MOD

This is my first attempt at this style.  I don't have any skinny brushed nail polished right now so I had to use the regular ones.  I can't wait to try it again when I have the right brush! 

Instructions:  My toes were already painted black so I first made the two big yellow v forms in the middle, then the smaller ones on the sides.  I then filled in the white.  I did a double coat of the yellow and white and then fixed mistakes by going back in with the black.  When I get the smaller brushes, I will try painting everything on to my bare nail, starting with the black X in the middle and expanding with the yellow and white. Stay tuned! I will most likely have this done on my friend's nails by Saturday :)

Cascading Glitter

Just paint your nails any color and when they are dry use a glitter nail polish on the tips.  You can double coat the very tip for the effect I have on the purple nails.  I only did one coat of glitter on the green.  I used Deborah Lippmann's "Today was a Fairytale".  Ode to taytay swift ;) Note on Deborah Lippmann polish- it is expensive but pretty and the glitter is so easy to get off.  Definitely worth your time and your hand doesn't cramp up when you try to take it off like normal glitter.

Lace

This is my second time doing Sally Hansen Nail Effects, and I think I should start doing them more often! My only advice- go get a manicure when you want to take it off. It takes forever to get off :/

Birthday Cake Nails

I have been eyeing the Deborah Lippmann, Happy Birthday sparkles for quite some time now and finally bought them last week :) I painted my nails pink and then put two layers of sparkles at the tips.

Rainbow Leopard

Just another twist on classic leopard print.  I tried to do marble nails today and it didn't really work out.  I had some great practice though! I will try again next week.  Happy Memorial Weekend!

....Dots....

First I painted my nails with two coats of white.  I had a wooden skewer with a small circle shape on the ending, so I used that to make the dots.  All you have to do is dab a little nail polish on a surface (I used a plastic bag) and then dip your tool in the nail polish and then onto your nail.   Repeat this for each spot.  I will probably get an easter egg painting tool to do my dots next time, that way they can look smaller and neater.

April Showers Brought these Flowers

It is very easy to achieve this antique flower look.  Paint your nails as you normally would with any color.  I chose a hot pink.  When it was dry, I painted blobs of yellow, and leaf-like shapes next to the yellow shapes.  When the yellow and green were completely dry, I made petal type shapes over the yellow.  I usually use a small brush, but today I used a nail art pen made by Sally Hansen.  Either way, the shapes don't have to be perfect, so this is an easy design for a beginner! 

~Spring Nails~

This is a different take on Galaxy nails!  I first did a white base coat and let it dry.  I then painted a color on a piece of a sponge and dabbed it in a random place on each nail.  I repeated with a few different colors.  At the end, I added one coat of glitter and finished with a top coat!

**Galaxy Nails**

So this was my first time doing galaxy nail and I am pretty pleased.  It was very easy to do and you can use any colors you want to!  I used a dark blue and did one coat over all of my nails.  Then, I used the light green on the tips/middle of my nail.  I cut off the side of a sponge (I just used a kitchen sponge) and painted some color on the sponge and dabbed it on the end of my nails.  I then used a little white on some edges.  I would have liked more of a splatter effect with white but I don't have any really solid white colors- mine are all a little see through.  I need to get on that.  Then I did a coat of bluish sparkles over all my nails.  I used a Deborah Lippmann silver  glitter, "Today was a fairytale" on various places on each nail.  Finish with a topcoat and you are finito! I like using the sponge technique.  I will definitely be using a sponge to do cool color mixtures in the future. The top photo was with a flash so it makes it look a bit different than this one:

All Girls Hoard Bags

Hey girlfriends! Now don't be telling me you don't have a bag collection somewhere in your house! No, I do not mean purses... I mean BAGs- you know, paper bags, plastic bags, cloth bags, tall bags, skinny bags, Whole Foods bags, Ralphs bags, Lulu bags, and every other brand imaginable... You know what I am talking about! The term "bag lady" didn't come from nowhere!

This bag hoarding idea came to me last Easter when my dad and I went over to my cousin Rimas and wife Myia's house.  Somehow it came up that my mom had a real problem throwing away these grocery/shopping bags and he started finding them all over the house.  He said it had gone to far when he was finding them under beds, and made her throw SOME of her bags away.   Lets be realistic- what woman can throw out ALL of her bags?

Right then my cousin Rimas starts talking about Myia's bag problem and opens the closet next to us, where millions of all types of bags fall out.  She immediatly starts rationalizing why she needs so many bags.  I then realize that I also hoard bags in the back of my closet.  You know, those big nice ones from Bloomingdale's or the cloth ones from Free People, plastic ones in the kitchen.  Anyways, I think the reason we save them is because "you never know when you might need a bag".

 I like to think my bag obsession is a combination of genetics and LA's idea that lunchboxes were lame and you needed the coolest little paper bag from a trendy clothing store to keep your lunch in.  Oooh those Elyse Walker light pink bags with the cloth brown handles were my favorite lunch bags.  In high school we also used these cute little bags to return clothes to friends after wearing their dress and not wanting them to see how crumpled it is until they got home by shielding it with this beautiful bag.  Return a crumpled dress alone and you never let them borrow anything again.... return a crumpled dress in a bag and its ALLL gooood.  But when was the last time I used one of those nice bags to bring someting to someoone? Um probably never, and so my collection grows.

Aleksandra, my roommate and I subconsciously collected bags under the sink this year.. In about December, things were getting ridiculous in the bag department and I got up the nerve ;) to bring up our obvious but never spoken about bag hoarding problem.  Now we joke around about it, and pretend we don't cherish every little plastic bag we use.  Everyday we have new stories about bags we collected or secretly reused that day.  We kick ourselves for not remembering our cloth bags at whole foods but then delight in the idea that we will get new bags from our trip to the store. It's an addiction.

I could go on and on about bag stories, but I will not.  If you're a girl, you know it's true.  I hope all of you prosper in all of your bag endeavors!

And if you're wondering if I threw out the bags pictured above that we keep under the sink.. NO I DID NOT THROW OUT OUR PRECIOUS BAGS, but I did organized them :)

~Cheeetah Rawwwr~

Yes, I did just take off the crackle and applied cheetah.  It's been a long time since I've had cheetah myself.  I did it for so many other people, I kinda got sick of looking at it.  Don't worry friends, I still dooo fo you :) To do cheetah print is pretty simple and fun! You can change up all three of the colors! For mine, I used Over the Taupe OPI for the base (let it dry for about 10 min), then I used a nail polish that came with a  thin black brush I got at a Sally beauty supply store, and a CoverGirl glitter gold nail polish for the middles of the spots.  

 If you want a lot of small-brushed colors, you can just use the normal nail polish you already have and just buy a small paintbrush at an art supply store.  When applying the black designs, try to keep them all the same size.  I like to have some full shapes and some coming off the sides to infinity and beyond.  Then I just draw a few small lines or specks in open places.  The trick for the shapes are to do one longer/bigger U shape and then one smaller one.  It really matters what kind of brush you use because sometimes the shapes will come on thicker.  I prefer a thicker brush, but right now I have a thinner one so I glob more nail polish onto it.  I usually put the middle color of the spots on last, but you could do it before and then use them as a guide to draw the black shapes around.  If you are using a solid color for the inside of the spots, I recommend putting them on and then drawing the black around.  After you wait for everything to dry for about 20 minutes you can apply a topcoat :) Voila! (Said like Vwala.. I just learned how to spell that.  It's french)

Colors I used:

OPI Crackle

I purchased the last OPI crackle polish at ULTA last week..score! I could not decide what color/glitter color I wanted underneath so I painted a different color on each finger.  The instructions say to wait until the underneath color is completely dry before applying the crackle polish, but I was too impatient and it didn't crackle correctly.  I had red on my nails from the weekend and decided to try the crackle again today.  Not such a fan of the crackled look.  It just looks messy to me.  I also have never been a fan of red + black together- kinda goth looking.

China Glaze is coming out with multi colored crackle polish soon, unless it is already out.  I don't think I will get anymore.  I may try a new color under the black next week, but after that, I think I will wait until Halloween to do orange and crackle black.. it seems fitting.

TIPS from me for Crackle polish:

• Wait for your underneath color to be completely dry.  I would wait about 20-30 minutes
• Use as few strokes as you can to apply because it starts crackling instantly.  I found it the best to use 3 strokes: side, middle, other side.  I dipped the brush into the bottle every new stroke. Make sure you have enough polish on the brush, because you don't want to go over the same spot twice

Stay tuned.  I just bought the Sally Hanson Salon Effects and am going to apply them for my next big night out on the town! I'm off to take off this crackle shiznat!

New Rhinestoned iPhone Case

I must start this post off by saying I will not proofread my posts because I am too lazy to, but I also will probably feel embarrassed by how long I an talk about certain subjects.  So as some of you know, I ordered the most beautiful sparkly black rhinestones this summer.  When they arrived, they were blue but said they were black on the label.  I called to complain, but I did not get a call back   or email me back so finally after many months, I just rhinestoned my cell phone case blue.  Unfortunately things took a turn for the worse and was running out of blue towards the bottom, so I put a pink heart at the bottom to take up space.  I still ran out and had to use some of the clear I had left over from rhinestoning my car at the bottom. So, needless to say my cell phone case is not as beautiful as it should be, but it's sparkly.  


If you feel like rhinestoning your cell phone, face... entire body, or anything else that comes to mind, I cannot judge you, but I do have a website I recommend.  They only messed up this one time and usually they are quick to respond to an email or call.  https://www.rhinestoneshop.com


I recommend the 10ss or 9ss for cell phones.  I think they look the best.  That is what I used for the blue.  If you are not patient or have trouble placing small items in straight lines you should use 12ss. The bigger ones are easier to put on, but don't always fit well, so the smaller, the neater everything looks.  I got 3 Gross of my blue (that were supposed to be black) and ran out so you should get 4 Gross or 5 to be safe.-what's the harm in having rhinestones left over.


I would also recommend you get the "hotfix" rhinestones because they have a beauuuuutiful shine on them.  I rhinestoned one of my phones with the chalk white and it was one of the prettiest things I have ever seen.  The other rhinestones on the website appear shiny in photos, but don't have that multi color sparkle in person.  My car had to find out about this the sad way. The blue and clear rhinestones I put on the steering wheel and back bmw sign are very "blah". Check out the black hotfix rhinestones I was supposed to get.


Last but not least, if you plan to rhinestone anything, you must buy the "picker upper" and glue off the website.  The picker upper is a little plastic tool with wax on the end which makes it extremely easy to lift and transfer rhinestones at a very fast speed.  If you are right handed, I recommend starting at the left and working towards the right in horizontal lines, and work your way down from bottom to top with those horizontal lines. 


It is hard to capture the beauty of rhinestones in a photo, but I tried..

Soon to come...