Brush stroke feather technique

Once again I have found inspiration from this site Pshiiit, the site is in french but the universal language of art in undeniable, the 'force' is truly strong with this one! Using a flat brush you can mimic the look of the very popular feather nail art you see all over the place, & the best part...no birds are harmed in the creation of this art.

I used Zoya Neely as my base, China Glaze QT to make the pink feather brush strokes & white paint for the dots.

indoor light

edited with a film in picassa

Mini Cadbury Eggs

I saw a post on 10BlankCanvasas & loved it, she featured her take on mini Cadbury Eggs. I was planning on doing the exact same effect but found myself terribly short on time, so I chose a faster route & cheated a little with some large glitter polish over my pastels. Although it's definitely shinier than Cadbury Eggs actually are, the result was still quite lovely & I'm glad I can share just how simple it is to recreate something that looks both professional & authentic.

I used various polishes for my nails & alternated: China Glaze Lemon Fizz, Zoya Blu, OPI Rumple's Wiggin', Zoya Neely & China Glaze Something Sweet. The glitter polish I used to top it off is from Sinful Colors Jewelry Heist, it's different size glitter in it, I just swiped one thin coat so the glitter looked spread out. Thankfully they turned out just how I wanted & resulted in many compliments. 

Christmas Movie/Nail night

It's been so long since I held one of these & what better time than Christmas! It was so much fun, I enjoyed every minute as I got to see each lady light up when their nails were done & that was my little bit of Christmas Cheer!

The Movie of choice:

Who doesn't love this movie? It's full of fun & love, the kind of movie that makes you feel warm & fuzzy & touches you at your core. (It also inspires you to try out your British accent all night, heehee!)

The following are pictures of everybody's nails, in no particular order. 

Polishes used were:

Sally Hansen "Sent me to Green Heaven"

Sally Hansen "Celeb City Silver"

Zoya "Sara"

Zoya "Blair"

Butter London "Fishwife"

Orly "Royal Navy"

Nicole by OPI "Follow me on Glitter"

Designs were created using acrylic paints & a fine nail art brush. Some pictures didn't come out as I had hoped, it was late at night & the lighting was bad, so I'm sorry. You will notice that the last pictures look much better, these were retakes the next day at the office & I could only do that with the ladies I work with. I also got creative with my snowmen, lol, so don't laugh. Overall you get the feeling of Christmas Joy!

Leslie's abstract c'mas tree

Tara's blue Christmas snow

Melissa's presents

Linda's snowflakes

My Christmas Tree

Corinne's snowflakes

Yesenia's Holly & Snowflakes.

Girly-Girl Challenge, Day 7: Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice

Day 7 of the Girly-Girl Challenge: Sugar, spice, & everything nice, it's what little girls are made of. For this design you can choose between something sweet or spicy. Not wanting to pick a side, I decided to incorporate both! So here is my design with a little of everything that's makes us girly-girls:

For the base nail polishes I used: Wet N Wild "Sugar Coat", Spoiled hot pink called "Tip Your Waitress" , & a chocolate brown from Zoya called "Angelina". On the pinkie I went over the soft nude pink with Spoiled glitter called "Jewelry Heist", I used a striping brush with Zoya "Sarah" over the hot pink on my ring finger to make it look extra SPICY! I then used various acrylic paints to do designs on all my other nails: Some white lace on the middle finger, multi-colored dots to look like MM's or candy on my chocolate nail & a pretty pink bow on my thumb. There were a lot of ideas I had of all things sugary & spicy, but I like how this turned out with a little of both, hope ya'll like it too.

I really love how the bow turned out :-)

Girly-Girl Challenge, Day 4:Inspired by the Runway

Day 4 of the Girly-Girl challenge: "Inspired by the Runway"

I love this idea & I immediately started Googling fashion runway looks that I wanted to imitate on my nails.Take a look at all the lovely colors & styles of fashion on the runway & you are literally overflowing with ideas one after the other until you have to narrow it down to your absolute favorite & which you feel expresses the most inspiration for you. This is so hard to do. I found this pretty color block dress that was just lovely, I really liked the color combo, so I figured "why not!"

My inspiration.

Once again using Sache Vite for both my base & my top coats. I then painted my entire nail a pretty pale gold shimmer from Revlon called Gold Get 'Em, for the other block colors I used a greige color from e.l.f. called Desert Haze & a bright orange from the brand "Savvy" that I found @ Sallys called Orange You Happy. And for the tip I used Zoya Cynthia to tie it all in.

Here's my Girly-Girl challenge, Day 4, Runway inspired look:

Girly-Girl Challenge Day 2: Gimme that Bling!

Day 2 of the Girly-Girl challenge: "Gimme that Bling". In the description it says, " Diamonds are a girls best friend, so put some bling on those nails". Immediately I had Marilyn Monroe stuck in my head with her singing that famous song, so why not honor the queen of girly-girl glam & make the nail design all about Marilyn.

Here are some of the pictures where I got my inspiration...

After applying Sache Vite, ridge filling base coat, I did a couple different designs to capture everything girly & glamorous about Marilyn in the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blonds. Red Carpet from Sally Hansen  & a pearl from Zoya called Angella were used as my background colors. I then added some pink curves over the red base using Spoiled nail polish called Fuzzy Dice to look like Marilyn's lovely hourglass shape, I also used a silver acrylic paint for some outline dots. A whole lot of glitter is what went on my ring fingers, I used a silver glitter, a pink one & a white one over the pearl base, to look like the sparkle of diamonds. For the thumb I cut up a very small picture of the lovely Marilyn herself to size &, using just some regular white glue, placed the cut picture on my nail & held it there for about a minute pressing it down so it would stick. I then topped with Sache Vite top coat & viola! I still have to see if the picture will actually stay on & for how long, I'm especially concerned about showers, lol. I will let you know how that goes, but I really just wanted a picture of Marilyn & i'm too busy to paint it & didn't want to wait to search for an actual sticker, so I just used paper :-)

So without further ado, here is my girly-girl "BLING" design:

These first 2 show the best view of the design

Then I got a little creative with picasa & made a couple artsy versions...

Comic Book style

Cinema Scope

The Dotting Tool Pollock painting

My Entry for the Dotting Tool contest, that Chalkboard Nails is hosting, was inspired by this Jackson Pollock painting called Full Fathom Five:

Here are the polishes I used, L-R: Sally Hansen white tip, Santee Black, Zoya Cynthia, Zoya Dove, Sally Hansen Blue-Away & Santee Neon Orange.

The finished design...

For my base coat I used Sache Vite ridge filling base coat & for my top coat I used Sache Vite fast dry top coat. First I applied the base coat, followed by 1 coat of white, then I painted some random swipes of blue-away using the brush that came with the bottle. Next, using my dotting tool I dragged & pulled the various other colors so as to look like the dripping technique mastered by Pollock. For the finishing touch I topped it off with my Sache Vite top coat, here are pictures of the art step by step: