Stained Glass Nails

So like one of my favorite nail designs ever is probably stained glass. You can always make it as colorful as you want, or you can pick any color scheme you like. They're a great way to express yourself, and you can also make them as detailed or as basic as you want. The lines can be straight, jagged, bent, anything! Ok so I love stained glass nails.

Star Wars Nails

Hey all I'm back I'm alive sorry for that unexpected hiatus! Gr I've been busy with lot's of schoolwork and other things, and I've fallen behind on lot's of posts that I had planned for you guys! My weekends have been pretty busy and there hasn't been much time for any nail art at all :((
Anyway today is Star Wars day and even though it's super late it's still May 4th...so I can post my star wars day nails!

My New Year's Eve Mani!

Hello lovelies and happy new year's eve! I have my final mani of 2013 to show you all! It's my new year's mani of course! For about a second i considered doing a simple black and gold design. But then I was like who am I kidding, it's new year's eve, time to be sparkly and colorful and BAM! So that's what my nails are today. 

Waterfall Lines Nail Art

Hi all! Whew it's been a while without a post, hasn't it? Well I'm back! And I've got some cool nail art to share with you guys! It's a waterfall mani! 
So this was my first time trying one of these, I think it came out quite nicely. 

Ombre Chevrons

Sigh.

Why do I do this for you guys? I mean, I've got 3 tests this week, and an essay rough draft due on Thursday, plus marching band practice for 3 hours after school, 40 minutes of flute practice a day, and a season of Lost that needs finishing, and yet I still take valuable time out of my weekend to paint my nails and blog about them.

Answer:

Because I love doing it 

What other reason do I need? 

Case in point, let's look at this week's nails, shall we?

So uhm I know I said I love doing this...but dear God by the time I finished these I was so happy, because these nails were a PAIN. 

But they look great. so whatever 

And I promise that these look so much better in person. In person it's harder to see the places where I screwed up. 

:P

So the pretty gold base here is China Glaze-Blonde Bombshelll, which is this awesome yellow gold glittery base. You all know how much I ADORE blue and gold together!

The blues in order, from light to dark, are Essie-Lilacism, Orly-Snowcone, a blue polish from China, and Butter London-Royal Navy. That polish is my love. I have never found a blue that I love as much as Royal Navy. Apologies to the 30+ blues in my stash. 

But seriously like if I could marry a bottle of nail polish, it would be Royal Navy. 

I used striping tape to block out the lines, then painstakingly went in with the polish brush and did my best to paint between the freaking lines. I failed and spazzed a couple times. 

I did a reverse ombre on my ring fingers and thumbs as an accent nail.

So yeah it was kinda a bad idea for me to have painted every single one of my nails like this, because each nail took like 10 minutes to do, something that I did not realize until I started my left hand. 

I really wanted to not do anything on my left hand and just leave it gold, but you know how I'm like really OCD about this sort of thing. Of course they had to match!

So don't get me wrong, I really like these nails alot. I think they're pretty and they stand out and they're overall awesomeness. Let me just tell you that a lot of people think I wear fake nails or appliques or something. I think I need a shirt or something that says "I paint my own nails" on it. I dunno. That'd be cool.

I'm just saying that I'm probably not going to do a design this time consuming for a while. You're all just lucky that I had practically no homework this weekend. 

So yeah 2 coats of topcoat made them smooth and shiny and ready to wear! Yay! 

Now my hands are really cold and I have to pee.

And here's my cat

Just because he was being really cute today. 

Ok that's all guys and thanks for reading as always!

~Nova

Double Post-Mermaid Style Nails

Hello everyone! Whew I'm back from that long break I took. So yeah I had sleepaway band camp and stuff...God band camp is literally NON STOP work! We have to learn drill and music and be good so our band instructor won't yell at us. But you know it's actually a lot of fun...we slept in cabins with our friends and had theme days like purple day and superhero day and we had a talent show and it was awesome! Ok that was 5 days, so then after that we had Labor day weekend which I spent with some family, and I went SHOPPING which was fun, as always. Then SCHOOL started again. I got to meet all my teachers and stuff...I'm loading up on honors courses so I'm probs gonna be like super busy during the year :( so yeah I've been busy lately...But it's a long 4 day weekend so it's back to posting! 
Today's I've got another fun double post for you guys with my good friend Carlee. If you missed our last double post you can see it here. 
Today's theme was mermaid inspired. Carlee is sporting this lovely polish:

"Hi blog readers! So this is Carlee and this polish is Sephora By OPI-Mermaid To Order. This polish is an aqua blue/teal color with a shiny metallic finish. It's a little frosty and you can see some streaks and brush strokes but it doesn't take away from the appearance. 

This is with only one coat plus a quick dry top coat, but another coat of polish could be used for touch ups or if you have larger nails. This polish goes on very easily, it's pretty thin but still thick enough for only needing one coat for opacity. 

This polish is also a little different depending on the lighting, it can look more green or blue, and these pics are making it look a little more blue than it really is. 

I love this polish and it's probably the favorite polish I have ever used, I am just IN LOVE with it! I think this is a serious must have for everyone's collection, I mean, it practically glows. So these sell for about $9 a bottle, but I got mine in a special gift box that came with other polishes, I don't remember what it was called...
That's all I've got for today thanks for reading my post everybody!"
Ok so to go along with Carlee's nails I thought I would just pull out one of my metallic teals and swatch it, but then I thought geez that would be so boring. I was thinking about some nail art to do to match Mermaid To Order and then it was like hey, it's got mermaid in the name, it's time for Mermaid Nails!! Yayy!

So these are the mermaid nails I came up with. Whenever I think about mermaids I think about colors like gold and metallic greens and blues, like the polish above. And I also think of this:

http://norribeth.webs.com/photos/Take-a-splash/08_hp-mermaid.jpg

Yeah I know I'm a nerd. Most people think of like the little mermaid and Ariel and stuff right...?

http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Ariel---Flounder-the-little-mermaid-223085_1280_1024.jpg

But whenever I think of Ariel I think of this:

http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt66/beth_soprano/Daily_Firefly/May25ariel.jpg

Two by two hands of blue...

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIOa1rZz-jWF2kANnHsN1Y4sQQW_MnFOGasWHWllOSFUlci_RBDrSsNhfGcx2h1GWi3kesXb801ZLkFZw49PjLjnmt30rLH31ywcVfqFyuhj-vGM-Bsha1V63TcJukmbau5w8WlqIzNCmv/s320/firefly_8_ariel.jpg

Ok sorry about my tangent...For those of who get this I bet you all agree with me. and for those of you who are looking at me like wtf yeah...sorry.
Ok so back to nails.

 I started with my lovely black base, then used striping tape to block off the fishnet pattern. I painted rows of Sally Hansen Lustre Shine-Plume(the gold), Wet N' Wild-Caribbean Frost(greenish teal), and an unnamed metallic blue polish onto a make up sponge and dabbed the gradient onto the nail. I remove the striping tape and voila. My mermaid mani is complete. almost

Just to add a little extra dimension and color, I painted a veeery thin coat of Essie-Shine Of The Times, a multidimensional iridescent flakie topcoat to give it a little more mermaid-ness.

 So this was the final result. These nails were actually very easy, I should do some more striping tape gradients in the future. I always love working with striping tape. It's fun.
Ok that was actually a pretty long post, thanks for reading guys!
And here's a pic of my band camp cabin:

Yeah it was purple day.

That's our entire band lol. I feel really nerdy now. This whole post was sorta nerd filled. And also yes, it was still purple day. 
Hooray for nerds, we're the coolest
~Nova

Zoya FeiFei + some striping

Hi everyone! I didn't have any final exams yesterday so I had some free time on my hands (when I should have been studying. Psh) and I only had my french test this morning, so now I have the rest of the day! Yay. So yesterday I decided to swatch one of my untrieds, the famous Zoya-FeiFei. This is a really popular color among other nail bloggers that I've seen, and I get why. IT'S FREAKING BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sigh pictures simply do not do it justice. It's such a pretty shimmery color. The predominant base color is a slatey blue purple color, but there are flecks of shimmer of all sorts of other colors in there. From my close examination, I see blue, green, purple, pink, silver, and orange. Holding the nail at different angles reveals different colors of shimmer. If you look at it really close up it looks like a rainbow! Maybe like a holographic effect or something. Whatever it is, I LOVE it!!

You just have to see this polish in person to appreciate it! Here's an uber close up of one of my fingers so you can see the flecks of shimmer better:

The formula on FeiFei was rather sheer, and I used 3 coats to build it up to opacity. Also it smells funny. Kinda nasty. Sometime I'm gonna try layering this over some other polishes, since I think it's sheer enough to do so. 
And of course yesterday I couldn't leave my nails all one color, so I took out my striping tape, did some accent nails, and this happened:

I was too lazy to do all my other nails, so accent nails will have to do! The glitter I used was China Glaze-Optical Illusion. I love all the full coverage glitters that came out in that collection! I love full coverage glitters in general. Optical Illusion was so freaking sparkly that you can see it totally freaked out my camera! It just wouldn't focus. God I love sparkly things...

Ugh I hate how my camera won't focus on the thumb! But also the blurry image also kinda shows you all the colors in Optical Illusion so it looks kinda cool! 
Zoya polishes are $8 on their website, and you can find China Glaze in most beauty salons or drug stores, and I think they cost somewhere in the $5-$7 range?
Anyway that's all for today and I promise I'll have some nail art for you guys on Sunday!

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!