Sunset Gradient

Happy Tuesday! I hope you had a great day. Apart from my poor feet, I had a good day. The morning was decidedly meh but the day picked up as I started my new and improved job!

Tomorrow I'm debuting something different from nails. I'll post it on Wednesdays- I haven't decided on every Wednesday or every other Wednesday, but we'll see. :)

Last night I did this mani- you can tell because even with a top coat, the next day I will almost always have tip wear. I also did not feel like cleaning it up last night so the clean up that I did this morning was er, a little hairy, because it was the first thing I did after rolling out of bed. HOWEVER, I love the colors. Do I love the mani? Uhm... well I'm taking it off as soon as this post is written.

It reminds me of a sunset at a beach. I definitely thought of home- I was going to add some yellow and maybe a few black lines to mimic the silhouette of a seagull or two BUT that will wait for another day when I  have thought more about how to go about this.

The polishes I used are:

China Glaze: Bahamian Escape

Essie: Tart Deco

SOPI: High Maintenance

Peter thinks it looks like parrot inspired. So, is a sunset, or a parrot?

Glitter Gradient & a note on Fall

On Pinterest a few weeks ago I saw a beautiful manicure that I needed to recreate. It is called a Mermaid manicure, and it's super easy. My nails look like a million bucks!

Recently, nail art has become a huge trend; to the point that it's actually being used as an accessory. So that makes my life easier- I don't have to wear as much jewelry. I'm not big into jewelry anyway! However, I do love sparkly nails.

This manicure screams summer. Now that labor day is passed and we're getting into September (holy moly!), I only have a few weeks in which I feel like I can rock the super bright colors. I mean, I'll probably wear neons into fall to be perfectly honest, but it will be for nostalgia. I have some great fall looks coming up, however. Among it, I have two series- a wedding/fall-love manicure series, which I'll debut on September 22nd, and a halloween series that I will start in October. I'll be showing how to coordinate fall trends with nail art/manicures and fall events.

On to the nail pictures-

First I painted my nails with Milani's Fresh Teal. I've raved about this before. It's on of my favorite colors and I use it pretty consistently. I actually need to get a new bottle soon. After that dried, I sponged on Wet 'N Wild's Diving for Pearls to create a gradient. I would start at the tips of my nails, when I had the most polish on the sponge, and gradually moved up the nail until I had none. So the color would be concentrated at the tips and sparse towards my cuticles so Fresh Teal shown more.

After that dried, I repeated the same sponging technique with Sally Hansen's Bling-tastic, which is a part of their Gem Crush collection. If you don't have this blue glitter polish, you need it in your collection. It has small blue glitter with larger circle silver glitters. It coats pretty well on its own.

It's super important that you wrap your tips in this mani- the glitter does sit on the very tip of your nail where it's most concentrated. So if you don't wrap your tips, it will chip within a day or so. I mean, you should always wrap the tips but especially so with this mani. It will prevent the glitter from snagging on anything too.

What are you looking forward to most this fall? What is your favorite trend?

Galaxy nails!

Let me start of with saying: I love this manicure.

It's super easy despite how complicated it looks on the nail. All you need is a black base, 3-4 nail polish colors for sponging, a white (or glitter nail polish) for stars, and a cosmetic sponge. I tear my sponges into tiny pieces, but some people have issues with sponge lumps so you can also cut the sponges.

I actually did this on my friend's nails! A few days ago, I walked into work with these nails and she demanded that I do them. So I'm quite happy to do them for her, especially since she's moving away to FL.

But anyway, have a picture!

The weather was pretty icky today- we have the remnants of Hurricane Isaac so unfortunately this was the only good shot I got because lighting was kind of difficult.


I used:

• Mourning Glory by OPI (Your standard black creme base)
• Turquoise & Caicos by Essie
• Purple Dragon by China Glaze
• Pink Flamingo by Spoiled
• Snow Globe by China Glaze

Thanks R for providing your fingertips! Enjoy your nails. :)