Summer Sailboat Nails.

I've been trying to think of nail designs that are perfect for summer, and eventually I came up with sailboats! 

I think these are pretty simple, bright, and cute; essentially perfect for summer. 

The base color I used for this design was Revlon Blue Lagoon, and everything else was done with acrylic paints. 

Holographic Bling Nails.

I was very excited to see the new Bling Ring movie and I figured I needed blinged out nails for the occasion. I considered a few different ways of going about it and ended up deciding on using lots of chunky glitter! 

The base color for the manicure is OPI Suzi Skis in the Pyrenees, and my ring finger is painted with China Glaze Some like it Haute. The hexagon glitters are from Born Pretty Store.

This manicure is a lot darker than the ones I've been wearing for the summer, but I think all the shininess balanced it out and made it very fun, and I liked the results of varying the design a little for each nail.

Textured Dot Nails.

I typically like my manicures to end up very smooth and always add a thick coat of Seche Vite when I'm finished. However, I decided to mix things up and do a more textured manicure. 

I used OPI Suzi and the 7 Dusseldorfs as the base color and then switched up the texture by adding the nail art with Milani Silver Dazzle and forgoing the topcoat for a change.

I think I still prefer a super smooth and shiny nail but this is a fun way to switch it up!

Glitzy Turquoise Stone Nails.

During my hiatus I saw a lot of water spotted nails and knew I needed to try it, but I wasn't doing much nail art, so I've just recently gotten around to giving it a shot! I knew I wanted to create a turquoise stone design with water spotting and I loved how it turned out. 

I read a few different techniques for water spotting; some people used hand sanitizer, some hairspray, others perfume. When I first attempted it I started with hairspray but didn't have a ton of luck. I ended up switching to using body spray to create the veining for the stones, and from there everything worked out without any issues.

The turquoise color I used was BK Candy 06, the black was Wet n Wild Black Creme, and the gold is Orly Rage.

As I said I was very happy with the results, and I was very pleased to find water spotting is easy to do. I already have plenty of ideas for other manicures using this technique!

Purple Seashell Nails.

I'm not much of a beach person but I do enjoy a good beach-y manicure and I think these seashells are perfect for summer! 

The base color is OPI You're Such A Budapest, the seashells were done with purple acrylic paint, and I couldn't resist adding a little shimmer with CND Violet Shimmer.

Born Pretty Nail Foils Review.

I officially have a new obsession! I love nail foils. No matter what you do with them they look awesome. Today I'm reviewing the nail foils from Born Pretty Store, which are the first foils I've ever tried. 

I chose three different foil colors/designs. The ones I have are #6, 7, and 19. There are 27 ones to choose from, and I'm pretty sure you can't go wrong. (Although I've seen a few people use #27 and have really awesome results!)

I didn't really have any idea how to use nail foils when I picked these out, I just knew they looked pretty and I had to have them. When they came in the mail I looked up directions on the BPS website. It required a bit of trial and error for me to get things right but once I had one nail that looked good, it all went seamlessly from there.

I used the polish I've already declared as my summer favorite, OPI Can't Find My Czechbook as the base color and used all three foils on top. I read about a few different methods but ended up sticking with the one suggested by BPS. I did one coat of the base color and let it dry completely. Then one nail at a time I did a second coat, which I had to let dry to the perfect consistency. You should be able to make a finger print mark, but you don't want it to be too sticky because that is when all the polish smudging will occur.

Once I had the right consistency I took each foil and lightly pressed it (foil side up) against my nail wherever I wanted the design to show up.

I loved how this manicure turned out, and I'm excited to try out more foil manicures in the future. There are so many different ways to use them (incorporating them into a design, covering the entire nail, small splotches, bit splotches, etc.) and I'm already thinking of fun combinations.

If you're interested in getting nail foils of your own each one is only $2.29. There is a lot of product inside the little jars and you could get a lot of different fabulous manicures out of one. (My favorite of the ones I tried ended up being #19 which is the awesome silver holographic one incase you were wondering!)

If you decide to purchase foils or anything else from Born Pretty you can use my coupon code (as always) and get 10% off your order!

Spring Fever VoxBox.

If you've been keeping up with Holy Manicures for a while now, you've probably seen one of my posts mentioning Influenster. If you're just joining us or have forgotten about Influenster, it's a website where you can sign up and receive boxes full of awesome, free stuff. In return you post about what you received on the forms of social media you use. It's a pretty great program, and if you haven't signed up yet I recommend it!

I recently received my fourth VoxBox, which I was excited to find had three beauty items inside.

One of the items was the Broadway Nails imPress press-on manicure in Over the Moon. The pattern mimics a water marbled design, which can of course be a real pain to do, and is the perfect kind of design for fake nails.

I personally don't wear false nails because I don't have a problem growing my nails out, and I like my natural nails better. However, I did originally plan to take these for a quick test drive. The only issue was that I believe these are meant to be used by people with quite short natural nails and I found that my nails were too wide at the tops for the fake nails to cover them completely. I appreciated that these fake nails were a very reasonable length, but since my real nails were of a similar length it didn't quite work.

If I was typically a fake nail wearer, I don't think there would have been a problem as I would have happily been able to trim my own nails down and rock these. But alas, that isn't the case and since I'm working on getting my nails longer, it was a no go.

So, I can't offer my personal experience with wearing the nails, but I can say that if one of my friends was going to be wearing fake nails, I'd recommend these. As I already mentioned I like the pattern and the length, but there is also the important fact that you don't have to use any messy glue, and it's a nice bonus that the packaging is totally cute and functional! I'll be passing these on to a friend since I couldn't get much use out of them.

The other beauty products in the box were Osis+ Dust It, which is a mattifying and NYC Applelicious Glossy Lip Balm, which seems to be their response to Revlon Lip Butters or Maybelline Baby Lips. Since I prefer to focus on nail related things here I won't go into too much detail about these items. The mattifying powder doesn't really serve my needs although has a lot of great reviews (it's better suited for someone with fine hair.) The lip balm is in Big Apple Red, and provides a nice sheer wash of color. I don't wear red lips much, but I approve!

Return to Blogging Announcement.

My blogging hasn't been very regular in 2013, and I took a bit of hiatus in May, but now I'm back! The Spring semester is over and I have plenty of free time to indulge in all of my favorite hobbies, so with all my polishes freshly organized, of course I'm eager to get back to my nail art habit.

I posted a review for OPI polishes which featured all of my favorite colors for summer (check that out here) at the start of the weekend, and I'm optimistic that I'll keep up blogging from now on! I don't know if I'll be back to posting new nail art everyday, but I think I can promise at least a few posts a week.

I have a few items I need to review, so you can expect those posts in the near future. After that, I'm sure there are a lot of new nail art techniques and trends I need to catch up on and try out, and of course you'll get to be privy to the results! And of course I'm always open to suggestions.

Until next time!

OPI Nail Polishes Review.

If you've ever gotten a peak at my nail polish collection, you'd easily be able to tell that my favorite brand is OPI. So of course when I was offered to pick a few OPI polishes to review, I jumped at the chance!

I decided on six polishes that I thought I could get a lot of use out of during the summer; Can't Find My Czechbook, Dating A Royal, You're Such A Budapest, OPI...Eurso Euro, Sparrow Me The Drama, and I Don't Give a Rotterdam.

I've had the polishes for a few weeks now and have had the chance to wear them all. They all applied very nicely. I needed two coats for each of them except for I Don't Give a Rotterdam which required three.

In the past I've mostly reviewed nail art products and not polishes, so at first I wasn't sure how I wanted to go about doing my review. This has never been a swatch blog, so I decided to keep it that way and do a few nail art looks with the polishes instead.

The first design I did uses OPI...Eurso Euro, Can't Find My Czechbook, Sparrow Me The Drama, and You're Such A Budapest.

I thought this dotted manicure would be fun for the summer, I really liked all the spring-y colors on the darker purple base color.

The second design I did used I Don't Give a Rotterdam, Sparrow Me The Drama, and Dating a Royal.

This time I went for a dainty floral design, I liked the look of the creme finish polishes over top of a shimmer one.

I was very happy with my choices of the OPI polishes, they're already becoming key items in my collection. Can't Find My Czechbook has been my favorite so far, I've already dubbed it my favorite polish for summer!

OPI nail varnishes are available for purchase at Littlewoods.com!