Mexican Fiesta Nails.

I recently held a fiesta themed housewarming party in my first New York apartment, and I thought the occasion warranted a manicure. I didn't get a good shot of the nails due to party preparations, but after I deemed them Instagram-worthy I thought I'd share them here too.

I was short on time when working on this design so I decided to stamp something, and luckily found a few images that were perfect for the theme. I used the pepper image from BM-06 and the citrus images from BM-04 to create limes.

The polishes I used were Orly Spark, Sally Hansen Lickety Split Lime, and a red stamping polish from Born Pretty.

Mean Candy Heart Nails.

I've been enjoying my break from nail art lately but I couldn't let Valentine's Day pass without doing this manicure! It's a design I've been wanting to do since last year after being inspired by mean spirited candy hears on tumblr.

The polishes I used for this design are Essie First Timer, Orly Pixy Stix, Orly Spark, OPI Can't Find My Czechbook, OPI You're Such A Budapest, and Sephora Formula X Dark Matter.

I thought these turned out very cute and were something a little different from my other Valentine's Day designs!

Inverse Dotted Flower Nails.

Today's nails were inspired by this manicure. As far as floral designs go, dotted flowers are the way to go when you're looking for something easy that still makes an impact! 

I didn't want my flowers to seem too spring-y so I used China Glaze VIII and Orly Rage.

Glam Snowflake Nails.

It's been snowing all day here and I decided I needed a manicure to match. I posted a stamped snowflake design a little over a year ago, so I thought it would be a great time to try freehand snowflakes.

I also chose to not use the typical snow-y manicure colors and went with polishes that would match my style and wardrobe a little better. I used Bellisimo Naples Night Out for the base color and Orly Rage for the dots and snowflakes. At first I was thinking I would stick to just snowflakes on my nails, but after I started I decided to add lots of dots to mimic snow. Plus, I happen to think dots done in Orly Rage are super pretty!

When I decided to try doing snowflakes in an untraditional color with an unexpected background color I wasn't sure if it would end up translating well, but I was very happy with the color combination when I finished. I love how it mixes things up a little.

Summer Sunrise Nails.

I've had the idea to do a sunrise or sunset design based around a half moon manicure for a while, and after looking at pictures of pink and purple sunrises I had to give it a shot. 

This was a pretty time consuming manicure because there were different elements going on, a few of which required lots of drying time.  The first step of the manicure was painting my nails with Orly Spark, and then I used reinforcements to create the half moons. I created the gradient overtop using China Glaze Shocking Pink, OPI Ate Berries in the Canaries, and China Glaze VIII. The last part of the manicure was creating the sunbeams, which I did using striping tape. This was the part that took the longest, which probably is surprising if you've done a striping tape manicure before.

I don't think the design exactly screams sunrise, but that wasn't really the purpose of the inspiration. They're just fun and bright, and something different than what I've done before.

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!

Holly Nails.

Merry Christmas! Today I decided to share my final Christmas design, the one I chose to wear for the actual day of the holiday. 

The base color is Orly Rage, and then I stamped the holly design from the BM-14 plate. I didn't have a green in the right shade for my stamping so I mixed the blue and yellow Born Pretty Store stamping polishes. The red is acrylic paint.

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.

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!)

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."

Zig Zag Ikat Nails.

Today's design was loosely inspired by one of my favorite shirts. Fashion is always a great way to find nail inspiration. 

The polishes I used were CND Flashpoint and CND Electric Orange, Orly Spark, and China Glaze For Audrey. The black polish is CND Oilslick. 

Bright Bow Nails.

I love bows, and they're perfect for a little girly nail art.

For this design I used Orly Spark as the base color and did the bows in acrylic paint.

Tie Dye Paisley Nails.

I really love today's manicure! I used the same technique I used for this design, but this time with pastels. And I like the results even better than I did last time. The pastels create a really soft and pretty tie dye effect. 

I painted all of my nails with Milani White on the Spot as a base to create the tie dye over. Then the pastel polishes I used were Orly Pixy Stix, Orly Spark, American Apparel Office, OPI Lucky Lucky Lavender, and Revlon Blue Lagoon.

The perfect finishing touch to complement my tie dyed nails was stamping with the Born Pretty Store M64 plate (reviewed here.) I stamped with Konad Special black polish.

I'll have to come up with more designs I can use the watercolor technique for because I'm really loving it at the moment!

Fun Leopard Nails.

Today's manicure was an easy one to decide on, I knew I wanted to do a freehand leopard design and I wanted to use Orly Rage as my base color. It's a gorgeous polish that I haven't worked into my nail art enough. Then I chose to do the leopard spots in China Glaze First Mate and Shocking Pink, which ended up being a very fun color combination.

Layered Dot Nails.

Today's manicure is another fun dot design! Placing lots and lots of dots can be a bit time consuming, but this is definitely very simple to do. 

I used three polishes for this design, OPI Ski Teal we Drop, Orly Pixy Stix, and Essie Mint Candy Apple.

Rainbow Splatter Nails.

When I decided to do a splatter manicure, I wasn't sure about a color scheme. Eventually I decided on a bright rainbow color scheme. At first I wasn't sure about the outcome, but after a while it really started to grow on me. 

I used a bunch of polishes for this: OPI Hot & Spicy, Orly Spark, OPI Elephantastic Pink, China Glaze Tree Hugger, China Glaze Rich & Famous, China Glaze Spontaneous, and LA Colors Static Electricity.

Dotted Butterfly Nails.

I was inspired for today's manicure after seeing this design. I switched things up a little, just taking inspiration from the dots around the simple stamped design.

I used BM-05 for the butterfly design, and stamped with Sally Hansen Presto Pink. The base color is OPI Steady As She Rose, and the dots are done with Orly Spark.

Orly Nail Rescue Review.

I posted about buying Orly Nail Rescue back at the beginning of April, and now I've had a few chances to test it out so I wanted to let you know my thoughts. 

First of all, the process is basically fool proof. You brush on the glue, dip your nail in the powder, and then buff the area. It couldn't be more quick or easy. 

I haven't had a major break in any of my nails for a while (thankfully) but I've had a few cracks recently, so I used Orly Nail Rescue on them before they could get any worse. I tested the product out on a small crack on my thumb and another on my index finger. Both have been doing great, especially my thumb which was a bit worse. 

I'm extremely pleased with this product. It's nice not having to worry that if one of your nails gets a little break you'll have to cut them all down! 

Neon Dot Nails.

Some of my most well received manicures have been all dots (like these or these) so I thought I'd break out my dotting tools again. This time I decided to use all neon polishes, perfect for the very summer-like weather we have been getting.

The dots were done with China Glaze Shocking Pink, China Glaze In the Lime Light, American Apparel Neon Yellow, and Claire's Orange Neon. The base color is Sally Hansen Whirlwind White.

On an unrelated note, someone asked me how the Orly Nail Rescue I mentioned purchasing worked out for me. I haven't had a reason to use it yet, but I will update when I do!