Last two holiday manicures.

I'm so behind on blogging! Lots going on here. We are moving to a new house in the next couple weeks so I won't be doing manicures with all the packing! Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and happy new year!

Candy cane tips.

Still feeling in the Christmas spirit, I did these candy cane inspired tips for the weekend. They were cute and really easy to do free hand.

Nails for the Marine Corps ball

I experimented a few times with some fancy looking nails for the ball but, ultimately, I ended up pretty simple. I knew I wanted to go with silver to match my shoes and dress. My shoes were silver glitter and my dress had silver stones on it.

I had grabbed this silver glitter polish when we were in San Diego last time. It's OPI Crown Me Already and it's great for glittery manicures.

I also did my friend's nails. Her dress was chocolate brown with gold detailing so she decided on this pretty bronze color and a gold accent nail with a tiny gold rhinestone.

A couple of stars from the OPI Muppets Collection.

When we were in San Diego, my friend Trish asked me to paint her nails for her ball. We headed to Ulta to find some polish and they had the new OPI Muppets Collection at the front of the store. Trish and I both fell in love with the glitter!

I picked up Divine Swine which is the manicure that looks pink/purple and Trish grabbed Rainbow Connection which is a mix of glitter colors. Both polishes were awesome and I layered them both over a silver base.

For the ball?

The Marine Corps ball is coming up and I have been trying to decide what to do with my nails for the night. My dress is royal purple (although it looks blue in pictures!) and silver so I'm thinking some sort of silver polish and design. I did this one night, just messing around. I wanted the glitter to look more curved but it's still a decent mani. But I'm thinking maybe it's a little too subtle. I'm just not sure.

Teal/black

I absolutely love this color combo. And I find the half one color, half another color manicures easy and still cute.

After I taped the teal and painted the black, I decided I wanted a little more "oomph" so I went with the silver dots. I really liked this manicure when I was finished.

Floral half moon.

I had so much fun with my last half moon than I decided to go ahead and do another one. I opted for more contrasting colors this time with an accent nail.

For the base, I used two coats of Sinful Color Easy Going. I loved this polish! Even on it's own, it's a pretty great mani. I had no top show through and that's surprising when you realize how light pink this polish is.


After the base coat and a coat of Seche Vite, I taped off all but my ring finger with the round reinforcers so I could make the half moons. I painted a coat of Orly Liquid Vinyl on top. I waited a few minutes and then pulled off the stickers and using the Kiss silver glitter, I highlighted the half moon.

I really liked this manicure as is. I could have painted my ring finger the same and still liked it but I was feeling the accent nail that day so I went with a simple black flower. To make it, I used the flat end of a toothpick to make the dots and then used the pointy end to kind of drag a line from the center of the dot to the middle of the flower.

Since I was on the flower kick, I decided it should extend to my toes. It's hard to tell, but there are darker pink flowers along with the light ones. I really should have chosen a better pink that would have shown up more on the black but I liked the concept. There are three flowers on my big toe and then a partial flower on each of the rest.

I'm pretty proud of this manicure/pedicure. It turned out better than I had hoped and I will be using this Sinful Colors again in some more designs.

Breast Cancer Awareness month

Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and pink is it's signature color, I decided to go with a pink/zebra stripe mani. I used Sinful Color Snow Me White, Sally Hansen HD Byte, Kiss Nail Art silver glitter and a black nail pen.


I was worried the pink would be too pale so I did white as the base coat. I did not tape this manicure, just did a strip of pink diagonally down the middle of the white. I lined the pink with the silver glitter and then topped it all with Seche Vite.

After that dried, I used the black nail pen to draw random Vs and lines to make the zebra pattern.

I think this manicure turned out really cute. I need to work some more on the actual zebra print but it's not bad for my first time. I will definitely repeat this in different colors.

On another note, I finally received my first order of Konad along with my Monster bundle pack. I did a couple manis with the stamps today. Some I liked, some I didn't. I really need to see what polishes are best for the design. But I know I'll have fun practicing!

In the beginning...

These are some of my earlier manicures. I don't have the bottles to tell you the colors but the first is a deep maroon/red over silver and the second is a dark plum/purple over silver. I guess I can't really call them "French" since the French manicure is white with pink. They need a new name. Not so formal French? Formally French?


I'm not too excited about posting pictures of my toes because, well, they're toes.

This was my first try at a not so ordinary pedicure. I did it all by hand which would be why the halves aren't equal but I still liked it and was pretty proud. This is actually the same dark plum/purple from my fingers with the same silver and then the white highlight.

Not exactly my first time.

First of all, I have to say, I love black nail polish. Why I waited 36 years to buy my first bottle, I have no idea. I've had dark colors (I did a silver/purple French that I'll post that looks black) but I never bit the bullet on just straight black.

I got a bottle about 10 days ago. Orly Liquid Vinyl. I can't say enough good things about it. I've used it with almost every manicure since then.

I started off with a base coat (also an Orly brand but I'm not sure which one), two coats of the Liquid Vinyl and a coat of quick dry Seche Vite.

Then I taped off the sides of the black to make a V at the bottom of my nails and painted the V Orly It's Up to Blue. Before it completely dried, I removed the tape and painted on another coat of Seche Vite.

Once that dried, I used some nail art stickers I picked up at Sally's and adhered the flowers to my nails followed by, you guessed it, one last coast of Seche Vite.


I wore that to San Diego for the weekend and picked up some more polish from Ulta while we were there. In my haul, I grabbed a silver and a gold Orly skinny bottle of polish and used the silver to highlight just the V on my nails. By that time, it had been three days since I painted my nails and I took everything off when we got back to AZ.

If you're wondering about the title of this post, it's because this was actually my second attempt at using tape to do a manicure. My first attempt was only so-so. If you're a Facebook friend you've already seen it but I don't have the heart to include it on the blog yet. Maybe another day when I want to laugh at myself or see how far I've come.

*I have to point out that I took all my pictures without cleaning up my cuticles until the last one. That truly drives me crazy because my nails look so much better without polish everywhere. Told you I was a novice!