Fun with Nails

For years, I reserved nail polish for my toes. I was used to messing up my nails, painting way out of the lines, getting lazy and let the polish chip to oblivion. I figured it wasn’t worth it. My toes were easy to ignore for a while. It was hard to tell if I had messed up and they lasted forever. So I stuck with that. Until I tried Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Polish strips. And then I fell in love with nail polish and nail art.

It started off with the strips, but then I got into actual nail polish. Wanted to try it out. And if you read this blog regularly, you know I really enjoy my OPI and I like to share the different things I try on Nails and Ales posts. Unfortunately, this summer has been filled with the same cheap beer, so I don’t have any new ales to show you. But I do want to share some of my recent nail art endeavors.
They aren’t perfect by any means, but it’s been fun to experiment.

(Again, I apologize, some of these are a bit messy)

I finally got some nail art polishes. L.A. Colors Art Deco polishes in black, white, and pink.
My first trial was this semi-tribal look. This was easy enough. I just used OPI’s No Room for the Blues and A Roll in the Hague and alternated nails. I used the regular brush to put the horizontal stripe in. And then I used the striper polish. It was SO easy and effortless. You must try L.A. Colors Art Deco. It’s amazing. The formula is smooth and opaque enough to cover any polish.

This was my second time using the striper and the first time doing a tape manicure. OPI’s Pamplona Purple served as the base. I used a bunch of tape to do the triangles, my favorite being the upside down triangle on both of my ring fingers. For that part, I used one of the new Essie metallic polishes, Good as Gold. And then I used the striper polish to trace the outline and separate the two. I really liked this.

Braided nails were a lot of fun to do. I want to try this again with different colors. This came from one of CutePolish’s amazing tutorials. 
I used OPI’s Pink Friday, Did It On ‘Em, and Fly (all from the Nicki Minaj collection, and covered it with Essie’s Shine of the Times flaky top coat to add a little extra oomph. I liked these colors together, so fun, and this braided style is super easy.
No extra tools needed, just the regular brushes that come with the polish!

Theses are the nails I am currently rocking (I took this picture right after painting them, thus the tiny messes here and there). These watermelon nails were super duper easy and they are so yummy and happy! There are so many ways to do these depending on the colors you want, if you want to do the whole nail (or just a slice, like CutePolish), and how much detail you want to put into it. I was based mine off a  photo on HelloGiggles. I used OPI’s Sparrow Me the Drama for the fruit and Jade is the New Black for the green rind. I finished it off with a swipe of white striper beneath the green line, and made my seeds using the black striper. Again, super easy and so fun!

 

So that’s my nail art right now. I’m so glad I’ve gotten into it all. I’m not the craftiest or artsy-iest person in the world, but nail art has been one of my favorite (and, as of late, few) creative releases. Hands are a part of everything we do, so it’s fun to look down at them and see something bright or cheerful. And they are a great conversation starter! I love talking to people about my nails or their nails.
That’s how I found out where to pick up my L.A. Colors!

Can’t wait to share more in the future. And hopefully we will get back to the Nails and Ales soon.