Metallic Leopard Print Nail Art

I had a small tragedy today with a bottle of China Glaze polish breaking in the large Urban Outfitters bag I keep most of my polish in, and gooping up all my cheez wiz. Lesson learned? I need to store my polish in a more secure way to avoid goopiness and breakage.

Took my puppy to the vet today also, and got some ickiness to deal with in the next few weeks, and while I am so thankful that it isn't anything serious, the stress of the day meant I needed to focus on a project. I've done a super cute free-handed leopard print nail before that was the traditional leopard colors, but this time I wanted something subtle and "fierce."

So I decided to try out a subtle, metallic leopard print nail using China Glaze polishes in order to "pour some out" for my lost CG homie. I used three coats of China Glaze "Avalanche" (a periwinkle/silver frosty metallic ) for the background color, and using a small nail art brush, I made some blobs of silver spots using China Glaze "Jitterbug" (a charcoal silver micro glitter.) After letting them dry a bit, with a coat of Seche Vite in between, I used Orly "Goth" (a semi-opaque black with silver micro glitter.)

The secret for this design, which is crazy easy by the way, is to make blobs of color that aren't uniform, then let them dry. Then when you follow up with the outlines of the spots, just make little parentheses around the colored blobs with a darker color. And shazaam! You've made a leopard print finger nail. Well done, you!

OK, on with the pictures:

Hope you enjoyed!

Sephora Spring Nail Trend DIY

In March, I was playing around with the Sephora iPhone app and stumbled upon some Spring trend videos. They were talking about brights, romantic looks, and how you can translate some of the Spring runway trends into your everyday makeup look. During one of the videos, an image of the model for the romantic look flashed across the screen with a really cute subtle color block mani on her artfully displayed fingers. I was able to scrub the video and get a screen grab:

This nail look became my obsession. I couldn't think about anything else until I found the colors I needed to make this happen. Everything about it was appealing. The subtlety of the shades, the awesomeness that is the half-moon mani, and the fact that the model looks a little bit like Fiona from Burn Notice, right? So my search was on.




I dragged my BF to Ulta with me, armed with my precious screen grab to see if I could match the colors enough to make it work. We must have looked like total psychos, huddled in the corner of the Ulta, holding up different polish shades and saying, "No, too brown," or, "This one looks right for the base shade, but do I already have this color?" Then congratulating each other with high fives when we settled on the appropriate colors. This is why I love him. He doesn't mind humoring my quests for silly things like this.

Ended up with Ulta Professional Nail Lacquer in "Girl Next Door" for the lighter color and an OPI color I already had, everyone's favorite "Barefoot in Barelona."

So here's how it came out. Please excuse my horrid, ugly cuticles in this picture. It was taken after a rough work week which was murder on my hands. Seche Vite basically made it bulletproof, so no chips! This was taken in natural light on the steering wheel of my car, because I'm classy like that.

Hope you enjoyed! I promise I'm going to move on from the half-moon/color block manicures soon. I seem to be going through a phase with them. Next, I'll probably experiment with the new set of nail art brushes I picked up at Sally. Yay.

Livestrong Inspired Manicure

My little brother (@LaserRobotTime on Twitter) is running his first marathon this weekend in honor of all of my family members that have battled cancer. Throughout my Grandfather's illness, my family relied on a lot of the information provided by the Livestrong Foundation. Long after the wristband trend died down, this non-profit has helped countless families and patients learn about what to expect, and what support is out there for them. In order to help raise awareness for my brother's fundraising efforts, I decided to try out China Glaze's Solar Power in a half-moon manicure over China Glaze White on White.

Please pardon the junkiness around the cuticles. I've yet to invest in one of those remover clean-up pens. I used regular french tip guides for the clean half-moon line. I wanted to make the half-moon a lot larger than normal, to almost appear color blocked.

Here's my process:

Sally Hansen Hard As Nails acrylic strengthener as a base coat over my natural nails. Then two coats of China Glaze White on White, concentrating on the base of the nail for opacity. One coat of Poshe, and then I let it sit for a few minutes so the stickiness of the french tip guide wouldn't mess up the base color. Then applying the manicure guide with just a little white peeking underneath, I applied two medium coats of China Glaze Solar Power. One relatively thick coat of Seche Vite sealed it all in.

I think I'll probably use Orly Instant Artist in black to draw a thin black line over the half moon line to make it even more Livestrong inspired and put "Go Tyler!" on one of the nails.

Thanks for checking out my blog. I'll be writing about everything from nail polish to hair products. I'll add reviews of what I'm loving now, and what I'm using now. While I love MUA's reviews, I'll go slightly further in depth.