Sinful Colors - Snow Me White on every finger BUT my ring fingers.

The top middle is the lucky design today...

Once that was stamped and dried, I used Revlon's 730 Valentine, Pure Ice Jamaica Me Crazy and Pure Ice Watermelon Ice(Which there will be more on this color soon...) in a gradient over the stamp. This obviously didn't effect the base color with it being so dark.

On the ring fingers, I used an un-named Melissa polish that has pink and silver flecks in it. It's old..So I had to wait forever on it to dry as well as re-do one because I smudged it.. This is a brand that's no longer in production unfortunately. :/ 

Finished up with a coat of Seche Vite Top Coat as always and there you have it! Loved them and they're now in my favorites list! 

Ta ta for now!
Alli

V-Day Mani Two Days Late. Heehee!

Happy Two Days After Valentine’s Day, Chicas!

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done my nails so I’m really glad that I got to do these! I did some for WinterJam and apparently, they looked like Dino poop. And I also deleted the pics when I thought I had more somewhere else….Which I didn’t. -__- Gar…

But anyways, I had a lull in my studies and I saw this mani from cutepolish on Youtube (here) and knew that that was the mani for this week! So cute, so easy. I bit time consuming when figuring out how I would do it, but so worth it.

Since I didn’t really have any peachy color as what she did, I painted my nails a solid gold, Pure Ice’s Jaguar, and I covered my entire nail instead of doing just the French mani style. Two coats isn’t quite enough for that color to be completely opaque, but with the spots on it, it’s totally fine. 

 

Once I got all the base color finished, I made the hearts on the ring and thumb nail on both hands. After that, I used Essie’s Study Case for my brown spots. I was a bit worried that it was too similar to the gold color, but when it was outlined with the black it wasn’t too bad. Then you obviously outline the spots and part of the hearts. That’s really the most time consuming part of this mani. 

A word to the wise…Don’t do the outlining when you’ve had a cup of coffee that day. Heehee! Did that once and it looked terrible…lol!

Anyways, hope you all had a great V-Day with your special someone! :D

Pure Ice Jaguar - Vintage Lace

Morni…Afternoon!

For the mani today, I saw on Pinterest(shocker) this tutorial for how to do sort of a lacey type mani with a cloud mani. And for some odd reason, I can’t find it on Pinterest, but I found it again on Lacqueerisa’s blog and I guess it was originally Nailside’s. Both AMAZING bloggers! Super simple, incredibly cute. 

So, a few weeks ago, I had won a really cute polish via the County Fair Nail Art Contest, Pure Ice Jaguar, and I had been wanting to use it for *something* for a while to see how it works. So I used that for my base. A little streaky, but it’s really quite cute. It was somewhat opaque after two coats, but the bottom of the nails was to be covered anyways, so it would have taken at least three coats to be completely opaque. But, it dries nicely, so that’s a plus. 

So anyways…:) I decided to use two contrasting colors.  And gold and blue seem to be good ones. So I used that(PI) and China Glaze’s For Audrey using the vintage lace tutorial. I did a terrible job on my right had and a decent job on my left hand. :)

So what do y’all think?

In Christ,

Alli

Bundle Monster Plate 319 - Rainbow Style!

Afternoon, Chickies!

Sooo first off…I’m sorry for being absent. I’ve been working at a summer camp for inner city kids with one or both parents in jail and we teach them about Christ and what he did for us. We get to do a lot with the kids and sometimes, this is the only time in their life that they actually hear the name of God that isn’t in a cuss word. :/  And these kids just LOVE attention and boy, do we love giving it! It’s always a cry fest for us counselors when they leave cuz we won’t be seeing them again for another year….If they come back. This was my third year of being out there and it’s really rewarding and very tiring. :) It has really challenged me in my walk with the Lord and it has helped me be able to explain the simplest concept to someone. Er…I’m still learning how. :D

Anyways, that were I was for so long. So. :) For this mani that I’m showing you, I used one of my new Bundle Monster plates(!!) and some rainbow colors. For my base coat, I used Pure Ice Superstar and a variety of colors with plate 319. If you’d like the list of colors, please comment. :) I was wanting to do a quick mani and I wish that I had taken more time doing it because obviously, it's a bit messy. But I thought it was cool. It’s not exactly what I wanted, but ok. 

Actually, that reminds me. Has anyone else had any trouble with the new BM plates not transferring to the stamper?? There’s a couple in my set that don’t want to work and one was the owl print that I was really looking forward to. :’’(

So yea. So what have y’all done this summer? Hope it’s been a great one!

In Christ,

Allison

County Fair Nail Art Contest!

**Warning: This post has LOTS of pictures. 

Hello, my lovely readers!! I have exciting news! I won my first ever nail art contest!! It was part of our county fair and it was for amateurs so I thought it would be a great idea for me to do it. I figured that even if I didn’t win, that it would be a good experience and that I’d meet some people that were passionate about nails. And I got both! There were only two other people competing however.  The older one, Jana, was so nice and she was really good! She had only been doing nails for a month and I thought they were great!

                                                                              Here I’m getting ready…

                                                  Me being obsessive about where my polishes are…Heehee!

                                                                                    My cheer squad! 

                                                Starting the mani with my bangs in my face. Like always. :P

So concentrated. Earlier today, I had done the mani and I had had a stiff cup of coffee and was all jittery and it turned out great. So I figured that if I could do it all jacked up on coffee, that I’d be able to do it without jitters. Well….I was shaking the entire time. Literally. So it was good that I had a practice run beforehand. ^^

                                                                  Jana’s and mine finished product.

                                                                                           People…

                                         So happy that it’s done! It was a bit terrifying but SOOOO exciting!

                                                             All three contestants and the two judges.

                                                                 Me grinning out of shear joy. Nbd…..XD

                                                                                       And Jana and I.

So are you ready to see what I did?!?! Tada!

I did a gradient with blue and green for my base, used an brown and light brown for the tree, and just various colors for everything else. If anyone want an entire list, just comment and I’ll get it. I’m bushed right now and I don’t want to go see what they are all called. ^^  Lazy me…I will say that I used Sally Hansen, China Glaze, Pure Ice, some Revlon, Elf, Essie, Sinful Colors, aaaaannnnnndddddd......I think that's it. :D

                                   And I got this stellar ribbon! Bragging rights are actually really nice. Lol 

My prize was this really pretty goldish color by Pure Ice, Jaguar, and a gift certificate to the sponsoring salon for a manicure. 

Anyways, it was a blast and I’m ready for round two! I’ll have to think of some other things to do for next year and hopefully, I’ll be better than I am now. Oh, and I have several more new ideas of what I should do with my nails! Any suggestions are very welcome. :) Hope y’all had as good of a day as I did!

In Christ,

Allison

Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Orange Impulse

Afternoon!

Today’s mani I just wanted to try doing whatever I could think of with just a couple colors. So I chose orange, grey, and white. I was quite pleased with the outcome, but there were definitely things I’d do differently.

I used Sally Hansen’s Insta-Dry Orange Impulse, Pure Ice’s Kiss Me Here, and Pure Ice’s Superstar. And then for the thumb(which is down low), I used matching colors of acrylic paint. I’m really digging the acrylics right now. XD For the middle finger, I used the white base and then stamped twice with RA plate 119 in both the grey and the orange and that was one of my favs of this mani. 

I really enjoyed doing this and I’m going to be doing it again. Perhaps in the next post.  :)  Have a great day!

In Christ,

Allison

Finger Paints Laugh My Art Off and Independence Day!

Happy Independence Day!!  We’ve been free of English rule for the past 236 year! However, there are some pretty stellar people in England. :) A lot of my favorite bloggers are from the UK, so I love the UK just for that reason. ^^ On to the mani!

I got really excited the other day cuz I thought of this idea all on my own. So proud of myself! So I started doing it last night and looking back, I should have done it TOTALLY different. I pretty much did it the hard way. I should have done all the red first, let that dry and THEN do the blue. I did it the retarded way. :P Oh well….Ya live and learn. :)

First, I did my base coat, Sally Hansen Nail Nutrition Green Tea + Bamboo Strengthener, as always. Then I used Creative Nail Design’s 94 Hot Lips as my base red, let that dry and then I tried doing a freehand French Tip on my left pinky with Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Blue By! and I succeeded.…..But then I tried doing it on my left ring finger.  I re-did that one. :D So I used some of my French Manicure guide strips from a Sally Hansen French Manicure Kit that I got once, which I love. 

Anyways, I used that and I had originally planned on just doing glitter on two fingers instead of the entire hand, but Mom thought it would look really cute with them all glittery. And mother knows best! After I had my base colors on, I then put on a coat of China Glaze Ruby Pumps, a red glitter that has a red tint to it. Then I used a blue glitter over the tips, Finger Paints Laugh My Art Off. 

Fourth of July isn’t complete unless you have all three colors, red, white and blue. So I did white dots on the tips using Pure Ice's Superstar. I didn’t do anything glittery for the dot cuz there was already SO much glitz on the nails and I’m glad I didn’t. The in finished up with a coat of Seche top coat. I honestly wasn’t too happy with the mani last night. It didn’t turn out how I had hoped, but the longer I have it on, the more I love it. So it’s a wonderful mess-up!

As for Fourth of July plans, I think we might be going to see a fireworks display this evening. What are your plans? Whatever they are, stay safe and think smart. :)

In Christ,

Alli

Gradient Stamping

Hello Peoples!

Today’s mani was an experiment, Heehee!  I saw Miss80Million do this here and I thought it was the cutest thing *ever*. And best of all, I got to try it on a friend.  >:D

No, it was fun and it turned out better than I had hoped! So here it is. 

Pretty much what you do, is you start with a gradient mani and then stamp from BM plate 221 with one of the colors that you used. In thing mani, I used China Glaze Pool Party and Pure Ice Superstar. When I was ready to do the stamping, I tried it and then realized that the nails were too….rough for the stamp to adhere. So I put a thin layer of top coat on to create a smooth surface. It worked great after that. :D

I do apologize for the quality of the pictures, I didn’t have my normal camera and we were outside when we took them. You still get the picture. :)

I was a bit unsure as to whether my friend would like it, cuz she doesn’t wear polish that often and never any designs, but she liked it! Her mom said that it reminded her of strawberry ice cream.  What would you call it?

Anyways, thanks to Gab for letting me do her nails! Love that girl…:D

In Christ,

Alli