On the Grid

   I am behind again... But, this week was busy with Derby Day and going home over the weekend, that I don't have a design on my nails this week anyway.

   Last week I was inspired by a super cute dress sold by Simplicity Is Bliss Vintage on Etsy (@sibvintage on Instagram). I love the pattern! It's so simple, yet cute.

   My design is cute, but I personally think that the dress is way cuter.

   I started with a base of Essie Mademoiselle, a nice sheer nude. Then I drew the lines and X's on with black polish and my favorite super thin brush. The glitter was from China Glaze Silver of Sorts.

   I hope you all gave a fantastic week!

1950's Dress

   This design was very short-lived. I liked it once I figured out the best way to paint it, but then I only had two nails I liked. So I took it off after a couple days. It was inspired by this really cute vintage dress on Etsy.

   I started with a cream base, Relvon Colorstay Embody. Only two coats this time to keep it a little sheer. The design was made with white polish.

   To make the design, I eventually found that the easiest way was to paint vertical lines first, and then the horizontal lines. I don't know why it took me so long to figure that out, but it did.

   I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Gold Leaf

   This client really wanted something green. I had a gold that looked really pretty on top of it, so we painted a geometric design similar to leaf veins. I really liked the simplicity of the design.

   I started with a base of Studio M On The Field. Then I used Maybelline Color Show Bold Gold and applied it with a small, thin brush.

  Have a great week!

Stained Glass

   I found a pretty design by Will Paint Nails For Food and I just fell in love!

   I'm not gonna lie, I just changed the colors up and 100% copied it. Her designs are so pretty!

   I really liked the dark pink I used in my last design, so I used it again! I think it's a great color for Fall, and one I hadn't really thought of before. It's Finger Paints Plum Perspective.

   To make the stained glass design, I started with a light pink base (China Glaze Princess Grace). Then I drew out the black outlines with my black striper. Then I filled in the spaces with Plum Perspective, Revlon Colorstay Buttercup, and L'Oreal Doutzen's Nude.

   Then I finished it off ny re-lining my black lines and painting on my top coat.

  Have a great weekend!

Geometric Gels

   I'll start out by saying: school is awesome! For those of you that don't know, I started school to become a nail technician this month. We spent the whole first week giving each other manicures, so I never had polish on long enough to bother with. We started working with acrylics today. ...I think I'm in love! There is so much you can do with them.

   We ended the week with gels, so I'll have a pretty pink on for the next few weeks. This week I painted a geometric design on top of the gel.

   The gel polish used was OPI Pink Flamingo, I think. Something about flamingos, anyway! To make the geometric design, I used China Glaze Princess Grace and my favorite thin striping brush from Born Pretty. To make the dots, I used my smallest dotter.

   I'm not sure when I 'll have something new, but it shouldn't be too long now that we're not changing our polish every day. Maybe I'll have some acryilcs soon once I get more practice!


   I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Vintage Roses

   Sorry I've been so silent, I've been of vacationing and then working on a boat load of orders. Hopefully now that I'm done with summer vacations and getting ready for school, things will quiet down and I'll be posting and painting more regularly.

   This week I painted an old Etsy set.

   I wasn't a fan of this set originally - I like my flowers and things to be more realistic usually. But after painting it recently for an order, it started to grow on me.

   I started with a base of OPI My Dogsled Is A Hybrid and Revlon Colorstay Sure Thing. I used a white striper to make the dots and stripes. To make the roses, I started with Finger Paints Far Out Fuchsia. Then I swirled on various amounts of Revlon Colorstay Card Shark and Finger Paints Plum Perspective.


   Have a great week!

Picnic

   This week I have a cute red plaid to show you all. I really loved my brown plaid I painted near Christmas, so I wanted to try it in some different colors.

   It doesn't look quite as nice as the brown (I forgot my red turned funny colors on me when it gets thinned out), but I'm still happy enough with it.

   I started with a white base, Revlon Colorstay Sure Thing. Next I thinned out my red, Revlon Colorstay Red Carpet, and used a medium brush to draw the diagonal lines. To make the dark square where the lines cross, I used a very thinned out dark red, Covergirl Plum Pudding. Then I finished it off with a top coat.

   I even painted my left hand! Sort of. There was no way I was going to paint plaid on all my fingers on my right hand. So I painted some cute little tickle ants. They want to join in on the picnic fun too!


   I might be a little silent for a while (nothing new, I know, sorry!). My best friend is getting married next week so I have a ton to do to help her get ready and get me ready.

   I hope you all have a fantastic weekend!

Memorial Day

   I'm going to go a tiny bit out of order this week, so that Memorial Day's design is still somewhat close to Memorial Day. I know I've been quiet recently; I've been moving out of my apartment, unpacking, working, making a quick weekend trip to see family... Hopefully things will quiet down after this week!

   Anyway, I didn't plan on having a Memorial Day design, it just happened that what I painted ended up looking patriotic!

   I was really struggling this weekend with making a design work. I was in one of those fidgety moods where nothing turns out right.

   Using one of my favorite bases, Orly French Manicure Pink Nude, I painted some stripes with varying widths using OPI Aloha From Hawaii and Orly Teal Unreal. After staring at it and thinking it looked a little plain, I added some white dots to the widest of the stripes.

   There was no way I was going to attempt this on my right hand, so I used Aloha as my base and used my dotter to add on some white dots down one side of each nail.

   I hope you all have a great week!

New Spring Sets

   I have a few new sets to show you all this week! They are all old designs, but they're new to my shop. They're almost all flowers, so they are just in time for spring (and summer!).

   This first one you saw in my last post. I really liked how it turned out and think it will go over well with my customers. You can find it here in my shop.

   This one is from several months ago (you can read the original post here). I've always really liked this one; colorful and trendy, but simple. It was inspired by some fabric that always reminds me of an art deco print. You can find the set here in my shop.

   This one was inspired by some pretty stationary by the Rifle Paper Company. You can see the original post from a few months ago here. You can find the set here in my shop.

   This last one was a custom set for a customer on Etsy. You can read the original post here and find it in my shop here.

  I hope you all have a fabulous week/weekend!

Fall Plaid

  This year is apparently the year for getting really into seasons before they've arrived. I was ready for Fall in August, and now I'm ready for Christmas! I had to really make myself not paint a Christmas-y/winter-y design this week. I knew if I did I'd never get my Thanksgiving design panted next week! Luckily I found some cute plaid inspiration that kept me in season.

   I really liked my inspiration for the cozy winter aspect, but I had to keep it Fall-ish for next week's sake, so I painted it in orange-y browns. And it worked! I'm sort of back in the Fall mood (although I'm super excited to decorate for Christmas!).

   I started with my favorite base, Orly French Manicure Pink Nude (which still isn't pink...). I painted diagonals with OPI A-Piers to Be Tan, then I painted squares where the lines met with Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Branch Out. I painted the gold glitter with Finger Paints Wrapped In Ribbon.

   I'll have to make a tutoral for this one, I know my explanation made about zero sense. Why am I so terrible at describing?! I'm like this with directions too, it stinks. I can know exactly how to get somewhere, but it is extremely rare that I can give directions that are actually useful...
   I think I'm going to put this in my shop at some point too! I really like it and think it will go over well in other colors too.

   Thanksgiving nails next week! I'm super excited to paint it and show it to you guys!

   I hope you guys have a great week!

New Sets

   As promised last week, I have the rest of the evidence of my super-productiveness last week. I had planned to post them right after the first batch, but I was too excited about those cute foxes!

   I think this one will be a good summer design. Tribal things always seem to be at their height during the summer. I started with a base of L'Oreal Walk on the Beach and then used a small brush to paint on the teal triangle (Studio M Blue Ming). Then I just used my striper for all the black.
   You can find this here in my shop.

   I don't know what I think of this one yet. I like it, but at the same time I don't. I started with the same base, Walk on the Beach. Then I made three black lines with my striper, the top and bottom lines, and then one in the middle. Then I made diagonal black lines and filled the spaces with varying shades of brown (I used 3 shades). After that I went back over the black lines and then sealed it with a topcoat.
   You can find this here in my shop.

   This design is currently on my toes! I need to take a picture of them before I take it off. I forgot to get last months, so I 'll have to do better this time! This design is a simple glitter gradient. My base is Finger Paints Masterpiece of Minimalism and the glitter I used is Orly Glam FX Watch It Glitter.
   You can find it here in my shop.

   I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Blue Triangles

   This week was inspired by a pin on Pinterest. I deviated slightly, but I think it works better for how I used the design.

   I started with my favorite base, Orly French Manicure Softest White. I love that color!

  To make the triangles, I started with the furthest out color, grey, so I could see the size of the triangle. I used China Glaze Pelican Grey. Then I continued down from the top with blue, Revlon Colorstay Indigo Night, and then turquoise, Flower Good Bud-dy. Next I mixed L'Oreal New Money and Flower Good Bud-dy to get a more inbetween color. For the second to last color I mixed L'Oreal New Money and Revlon Colorstay Buttercup to get a yellow-y green. Then for the innermost triangle I used Buttercup.

   To make the dots I used Finger Paints Paper Mache and a small dotter. Then I sealed it all with my Seche Vite top coat.

   I'm not sure whether or not I want to put it in Etsy. We'll see. Right now I'm focusing on making some new fall sets. Speaking of which, I think I've made some cute ones! I'm super excited to show them to you guys.

   I hope you all have a great week!

Disney Princess Challenge #12: Snow White

   This week is Snow White! My design isn’t much different from most of the Snow White designs. I couldn’t think of any design that looked any better than those already out there, so I just combined the ones that I thought were best.

   For the accent I painted her red headband. I started with a base of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out to look like her hair. For the bow I used my red Stripe Rite striper because it shows up really well on top of anything and doesn’t really need a white layer underneath to it make it pop.

   For the rest of my fingers I combined her sleeves with her yellow skirt. I started with a yellow base, Revlon Colorstay Buttercup. I really like the lightness of this yellow, I think it’s so pretty! For Snow White’s sleeves I started with a blue base of Revlon Colorstay Indigo Night. Then I used my red Stripe Rite striper for the slits and the sleeve hem.

   I have this set available in my Etsy shop! You can find it here.

   Next post is on to non-Disney designs! I really liked painting the Princesses, but I'm ready for something new. I have some other Disney characters I want to paint – Alice (Alice in Wonderland), Giselle (Enchanted), and a few others – but I’ve come across some other designs I really want to paint as well. So eventually I'll get back to Disney, but for now it's on to something new!

   I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Chevron

   This week's installment of Etsy-to-Fingers is a chevron! It had been an accent set in my shop, but I think I'm going to change it to where the design is on two fingers instead of just the one.

   I think the chevron on just one finger looked pretty lonely, so I gave it a friend.

   Surprisingly, I got away without having to use tape. I didn't leave enough time and didn't feel like cutting strips and whatnot. I used the polish thinner on all but two of the polishes I used and that helped a ton.

   I used Revlon Colorstay Pale Cashmere as the base. I think this has become my new favorite polish! It's a great light color that goes with pretty much everything, but it's not too white or too brown. Then I used a hodge podge of oranges, yellows, and a blue.
   I still have to make the changes to the Etsy listing, but this is what it will ultimately turn out to be. You can find the listing here!

   I might have some pictures to show you guys later in the week. I went outside this week to take some pictures again and it was awesome! I've missed it more that I thought.
   Have a wonderful week!

Easter Nails

   I'm so excited to show you guys my Easter nails! I recently discovered a fabulous Etsy store that sells pysanka - Ukranian Easter eggs. I fell in love with them on the spot. I really wanted to buy one (I still do!) but I don't have the money for that sort of thing right now. If you don't know what they are, here are some pictures of some that I drew inspiration from.

   Aren't they all so pretty?! They make these by drawing the design with wax, and then dying the egg. It's more complicated than that, but that's the best way I can describe it. You'll have to look it up, it's pretty fascinating. I have a ton more on one of my Pinterest boards, if you want to check it out.
   For my nails, I couldn't choose just one egg to draw inspiration from. So I did the obvious thing and chose a different egg for each nail! It makes for a bit of a hodge podge, but I think they go together fairly well.

   This is by far the most detailed design I've done in a long time, maybe ever. I really like it! It took a really long time to do - it took me around 4 hours for both hands, I think; as usual, I didn't really time it.

   To make these designs I used acrylic paints and nail polishes. I tried out my new nail polish thinner and it makes it so much easier to make detailed designs! I had never thought about using a thinner, but when I was reading Will Paint Nails For Food's blog, she mentioned that she uses it for her more detailed designs, so I decided to try it out!
  I used mainly red, brown, and light blue acrylic paints, CoverGirl Outlast Out of the Blue, Maybelline Color Show Bold Gold, and my white and black Stripe Rite stripers.

   I think my favorites of the many designs are pointer finger on my left hand, and my pointer and middle finger on my right hand. If I ever get around to it (haha!) I think I'll make both my pointer fingers into their own full sets.

   I'm all out of updates until probably next week. I work a lot this week, so I have no idea when I'll be painting my nails again. I'm back on my Etsy-to-Fingers Project after this week's Easter nails. Have  a wonderful week!