PAA’s Monday Nail Art Challenge–Galaxy Nails!

The PAA Monday Nail Art Challenge for this week was Galaxy Nails!! Oh I was so excited about this one because I wanted to try this for so long!

I have never done sponging before and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get the effect I wanted but I think it worked out pretty well!



This is also often called Nebula nails, and I’m soooo in love.  I hope this one lasts a while because I really don’t want to take it off!

If you want to try this yourself, here is an easy tutorial!



The products I used for mine are:
Essence Nail Art Protecting Base Coat
Essence Multi Dimension XXL Shine Fatal
OPI (Pirates Collection) Sparrow Me The Drama
Essence (@Holographc.com Collection) Blue Ray
GOSH Green Hawaii
Catrice Bye, Bye Birdy!
Essence (50’s Girls Reloaded) Ahoy!
China Glaze Fairy Dust
Seche Vite Topcoat

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PAA’S Monday Nail Art Challenges – Animal, Splatter and Layer

I’m a bit behind on updating my entries for PAA'S Monday Nail Art Challenge, not that I haven’t been doing them, I have… I’ve just gotten behind on my photo editing.  I had to replace my laptop recently and one of the main problems with my old one was that I couldn’t edit more than one or two photos before laptop came to a halt.  It was very frustrating… but now I have an awesome new machine and am back in action!

Three weeks ago the theme was Animal, which meant you could do anything that had to do with animals. Animal prints, animal nail art, whatever…  I had seen this post by Grace from Oooh, Shinies! about a snow leopard mani, and I was in love. I knew this was what I wanted to do for my animal theme!


Products used:
Essence Nail Art Protecting Base Coat
Essence 50’s Girls Reloaded Ahoy (White)
Konad Black Stamping Polish
Konad Plate M57
Essence Silver Stampy Polish (Silver spots)
Seche Vite Topcoat

Last week the theme was Splatter… boy, what a challenge that turned out to be.  The way splatter is meant to be done is to take a thin straw and dip it into a blob of polish so that it covers the opening at the end of the straw, then you blow through the other end, causing the polish to splatter onto the nail.   Well, easier said than done!  The straws I bought were far too wide and wouldn’t work, so I tried disassembling a pen and using the narrow opening where the tip of the pen sticks out to pick up the polish and blowing on the other end.  By the time I got that far, all the blowing was giving me a headache, so I went for the hand drawn, fake splatter look instead.


This is done by putting a drop of paint on your finger and dragging it out with a toothpick or fine dotting tool.  I had a lot of fun doing this!

Products used:
Essence Nail Art Protecting Base Coat
Essence Multi Dimension XXXL Shine Fatal (Black)
Essence Multi Dimension XXXL Shine Found My Love (Light Purple)
Catrice Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezy! (Green)
Essence Colour & Go Let’s Get Lost  (Blue)
OPI  Planks a Lot (Dark Purple) & Sparrow Me The Drama (Pink) from the Pirates of the Caribbean Collection
China Glaze Fairy Dust (Glitter topcoat)
Seche Vite Topcoat

The theme for today was Layering, which is a little vague but I gather it just meant anything to do with layering one polish on top of another.  Unfortunately, I have an appointment tomorrow that I don’t think would be appropriate for really flashy polish so I chose to just stick a fake nail on my practice finger and do my idea on there.  It still counts!


Products Used:
Essence Nail Art Twins Thelma (Base coat, looks black but is really a dark purple)
Essence Nail Art Twins Troy (Glitter)
Pink Nail Striping Tape
Seche Vite Topcoat

I decided that instead of layering the entire nail I would do part, and try something different.  I got a package in the mail today with some items I ordered a few weeks ago from Born Pretty, which is a great shop in China where you can buy lots of nail items for seriously cheap prices.  Oh, and the best part?  FREE SHIPPING – WORLDWIDE!

I wanted to use one of my new products so I thought it’d be nice to border the two separate sections with some of the striping tape, so I could test it out.  I got 12 colors for only $7.99 (5,50 euro) which I’m pretty sure is enough to last me a lifetime!  You get a lot on those little rolls, it’s really surprising.
 
Be prepared, I see a striping tape frenzy in my future!

If you would like to get in on the Facebook nail group action, shoot me a message on Facebook and I’ll see about getting you an invite!

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PAA’s Monday Nail Art Challenge

A while back I joined a group on Facebook called Polish-aholics Anonymous, which was created by Traci from The Trace Face Philes.  It’s basically a group of women who love polish and nail art who came together to share their obsession.  It’s a great place to chat about nails if that’s what you are into and what I like most is that there are a lot of women in there who make me feel a lot better about my little addiction.  Some have hundreds of polish!  So I always have a "I could always be worse…” example! haha
The group decided to start doing weekly nail art challenges on Mondays.  Todays was polka dots!!  You know how much I love doing dots!

I got my inspiration from a blog I came across, and I so wish I had thought to bookmark it!  On the blog they credited a girl on YouTube who first inspired her.  Here is the video tutorial I, and the girl who’s blog I first saw it on, followed to create this mani.



Mine didn’t come out quite as neatly as hers, and it really made me wish I had bigger nails!   Sometimes having small nail beds can be a right pain when it comes to nail art, but we work with what we got!
I may not take part in all of the Monday Nail Art Challenges, but I’m going to try.  It’s really fun!
Products used:
Claire’s Super Speed Black Polish
Essence Stamp Me! White
Miss Sporty Gold
Essence Nail Art Protecting Base Coat
Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat
Sally Hansen White Nail Art Pen
Essence Mysterious Black Nail Art Tip Painter

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Givaway Win Nail Art

I’m really milking this giveaway win, aren’t I?!
I loved these polishes so much I wanted to try to do something fun that included all three.

Cute, huh?  I just love it! I really like dotting, I can imagine it would be even more fun with the proper dotting tools, rather than my homemade jobbies.
I was going to take a photo of the mani with a matte coat, but when I put the matte coat on it looked almost exactly the same!
I’m hoping to get at least another day or two out of this one, it’s just too cute to try to remove already.

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Cherry Blossom Nail Art

A while back I saw some Cherry Blossom Nail art by Kayla Shevonne, and I loved it!  I may have pestered her a bit asking for a tutorial and last week she totally came through!  She made it look so easy, but she is an evil trickster! I tried twice and mine didn’t look nearly as good as hers.
I’m just telling myself it’s because I'm new and don’t have as many materials to work with. It makes me feel better.
First, I tried with these colors…

Catrice Snow Motion, Miss Sporty Pink, Essence Let’s Get Lost, Essence Mysterious Black Nail Art Tip Painter.

It’s funny because I like this a lot more in the photo than I did on my nails.  When I had it on my nails it looked too dark, the blue and black didn’t have enough contrast and the pink dots looked too dark as well.  I liked it but something nagged at me that I should have used another color on the background. 
I left it on for most of the day but later that evening I decided to see how it looked with other colors.  A lighter background that would show off the other colors a little better, so I tried with these.

Catrice Snow Motion, Miss Sporty Pink, Essence Stamp Me! White, Catrice Easy Peasy,Lemon Squeezie, Essence Mysterious Black Nail Art Tip Painter.
I mixed the pink with some of the Snow Motion to make a lighter pink.

I probably should have waited until the next day when I wasn't so tired, but I am a total impatientpants and wanted to see if it was any better on a lighter background, so I got to work…

It’s funny because this is the opposite of the other photo. I liked this a lot more on my nails than I do in the photo!
I wish I’d taken my time more with the branches, which I think were shaped better on the blue, but the colors worked better with the green, I think. 
In any case, they aren’t quite as good as Kayla's but still pretty good for one of my first free hand nail art designs considering I didn’t have some of the tools I would have liked to be able to use.  I have kept this on longer than a lot of other manis I’ve done, almost five days!  It has started peeling though so I’m going to have to remove it and do something new soon. 
It’s ok, I already have a few ideas!
I almost forgot…. even with two layers of base coat the blue color totally stained my nails. They look just like this again. Argh.
Both manicures have a double layer of Seche Clear Base Coat and Seche Vite top coat.

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