Streaky Distressed Nails.

I've had this tutorial saved to watch for a while now, and when I finally did and saw how simple the technique was, I had to give it a shot!

This technique gives you a look similar to a shatter or crackle polish but you have more control, the results are super smooth and you can easily layer lots of colors.

In the tutorial neon polishes are used but I chose a few shades I thought were more suited to cold weather. The polishes I used were China Glaze Shower Together, Julep Taylor, Wet n Wild French White Creme, Wet n Wild Black Creme, and a Julep polish (the pinkish-red color) that I don't have on hand for the name!

I think this would be the perfect design for a little last minute nail art, especially because it's super easy to do on both hands! In the future maybe I'd want to try this technique with more color combinations and different polish finishes.

Melting Ice Cream Nails.

Ice cream is awesome, and it makes for awesome nail art too. 

As I mentioned it likely would be, today's manicure is inspired by one of my current obsessions! Not ice cream but the book I talked about in yesterday's post.

I wasn't confident that I could convey the actual sea of tranquility through nail art, so instead I went with ice cream. It's on the book's cover, it plays its role in the plot, and of course, it's awesome.

The polishes I used for this manicure were Orly Pixy Stix and Spark, OPI Done Out in Deco, Revlon Blue Lagoon, American Apparel Office, and Julep January.

Snowman Nails.

I guess today continues with the winter weather nails! I've wanted to do snowmen on my nails for a while now and I think these turned out super cute. 

I was inspired by this tutorial. For my version I used Wet n Wild Silvivor with LA Colors Star Light as the base. The details were done with OPI Hot & Spicy, Julep January, and CND Oilslick. All of the white is acrylic paint.

Plaid Heathers Nails.

Chances are you've been quoting and obsessing over the wrong high school comedies. The movie you should be obsessed with is Heathers! Late 80's Winona Ryder, Shannen Doherty, and Christian Slater paired with a whole lot of plaid and blazers. What more do you want? 

I've been contemplating Heathers nails for a while and decided to give them a shot. In the film each of the Heathers has a color that they wear that is representative of their personality, which made making each of my nails a different color of plaid the obvious choice.  

The red for my Heather Chandler plaid nail is Julep January, for my Heather Duke (green) nail I used LA Colors Atomic, the Veronica Sawyer nail (blue) is LA Colors Static Electricity, and the Heather McNamara nail (yellow) is Orly Spark. On all of my nails I used CND Concrete and Oil Slick and Wet n Wild French White Creme.

Heathers is full of incredibly quotable lines, and I knew I wanted one on my ring finger, after a little internal debate I went with, "How very."

Sweet Candy Nails.

Today's manicure has a theme I love, candy. The base color is one I don't think I've used for nail art before, Julep Maya. The design is done in acrylic paint and I added a bit of glitter with Color Club Starry Temptress. 

Rainbow Dotted Nails.

Today's manicure has  a bunch of different elements. I did a different gradient on each of my nails to create a rainbow, and then I added a shimmer polish on top of the gradients, and finished things off with gradating dots. 

The red to pink nail was done with Julep January and CND Raspberry Plunge. The yellow to orange nail is CND Bicycle Yellow and CND Electric Orange. The green to teal nail is OPI Don't Mess with OPI and China Glaze Shower Together. The blue to purple nail is China Glaze Spontaneous and China Glaze First Mate.

On the warm toned gradients I added CND Raspberry Sparkle, and for the cool toned ones I added CND Sapphire Sparkle. Then the dots were done with CND Oilslick and a few different sizes of dotting tools.

Nautical Nails.

Nautical nails are a design I've had on my list to do for quite a while now, but it took me a while to decide how exactly I wanted to do them. 

I played around with a few different ideas and eventually decided on this fun combination...

The polishes I used are Milani White on the Spot, Julep January, and Essence Just Rock It. I used striping tape for all of the stripes, and the silver balls are the steel balls I reviewed here.

I wore this design on the 4th of July so the color scheme was perfect, but nautical nails are so perfect for any summer day!

Born Pretty Plate M71 Review.

Today I have my last Born Pretty Store review for you! This time it is for another nail art item, the M71 plate, which comes with a stamp and scraper. 

Usually when I stamp designs on my nails I use a full nail image (like this one) so I played around with the plate a little before deciding on a manicure. All the images stamped well, and the stamp and scraper measured up to the ones I already own.

A lot of people prefer rubber scrapers or credit cards, but I always feel like I get a better scrape with a metal scraper. I'm happy to have another since mine is always a mess. The stamp is a lot different than the one I'm used to using, which is longer and double ended. But this short one is very easy to handle.

Now back to the manicure I decided on...

I didn't want to just stamp onto a solid base color, so after some consideration I started on an ocean-like gradient. I used OPI Ogre the Top Blue and OPI Yoga-ta Get This Blue, an then I added a layer of Sinful Colors Hottie. After than I added a very thin coat of Wet n Wild Teal of Fortune. Then I decided to try something new out, and added a few flakes of chunky teal glitter from Julep. After letting all of that dry I stamped the dolphin image from the M71 plate in Sally Hansen Silver Sweep. The final touch was one more thin coat of Teal of Fortune.

And here is a closeup...

This is just one fun option you can get from this plate, which along with the stamp and scraper costs $3.88. And once again here is a 10% off coupon code for you! 

American Flag Nails.

I've seen a lot of great Memorial Day manicures, but I decided to keep things simple and classic for my design. Maybe I will do something crazier for the 4th of July.

I created stripes on my pointer and ring fingernails using striping tape, and stars on my middle and pinky fingernails. For the stars I used the BM-20 plate, but I ended up going over them with a small brush so the white would be more opaque. 

 The blue polish I used is Essence Just Rock It! and the red is Julep January. The white I used for the stripes is Wet n Wild French White Creme and the white for the stars is Konad Special White Polish.

Purple Dot Border Nails.

Border nails have been becoming increasingly popular lately, and I think this is an easy and fun interpretation of the trend!

I went for a purples on purple look, which didn't photograph the greatest. (All the colors are more discernible in person.) The base color for this manicure is Julep Taylor. The different dots are OPI Lucky Lucky Lavender, OPI Done Out in Deco, China Glaze Spontaneous, and China Glaze Go Go Pink.

I really like the subtlety of the monochromatic design, but this would be fun to try in a bunch of different colors!

Heartbeat Nails.

After a long weekend I decided I wanted a quick and simple manicure. I ended up choosing a cute heartbeat/heart rate design. 

I used Wet n Wild French White Creme as the base and painted the design on with Julep January.

Queen of Hearts Nails.

Today's manicure was inspired by the Queen of Hearts from Disney's Alice in Wonderland. I did these nails for the Temptalia Disney Villains nail art challenge.

I wanted my nails to be an homage to the Queen of Hearts, but still be a bit subtle. I started with looking at images of the queen.

After a little contemplation, I decided the elements I wanted to capture in my manicure were her crown, the red roses, and the queen of hearts card.

The polishes I used were Wet n Wild Black Creme, OPI Don't Mess With OPI, Sally Hansen Whirlwind White, Julep January, American Apparel Port, and LA Colors Wave Length. I did the roses using acrylic paint.

I played around with ways to do roses for this manicure and ended up going with something a little different than my typical rose manicure. I really like how they turned out.

Minnie Mouse Nails.

I love doing manicures using dotting tools and Minnie Mouse nails are perfect for that.

All of my fingers except the accent nail are painted with Julep January. As I've mentioned I don't typically wear red, but this is a nice color with a classic feel to it. My accent nail and the white dots are Sally Hansen Whirlwind White. The Minnie heads were done with Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris, and then I added bows with January.

I wasn't originally planning to add the bows, but I think they were a nice finishing touch to pull everything together.

I've been wanting to do this manicure for a while and I'm very happy with it, it came out better than I was expecting!