Easter Nails

Inspired by my jelly sandwich from a few weeks ago, I did some Easter themed nails.
I decided to make it a ruffian manicure to incorporate some chocolate brown into it as well.

I used 2 coats of Revlon Chocolate Truffle to create the base for the ruffian. I only painted it near the cuticles, because I didn't want to create too many layers.
I went over that with a thin coat of Zoya White to create a base for the lighter colours.
From pinky to thumb, I used Zoya White, Fascino Blue, Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow, Sally Hansen Pink Blink and Ardene's Stereo Love. Two coats of each.
Once those were mostly dry, I added Ardene's Paris Nights multicoloured glitter. It's in a slightly green tinted base so it did alter the pastels a little bit, but it's super pale and sheer, so you don't notice it once the manicure is done.
Once the glitter coat was mostly dry, I went over it with Sally Hansen Polar Bare to mute down the colours and matte the glitter.
Topcoat to even everything out and protect it and voila! speckled Easter eggs!

The Ardene's polish and the Sally Hansen Polar Bare both take ages to dry, but it's a super cute effect.

I wore this over to a friend's house and once they saw it they said "you have Easter eggs on your nails! Chocolate ones!"
I think the concept was a success.

Reddit Challenge - Stripes

This week is stripes - they are probably some of the easiest nail art you can do!

I wasn't really sure what to do, so I just grabbed some colours, tried a couple of things and finally settled on this:

Two coats of Color Club Wild Orchid - a medium grey with a pink-ish shimmer. In sunlight this polish looks purple. It's really pretty! The first coat was a little patchy, but the second coat fixed it right up.

Off to one side, I did a single thick stripe of Essence Fortune Cookie from their Cherry Blossom line. It's kind of a mustard yellow with a very slight simmer to it. I had to do two coats to get good coverage over the grey.

Then I outlined the yellow stripe using my Stripe Rite black polish. I didn't think it was quite done, so I added a stripe down the middle of the yellow as well.

I keep thinking it looks like a street.

Reddit Challenge - Inspired by a Tutorial

It took me a while to find one, but I finally settled on this Hello Kitty tutorial by Kayla Shevonne

I used Wet n Wild Lavender as my base
Dots were added using Sinful Colors Fusion Neon

Hello Kitty's shape was painted on using Claire's white detail polish
The nose was Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine, and the eyes and whiskers were It's So Easy black Stripe Rite polish.
The bow is from the Claire's Girly Fimo Wheel.

Reddit Challenge - Violet

This week's challenge is Violet. I wasn't sure if I wanted to just do purple or actually violet flowers on my nails.
I seem to be coming down with something, so I'm tired and I decided on purple nails with some floral stamping ...

I used two coats of Ardene's Stereo Love - a lilac not-quite-jelly not-quite-creme. It's thick but sheer on the first coat, and the second coat makes it opaque, but it has an odd ... depth (?) to it. I like it.

After that was thoroughly dry (and Ardene's polish takes ages to dry), I used my Claire's white detail polish and Bundle Monster plate BM10 to stamp on some little white flowers.

Since the polish is lilac and not violet, I'll use the excuse that the flowers are supposed to be Canadian white violets ... haha

I'm going to try and do a second manicure this week, but we'll see how I'm feeling.
Next week's challenge is "Inspired by a tutorial"
I've posted every tutorial I wanted to try so far ... so I'm going to have to go in search of a new one!

Reddit Challenge - Spring

I've been MIA this last week, because my work schedule has been so weird that I haven't had much time to do anything, let alone my nails.

I managed to squeeze out some time to do the challenge this week. The theme is Spring, and as soon as I saw that, I knew which manicure I wanted to do.

Cherry Blossoms!

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I used this tutorial from Nails by Kayla Shevone, and it was really easy!

I started with a base coat of Fascino Blue and then went over it with two coats of Sinful Colors Mint Apple.

Once that was dry, I used my Quo by ORLY striper polish in Black to draw the branches. I didn't do anything specific, I just kind of placed them wherever looked good.

After that, I used my Claire's detail polish in white to create the flowers. This polish has both a striper brush and a 'pen' tip, so I could do the dots. I did the dots one by one, because when I tried to do groups of three, the polish flowed into itself and created a blob - so, I did single dots where I wanted to place the flowers on each finger, then went back and did the second dot for each flower on each finger, then the third..

Finally, I dripped a bit of Sally Hansen Pink Blink and Avon Mocha (which is pink ... ??) onto a bit of plastic and used a bent bobby pin to dot those colours over top of the white.

Everyone keeps asking me if they are nail stickers.
The next question is "how much time do you spend doing that!?"
Usually about an hour from removal to final topcoat.

Oh, and bonus kitty legs in the background of the photo - she was sleeping there, but as soon as I brought out the camera, she got up. She does it every time.