Rose Gold Beam Nails.

I love striping tape manicures, and I realized I've barely been doing anything with tape lately! I figured I'd fix that and put it to use for today's design. 

The base color is Orly Rage, and the black is CND Oilslick. The finishing touch were the black rhinestones from a wheel I got off of Amazon (I ordered the striping tape off of amazon too!)

Hot Chocolate Nails.

Hot chocolate is one of the best things about winter, and so when I saw this youtube video, I knew I had to use it as inspiration for a little nail art!

The base color is OPI We'll Always Have Paris, the white is acrylic paint, and for the hot chocolate I used OPI You Don't Know Jacques.

Green Converse Nails.

I did these converse nails a few months ago and just rediscovered them on my computer. I ended up posting a different manicure when I did these, but I decided they're still cute enough for a post!

The base color is OPI Don't Mess With OPI and the other colors are Sally Hansen Whirlwind White, Sally Hansen Silver Sweep, and Wet n Wild Black Creme.

Jawbreaker Nails.

Recently splatter nails I've seen have reminded me of jawbreakers, so that is where I took all my inspiration for today's manicure from!

The base color for this manicure is Wet n Wild French White Creme and the colors I splattered on are Orly Spark, OPI Ogre the Top Blue, and CND Flashpoint.

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."

Red Puzzle Piece Nails.

I have a new obsession, and of course all good obsessions deserve a little coordinating nail art.

The thing I'm obsessing over are the Consequences books by Aleatha Romig. I read about the books online and heard you couldn't read them without obsessing, and boy is it true. They're psychological thrillers that are super intense. I read the first book, Consequences and am currently about 40% of the way through the second book, Truth. 

I decided to translate my obsession into nail art by taking inspiration from the book cover which features red puzzle pieces. The base color for my manicure is Mary Kay Coral Stone, and I did the lines with white acrylic paint.  I used Milani White on the Spot to add the grunginess to the puzzle pieces.

Let me know if you read or have read these books, we can obsess together over twitter.

Purple Leopard Gradient Nails.

I always love doing freehand leopard nails, and I realized I had never combined the freehand leopard with a gradient (just stamped leopard prints over gradients.) So of course it had to be done!

The gradient was done with China Glaze Secret Peri-winkle and American Apparel Mount Royal. The leopard spots are done with China Glaze Purple Panic and CND Oil Slick.

These are very fun and I love how they turned out, and it's a nice bonus that my nails are finally getting to a length I like!

Born Pretty Glitter Liner Polish Review.

The last item I was sent to review from Born Pretty Store is a silver glitter liner or striping polish.  This was something I surprisingly didn't have anything like in my nail art collection, and was also different than the other things I've reviewed, so I knew it was perfect!

I got a feel for the product by testing out adding bits of silver glitter to several manicures, until I finally thought of a manicure that I could do to utilize the liner polish. 

The rest of the polishes I used are from the OPI Germany collection; Unfor-Greta-bly Blue, Suzi and the 7 Düsseldorfs, and My Very First Knockwurst.

The stripes of silver glitter ended up being the perfect thing to take the manicure up a notch from being just like every other dot manicure.

I'll have to find more designs to use the glitter in because I was very happy with how this one turned out!

If you are in need of a glittery striping polish, Born Pretty's are only $1.60, and like anything from their website you can get 10% off using the coupon code BRJ61.

Green Leaf Nails.

I did this manicure a while ago and realized I've never shared it, and figured I should. It's definitely a good fall design, maybe I'll have to try it again before it really turns into Winter. 

The base color is OPI Stranger Tides, and the leaves are stamped from the BM-19 using Color Club Perfect Mol-ten. I always love subtle tone-on-tone stamping, especially this green on green combination!

Born Pretty Velvet Manicure Review.

The velvet manicure is a trend that I wasn't sure about at first, but like most nail trends in the end I realized I had to give it a try!

Born Pretty Store sent me their dark blue flocking powder, which also comes with tweezers and a brush.

Looking at a bunch of loose flocking powder and then at my blank nails I thought creating the manicure might be a bit of a daunting task, but it didn't give me any trouble.

I painted my nails with a dark blue polish I already had (China Glaze First Mate) and then I used the tweezers to take a small amount of flocking powder out and sprinkled it over my nail before the polish could dry. Then I used the tweezers to pat the flocking powder down and make it stick. Lastly, I used the brush to sweep off the excess.

This isn't the cleanest manicure of course, but cleanup wasn't a problem for me. I did my nails over a tissue, and was able to use the product that fell onto it so I wasn't wasting too much. My fingers were a little fuzzy when I finished doing my nails, but a little acetone was able to easily sweep it off.

After seeing how my nails turned out I am definitely on board with this trend! I wouldn't choose it for an everyday manicure, the velvety texture is a magnet for little pieces of fuzz so it doesn't stay pristine for long. However, it's perfect for a special occasion or to go with a fun outfit.

If I'm ever thinking of channeling the Heathers or my favorite 90's television characters in my outfit, a velvet manicure could be the perfect addition.

The flocking powder, tweezers, and brush are sold together for $7.99. The container of powder seems to hold quite a bit of product and you don't need much, I think you could get quite a few fun manicures out of this!

And don't forget you can get 10% off any BPS purchases using the coupon code BRJ61!

Born Pretty Square Studs Review.

It's time for more Born Pretty Store reviews! The first thing that I was sent this time that I'll be reviewing are the gold square studs. After I tried these studs last time, I knew I wanted to test out something different! I stuck with the gold but chose a 4mm square stud to mix things up.

Studs have quickly become my favorite way to easily take any manicure from just being polished nails to being nail art. 

These studs really do quickly transform any manicure! I chose to put them over top of OPI Nein! Nein! Nein! OK Fine! because I've been loving the dark grey or gunmetal and gold combination lately. (The polish photographed black but it's described as a "black olive" and really looks grey.)

The only thing about these studs is that the 4mm size is definitely a bit on the large side for my nails. If the top of your nails are flatter, this size might be perfect for you but mine are very curved so the studs can't lay completely flat. I'm still happy with them because they lay flat enough that they aren't going anywhere and you can't tell unless you're inspecting the manicure from the side. However, I think that a 2mm or 3mm stud might be better suited for anyone with smaller or more curved nails.

Any of those stud choices is going to be a little less than $6 and as always you can use my BPS coupon code, BRJ61 for 10% off!

Biotin Discussion.

I've always thought my nails and hair grew fairly quickly, but lately I thought my nails could stand to be a bit stronger and longer, so I decided to try taking biotin.

I looked at a few different options and decided to try the Twinlab Biotin Dots. I've only taken them two days so far, so I don't have many comments, other than I'm very pleased that they're chewable and the flavor isn't bad! Anyway, once I've started to see results I'll be sure to update.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear any of your experiences with taking biotin! How much you took, how long it took to notice any differences, etc.

Birthday Cupcake Nails.

The first manicure I posted on my blog was a cupcake design, and I thought I'd try it again for my 19th birthday nails! 

I always have a tough time deciding on the perfect color combination for cupcake nails but I wore these all day on my birthday (which ended just a few minutes ago) and thought they were very cute.

The base color is China Glaze Secret Peri-winkle, the base of the cupcake is CG For Audrey and OPI Ogre the Top Blue, the icing is Wet n Wild French White Creme, and the sprinkles are OPI Lucky Lucky Lavender and the same colors I used for the cupcake base. The hearts on top are from Kleancolor Twinkly Love. They were a little hard to photograph, but they're the perfect cutesy thing to top off the cupcakes!