I'M BAAAACCKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi everyone! Sorry for the long absence, but I was away in Las Vegas for a week on a vacation, which was awesome, then I was busy hanging out with my sister and then it was my birthday! So now I am back after all sorts of excitement! I decided before I went away I wanted to get a Shellac manicure so that I wouldn't have to worry about my nails while away on vacation so that actually lasted longer than the week in Vegas. I finally took it off while at my sister's place and then redid my nails for my big birthday night out so that's what I have to show you today. I wanted something super sparkly for my birthday since I looooooove some sparkles! I also had a lot of trouble deciding between a few color combos so I decided to go with the cocktail nails trend and do two nails on each hand a different color. So I started off by painting one coat of Sally Hansen's "Silver Sweep" on my thumb, ring and pinky fingers. Then for my other two nails I did three coats of Nicole by OPI's "It's Not Me It's Blue". Then I did one coat of Essie's "Set in Stones" over all of the nails. The end result is FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I looooove it! So without further ado here are the pictures! :-)

I have been falling more and more in love with "Silver Sweep" recently since the metallic thing was pretty big for a minute and with all of the so called metallic polishes this is the only one I think actually looks good. I guess it could be that the wider brush allows for one swipe to cover the nail and avoids the visible brush strokes or that the slightly thicker formula covers nail ridges better or both, but for some reason I LOVE this nail polish. The Nicole one I also love because to me it changes color based on where it is and what angle you look at it from and in this look I love the contrast between it and the silver glitter from "Set in Stones". I seriously think this look is awesome and it is really sparkly even in the dimmer lighting of bars and restaurants where I was hanging out for my birthday. Overall I love this look I think it is sparkly and sophisticated and very trendy too. So I hope you all enjoyed it and now that most of the craziness is over until I actually start school I will be back to posting although I don't think my nails could take it if I tried to post every single day! :-)

Summer Challenge Day 16- Recreate your favorite manicure of someone else's

Hi everyone! Well for today's challenge I had a ton ton ton of fun! I saw one of the wonderful ladies did this manicure for the favorite color challenge and I loved it so I was really excited to recreate it for this challenge. It was actually pretty easy too even though it was a little bit on the tedious side it wasn't the worst I have ever attempted lol! SO! I started with a base of Sally Hansen Complete Manicure in "Lavender Cloud" then I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear "Cherry Red", Sinful Colors "Orange Alert", Finger Paints "Lemon Sour", Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear "Going Green" and "Blue Me Away" and finally Essence "Break Through" for the polka dots. I used my dotting tool to create this look and just had lots of fun with it really! So here come the pictures!

Love this look! It is so awesome and fun and adorable! So pretty much that's it for this challenge and I had a lot of fun! After this though I am going on vacation to Vegas (YAY!!!) for about a week so I will be scheduling a post and crossing my fingers that it actually works! :-) So until then enjoy!!!! :-)

Summer Challenge Day 15- Ocean

Hi everyone! Well today I have a very very very cool manicure to share with you all! I LOVE this one! I am really proud of how it turned out since I have had mixed results with water marbling. For this challenge I thought that water marbling would be the perfect technique to use. So I started off with three coats of Chameleon's "Blue Frost", which I have to say was awful! I found the formula to be thick and streaky and it seemed like every brush stroke just wiped away whatever had been put down. Also "Blue Frost" ended up with bubbles and a very uneven texture. I then used Borghese's "Mezzanotte Blue, Avon's "Vintage Blue", Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in "Blue Me Away", and Essence Holografics "Blue Ray" (this one is not a holo really, but more a duochrome). There are a million tutorials and tips and things out there on the web for how exactly to do water marbling so I won't go into that and I will just get to the pictures!

Please excuse the messy-ness all over my skin, but I was very excited to take the pictures that I didn't wait until I had finished all the clean up. I actually didn't have a ton of clean up to do though because I coated my fingers (except my actual nails) with Vaseline so the excess polish just slid off. Anyways, I LOVE how this turned out actually and I love the variety in the patterns and how fluid it looks. (cheesy, I know and I am sorry, but it's true!) So I hope you enjoy this one too!!! :-)

Summer Challenge Day 14- Swimsuit

Hi everyone! So for today's challenge I am going to use my favorite bathing suit as my inspiration. Here is a picture of that just for reference:

So I started off with about 3 yucky coats of Wet n Wild's "French White Creme", which I say was yucky because I honestly hate painting my full nails in white because they come out way too streaky for my taste. So then I used my Jordana black striping brush to add the zebra stripes and there you have it and here come the pictures!

So I think I am totally in love with the zebra stripe nails because they are so cute and actually pretty easy, also they can be any color combo you want! So I am thinking this might have to happen more often. :-)

Summer Challenge Day 13- Dolphins!

Hi all! So for my favorite sea animal I chose dolphins since I have always been fascinated by them. I even got to do one of those swim with the dolphins things when I went on a cruise with my parents in high school. So anyways, I thought it would be cool to do a dolphin jumping out of the water so I chose a very appropriately named polish for the water, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in "Deep Blue Sea", then I used my trusty Jordana black to draw my little dolphin only on my thumb because it was way too hard honestly to try fitting it on all my fingers. After that I just used a light blue striping brush to add little lines by the tail so it sorta kinda looks like the dolphin was jumping out of the water. All in all I thought this was cute and not too over the top. :-)

I actually really love that blue also. It is super sparkly and very pretty! :-) Hope you enjoyed this one!

Summer Challenge Day 12- Favorite Beach Memory

Hi everyone! Well today I have a really adorable (in my opinion) little manicure for you all. So for my favorite beach memory I thought about how when I was a kid, I would go visit my great aunt at her house just about every weekend, especially in the summer. Her house is right on the beach and as a kid I would be down there all the time and I remember the best days were when you could see all the kites being flown all up and down the beach. It looked really cool and I just loved seeing them all lined up so kites are what inspired me today. So on my thumb I used some scotch tape to create the classic diamond kite shape and then I free-handed some stripes and the black outline. To start though the background color is Essence "Gleam in Blue", which is suuuuch a pretty blue! I looove this color so much, so I owe my sister another shout out for finding and buying this one for me. Thanks!!!! :-) So back to the kite. I used two more Essence colors for the stripes. The purple is Essence "Break Through", the pink is Essence "Ultimate Pink" and the blue is Ulta's "Blue Streak". I used my Jordana striping black for the outline and then I used Wet n Wild's "French Creme White" for the clouds. I used my dotting tool to add the clouds around the kite as well as on my other four fingers. Overall I love this look so much! So here come the pictures!

So I hope you all enjoyed this look! :-)

Summer Challenge Day 11- Sea Shells

Edit: SO sorry that this posted so late! I set it to post automatically, but that didn't quite work out so well so here it is a bit late, but still it's here! :-)

Hi everyone! So I actually really love how this manicure turned out for today's challenge. Yay! So first I thought I would show my inspiration for this manicure.

I had the idea to do use the ruffle manicure technique that Chalkboard Nails shows here and using some colors similar to the shell above. I think that it is a bit of an abstract take on it, but I think with seeing the shell that was my inspiration it makes more sense. Anyways, I started off with a base of Wet n Wild "French Creme White" then I added a layer of of Sally Hansen's Diamond Strength in "Dazzling Diamond". For the ruffles I used NYC Color in "Canal Street", Rimmel London's "Steel Grey", and Essie's "Armed and Ready". So without further ado here are the pictures! :-)

Well I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did! I actually think that I might have to do the ruffle manicure again sometime with some more fun colors. :-) Until next time! Enjoy!