Everyone was going away for spring break recently, which was the inspiration for this manicure. I have one student who adores flamingos and had a “flamingo experience” where she got to interact with them in person while she was in Florida, which sounded amazing! These nails are dedicated to her.
I chose a rosy salmon pink as the base color for this design. This was achieved with 3 thin layers of Belen gel polish in color NU016. Each coat was cured for 60 seconds in a 36W UV/LED lamp.
I had the wonderful opportunity to play with New Camerata Opera last week for their double bill of John Blow’s Venus and Adonis and Savitri by Gustav Holst. Everyone sounded amazing, but I was especially inspired by the costuming for the production of Venus and Adonis. They went for an MTV 80’s glam rock/punk interpretation of this 17th century opera with vibrant neon pinks and black mesh, leather, and lace.
After our first dress rehearsal, I promptly went home and created these nails.
I started by painting my nails white with Laguna Moon Classic Soak-Off UV-LED Gel Polish in color CL361.
2 coats of gel polish were applied with each coat cured at 30 seconds with a UV/LED lamp.
Today I’m going to introduce you to some pretty microbeads that I found on the Born Pretty website. They are super pretty because of their pearlescent rainbow AB finish and look like tiny bubbles!
Born Pretty clear microbeads have an iridescent look to them.
Today I have a very interesting and useful tool to show you all. It is a dual ended rhinestone picker and brush pen to help with your nail art designs.
This tool is similar in size to an actual pen and combines two functions: the ability to pick up stones and glitters on one end and a brush on the other to either dust away excess powders or glitters from your nails or help push excess charms back into their container. The shape is easy to hold, and the white and clear hot pink plastic of the handle makes for an attractive addition to your nail art area.
It’s hard to believe that we’re halfway through August already! I have no idea how time has been flying by. To be honest, I did these nails 2 weeks ago but am only just now starting to catch up with my blog.
In any case, I still haven’t been to the beach this summer because I’ve been so busy. The closest I can get to one is through some nail art.
I started by painting my nails with Born Pretty Thermal Gel in color BP-5730. I love thermal polishes for their natural gradient effect and also for their ability to entertain me in different temperature settings! This one looks like a pale periwinkle blue in warm temperatures and a deep royal blue in cold temperatures. It also has the perfect sprinkling of two different sized glitters in the formula which truly makes it look more special.
I applied and cured this polish for about 1 minute and repeated the process for a second coat.
My next step was to create a sandy beach line along the half moon area of my nails. Continue reading
Happy summer, everyone! Who is looking forward to going to the beach? I have to live vicariously through my memories of previous summers for now because I’ve been ridiculously busy this month with gigs, so I brought the beach to my nails with this jellyfish design.
I started by painting my nails with Recall from Born Pretty’s Flower in Sunshine Series. It’s a beautiful mermaid turquoise green color with a pearl pink sheen and holographic sparkles.
To create an ocean effect with some depth, I sponged on dabs of Diva into the Pool from Nicole by OPI.
For more contrast, I added a few dabs of Queen for a Night from Finger Paints. This was also a good choice for me because it alludes to the Queen of the Night character from Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, which I am currently playing!
I’ve still been pretty busy these days, but I needed a change from my last manicure, so I went for something that would be quick and easy to put together for this week.
My polish of choice was something that looks stunning on its own: a multichrome polish from Beauty Big Bang. They call this Chameleon Polish 001, and the color is amazingly shifty in a good way! It has forest green tones that border on teal blue and has a dark purple undertone in indirect light.
Beauty Big Bang Chameleon Polish 001
This polish alone would have been enough for me, but I added some multi-toned rhinestones purchased from AliExpress to make it look even more fetching.
These rhinestones come in a few different sizes and have a somewhat iridescent sheen to them that make them appear multicolored.
Happy March, everyone! I’ve been meaning to do some unicorn nail art for awhile just for fun, so let’s get on with this magical manicure!
My base color was an indigo wonder from Beauty Bigbang, 009 in their Holo Polish series.
Beauty Bigbang Holo Polish 009 is full of magical rainbows that are perfect for a unicorn theme!
I’ve been feeling lazy about doing freehand stuff lately, so I opted to use plate L045 from Harunouta to assist me with this manicure.
I chose to use the unicorn from the top row, 2nd image from the left, and the shooting star 2 images to the right of that for this manicure.
This week is full of holidays, so here is some Mardi Gras nail art to get the good times rolling!
I planned to do a rather intricate design, so I didn’t go for a solid shade across all my nails. I decided to use a golden shimmery yellow (Nadia from Julep) alongside a glossy black (Johnny from Julep) for my base colors.
I first did a preliminary sketch of my mask with pencil and paper to give me the confidence to paint it across two of my nails. The sketch looked way better, but I also was painting this design late at night and was getting increasingly more worried that I wasn’t going to get enough sleep because I knew this wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought!
In any case, I used craft smart acrylic paint in black to paint the mask, then used a striping brush with gold holographic polish (Heart of Gold from Born Pretty) to paint diagonal lines across the mask to form a diamond harlequin style pattern.
After seeing so many people use dried flowers in their manicures lately, I felt the need to try out the trend. When I was offered the opportunity to get this set of dried flowers from Born Pretty Store, I was eager to put them to use!
The flowers are packaged inside a cute heart shaped plastic container which is surrounded by plastic wrap to keep the package from opening during shipment. The item label is affixed to one side while the color variation is marked on a small loose slip of paper on the other side.
Top view of the container.
These flowers come in four color variations of the same type of flowers. I chose the “B” assortment from the company’s website.
Bottom view of the container. The writing is on a loose piece of paper, not a sticker, so you will want to label the box yourself if you want to keep a record of color set inside.
The lid conveniently snaps open and shut and is attached to the bottom storage compartment, so it is very easy to use!
Have I mentioned how cute the container is?
