Tutorial Tuesday: Abominable Snowman Nail Art!

Good morning, readers! It has been forever since I've done a proper Tutorial Tuesday post. Sorry about that! The holidays are crazy around here and with Hailey off of school, there wasn't time to do extra posts like that.

But, I'm back and trying to get into the groove! Since it's pretty much FREEZING all over right now, it seemed like a great idea to do a Yeti/Abominable Snowman tutorial! This design was my VERY FIRST post with The Digit-al Dozen last December and it's still one of my favorites!

Turquoise Waterfall Nail Art!

Hello, readers! I was able to take some time to put up a post tonight for you! It's been crazy getting Hailey ready to start Kindergarten next week, and the hubby and I started watching Doctor Who on Netflix so every night we are watching that instead of me having nail time! Haha, its addicting.

Anyway, tonight's post is a nail look I did last week. I followed this awesome tutorial by The Nailasaurus but went with one of my favorite color families--turquoise-- for my version of the look!

My base is is Dior St. Tropez and I did the waterfall stripe lines in Illamasqua Muse, Zoya Zuza, Milani Quick Teal, and Cult Nails Let Me Fly. I also couldn't decide on shiny or matte so I'm going to show you both and I'd love to hear what look you prefer!

Here are the shiny top coat pictures:

And the matte top coat pictures:

So what do you think? Which do you prefer: shiny or matte? Have you tried "waterfall nails" yet? Thanks for reading! 

Teal Gradient+Glitter Bomb!

Good morning, readers! I'm not sure that there can ever be TOO MUCH glitter, can there? As I was trying out ideas for this mani on a nail wheel yesterday, I was deciding between 3 glitter toppers for my gradient and I ended up layering all 3! Why not? Live a little-have super sparkly nails! LOL, that's my motto anyway!

Anyway, onto the nails. My camera couldn't focus on this glittery goodness in the direct sunlight this morning so I've got some indirect sunlight pics. They show the different glitters fairly well, but minus the crazy sparkle that only comes from seeing in person. You will just have to trust me on this one!

Ever since I received Zoya Zuza in the mail, I knew I wanted to do a gradient with Zoya Charla. As much as I love gradients, I can't seem to leave them alone. That's where the glitter bomb comes in. Take a look:

I used: 

Orly Nail Defense

2 coats of Zoya Zuza

Ripped up damp makeup sponge and Zoya Charla for the tip gradient.

1 coat of Ozotic Elytra 528

I coat of Cult Nails Hypnotize Me

1 coat of Essence Edward

1 coat of Cult Nails Wicked Fast.

I just love macro shots when you layer multiple glitters! You get to see so many different shapes and colors!

As I said, it's super crazy sparkly in person because of the holo glitters in Edward. I love the multichrome colors of the Ozotic Elytra peeking through as well! And I've decided that everyone needs Cult nails Hypnotize Me in their life. 

They are completely smooth after one coat of Cult Nails Wicked Fast. Another reason these 3 glitters rock. 

I may have a teal obsession...but I just love how these turned out. What do you think? Thanks for reading!

Day 4: I Meant What I Said, and I Said What I Meant...

Wow, two days of posts back to back? Feeling productive over here I suppose! I have another fun kid nail art challenge for today!

Day 4: Favorite Children's Movie Nail Art

Since I did How To Train You Dragon on the 31 Day Challenge, I asked Hailey to go through her dvds and help me pick another kids movie to do. We both decided that Horton Hears A Who would be cute! I was googling and couldn't find other Horton nails so this may be a first!

google image of Horton

Here are how my nails turned out:

I used:

Cult Nails Get It On

2 coats of OPI In My Back Pocket

Cult Nails My Kind of Cool Aid for Horton

Essence Walk of Fame for the ears

Details with :

 Essie Trophy Wife

 OPI Alpine Snow

 Wet n Wild Ink Well

 OPI Feelin Hot Hot Hot!

 OPI Who The Shrek Are You?

 Essence Movie Star

 OPI Jade is the new Black

Top Coat of Cult Nails Wicked Fast

What do you think? Thanks for reading!

Zoya Bevin Gets Hypnotized by Essence Edward!

Good morning, readers! Hope you are all enjoying your last weekend day! I have some pretty layering to show you today. Wendy of Nailsalicious recently posted her Nails Of The Day featuring Chanel Nouvelle Vague topped with Essence Edward and I loved the look! I hadn't thought about wearing my Edward over a lighter color and couldn't wait to try it! Of course, I don't have the gorgeous Chanel Nouvelle Vague(which will cost you a whopping $90+ on ebay these days), but I did recently get Zoya Bevin from Bloom.com and it has a similar(although, it's greener toned) look.

After I put on Bevin, which is so pretty, I realized that I still hadn't tried out Cult Nails Hypnotize Me from my prize package! I must be crazy for waiting this long to try out that beauty! It added some gorgeous teeny glitters before I topped everything off with one coat of Essence Edward.

My hubby even complimented my on these nails yesterday! I must add, that these are much more sparkly in person and I hate when that happens! The holo bits in Edward don't really show up on camera that way so just take my word for it.

You can really see the gorgeous teeny glitters of Hypnotize Me under the bigger glitters of Edward!

What do you think? Sometimes it's nice to see what you can come up with when it comes to layering instead of stamping or other nail art. It's a nice change and I'm digging it! Thanks for reading!

Cult Nails Toxic Seaweed!

Happy Sunday, readers! I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend, especially if you are getting a long holiday weeekend! We just got back from running a couple of errands and having a nice family lunch at Chilis. Yummy!

I had to break up a dog "fight" incident yesterday and sadly broke some nails! :( I had to cut and file them all down to nubbin nails and am sad about it, but I'm hoping they grow back quickly! I did get some Orly Nail Armor to try and like it so far!

It's been so rainy and gloomy lately but the rain let up around lunch time today and the sun is shining. I was so excited, I grabbed my camera and ran outside in case it didn't last long.

I am so happy to show you this Limited Edition Cult Nails polish! I was one of those crazies that stayed up to order the minute they went on sale at midnight last weekend. However, I just looked at their site, and you can still purchase your own Toxic Seaweed HERE. Looks like they didn't run out as quickly as Unicorn Puke did, but I didn't want to chance missing out on this polish. I'm SO GLAD I got it! It is so unique to others in my collection and I really like it with my skin tone.

sad little nubbin nails

This is a jelly with flakies and glitters packed into it and I love it! I had to do 3 coats to make it this opaque(and you can see the visible nail line[VNL] but it's not even noticeable in person because its so packed with glitters and flakies). 

I used:

2 coats of Orly Nail Armor

3 coats of Cult Nails Toxic Seaweed

1 coat of Cult Nails Wicked Fast

What do you think of this color? I just love the name! It's so creative and really makes me think of pollution floating in the seaweed and ocean. Thanks for reading!

Lots of New Nail Mail!

Hello readers! It's a gloomy day outside so it won't be good for taking new nail pics. But, I had some awesome nail mail come in the past week and I wanted to show it all to you!

Here is a group pic of everything on my table:

 Here is my amazing price package I received from Maria at Cult Nails for winning the Nail Art Contest! Thanks again to everyone that voted for me!!

Wicked Fast Speed Dry Top Coat, Get It On Perfecting Base Coat, Hypnotize Me, Let Me Fly, and Iconic!

5 Bundle Monster wheels with gems, shapes, etc! Wow!

Konad Double Sided Stamper and Scraper Set(yes, I've already used it as you can see on the scraper) and a set of MASH Stamping Plates!

Set of Shany Nail Art Brushes and Dotting tools! (Both my brushes and dotting tools were looking pretty sad lately and breaking so this was REALLY exciting for me)

Talk about an epic contest prize, right? Thank you SO much Cult Nails for this awesome box!

I ordered myself Deborah Lippman's Razzle Dazzle from ebay! I can't wait to try this beauty out!  

 My friend Aleta from The Nail Junkie sent me this awesome package! She picked up a extra set of each CND polish sets and I was able to buy them from her. She also threw in these awesome extras!!

I can't wait to try out the red set for a Valentine's Day mani! Thanks, Aleta!

 Last but certainly not least, another friend, Denise, was kind enough to send me a Max Factor Fantasy Fire!! This is a very very close dupe to Clarins 230(which is HTF unless you want to pay over $50 on ebay!). It is in the UK so there was no way I'd get it here in the US without an awesome friend. Look at the sweet extras she threw in!! Thanks Denise!!!!

Well, there you have it readers! I had some awesome nail mail this week! I am trying to decide what to try next! Thanks for reading!

Wear Red Day! Cult Nails Iconic!

Hello readers! Yesterday I received my amazing prize package from the Cult Nails Nail Art Contest!! It's so amazing, I'll do a post on it later for you! I was happy it came because I had chosen Iconic as one of my colors and today is National Wear Red Day! I had to put it on!

If you are interested in more info on Wear Red Day, you can go to this site. It's about supporting women's heart health and I bet you will see lots of people wearing red today in honor of it. I know my 2 favorite daytime shows on ABC are having red shows today: The Chew and The Revolution. I can't wait to watch!

On to my red nails for today's special theme:

I also did a couple heart stamps with my new Essence plate using China Glaze Passion. 

Here are some nice swatch pictures of Cult Nails Iconic before the stamping. Those flakies and shimmer are so gorgeous!  

I used: Cult Nails Get It On perfecting base coat

2 coats of Cult Nails Iconic

1 coat of Cult Nails Wicked Fast speed dry top coat

Isn't this polish gorgeous?? I am not usually a red toned polish lover but I am really really in love with this color! I plan on doing lots of Valentines Day themed manis these next 2 weeks so maybe I'll become more of a red lover!

Thanks for reading!

Flaky, Fancy Clouds! And A Contest..

Good morning readers! Surprised for a post the day after the last one? Me, too! It was a rainy day around here yesterday and I couldn't help brainstorming about more mani ideas and decided to try something new sooner than expected!

I saw these "fancy clouds" yesterday on Nailside and thought it would be a fun design to try! Here's a tip that I learned the hard way, use one coaters or its very thick and easy to smudge by the end of adding all of the colors. haha. It wasn't too hard, but since I used some OPI polishes with the pro-wide brush, it wasn't super easy to make the "bumps" for the layers.

Since all 3 colors are similar to one another, it ended up being more of a subtle design that still got to showcase the new Finger Paints Special Effect I got recently! Next time, I'll do more contrasting colors, but I knew I wanted to do darker colors so you could appreciate the flakies.

I used:

Base Coat of OPI Base Coat for Natural Nails

2 Coats of OPI Roadhouse Blues

OPI Dating A Royal and

Sinful Colors Black on Black for the cloud layers

1 coat of Finger Paints Motley

Top coat of Poshe.

A close up so you can see the gorgeous purple and teal flakes in the Finger Paints top coat!

What do you think? I love the different color flakies!!

Also, I recently entered the Cult Nails Nail Art Contest on Facebook and wanted to share my entry link with you in case you wanted to vote for me! You just have to "LIKE" my photo in their contest photo album for a vote.

 Here is the direct link to my photo: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=326953777337751&set=a.326953690671093.86174.141755299190934&type=1&theater

OR you can click on my photo below to go to it! This is the Needle Marble Design I did a while back!

I really hope I win because the prize is a lot of nail art tools as well as some Cult Polishes!! Thank you for any votes you are willing to give! Also, Cult Nails is going to give a prize away to one of the people who voted for the winning entry!! How awesome is that?

Thanks for reading! Hope you all have an amazing day!!

Needle Marble Design

Hello readers!! I tried a new design technique today. After seeing this post from Liquid Jelly a little while ago, I knew I had to try it. She put this video tutorial up if you want to see how it's done.

Also, my friend Sarah from Chalkboard Nails just did this other variation of needle marbling yesterday!!

I made mine more "gloomy" colors so maybe they fit in with Halloween coming up. Or, they just reflect the gloomy day we have outside today. Either way, it wasn't too hard to do and I plan to keep trying at this for new designs and colors in the future.

I used: Cult Nails My Kind of Cool Aid

Color Clubs Artsy Crafty and Blue-Topia to do the swirling

Sponged some Nubar Star Sparkle around the design

2 Coats of Out The Door.

What are your thoughts? I got this gorgeous Cult Nails in a swap with my friend Heather and just HAD to try it out. The sun wasn't out so you can't see the shimmer on my nails, but in this picture you can see it in the bottle!

Have you tried needle marbling? Thanks for reading!

I am in Flakie Heaven!

Hello readers!!! It came, it came, it came!!!!! My Cult Nails Unicorn Puke just came in the mail! I had just finished taking off my old polish when I heard the mail truck driving around our culdesac--perfect timing, I say. So of course, less than 20 minutes later, my polish was on and ready for pics! Are you ready?!

 This was 3 coats on it's own. I wanted to see it's true potential first, before trying it on some base colors. This is such an awesome purple jelly color, and then to add in all of these amazing flakies...just epic. I love it!

Look at all of those multicolored flakies!!!!!!!!!

I got #136 out of 275 bottles.

There were only 275 bottles made under the name "Unicorn Puke" so I had to pre-order to make sure I got one and am so happy I did! This color will be released under the name "Clairvoyant" with the rest of the Cult Nails Winter Collection in the next month or two. So don't fret if you missed your chance at Unicorn Puke and love the color. :)

I can't wait to add more Cult Nails to my collection! Cult Nails is actually based out of my hometown area so it's pretty exciting for me! You can check out the rest of the Cult Nails polishes and order them online here.

What are your thoughts? I plan to try this over other colors in the future, but I love it on it's own! Did you get Unicorn Puke? Thanks for reading!

EDIT: If you want to see this over some different colors, come check out what Allison did with her Unicorn Puke today! I am surprised that I love it over red!