Mani Monday- It's a Boy!

My little sister is having a baby!  It's pretty exciting.  So over the weekend we had her baby shower, and of course I needed to rock some cool baby themed nail art.  Because everyone is there to look at my nails, not oh and ah over my sister's belly.  :-P

On my thumb I am wearing two coats of Julie G's Canary Islands from her new Summer Cruise collection.  Right off the bat, I am in love with this polish.  Yellow polishes are notorious for being difficult to work with.  Canary Island was almost a one coater, I just did a second one to cover up the odd streak or bald patch.  I topped this nail with Black Cat Lacquer's Let Them Eat Cake.  It is a clear base with pastel pink, yellow, and blue hexes and holo glitter dusted through it.  It screams spring and baby showers to me, so it was a must.

My pointer finger is Julie G's Santorini from the same collection as Canary Islands.  It is the perfect pastel, robin egg blue cream with just a hint of shimmer in the bottle.  Unfortunately the shimmer didn't translate to my nail.  Like the yellow, it was two coats for opacity, but if I had been careful, I could have been fine with just one.  On the blue I drew two footprints with Zoya's Jacqueline and my dotting tools.  I basically just painted two big commas and dotted five little toes over each.

My middle finger is two coats of Zoya's Jacqueline.  It is my favorite cream colored polish and what I reach for when I don't want stark white.  I topped it off with more Let Them Eat Cake and was pleased.

My ring finger is three coats of Essie's Hors d'oeuvers.  It is a dense gold glitter with large silver hexes. Hors d'oeuvers was released in Essie's Winter 2013 collection.

Finally, my pinkie began with two coats of Milani's Mint Candy, which is a dark mint cream with a blue shimmer.  The shimmer does not translate onto the nail at all, but it was perfect after that second coat and it is a really pretty color.  Mint polishes have always given me a bit of trouble, so I do not regret this purchase at all.  If you are interested in this color, I would head to your local Walgreens or CVS because it is on clearance right now.  The stars are filmo bits that I actually got at Walgreens in their bargain beauty extras endcap.  To apply, I just dropped a glob of top coat and placed the star on top, pressing down on the edges with some tweezers to leave them flat against my nail.

As the usual side note, these polishes and products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have people send me polishes just to review them. ;-) 

Colorful Leopard Nail Art

My mom wanted me to do her nails, and by "wanted" I mean demanded.  She went on youtube and watched videos until she decided that she wanted leopard print.  She picked the colors and I just did as I was told.  

I started with three coats of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Ivory Skull because it was really bad at going on smoothly.  I don't like it very much, just because if I'm using something as a base, it should cover really well in just one or two coats.  Three is far too many.  For the spots I used one of the bigger ends of my dotting tools and just scattered a few of each color on every nail.  The black was done with a smaller tip, I just made sure to not completely surround the dots.  Make sure you fill in empty space with small black dots and you're done!  

Look at my poor mom and her beaten up skin.  She works with her hands and her cuticles dry out really easily.  Any suggestions for what she should use?

February Nail Art Challenge - Day 3 Flowers

So day three is off to a better start then my first nail art attempt, so yay.
Flowers were a lot easier to pull off then hearts, for some reason, so I am really happy with this mani.  When I first started trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to do with for the flowers theme, I was at a loss.  Then I started playing with my cousin's nail polish and fell in love with this blue.

It is Sally Hansen's Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Blinding Blue.  I probably would have been fine with just one coat, but there was just a touch of visible nail line so it was a two coater.  I might have to find my own bottle of this for a lot of the nerdy nail art I have planned.
For the flowers I pulled out the dotting tools and used the biggest end I had.  The orange is Essie's Fifth Avenue, a bright red orange that paints on in one coat.  I'm very glad that I bought it on a whim.  The yellow is Milani's Totally 80's.  It's supposed to be neon green, but the formula is so thin that even with three coats on top of white polish it looks yellow.  I loved the name, but not so much the actual polish.
I love the way this ended up.  It remind me of 70's retro curtains, all bright colors and funkiness.