Stripes and Outlines

I wanted to do some Spring-y stripes and when I completed them I decided to experiment with some outlines. I wish I had made the outline skinnier. Which design do you like better, with or without the outline?

Branches and Stripes

Sometimes I don't plan out my nails at all before I start painting, this was one of those times. But I kind of like how it turned out. The colors were inspired by a planner that I use and I somehow ended up with some branches and random stripes. Unfortunately my poor photography skills have once again made it difficult for you to actually see the colors of these nails, but I have a feeling that (although my nail art may improve) my photography never will! 

Animal Prints

I've never been a huge animal print kind of gal, but I'm totally in love with these nails. Does that sound a little conceited?  Oh well, that's how much I like these nails -- enough that bragging about them outweighs any fears of seeming too into myself! I wanted to make a sort of organic overlay of both leopard and zebra prints and this is what came out. I think the design looks really cool, but if I were to go back and do it again I would probably use different colors for the leopard print. I would have used the lighter color as a background and the medium shade as the center of the spots. Anyways! This was my first attempt at zebra print and I think it was a success. I always get worried about print type things because if you try to hard to be random, you create patterns and then the art looks fake. Another thing I love about these nails: the matte finish. I love mattes + animal prints. Yay, these were some super happy nails!

Guest Hands and St. Patty's Day

I don't typically do holiday nail art too much. In fact, I usually don't even realize it's a holiday until I check my blogroll (ie. I had no idea it was Mardi Gras until I saw like 8 million Mardi Gras nail arts). But on one of my last days of school, a fellow student asked if I wouldn't mind doing some St. Patrick's Day nail art on her. About a week earlier I had given her a pedicure and painted her toe-nails green, so it only seemed right to have matching fingernails! For these nails I used polish (Borghese's Lira and some lime green Sally Hansen that I forget the name of and am too lazy to look up) and acrylic paint. But because it's not quite St. Patty's Day, I decided to use a Shellac UV top coat to seal it all in. I did this before on a different students' Superbowl nails. I hope they stay until the big day because I think they turned out really cute! 

Striped Gradient

You may remember for Halloween that Michelle from Sonoma Nail Art did a spooky candle gradient during her 30 day challenge (if you don't remember, you can see it here). I thought it turned out totally awesome and used it as inspiration for these nails! Instead of doing a normal faded gradient, I used curved stripes to give the look of gradient nails. I loved these because from afar they look like normal gradient nails but up close they have awesome detail! After painting these I realized that they looked like the sky, so after a few days of wear I ended up painting some flowers coming out of my cuticles. This ended up being a mistake: they looked weird and it took away from the simplistic awesomeness they already had.

Have a wonderful new years celebration tonight! I will be posting my favorite nails of the year tomorrow, so make sure to check back to see some old designs!

Fleury Rose Inspired Stripes

As the title would suggest, these are some Fleury Rose inspired stripes. She is one of my top five favorite nail artists, and one of the awesome things about her is that she is a professional! So many awesome nail artists are (AMAZING) amateurs, and while there is nothing wrong with that, it sure is inspirational to see someone get paid for doing what they love.  She is based out of Brooklyn, and I really hope that at some point I can get my nails done by her!

If you haven't seen her work yet, I would HIGHLY recommend it. She has a very distinct style. Since she is on Tumblr, you may have to sift through some posts that are not her original works, but believe me, it is totally worth it to go through and find her stuff!!

Hamburglar

When I first started doing nail art, I realized that blogs existed that were completely devoted to passion for nails, nail polish, nail art, and probably about a million more nail related sub-genres. I used to (who am I kidding, I still do) scour these blogs by bookmarking them all and compulsively checking them all. Ron, my fiance, loves hamburgers like how I love nails, so when he discovered Burgers and Nails aka The Nail-Burglar on tumblr, we were both in heaven. A blog that was completely devoted to the combination of two of our greatest passions! The Nail-Burglar is pretty self explanatory: It features photographs of hamburgers being held by well manicured ladies (and presumably sometimes men as well). So, Ron and I knew that we *had* to submit some nails to this site, and it took me long enough! I finally decided to paint The Hamburglar from McDonaldland on my nails! I painted his face on my ring finger, his striped jailbird suit on my thumb and pinky, and his hamburger print tie on my index and middle fingers.

Here's the actual post on Burgers and Nails. Hope you enjoy!

Plain Stripes

A thing that I need to learn how to do is tape manicures. I think my impatience kills me for doing them because I always (well, the one time I did one) put the tape down before my polish dried. This was SUPPOSED to be a super quick mani to last me through an evening out. I painted it in about 10 minutes with acrylic paints (which dry faster) and then quickly applied my top coat. But obviously I forgot that top coats require time to dry as well -- I started getting dressed and immediately ruined these nails! Without enough time to repaint, I spent the entire evening attempting to hide my nails (which is really really hard to do). I think everyone probably thought I was crazy for grabbing all my drinks with like a deformed monkey paw of a hand. Stupid ruined manicures always ruin my nights!