Sunsational Rainbow Gradient

The weather has been a lot nicer lately- by which I mean it's 50 degrees instead of 40. In New England, that means break out the short sleeves and sandals! And bright, summery manis! I really wanted a summery gradient, and I saw one on Instagram that used the China Glaze Sunsational Collection. I was immediately inspired, and love the way it turned out!

The China Glaze Sunsational Collection is Neon & On & On, Sun of a Peach, Bottoms Up, That's Shore Bright, Too Yacht to Handle, and Highlight of my Summer. I added China Glaze's Fairy Dust as the holographic topcoat. 

I figured I should do a design to switch up this mani after a few days, so I added cheetah print.

I used OPI's Black Onyx for the cheetah print.

Delicate Jewel Nails

I saw a beautiful nail design on Pinterest that was intricately simple, if that makes sense. It looks a lot more complicated than it really is, especially from farther away. And I really love the colors, they work great together.

I used OPI's My Vampire Is Buff, OPI's Love Angel Music Baby, China Glaze's Too Yacht To Handle, Sinful Colors Endless Blue. 

These were inspired by a photo I saw on Pinterest, watermarked Orchid Nails and Spa (Instagram @orchidnailsandspa). It's a nail boutique, with various nail artists who post pictures of art they did for clients. Here is a picture of the original design which inspired my mani!

Beachy Sunset Nails

So I'm going to Florida in a week and a half, and of course I'm trying to decide what to do for my nails while I'm there! I have about 10 designs I want to do, and I'm trying to narrow it down to 2; one for when I go to Florida, and another one about halfway through the trip. Since I have so many I love, I decided to do a few now, instead of in Florida. I saw a gradient Jessie (Instagram @nailsofjessiek) posted, and was immediately inspired by it. I liked the gradient so much that I left it without a design for a few days, then added a design that I love!

I actually had a bunch of pictures of the gradient, but I accidentally deleted about half the pictures on my phone. I managed to save this from a message I sent my friend, so this is the only photo I have of the gradient without a design.

For the gradient, I used China Glaze's Sun Worshipper and Bottoms Up, and Color Club's Warhol.

This is the picture Jessie posted that inspired my gradient.

I was looking for a design to do over this gradient, and I found a mani on google that I knew I had to recreate!

I used OPI's Alpine snow for the stripes, and Black Onyx for the palm trees.

I really love the way this turned out, and I'll definitely recreate it for summer. And hey, while I had it on, the weather was pretty nice. 

This is the picture I saw on google that inspired my design.

Quatrefoil nails

So I recently saw a design by Christabell Nails (Bloglovin- +ChristabellNails, Instagram @christabellnails) that I knew I had to recreate! I followed Christabell's Youtube tutorial and fell in love with the design. It's a step up from the usual quatrefoil nail design, and it's pretty straightforward to do if you have a dotting tool. I've done two manis with this design, and I also did a pictorial on a nail wheel. 

I'll leave a picture of the original design, as well as a link to Christabell's tutorial below. 

 I used Zoya's Giovanna for the base, and OPI's Push and Shove for the design.

Next, I did a simple pictorial to show the steps for this design. As I mentioned above, there is a video tutorial, but I wanted to make a pictorial as an alternative to a video.

I used Color Club's Warhol as the base and OPI's Love.Angel.Music.Baby for the design.

In case you can't tell, I really like this design! So I decided to do another mani, but I did quatrefoils on every nail, instead of just an accent nail.

The blue is China Glaze's Too Yacht To Handle, and the gold is China Glaze's Swing Baby.

Before I painted my nails with this color scheme, I painted a necklace and liked it so much that I decided to match my nails with it.

Obviously, I had to take a bunch of pictures with my nails and necklace, because twinsies. 

In case you can't tell, I really like this design! Several people asked me if it was a stamp, which is really flattering to me. 

Here's the link to Christabell's Youtube tutorial, I recommend watching it if you want to attempt this design, it's extremely helpful! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOPNQI2FMiA

Tie-Dye Overload!

These tie-dye nails were inspired by a post I saw on Spektorsnails.com (she was inspired by Chalkboard Nails). I've done tie-dye nails in the past, but I didn't even think to use this color scheme before. Chalkboardnails.com has a tutorial for tie-dye nails if you haven't tried them yet, which I recommend following.
http://www.chalkboardnails.com/2013/03/sally-hansen-x-rodarte-tie-dye-and.html

I used OPI's Alpine Snow as a base, and for the design I used Covergirl's Out of the Blue, OPI's I Saw... U Saw... We Saw... Warsaw, Sally Hansen's Vanity Flare, Essie's Play Date, Lime Crime's Once in a Blue Mousse, and OPI's Black Onyx.

Here's the photo by Spektor Nails that inspired me (http://www.spektorsnails.com/2013/07/blueberry-tie-dye-nails.html)

My nails are obviously different than the image above, but it was my inspiration.

The last time I did tie-dye nails, I followed the same tutorial by Chalkboard Nails, including her color scheme. 

As you can tell, this was a while ago, as my nails have grown a lot since then! I don't remeber which red I used for this, but for the blues I used OPI's I Saw... U Saw... We Saw... Warsaw, and Covergirl's Out of the Blue. I shaded in the design with OPI's Black Onyx.

Since this post is all about tie-dye nails, I'll include my first tie-dye mani, which I did way before I started this blog! 

I used the entire Color Club Poptastic polish collection for these nails.

For this starburst tie-dye design, I followed a tutorial from Geebsterlove that was all over Pinterest.

In case you can't tell, I really like tie-dye! Out of all of these designs, the starburst design is probably my favorite, and I would like to eventually recreate it, although I have many manis ideas that I would like to do first!