Blueberries

   I ordered some new polish, and they are both holos! I'm telling you, I'm officially addicted to them like the rest of you. I don't know what took me so long...

   This is Girly Bits Cosmetics Downtown Funk in bright sunlight and indoor light. It's such a pretty holo!

   (This isn't a very color correct image for Downtown Funk, but you've already seen some in the first two images.)
 
   I made some vines with berries (blueberries?) on this design. It ended up looking kind of wintery.... I started by painting the vines with thinned out OPI A-Piers to Be Tan and Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Branch Out. To make the berries, I used Aurora Gel Effect Inky Dinky, and highlighted them with L'Oreal Royally Reinvented. The leaves were made with Studio M On the Field and Revlon Parfumerie Balsam Fir.


   I hope you all have a great week!

Fall Branches

   Last week (I seem to be perpetually a week behind) I found a neat graphic that I just fell in love with.

   I couldn't resist painting it! I love the colors and the design.

   I started with my favorite base, a creamy off-white (China Glaze Oxygen). I painted all the branches first, so it would be easier to decide where to put all the foliage. I made the branches with a thinned out brown base layer (Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Branch Out), and then painted a couple stripes of a lighter brown (OPI A-Piers To Be Tan) here and there to act as highlights and give it more dimension.

   Next I painted on the flowers. I used a burnt orange (L'Oreal He Red My Mind) and orange (Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Sun Kissed) as the bases for the two flowers. I painted them on with a smaller dotter, making three dots to make it more petal-like. Then I used either He Red My Mind or a lighter orange (L'Oreal Orange You Jealous) for the highlights/shadows on the flowers.

   To make the berries/flower buds, I used He Red My Mind, Sun Kissed, and a yellow (Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Butterscotch). Then I made the leaves, using light and dark greens (Revlon Colorstay Spanish Moss and Jungle), and used a very light green (OPI That's Hula-rious) for the highlights.

   I finished the design off by making the acorns. I started with a darkish tan (Nina Ultra Pro Beige A Vu) and then made the acorn cap with Branch Out.

   I think this is definitely one of my favorites this season. And it's only begun! It will be hard to top this one for me, I think.

  I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Pineapple Princess

   Have you ever heard the 60's song, Pineapple Princess? My cousin is in love with that song, it's pretty catchy.

   I found this pin last week, and that song has been stuck in my head ever since! I'm really ready for warm weather (it's supposed to get around 70° this week!), not to mention summer! I've got lots of fun beach plans this year, so I'm excited.

   I started with a white base, Revlon Colorstay Sure Thing. To make the pineapples, I used Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Butterscotch and a dotter. I thinned it out a little to make it a bit easier to spread out.

   Next I outlined the pineapples with a very thinned out OPI A-Piers To Be Tan. I also used that for the diagonals inside the pineapple. Next I painted the leafy part of the pineapple with Revlon Parfumerie Balsam Fir, also thinned out.

   This one really reminds me of a wallpaper or fabric print or something. I think it's really cute! I want to put it in my shop, but I can't decide if I should put it up as it is now, or have the pineapples as just an accent.... I might try both, we'll see!

Update: I've added the set to my store! Just the full set for now, but I'll probably add the accent later. You can get it here.

   I'm in a tropical mood, so be prepared for a few more tropical-inspired mani's in the next few weeks.
   I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Watermelon Seeds

   Two weeks ago I ordered some new polish from Spellbound Nails, a shop on Etsy. She has some really neat polishes, it was hard to choose which to buy first! I ended up getting Watermelon Seeds, a pretty pink polish with small black glitter, and Eat Me, a cream polish with multi-colored glitter that is part of her Alice In Wonderland collection.

  This is three coats of Watermelon seeds. You can get away with two coats, I just wanted to add a little more depth to the overlapping layers of glitter.
   I thought Watermelon Seeds was so cute! I like the color and the small glitter. So many polishes only use large or medium glitter, so it was nice to see a polish that only used small glitter.

   Quite predictably, I created a watermelon mani out of this polish. What with the name and the looks, I couldn't resist! For my design, I combined The Nailasaurus' tutorial with another design I found on Pinterest.

   For the watermelon shell (peel?) accent nail I started with a base of Revlon Parfumerie Balsam Fir. Then I drew on some squiggly lines using L'Oreal New Money. I finished it off by lightly sponging on New Money and then Balsam Fir.
   The other watermelon nails were made by painting on a line of white with a striper and then a thin line of New Money over top the white. I tried painting the green and then the white like in Nailasaurus' tutorial, but I could never get my striper to cooperate and make a thin enough line.

   I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Lost Nails.. :(

   So I was cleaning out my folders on my desktop and found some designs I had completely forgotten about! They aren't super old, just a few months late. Oh well. You're seeing them now, so that's all that matters, right?

   This first one was made back when I painted my watercolor ombre toes. I really liked how it looked so I made it into an Etsy set. I'm not sure why I didn't post about it when I wrote about my toes, but I didn't!

   You can find this set here in shop.  As usual, I have to offer some options. I currently have it to where you can order blue, pink, purple or grey/white. I think the blue is my favorite though. It all goes back to that love of the ocean...

   This next set was made right after my Elsa set. I have a ton of glitter sets in my shop, but after making the glitter tips for Elsa, I thought that would be a good addition to my glitter cache.

   You can find the set here in my shop. As of right now it's just available in this icy blue. There might be more color options later, you never know!

   I absolutely love this next set! It was a custom order from a few weeks back that just got lost in all my Disney craziness. It is super cute though, and I can't wait to put it in my shop.

   I didn't think I would like the roses at first, but I ended up really liking them. You can't look at them too closely, or else they look like a jumbled mess, but other than that I think they turned out pretty cute. They're pretty good at-a-distance-roses. So many of the roses I make that look halfway decent up close look like nothing but a red blob from far away. They're definitely something on my Picky-Sarah-To-Do List.

   This next set isn't technically lost. I painted it last week on my cousin! She wanted some pineapple nails so we found a couple cute designs and mashed them together. This isn't the best picture, but oh well.

   I really like this one! I think I'm going to eventually get it up in my shop. It would be a cute summer/beach set. It was inspired by this pin and this pin. It was a lot of fun to paint. Pineapples are pretty easy to make!

   That's all for tonight. I know I've gotten kind of irregular again, but the past two weeks have been kind of crazy between VBS, work, and entertaining my cousin! I should a have a new post soon though. I just painted my Tiana design on my fingers and I finally painted my toes again!
   Have an awesome week!

Strawberries

   I had time to paint my nails this week after all! I had an unexpected day off, so that gave me time to finish everything early and get my own painted. They are the promised strawberries, which is another installment in my Etsy-to-Fingers project.
(Pardon the pictures, the color is a little wonky; it's been raining practically all week so my lighting has been terrible!)

    Overall, I'm satisfied. I had different plans for the leaves, but they weren't cooperating. They work well enough though!

   I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Cherry Red for my red base. I made the seeds by first making white dots with polish from my Stripe Rite striper, then going over the white with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow. For the leaves I also painted with white first, to make sure the color comes out brightly over top the red. Then I painted over the white with L'Oreal New Money. After that I thinned out some of Revlon Parfumerie Balsam Fir with OPI's polish thinner to paint the outlines on the leaves. Then I sealed it all with my fancy Seche Vite top coat!

   I think it's funny that out of all of my designs, I've gotten the most comments from this design. Strawberries are just cute and summery! And I'm sure the bright red helps it to be noticed more too.
   As I mentioned, these are an Etsy set. This is one of the first sets I listed, back when I first decided to sell fake nails. The design looks a little different now, but it's basically the same. You can find the listing here in my shop.
   I painted my toes again, so I should have another update for you sometime next week, once I get around to taking pictures of them.

   I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!