Nail Challenge Week 23: Ombre Nails

Hi Lovelies! This was probably one of my favorite challenges from the past month or so--finally one turned out that I really liked!

Now you may be wondering what an ombre mani is. Or, perhaps you "know" what it is...but you may be wrong. The Swatchaholic did an amazing post a couple weeks ago describing the differences in ombre, skittles, and gradient. Many, many people are confusing ombre and gradient. So, if you think an ombre mani is when the color changes on the nail... I'm sorry to inform you, that is actually a gradient mani (which p.s. is coming in week 28;) When you Google "ombre" mani, sooo many of the pictures are gradient! So this is definitely a common misconception!


The whole point to ombre is that it is a gradual change of color.. so each nail is from the same color family but changes from dark to light or light to dark. I really thought  my nails would be pink this week 'cause I figured I'd have the most variety of shades there... HOWEVER, when I saw some of my purple polishes together, I knew I had a winner!

The polishes used were LA Girl French Nails Purple, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Lacey Lilac, Ulta Tutu Cute, Revlon Top Speed Grape, and Orly Out of This World.

I did the left hand dark to light from thumb to pinky and the right hand was light to dark from thumb to pinky!

The lighting isn't perfect... but I promise in real life it looks so fun! I never would've thought I'd like to have a different color on each nail, but I think it is sooo pretty!! When I buy more polish, I'm definitely going to consider how it works with other shades I have so I can do ombre manis in other colors as well:)

Have you done ombre nails? Did you know the difference between ombre and gradient? What colors would you have used to do this challenge?:)

Nail Challenge Week 22: Splatter Mani

Hi Lovelies! Time to see another one of my nail challenges! I know there are a couple different ways to do this.. you can either take a small brush and literally splatter the paint on your nails or you can use straws to kinda blow the paint on to your nails.

I chose the straw method.

I did a base coat and two coats of Sinful Colors Snow Me White then taped around my nails. I'm usually really bad at this, but I think I'm using a better thinner tape that actually worked out quite well!

For my splatter, I wanted to do it kinda old school. Did anyone ever have their school pictures taken on the latter in front of the splatter paint background? It was all primary colors and just kinda crazy. That's really the splattered look I was going for.

I used an empty Birchbox cover and dripped in the polishes (Revlon Top Speed Fast Dry Nail Enamel Jelly, Sinful Colors Unicorn, and Orly Snowcone), used a straw for each color (two from Ruby Tuesday's, one from Wendy's) and blew each color.

I did one nail at a time. So like, pinky got red.. blue.. yellow... next nail...

This is how it turned out (still with tape on so it looks super messy):

Then after taking the tape off there were really just a few spots that would require some extra clean up:

Confession: I only did my left hand then took it off. I wear a lot of crazy things on my nails to work; this just seemed a little *too* messy for me. I like the splatter mani for the right occasion; but for me, I just couldn't rock it as an every day nail look.

Have you done a splatter mani? Which method do you prefer?

Nail Challenge Week 21: Fruit Mani

Strawberries! Bananas! Pineapple! Kiwi! Cantaloupe! What do all these words have in common?? They are some of my favorite fruits! (ooh peaches and plums too!!:) I was both excited and nervous about this week's challenge! A fruit mani. *sigh* As with all of these challenges, it could go sooo many different ways! As usual, for inspiration, I checked out Google. So many girls did so many fabulous designs on their nails! I considered doing a variety of fruit--almost like little fruit baskets on my hands! But that was just sooo much work...

So, I cheated. Again. And I know stamping isn't really *cheating* but it still kinda feels like the easy way out. Hahah.

Thank you Shany for making a plate with a strawberry on it!:) lol

My plan was actually to make it look like the strawberries had been drawn on and colored in on my nails. In my head, my inspiration was the Dooney and Bourke bags that looked like they'd been doodled on

via

So two coats of ORLY Opal Hope... p.s. how beautiful is this color??? I love that it's soft and shiny and changes colors in different lights. When applied by itself, it doesn't totally go with my skin tones, but for this, I think it was perfect! After that, I kinda did some red blotches with Sinful Colors GoGo Girl (still my fave shade of red right now!!;). Then stamping with Konad Special Black.

Someone at work pointed out they look like lady bugs... and I think they kinda do, but they're STRAWBERRIES!!:) Yay!:)

What's your fruit? What fruits would you have put on your nails??:)

Nail Challenge Week 14: Striped Nails

Hey Lovelies! Okay! I am now officially caught up with the nail challenge! This week was a striped mani and I felt like the opportunities were endless! I could use Migi Nail Art Pens, Sally Hansen pens; it could be basic stripes, zebra stripes, tiger stripes.... What would I do!??

That's when I turned to my stamping plates... it's been a while since I've done any stamping and thought I might have just the right stamp!

And I did! Shany plate SH23!

So I set out using these polishes:

OPI Base Coat, ORLY Fabfuschia, Konad Special Black, Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat.

I didn't take as many pictures of the step by step process of this one, but I am really happy with how it turned out! I think using the stamps was probably my best bet, because there is no way I would've gotten such straight (and nearly perfect) stripes by drawing/painting on my own!

no flash

with flash

no flash

I'm pretty pleased with how these turned out! Very simply, classy, with a little pizzazz!

How 'bout you? Are you doing the nail challenge yet? What other colors would've worked together well for this mani??

Haul Time! Ulta and Walgreens!

So Lovelies, there was a community yard sale this past weekend in my neighborhood! For those of you who don't know what that is, basically the community advertises and if you want to set up shop in your front yard, have at it! There's a lot of traffic that comes through and it's a good time to get rid of unwanted junk stuff!

I set out some jewelry (thanks everyone who gives me earrings as gifts, but MY EARS ARE NOT PIERCED, so I'm trying to make some money on it lol), shoes, nail polish, CDs, DVDs, video games, etc. and actually made a good little bit of cash! So, it was time to boost the American economy and go shopping!:)

First stop was Ulta. Oh, Ulta, how I love thee. I didn't really go for anything specific, just did a little browsing and left with the following:

1.) The China Glaze Magnetix polish in Drawn To You
2.) The Magnetix Magnet (sidenote, really?? $10 for each?! Can't there be some bargain deal or something! I suppose the bright side is, you won't need to buy it again with other magnetic polishes, but still...)
3.) Piggy Polish in Envy (for my Skittles Mani;)
4.) Orly polish in Out of This World (which to me looks slightly similar to Sinful Colors Daddy's Girl. Curious to see how they compare in swatches!)
5.) A new bottle of Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat (yes, I already have some; but I had the extra money and thought I'd pick up another; this is not something you want to run out of at an inopportune time!)
6.) Revlon Lip Butters in Sugar Plum and Gum Drop. (yes, I tried lip butter before; yes, I really didn't like it. But I've read some other reviews of girls who also didn't like Strawberry Shortcake [the one I had] and tried some other flavors and liked it better. Soooo, Revlon, I'm giving you a second chance. Plus it was buy one get one 50% off!) And I got to use my $3.50 off $10 or more coupon! I think all together I saved $7.25!! Yay! Bargain!:)

Then, I had to run to Walgreens. While there, I wandered through the makeup section (honestly, I could be at Walgreens for ANYTHING, medicine, tampons, a card, whatever; I always have to walk thru their makeup. I think that's why they put it so close to the front door, they know everyone will;)

You may recall during Christmas time I was obsessed with the Sinful Colors Extra Shiny Lipgloss and had to go to a couple different Walgreens to find them. Well! There's a limited edition *new* Sinful Colors lip gloss out there now! Lip Shine Lip Gloss--and they're all super glittery! I picked up the one that looked silvery called Crystallized! I hope when I do my full review I'll be able to get good enough pictures to show all the glitter! This was a dollar more than the regular lip glosses in December, so I'm hoping I'll love it as much or more!:)

Anyway, I picked up that and also got a new Sally Hansen Nail Art pen. My last white one went kinda crazy with my Skittles nails. Started leaking all over the place and whatnot!:( Now, at some point I want to do a whole comparison review of the Sally Hansen pens versus my Migi Nail Art pens... if you have opinions on the two, leave them in the comments!!:)

Have you done any shopping lately?? Picked up any new bargains?? And what do *you* think of Revlon lip butters?? I know they've been released in the UK now, so you British girls should even have an opinion!!:)