Vegas Pizzaz Nails

My roommate's mom and and dad just celebrated their wedding anniversary, and as part of that celebration the whole family went to Las Vegas for the weekend. But before going, her mom and sister stopped by our place and let me spruce up their nails ;)
First up, her sister wanted pink and chevrons. I'd actually bought some chevron nail vinyls, but they didn't get here in time so I ended up hand-panting the chevrons! I used Folk Art black Acrylic paint to create the chevrons, then once I had the design I went over then with a thin layer of Black Shadow to try to smooth and seal. I used A Petal For Your Thoughts (one of my FAVE colors) then asked her if I could improvise a little, and I added a Pinch of Pepper accent nail and a couple of stud that I felt pulled the mani together nicely. I really love this one! (even though it's on the simple side for me ;)
Next up was her mom. When they told me she needed sassy Vegas nails I immediately thought purple and zebra stripes. I used You Glare, I Glow across her nails and used Black Shadow to hand-paint the Zebra stripes. I then used a mixture of craft store glitter and Am I Making You Geish? on her middle finger. I mean, it's Vegas, full of drunk assholes... better make that middle finger sparkle. ;)

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A New Year, A Few More Trends

I have FINALLY returned from St. Louis.
We were supposed to have left on the 4th, but due to the Snowpocalypse Polar Vortex we didn't get out until Tuesday night! I should also apologize for all the snow spam on my Instagram over the past couple of weeks. Being from Southern California, snow is an exciting wonder, and even though we spent 3 hours in sub zero temperatures shoveling snow... it was still fun and exciting. ;)

I made out quite well for Christmas where polish is concerned. Tons of new Gelish polishes AND some MoYou plates! I also think I now have almost ALL the Trends polishes! I swatched a few more in case you're curious. Just click on the pics below to get the deets and more swatches on Candy Shop, Am I Making You Gelish?, Let Me Top You Off, and Too Tough To Be Sweet (I'm trying to keep the rest of my Trends swatches in one post, hence the linkage!)
I'm also trying something new with my swatch pictures. I decided there was way too much dead space in the pictures I had been taking, so I'm EVENTUALLY going to retake all my swatch pictures. My Color List right now is SUCH a mess. I've got some of my own pictures, a few Chickettes pictures, and some colors without any pictures at all! My goal is to get all that fixed and updated by the end of the month.

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White, Glitter, and Ice

I spent this weekend trying to get everyone's holiday nails done in time for Christmas (and yet I STILL haven't done my own! Those go on tonight!). We're leaving to go out of state and visit the in-laws in a few days, and my fiancée has decided to let her nails grow out a bit for our upcoming trip. Then, the day before I was set to do her nails... one of her nails ripped off straight down to the quick.
She was understandably upset and while she did NOT want to file all her nails down, she also didn't want one gross nubby nail and asked me if there was anything I could do. It got me thinking. Kim at Ten Little Canvasses just let me know about an "AcryGel" method on YouTube. I thought maybe I could combine that with a plastic tip. I picked up acrylic powder and plastic tips from Sallys. I cut the tip down and glued the tip on to her nail stump with nail glue (after filing down the well to help it blend into her nail bed), then did the Foundation/Acrylic powder application (shown in the previous link) twice over the top of the whole nail and tip. I then did one more coat of Foundation, cured, and applied 2 coats of Structure to make sure that baby had a ton of support. I applied TIO, cured, and then worked on filing the nail down into the proper shape. One I felt I had a good shape, I applied my color gel polish as normal. So far it seems really strong. If it works out well I'll do a more thorough, visual tutorial.
Can you guess which one is the AcrylGel false tip? The middle one. :) I went with full glitter on that nail to mask my unprofessional blend line. ;) She told me she wanted white nails with an "ice" theme, so she basically got a lot of silver glitter ;) The manicure uses 3 coats of Sheek White, loose craft store silver holo glitter, and Am I Making You Gelish?. The Middle and Thumb nails have alternating layers of loose craft store silver holo glitter and Am I Making You Gelish? to get a really dense glitter look. For the Pinky nail, I literally picked out large glitter pieces from Am I Making You Gelish? and placed them on the nail. The Ring finger is using foil from the Gelish Foil Nail Art Kit (you can check out my tutorial on that over here).

And here's a bonus Christmas/Gryffindor nail set I did for my roommate this weekend:
I used 3 coats of Red-Y And Waiting and scrubbed a gradient with loose craft store glitter across all nails except the Ring finger. I also topped those nails with a coat of All That Glitters Is Gold. In the Ring finger I scrubbed loose craft store glitter into the Foundation layer, added a layer of All That Glitters Is Gold, then scrubbed loose craft store glitter into the polish layer, and added another layer of All That Glitters Is Gold. All the holo glitter in the All That Glitters Is Gold polish made it difficult for the camera to focus, but man her nails are mega-glitzy when they catch the light!

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White, Red, and Green Holiday Nails

Here we go with yet another set of holiday nails! (didn't I say this would be Christmas Nail Week? ;) My coworker agreed with me that white nails are incredible and Need To Happen. I think I was scraping the bottom of my bottle of Sheek White for this one, but I got it done!
Did I buy teardrop studs for the express purpose of making Christmas light nails? Yes. Yes I did. But, when combined with a small round stud, they also made the CUTEST little bow on her ring finger! I used 3 coats of Sheek White on all her nails. On her pinky I scrubbed in some loose silver holo glitter from Michael's and created a fade from the tip of the nail. I then added a thin coat of Am I Making You Gelish over the top (sorry it's out of focus in this pic!).

On her index I used silver Folk Art acrylic paint to paint a snowflake (and used it for the Xmas light "wire" on her thumb). Now, her ring finger is where we're running an experiment. I really wanted to use silver striping tape, but we ALL KNOW that even under 2 coats of Top It Off that shiz will lift up. I was lamenting over this with my coworker when she said, "Why don't you just put Structure over the tape?"
If this works... nail art will never be the same. I'll keep ya'll posted.

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