Independence Day Mani!

Hello and happy fourth of July my fellow Americans! Anyone going to see fireworks later? I'm not sure if I'm going, I haven't really been into fireworks lately. Just a bunch of people gathered to see pretty lights with loud booms and then get choked by smoke. I don't like going to crowded places, so fourth of July fireworks=unnecessary social contact. 
However, I decided to get a little into the fourth of July spirit with an independence day manicure!

Originally I wasn't even planning on doing a red white and blue manicure because I don't really like those colors together. But I figured I'd have to show my patriotism in some way, so what better way for me than on my nails!

The white base is Kleancolor-White, while the red is Essie-She's Pampered and the blue is Essie-Butler Please. The accent nails are Julep-Michelle with Milani-Diamond Dazzle glitter on top. I used a fan brush to do the red and blue zig zaggy stripes. 

There's a piece of rogue copper glitter on my index finger :P
Here's a close up of my accent nails. I tried little fireworks on them with glitter. I wish I had more colors of bar glitter, but I only have gold. The silver glitter I pulled from another polish. Note to self-buy more bar glitter.

It's kind of funny, because my friend was always joking that I should take mini firecrackers and attach them to my nails, and then I could fire them off and have mini fireworks! So these mini firecracker nails are dedicated to her ;)
I also really like this "firecracker" design. I might have to use those in another manicure sometime!

More fireworks on my thumbs yay.

So that's all I have for today! Anyone have fun fourth of July plans? Whatever they are, I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time!

Sunday Nail Art-Chicago inspired!

Hello hope everyone's having a good weekend! Today's nail art is inspired by my favorite musical ever: Chicago! If anyone else has seen it it's amazing and is like a serious feel good movie for me, which is weird seeing as its terribly dark. I wasn't feeling terribly up to nail art today, so I thought I would just do something with loose glitter. I watched the movie for like the third time the other night with some friends, so today when I was thinking of glittery designs, Chicago obviously came to mind. I was also listening to the Chicago soundtrack while doing these (<3<3<3) so I was super Chicago geeked out. 

The black nails with red glitter were based on Billy Flynn's (my fave character!) suit in the song Razzle Dazzle (also one of my favorite songs!):

This is probably my favorite outfit in the movie. Gotta love that red glitter pinstripe suit! I knew I had to some sort of nail art with it!

Those nails were also kind of problematic. I knew I wanted to have a matte background with bright glitter, but I didn't really know how to have a matte background without matting the glitter too, which I didn't want to. So I applied the matte top coat and put the glitter on top, but I wasn't sure if the glitter was gonna just fall out, so I took a striping brush and put some Seche Vite on top of just the glitter. It looks sort of bumpy now and I'm not quite a fan of it, but I couldn't see any other way to do it. 

The white accent nails were based on Velma and Roxie's dresses in the final number of the movie:

It's sorta hard to see here but their dresses have thin lines of silver glitter on a white iridescent background.
These nails were easier. After a white base, I used a thin coat Milani-Diamond Dazzle, which is a densely packed fine iridescent glitter in a clear base, on top. It's hard to see the pretty iridescence in these pictures but it's really pretty in real life. Then I placed the silver glitter in diagonal lines across. 

The hardest part of these nails was getting all the damn glitter in a straight line. You can see I didn't really do that good of a job of that, especially with the diagonal lines. 

I like these nails a lot, even though the glitter was a pain in the ass. I swear my left hand was trembling when placing that glitter! I just hope these nails last and that the red glitter doesn't all fall off. 
So has anyone else seen Chicago?! It's great I hafta say my fave song is probably the Cell Block Tango (whose isn't?!) but I love We Both Reached for the Gun, All That Jazz, Razzle Dazzle, and of course, When You're Good to Mama...
I quote that song all the time in order to get people to do stuff for me
 Enjoy the rest of your weekend, I'll see you guys next time!

Sunday Nail Art (On Tuesday) Gold X's

Hey guys happy Tuesday! Lot's of freshmen in my school took a standardized bio exam this morning, but I took bio last year so I was basically the only one in all my morning classes haha. I had a lot of free time it was fun. I kind of wish I could just bring my nail polish and swatch, so I wouldn't be wasting so much time! Anyway... I did these nails on Sunday but then I didn't have enough sunlight to take the pictures until Monday, and then I was having uploading issues. I'm still working on all this uploading pictures thing, I've never really done it before! But I think I'm getting the hang of it.

So I did these on Sunday, while watching reruns of Psych on Netflix :P They were pretty easy, but to anyone whose not a nail artist I guess they look pretty hard. I love that.  

I used Revlon Gold Coin, a lovely gold foil, as the base. Then I applied striping tape in the X's pattern and painted over it. The accent nails are Butter London Royal Navy(my favorite blue ever!) and the other nails are Zoya Wednesday. You can also see some shrinkage on like my index finger and thumb because I didn't apply my Seche Vite carefully enough. Usually when I'm careful and wrap the tips of my nail well I can get away without shrinkage. I also use a coat of Essie Good To Go top coat on top, which prevents shrinkage. I know, it's wasteful. But it makes my manicures last nice and long without chipping and stay shiny.

Afterwards I got to play around with loose glitter. This was my FIRST ever time using loose glitter, and I have to say I really like it! It wasn't nearly as hard or painstaking as I thought it would be. But maybe that's just because my design is pretty simple. I'll have to play around with glitter some more. I applied some clear polish then immediately after licked a toothpick and used it to pick up the glitter and place it on the intersections of the gold X's. Easy!

I did this manicure on both my hands. It really annoys me when people have like different manicures on both hands because they can't paint their non dominant hands. When I do a nail design I make sure to choose one that I can do on BOTH my hands! I just think it looks better and more uniform that way.

I don't know if you can tell but my middle finger is different from the rest of the nails. It's sort of squashed in flat and less curved than the rest of my nails because I got it jammed in a door a while back and it's still messed up. Bugs the hell out of me.

That's it for my Sunday nail art. Tell me what you think!