Manicure Monday - Green and Silver Zig Zag Design

Green and Silver Glitter Zig Zag Nails

When I did this manicure my camera battery died and I had to take the picture with my phone, so please excuse the quality.

This is a gel polish design.

This manicure is similar to designs I have done in the past but this is a new colour. My client brought in a picture from the Orly Nail Girls and chose this awesome green colour.

To do the zig zag design first paint the nail with your desired base colour, we chose white, and then dot out the design in your second colour before joining the dots together to make your zig zag.

On the middle finger we did a full silver glitter nail.

The rest of the fingers and thumb were just painted green.

Yay for me getting this post up on time.

Nail Art

So I had two nail designs to upload for Manicure Monday for the two previous Mondays but I kind of forgot to post them up. So here they are now.

Baby Blue Glitter and Diamond Nails

The first set is a baby blue custom blended gel polish colour. It is hard to tell in the photo but the ring finger is a glitter nail. On the middle finger is a diamond design. I did this design by first painting the nail blue, then roughly painting on the diamonds, then cleaning up the lines by going back with the same blue base colour and finally adding some dots in each diamond in a silver gel polish colour.

Black and White Heart Nails

The next set is a black and white design, all nails painted black except the ring finger which is painted white. Then using a small paint brush I painted a black heart on the white ring finger and a white heart on the thumb. I also went back with the base nail colour to clean up the edges of the hearts.





Wish me luck with getting next weeks Manicure Monday Post up on time.

Baby Shower Nails

A good friend of mine had her baby shower in the weekend and I offered to do her nails for the special event. We decided to create a baby blue colour in honour of her baby boy. We wanted to keep the manicure fairly simple so went with a blue and white colour scheme and kept the nail art to a minimum. This is a gel nail polish manicure.

Baby Shower Nails

On her right hand, all fingers were painted blue and the thumb white. I wrote her due date over the the first three fingers with white gel polish and a detail brush. On the thumb I did some dots using a dotting tool and the same custom blue gel polish that was used on the other nails.

On the left hand, all nails were painted blue except the ring finger which we painted white. On the ring finger I did a baby foot print using dotting tools of various sizes and the custom blue colour used on the other nails. On the thumb we mirrored the right hand and did white dots on a blue background.

I love this manicure, I think it is so cute and a perfect manicure for your baby shower and also excellent for a maternity photo shoot.

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Day Two - Technically I already failed

My first post was actually posted at 12:04 am on February the 2nd, so my plan for a post every day has already gone out the window. Lets just pretend that didn't happen, it was still the 1st in parts of the world......

Anyway onto today's post.

I am already struggling to think of ideas for posts, I dread to think what I'll be writing at the end of the month. Today I'm going to stick with something I know, a nail post.

These are a set of nails I did on myself using gel nail polish and fine craft glitter. I'm not going to go into too much detail on how to do these, but if you have any questions just ask. :)

I started by doing a basic french manicure with gel nail polish on all fingers except for the ring finger (i'll explain that one in a minute) and adding the gel topcoat, then I lightly buffed the shine from the topcoat so my glitter wouldn't slip around to much. I then drew a line in a gel nail polish colour similar to the glitter colour I wanted to use. Before setting the green line I sprinkled fine glitter over the wet polish and then cleaned up the lines with a brush. If you have a lot of excess glitter where you don't want it, gently blow on your nails. Once I was happy with the lines I set the nails in my UV light. Once set I brushed off any loose glitter with a nail brush, the kind you use to clean under your fingernails. Then I sealed the whole design with a gel topcoat. If the glitter was still a little ruff I again buffed the topcoat and glitter area until it felt more smooth and applied another layer of topcoat.

Now for the ring finger, I applied my base coat, set in lamp, then one coat of colour, set in lamp, then another coat of colour, before setting I sprinkled the green glitter over top until the whole nail was covered in glitter. I then set the nail in the UV lamp. Next I brush off any excess glitter and applied gel topcoat. I buff the surface smooth paying extra attention to the free edge. Then I painted on the lace design with white gel polish. If you would like a step by step let me know. If you're not confident with hand painting you can also do this with Konad stamping if you have the right plate. 

That's all for today, hopefully there will be more from me tomorrow.

Mint and White Heart French Manicure

Long time, no blog. Feels like I start every post with something along those lines and a promise to post more frequently from now on. No such promise this time, I will do the best I can to post more often but I will most likely fail to do so. 

The upside to being absent for so long, I have plenty of photos of nail designs that I can now share with you. Instead of lumping them all together in one post, as I have done previously, I thought I would give more detailed explanations of each design in their own separate posts.

This first design is using three polishes, a white (Orly White Out), a minty green (Orly Gumdrop, is slightly more minty in person) and an optional glitter polish I used Wasabi. I can't remember the brand name of the glitter polish, but if anyone needs to know I can search it out for you.

I start with basecoat as always then apply a few coats of Orly Gumdrop, you can use any colour you prefer. Then using the white polish draw to semi circle shapes at the tip of the nail overlapping in the centre, creating the heart or lip french. This shape of french is very easy to do because the brush does most of the work for you. You may need to do two coats of the white if the colour underneath is showing through. You could stop here if you want to, but I chose to continue and using a dotting tool and the same white polish I added a few white dots along the line of the heart tip.

You may see in the photo I added a few rhinestones, which you may like to do also, although I prefer the design with out. At the time of this manicure I had on some very grown out acrylics which I was being lazy about removing so I added the rhinestones to disguise the acrylic nail which was most obvious on my ring finger.

I know that was a very rambly explanation, so if you have any questions do not hesitate to ask.

Manicure Monday: Nude and Dotty

After 14 days of wear

Before I get on to this weeks manicure I wanted to show how my last manicure went. The photo on the right is my manicure after 14 days. It is a little grown out and there is some chipping on both of my index fingers. but overall I would say it has worn well. I could easily fix up the corner of my index fingers and it would still be an acceptable manicure if I was in a rush. The manicure stayed relatively chip free until around day 10 when the index fingers chipped. I did not take any extra care of this manicure, I left it as it was when I finished it.

Nude and dotty

Today's manicure is fairly simple although it requires patience.

After I had removed my old polish, I quickly manicured my nails before applying basecoat.

Next I applied two coats of Revlon Nude Chic to all of my nails. This colour is actually slightly pinker than in the photos.

After letting this dry at least 90%, I made a vertical line of dots down the centre of my ring finger using a dotting tool and pink and white nail polish. You could choose any colours that you prefer.

I then continued to fill my entire nails with vertical lines of pink and white dots. I did two pink dots in each column. I tried to make it random but a lot of my pink dots ended up in line diagonally.

I chose to only do the dots on my ring finger because I lack patience and couldn't be bothered to do it to all my nails, but if you have the time and you like that look, then you could.

It is important to make sure that the dots have completely dried before adding topcoat because if they aren't they may blur and the finished product will not look as crisp.

I think this is a great way to add something interesting to a nude manicure. It doesn't take much skill although a steady hand can help, but so long as you take your time, anyone can do this.