Birthday Cupcake Nails

Yesterday was my 20th birthday, and I really wanted to do creative nails. Unfortunately, I feel like there aren't too many designs that scream birthday- candles, balloons, cake, presents, and of course, cupcakes. I have already done candle nails three times, so I decided to do cupcakes. I did these about a year ago, and since I've improved a lot since then I wanted to give them another try. I'm not even going to post a picture of the first time I painted them, seeing as I hadn't learned that you shouldn't get polish on the cuticles, so they were pretty much a hot mess. I really like the way these turned out, although to be honest, I ate ice cream cake for dessert instead of cupcakes.

I used China Glaze's In a Lily Bit and a no name holographic Color Club for the bottom of the cupcake, OPI's Alpine Snow for the frosting, Essie's Ole Caliente for the cherries, and China Glaze's Sunsational collection for the sprinkles.

Gradient Skittle Mani

So I'm not exactly positive what constitutes a skittle mani, but from what I know, it's when you do a different design on each nail. I was going through my old polishes to get rid of the ones that are solid and stuck to the bottom, and I found a really pretty purple one that I immediately knew I had to do a mani with. I decided to do a gradient of light to dark shades of purple, and even though I really liked it by itself, I decided to try some different accent nails.

I used Rimmel London's I Lilac You and the purple side of the double ended Revlon Moon Candy in Orbit.

I got some decals from the Born Pretty Store a while ago, and I decided to use them as an accent nail.

Since I'm really bad at just leaving something simple, I added designs on my other nails afterwards. I added glitter polish to my middle nail, and a Ruffian design to the others.

I went to Starbucks and got a hibiscus refresher, and since #mynailsandmydrink is a popular hashtag on Instagram, I just had to take a picture of my mani with it.

Soccer Ball Nails

So my favorite sport of all time is soccer. I used to play it, and I love watching it! You probably know that the World Cup is going on right now, and I've been avidly watching. I would love for the US to win, but realistically, I'm rooting for Germany. I'm 75% German, and they have an awesome team that I hope goes really far. Anyways, I was going to do some soccer inspired nails for the start of the world cup, but my dad and I went to a US women's national game against France last Thursday, so I waited to do these nails until then (They tied 2-2, it was an incredibly good game).

I've seen a lot of people do soccer ball nails, but I wasn't really inspired by any specific person. I decided to add a little twist by doing a green accent nail to represent the field.

I used OPI's Alpine Snow and Black Onyx for the soccer ball, and Essie's First Timer for the grass.

I happened to wear a maxi dress that looks kind of like a field, so I took a picture of my nails with it.

And of course I had to take a picture of my nails at the game, although it did earn my some very weird looks from people sitting nearby. Oh well, it's better than taking a million selfies (like the girls sitting next to me did for the entire game).

Palm Trees in the Summer

So I've had this mani (by Instagram @Mireyaaxo) on the back burner for several months. I was planning to do it in Florida, but then I saw a mailbox I was inspired by so I painted that instead. I finally decided to give it a shot, and I really love the way these turned out! Unfortunately, I went swimming yesterday and almost all my nails had polish peeling off afterwards. So even though this took me several hours to paint, I only had it on my nails for 3 days.

I took over 50 pictures of this mani- in the sun, in the shade, in the pool, etc. And fun fact, I actually burned the bottom of my feet standing barefoot in my driveway for about 5 minutes trying to get the perfect shot. They didn't blister or anything, but they were pretty painful for two days. I learned my lesson though, and I will always put on shoes before going to stand on hot pavement from now on.

Just a warning- there will be a lot of pictures, because I wanted to capture the colors in different lighting, and because I'm just obsessed with this design.

For the gradients I used China Glaze's Son of a Peach, Flip Flop Fantasy, Too Yacht to Handle, and That's Shore Bright. I added China Glaze's Fairy dust over the gradient, then painted the palm trees with OPI's Black Onyx.

Here's the mani Mireya (Instagram @Mireyaaxo) painted that inspired mine.

Field of Daisies Nails

In case you couldn't tell, I'm constantly inspired by other nail artists and their beautiful designs. I have a folder on my phone that contains over 200 pictures of manis I hope to recreate at some point. I've been wanting to recreate a mani that Judith (Instagram +spektorsnails) posted on Instagram for quite some time, and I finally did it!

I used Essie's First Timer, Rimmel London's Sunshine, and OPI's Alpine Snow.

There's a field near my house that has little buttercup flowers growing, and even though it's not the same type of flower as what I painted, I took pictures anyways.

Here's a picture of Judith's mani. You can follow Judith on Instagram or visit her website, www.spektorsnails.com.

TFIOS Okay? Okay. Nails

So a few months ago, I read The Fault in Our Stars for the first time; I've read it a total of 3 times in the past several months. It is still my favorite book, and I read a book every day or two. John Green is just an amazing author, and he captures the feelings of being sick amazingly, making it easy to relate even if you don't have a terminal illness. I saw the TFIOS movie last night, and it was amazing, of course. I really wanted to do nails to celebrate it again, so I've been looking at different designs for the past several weeks. I saw the perfect design on Instagram (@cutepolish), and decided to recreate it. I did a similar design with my first TFIOS mani, but Cutepolish added newspaper print, which I thought was a quirky, unique twist. Anyways, enough babbling, here's the mani!

After a lot of swatching, I chose to use Revlon's Coastal Surf as the base, because it's the closest shade to the actual TFIOS book cover. As usual, I used OPI's Black Onyx and Alpine snow for the clouds.

Then I took pictures in my light box, just to show how the color looks inside vs. outside.

I really wanted to take some pictures with the book cover, but I bought it on kindle so I didn't have the actual book. Luckily, my best friend Karisa let me borrow hers! It's a testament to how good friends we are that she didn't think it was weird that I wanted to borrow a book not to read it, but to take pictures of it with my matching nails. 

All in all, I'm really in love with the way this mani turned out! It's so cute, and every time I look at it, I'm reminded of the best book ever, haha. 

Here's a picture of the mani by Cutepolish that inspired mine. She has a Youtube tutorial for it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rtaut3wo6A), and a lot of great video tutorials on her channel that you should check out!