I'm Back!

Happy Holidays Friends!!  Did you miss me?  We've had so much going on in our lives that I just haven't had time to post on the blog.  Hopefully that will change now.  I had a second surgery done on my ankle Christmas eve, and on the 18th (my birthday) my new grandson was born!  Oh happy day!  I did keep up with my manis during all this so thought I'd post a few of the Christmas ones that I did.

I wore this mani early in the month for one of our family Christmas parties.  I added a glitter top coat and loved how it turned out.  Made me think of Santa and snow!

This is the mani I wore on Christmas day.  I used striping tape to outline the tree.  The white that I used over the color is a new polish I bought with some of my birthday cash.  It's Orly Winter Wonderland.  I love snow and so I really love the look of this!  I really hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is having a great holiday season.

This, that, and Go Fish nails

Hello, hello!  These last couple of weeks have been super busy for me.  Between a death in the family, a baby shower I hosted, and the election I haven't had a chance to post.  Hopefully I'm back on track now though.  First off I want to show you a picture of the diaper cake I made for my daughter in law.  It's their first baby and my hubs and I are super excited for them.

I love how it turned out!! And my mani for the day was yellow with white and blue polka dots to match.  

In our local election, a good friend named Kelly Fisher was running for the office of Recorder of Deeds.  For election day and her victory party I gave myself Go Fish nails.  Like an idiot though, I only took one pic of them.  Argghhh!!  They looked so awesome I can't believe that in all my excitement of her winning I didn't get any more pictures.

Hopefully, everyone is doing well and getting ready for the upcoming holidays.  I've got lots of manicure ideas, let's hope they look as good on my nails as they do in my mind.  :)  Enjoy your weekend folks!!

Spooooooooky

Happy Saturday!  Boy, I sure do love the weekends.  :)  It's lovely to be off work and just take my time doing my nails.  This one I actually started last night and finished this morning.  Got a bit frustrated last night so I had to walk away and pick it back up today.  Anyway, I'm super thrilled with the end result.  Love how this looks and think I'll wear it until Halloween.

Scary, eh?  I started with Sinful Colors Happy Ending which is a green with a bit of shimmer.  Over that I added a couple coats of a Sally Girl mini that is green but I can't seem to find the name of it.  The black I used is Sinful Colors Black on black.

For Frankie's hair I used a fan brush.  I think his hair is my favorite part of this mani!  I used a striping brush and the black for the monster's mouths and the dots on my pinkie.  For the stripes, I used striping tape and again the Black on black.  The eyes are dotted with black and SC Snow me white, and the white moon with black cat in it is a little stick I ordered from amazon.  I think they are called FIMO sticks.  I got like 100 for just a few bucks.  You cut them with a razor blade, glue it on, and it gives a 3D type effect to your manicure.  I'm not sure it's worth the effort, but I got lots of fruit and butterflies and flowers so maybe next summer I'll use them again.

I added a spooky spider ring.  Wooooooooo, scary.....
Have a lovely weekend everyone!

I want my Mummy

Happy Saturday!  I'm getting in the Halloween spirit and decided to do mummy nails for the weekend.  I have a friend with pancreatic cancer who's fundraiser I'm going to today so I added a purple accent nail in honor of her.  I thought I had a ribbon stamp plate and I was going to do a purple ribbon mani but I was wrong.  I've been wanting to do mummies for a couple of weeks so here ya go!

I don't know why my fingers look so puffy this morning.  Must be all the salty stuff I ate yesterday.  Shame on me for retaining water!!

I used OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls for the base of the mummies.  Then I free handed the black stripey lines with black Kiss nail art paint.  For the purple spider nail I used Color Club Pucci-Licious.  I really love this shade of purple but don't seem to wear it much.  I must change that.  The spider is stamped on using mash plate 38 and Sinful Colors Snow Me White.  I used my dotting tool for the mummy eyes.  I think it looks pretty cute.  Especially from afar.  LOL, below is a close up that shows my poor clean up job.  Why oh why is it so hard for me to get a decent clean up?  I see other nails on blogs that are cleaned up so beautifully.  I try, and end up removing half the polish.  Hehe!  Oh well, I still like this mani!    

Have a great weekend friends!!

For Audrey ~ With Love

Hello, hello!  Today I've got one of my absolute favorite manis to show you.  Over the last year I've lost about 60 pounds and recently had to get some new bras.  For the first time I went to Victoria's Secret and bought some beautiful ones.  It's so much fun to get pretty undergarments as opposed to wearing big wide 4 hook old lady bras.  :)  So, the inspiration for today's manicure is one of my new pretty bras.  I got a great deal through Sally Beauty online for China Glaze "For Audrey" so that is the base coat.

Next, I dotted with Julep Kate which I think is such a pretty pearly white.  I did large and small dots with this color.

After the white dots, I took my China Glaze Spontaneous and added purple dots in the large white ones and a few purple smaller dots.  I totally love this color combination and how this turned out.

Add a top coat of Seche Vite, a big huge purple ring and I have a manicure I didn't want to remove!!  I'm sure I will do this one again and again.  I wish the camera could have captured the colors a bit better but the pics still turned out ok.  And, isn't the new bra awesome!!  Heehee!  Have a great weekend friends!

Dry Marble

Good Morning!  Since I have a three day weekend I decided to try something new.  I have a horrible time getting a water marble to look good so I did a bit of searching and found a dry marble technique I thought I would try.  For this technique you paint on to a baggie, marble it with a toothpick and then peel it off a few hours later and apply to your nails.  I'm not very happy with the result and didn't even attempt at clean up because I knew I would be removing it today, but thought I would share with my faithful readers.  I think what I don't like about it is the color combo but I'm not sure.  It was fairly easy to do, I'm just not happy with the end result.  Anywho, here is my first attempt at dry marbling.  Enjoy!

One thing I'm not happy with is the huge difference between both hands.  I painted a big area of the baggie and the one hand really only shows the blue and orange while the other hand just shows what looks like a jumbled messy spill of polish.  I used 4 colors.  Blue, orange, green, and plum.  I thought they would look nice and fallish (is that a word?).  To me it actually just looks blah.  I'm sure I'll try this method again sometime, maybe in the spring with pastels.  It seems to be a never-ending quest of mine to master a marbling effect.  It's good to have goals, right?  LOL, I hope everyone is having a great weekend.  Tomorrow I'm going to try a "on the nail" marbling technique.  Hopefully that will turn out nicer.  :)

New stamping plate

Hello, hello!  Happy to be back.  I had some health issues last week that kinda got me down.  :(  I've been dealing with a broken ankle since June and while I'm finally out of the cast, I still have problems with the pain.  Anyway, here I am, and I got a new Konad stamping plate that I LOVE!  I bought it for the argyle stamp on it and haven't even used that one yet.  Haha, I simply fell in love with this one and used it twice this week.  So here ya go...

 For this first one, I used Essie Bikini So Teeny and stamped it with Sinful Colors Black on Black.  This turned out so pretty.

I've used some plates of lesser quality (cheap) and I can tell you that I sure notice a difference between them and some of the higher priced ones.  Definitely worth the extra money to avoid the frustration.

I had a wedding to go to last night and wanted a pretty design, so again I chose this stamp only this time I went with a lavender/silver combo underneath.

 I used OPI Lucky Lucky Lavender and did a gradient with Essie No Place Like Chrome.  I took these pics before top coat/clean up and please ignore my icky cuticles. I stamped the same design using Orly Velvet Rope.

I got lots of compliments at the wedding, which I love!  It's nice to have people notice the hard work(mostly) and thought I put into my manis.

So there you have it, my new favorite stamp.  By the way, it's Konad m60.  I'm pretty sure I'll try the argyle later this week....Enjoy!!

Gradients

Hello!!  I'm so happy to have a few more followers.  :)  Thanks and welcome to all!
I don't now about you but I like to paint my nails to help me relax.  For some reason it really calms me down and makes me happy.  However, lately I've been trying so many new nail designs that I have become very frustrated and giving myself a mani was not so relaxing.  So after two days of total frustration with my visions not working out or turning out as I pictured them in my mind,  I decided to spend the rest of the week with easy applications.  And with that, I present my two recent gradient manicures.  For the first one I used my two favorite colors.  Orange and Pink.  I used Essie Tour de Finance as the base, and for the gradient I used Sinful Colors Clementine.

I love it when Walgreens has Sinful Colors for .99.  I always pick up a lot of colors during that week!

Aren't these pretty together?  I got lots of compliments on my nails while wearing it.
I made my first trip to Sally beauty the other day and picked up a few polishes and some eye makeup.  Two of the polishes I got were the ones I used in this next gradient.  First I put down my new China Glaze Spontaneous, then I sponged on my new Orly Velvet Rope.

I really like the sparkle in the Velvet Rope.  It's so pretty!
Both of these were so easy to do and turned out awesome.  They brought the joy back to doing my nails.  I think I might wait for weekends to try the harder designs and stamping.  That will give me lots more time to get the look I have pictured in my mind.  So Lovelies, what do you think?  And do any of you get frustrated with getting the perfect design to look good?  Oh, and I finally got my Seche Vite top coat!  I'm afraid Sally Beauty is going to become my new favorite store.  :)  Enjoy, and remember to live the life you love!!

Dots and NEW followers!!

Oh happy day!  I am totally happy to announce that I have two new followers!  I can now honestly say that at least two people that are not related read this goofy blog of mine.  Happy face!!  :)  Seriously, a big thank you to all!  I know that I can do better with my pictures and descriptions of the polish I use and now that I know that more than my hubby and sister are reading I promise to do the best I can from now on!!  I'm still fairly new at blogging so I know I can only get better.  The technical aspect of this baffles me at times.  Like getting my header better aligned and setting up tabs, but I know I will eventually get it all figured out.  So, having said that, I now present my latest dotty nails.  I totally idolize "A Girl and Her  Polish (www.agirlandherpolish.com) and she's does dots that look amazing so I'm constantly trying to get close to having a dot manicure that is as nice as hers.  This one turned out pretty good and I love the pink and grey combination.  For the base I used Pure Ice Kiss Me Here.

The accent nail is Essie Lights.  I tried to stamp a heart on the accent nail but it didn't show up very well so I just dotted over it.  The pink dots are done with Essie Lights and Maybelline Express Finish Posy Pink.

I topped it all off with Revlon Extra Life top coat.  I'm still trying to find a top coat that doesn't smear.  I'm think I'm going to order seche vite or make a trip to the Ulta store and see if they have it there.  Lots of folks seem to really like it.

And for my sis, I matched my hairy toes with the pink and grey.  It's a shame that because of my healing ankle I can't wear sandals to show them off.  My physical therapist sure liked them though!!  Thank you again to my new followers and to everyone who likes to check out my fancy fingers and hairy toes!

Happy Flowers

I love orange!  Anything orange puts a smile on my face so it goes without saying I have lots of orange polish.  This manicure is from earlier this summer when I was off work with a broken ankle.  It's when I first started taking pics of my nail art.  I just found out today that I shouldn't be taking my pictures with my camera phone.  Who knew?!?  I thought they were decent pics but I want to do the best for my loyal readers so from now on I'm gonna have Dave take the pics with our good camera.  :)  In the meantime, here is my orange mani from June.  I added the flowers with my dotting tools and sinful colors white.  Then I dotted the centers with purple.  LOL, since this was three whole months ago I don't remember the exact orange or purple I used.  I know, my bad.....

This was fun and summery!  Sure hope you like it, lovelies!!

Blue Chrome

Good Evening Lovelies!
Here's hoping everyone had a great holiday weekend.  I know I sure did...well, my Monday Labor day hangover wasn't very fun but other than that it was fab!!  My beautiful daughter-in-law Lindsey lost her beloved Nana recently so I decided to try and cheer her up with a manicure.  I let her pick the colors and stamp and it really turned out nice!  First I started with my new Julep Gunta from the Trina Turk collection.  This color is the most beautiful royal blue I have seen in quite a while.

Next I stamped with my mash-46 plate.  The color she chose for the stamping was Essie No Place Like Chrome.

I probably would have never picked this stamp for myself but I will certainly use it now.  I love it!  And the blue/chrome combo looks fantastic.  I hope I was able to cheer her up for at least a little while.  :)

Ta Ta for now Lovelies!!  Enjoy!

Pinkle

Happy Weekend Lovelies!  Tonight we have a beautiful pink gradient.  Sometimes I just want a quick and easy mani and this fits the bill.  I started out with my Julep Kate.  I've really been turning to this polish lately when I'm wanting to have white in my design.  This and my Sinful Colors white.

Next I applied three coats of Sinful Colors Glass Pink.  After that I did the gradient with this beautiful twinkling glitter.  Sinful Colors Pinky Glitter.  I adore this color.  It really looks pretty over the white & pink.

This looked  a lot brighter in person, but I really like it a lot.  I got some new polishes yesterday that I ordered from an Indie I found on Etsy.  I can't wait to try them both out.  I'm thinking a nice pedi is in my very near future since I go to the ortho doc Tuesday to hopefully get my boot off.  I'll have to use one of my new indie polishes for that.  In the meantime, enjoy this pretty in pink mani Lovelies!  As always, if you have any suggestions of a design you would like to see just let me know.

Blue on Blue

Lovelies, Happy Monday!
I made a necklace not too long ago that I really love.  While I was trying to figure out my polish design for today, my outfit of choice of course came in to play.  I settled on a blue sweater so I could wear the necklace.  Then the decision to stamp a design to match the necklace popped in to my mind.

So here's the necklace, and my Monday mani!!

Animal Print

Oh my Lovelies!  I am sorry to have been neglecting you.  I just realized it's been a while since I updated.  I have changed my nails, but have not been very happy with the result so I didn't post the pics.  I do have them in a folder, so someday I may put up a bunch of bloopers/screw ups...

For now though, I decided that since I will be spending a little time with my grandsons this weekend, I need to have nails that are of something they like.  And since they like wild animals I decided to go with this animal print.

I started with a base coat of Sinful Colors Nirvana.  Stamped it using my Sinful Colors black, and then added a few little dots with my dotting tool and Sally Hanson Insta-dry Cinna-Snap.  I really like how these turned out.  Love the look!