Tropical Sunset Nails

So this past week, I was in Florida! It was so much fun, and I wish I could've stayed longer. I went parasailing, jet skiing, and kayaking. And, of course, I painted my nails! This is my first (and favorite) mani I did for my vacation. I saw a beautiful design Sonia (@badgirlnails) posted on Instagram, and I knew it would be perfect for Florida. I love this design so much, I took at least 100 pictures of it. So, even though this post will have a ton of pictures, relative to how many I took, I held back haha.

This took over 3 hours, but it was totally worth it! I had it on for less than a week, because my nails chipped really bad. Honestly, all of my nails were chipped and I still left it on! That shows how much i loved this mani.

I used China Glaze's That's Shore Bright and Bottoms Up, Sinful Color's Endless Blue, Sally Hansen Pacific Blue, Essie's In the Cabana and Topless and Barefoot, OPI's Black Onyx and Alpine Snow, Color Club's Almost Famous, and Wham! Pow!

I also created a little pictorial for this design. It's pretty self explanatory; I painted a gradient, added a fairy dust top coat, and painted nude for the sand. Then I painted the ocean in a gradient of blues, added white for the frothy ocean, and palm trees. For the middle finger, I added a sun and outlined it with orange, then added some yellow on the water to look like the sun's reflection. I finished it with a topcoat, cleaned up the edges with polish remover, and voila!

Here's a picture of the manicure that inspired this design. Sonia is incredibly talented, and you should definitely follow her on Instagram!

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!