26 Great Nail Art Ideas - Halloween in the Wrong Colors

Ok, I am so late with this that I'm not even going to bother with any kind of intro...

For this look I dabbed all kinds of colors (listed below) onto a makeup sponge and applied to my nails.

What I Used:

* Sephora by OPI - Seeing Pink Elephants

* China Glaze - Friends Forever, Right?

* China Glaze - New Birth

* China Glaze - Spring In My Step

* Bonita - some purple color that has no name on the bottle

* Sephora by OPI - Natural Environ-mint

*Stamping polishes - MDU - Tutti, Neon Blue, Neon Green

*Stamps: BM-S205, Mash-38

I also added a few little pearls to each spider's back on the accent nail.  Not that it is obvious, but the pearls are the color of the opposite spider.  It was a super cute mani for Halloween.  

Thanks for stopping by - even if we are well into November now.  

26 Great Nail Art Ideas - Blue & Silver

Hello!  It's been quite a while since I have posted.  It's been really busy in my life, but I am starting the 26 Great Nail Art Ideas with the New Crumpets Nail Tarts.  The first prompt is Blue + Silver so, here we go:

The blue color combo makes me think of a Batman comic or something.  It's October, so I needed a little spookiness in there so I used Bundle Monster BM-S205 for the stamp.

If you've been here much, you know how much I love a gradient!  These colors all blended together nicely.  It's a spooky night manicure to get things started.

One last look.  Stay tuned for the next one!

Thanks for stopping by!

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - 3 Shades of Green

Three shades of green and chevrons were my prompt for this week's Crumpets Nail Tarts group.  I had a lot of ideas for this one but I wanted to try something new - decals!  I pre-made these and it really helped with my placement.

I struggle with getting a perfectly aligned stamp and making this ahead of time was a life-saver.  I will be getting my hands on a clear stamper soon though...

As you can tell, I went with an ombre look this time.  I chose 5 different green polishes.  I am always pleasantly surprised by the amount of selection I seem to have.  It pays to be a hoarder!

I also chose to have my chevrons pointing in opposite directions on each nail.  This image is from the UberChic Beauty 1-01 plate.  It is a very military look (to my husband's delight).

It worked out to be a great St. Patrick's Day look too.  :)  I hope you like it as much as I do.  Thanks for stopping by!

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Pastels

Pastels while still in winter is a challenge, but that is the prompt for this week.  :)  I had waterfall as my technique to do.  I haven't done one of these in a really long time!

It was really hard not making this look like an Easter egg, but it came out pretty cute.  Here is what I used for this:

I used 3 coats of The Way Tutu His Heart for the base color of this look.  It was still a bit streaky in the end, which was a disappointment.  I couldn't risk another coat and making the polish too thick so I just left it as is.

I used a fine striping brush that I bought from Bundle Monster to make the lines.  It is all just random and I tried to keep it to a minimum for this look.  I finished this off with a matte top coat.  I am really liking the matte look and it took me forever to find a matte polish I found to be decent.  In case you are wondering, I use the Wet n Wild Matte.  Yeah, the cheap stuff seems to be my favorite.  LOL!  It's a win-win.

 Thanks for stopping by!  Take a look at the other awesome entries for this prompt.

Neutral Kitty Mani

It has been so long since I didn't use a prompt for my manicure decision and, I have to say, I was a bit lost.  I love stamping so I was going to just use a plate ending in whatever date it was, but then I remembered that I had a new Bundle Monster set that I hadn't even put away yet.

I knew, up front, that I wanted to do a neutral colored manicure and it was easy enough to find some pretty polish that I haven't tried yet.

Picking a plate to use was also easy - I have a lot of cats so it is always good to represent them.  :)

After my base coat, I used 3 thin layers of the Bone White.  I am really trying to branch out on my stamping colors and since I own all of the MDU colors, this one was a perfect match.

I used my Luxe stamper from UberChic Beauty for this one and I will say that I was utterly impressed with the transfer quality.  I will also say that this is the first time I have been able to successfully use it for stamping.  I didn't do anything differently either.  It just worked this time.  Whatever, I will go with it!

I hope you think this is as cute as I do.  Thanks for stopping by.

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Red

Red!!!  I love red and I really need to use it more often.  The big drawback for me is how hard it is to clean up after it.  My prompt for this week was "watercolor".  It is hard to think of a primary color as a watercolor, but I did my research and decided to go with the Nimbus technique as per Sammy at The Nailasaurus.

I chose 3 shades of red to use over a white base color.  A cute little Valentine's day heart stamp was the perfect touch to this one.

I have done this technique before with this look.  It is a very easy technique but kind of hard to know when to stop.  I tend to over-think things...  Anyway, using acetone to thin out the polish, I just started dabbing away with a cotton swab.

The other tricky part to this technique is that the cotton swabs tend to leave fibers in the look!  I tried really hard to keep those at bay with a good amount of success.  I used Pueen 41 for this cute heart image.  After a layer of Seche Vite, it turned out to be a sweet little Valentine to myself.

I hope you all had a happy Valentine's day too!

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Love

Hi there!

This week I am participating in a theme challenge rather than just a color/technique prompt.  I love Valentine's day mani's!

If there is one trait my husband has that is both endearing and really annoying, it is that he can't keep a surprise to himself - especially when it comes to gift giving.  Last week, he couldn't keep my Valentine's Day gift to himself any longer so he handed me some new UberChic Beauty stamping plates!  He bought me collections 1 & 2 and the new Love & Marriage 02 plate.  Gotta love a man who supports your habits!  He knew I would want to use it for this mani - so I tried to live up to his expectations.

My wonderful husband also bought me  a whole bunch of NYX polishes for Christmas (2014) that haven't been used yet so I brought that out too.  :)  I started with a new to me base coat for this one.  I'm trying Nail Savvy Gripper these days - so far, so good.  I used 3 thin coats of Pastel Lavender as my base color on all of my nails.  The accent nail has one coat then 3 very thin coats of Sugar Plum Fairy on top.

I used a different image for all of my nails from the Love & Marriage 02 plate.  They are all so pretty, it was hard to choose.  Since the theme was "love" this week, I tried to stick to words and hearts.  The glitter on that accent nail was so amazing, I was tempted to do that over all of the nails but I refrained, from going bling-tastic this time.  The violet color of the stamping polish played nicely with both the glitter and the creme colors.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!  This is about as romantic as anything gets around here!  I bought my husband a toaster to celebrate.  LOL!

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Aqua or Turquoise

Hi everyone!  I am so glad to be back with a new nail art post for you.  My nail room is about 85% complete now so I actually have a small space dedicated to my nails.  :)  I do want to apologize for the look of my blog.  I am not sure what is happening, but my background image will no longer load and I can't for the life of me figure out why.  So, I guess this means it is time for some kind of re-vamp of the design.  I'll get to thinking about that.

In the meantime, here is my entry for the New Crumpets Nail Tarts 40 Great Nail Art Ideas prompt for this week: Aqua or Turquoise.  I have waterspotting as my technique this week.

This is my first time attempting this technique.  Watermarbling is such a nemesis of mine, that this scared me!  Here is what I used for this look:

I started with 3 thin coats of Teal The Tide Turns.  This is a textured polish so it is kind of hard to build up to a solid opacity.  Without adding a top coat, I started the water spotting process.  To do this, I added some distilled, room temperature water from a jug I have had for well over a year to a paper cup.  I added 2 drops of the black to the cup and then sprayed 1 spray of hairspray to get it to separate.

As you can see, each nail is different.  It is really hard to control the spray from the bottle so, you get what you get.  LOL  I think it came out cool! I finished this off with a coat of Seche Vite to smooth that finish out and give it some shine.

This was SO MUCH EASIER than watermarbling (for me!).  Since the results can be just random and have no pattern, I found it to be much more satisfying to the perfectionist in me.

Thanks for stopping by!!