Nail Art Lately

Here are some more of my adventures in nail art since the last post.

These nails were my first exercise with the nail sticker The Dainty Squid highly recommends. I’ve never found myself patient enough to work on chevrons with a brush, so I was excited with this zig zag sticker. I thought it would be fun to alternate neons. Both colors are from China Glaze. The base is one of my favorites, OPI’s My Boyfriend Scales Walls. For once I photographed my right hand, instead of the left. I did my left hand first (as usual, because my right is my dominant) and it wasn’t perfect. Not terrible, but I was quite proud of the work done here.

Inspiration comes from the weirdest places sometimes…this is a pair of underwear from Aerie! I love the pattern, though, and I had all of the colors available to me. China Glaze’s Into the Hue served as the perfect matching base. I used OPI’s Sparrow Me the Drama (pink),
Essie’s In the Cab-ana (blue), OPI’s My Vampire is Buff, and Julep’s Korin (green) for the triangles. All freehand with a brush.

So I had a couple of mess ups with these nails…they were my patriotic nails! I did these the morning of 7/4…I actually spent a lot of time during my vacation without polish on. Very strange, for me. I loved the dotted nails, but I think they got pulled when I applied the top coat.
These were gone within 24 hours…I spent the entire day in the pool and the chlorine killed them. I’m still proud of my thumb and middle finger though. The blues were Char and Bess from Julep, I used a basic red polish from F21’s Love and Beauty collection. The white was my go-to OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls and the glitter was a Julep add-on called Fireworks. I made the star with a dotting tool…I was pleased with how that turned out. I had high hopes for my nails, but I ended up slapping them together quickly. I hope to do the anchor again soon.

I was positively giddy over these watermelon nails. I fashioned them after these Scratch nail wraps, but I took more creative freedom haha.
I used Nicole by OPI Spring Break from the Selena Gomez collection as the base. Eventually I’m going to do a Favorite Nail Polish post and that’ll be on it. Other than that, I just had fun dotting the messy seeds and stripes. These are perfect summer nails and SO EASY.

To say I was in love with this design would be an understatement…it was so easy and I could stare all day at them. I used the beautiful My Vampire is Buff by OPI as my base. And then I covered it with the amazing fantastic ballin’ awesome fanfreakintastic Clearly Spotted by Maybelline Color Show for the black and white glitter…I can’t handle the awesomeness of that polish. Clearly.
I topped that with Seche Vite for shiny and quick dry, and then I taped off the little triangles with Scotch tape and painted in some Nails Inc. Leather Effect in Noho for that mixed texture effect. I just absolutely loved this look. Cookies and Cream and badass?

FUN NAIL TIME. I will be honest, this was a complete copy of The Dainty Squid, but how could you not? After a bunch of pretty quiet nail colors, it was fun not only to do color but to do ALL THE COLOR. I am getting more and more at ease with sponge gradients. The thumb and middle are my favorites. Yellow and pink make for an awesome gradient. 

I can’t wait to share more with you as I go. I really want to pick up my nice camera (instead of always always always using my iPhone) and make sure my cuticles are nice and purdy for y’all. Every time I paint my nails, it’s like a new adventure. Whether I’m testing my boundaries or simply trying out a new polish, it’s so much fun to explore the possibilities.