China Glaze - Pelican Grey; Argyle Tutorial

Hey guys! Even though I'm super busy, I made you all a tutorial! I promise to be a good blogger soon and respond to my comments and show some blog love but I'm so swamped right now!

I don't know about you guys, but I've been seeing argyle all over lately. I've seen a few bloggers do their take on it, but none of the tutorials I've seen have taken out the mystery of how it was done for me, so i made my own!

I used a base of China Glaze Pelican Grey. I love this! I picked it up at Sally's thinking it was a grey creme, but I was happily wrong! It's a dove grey with a barely detectable shimmer in it. So in love. This is two thin coats. So to make the argyle, this is what I did. I used all acrylic paints for these!

Make a diagonal line in whatever color you want. I wanted to use black, white and grey, so I used black for this part.

Then make another line to make sort of a y. I find this easier than just doing an 'x' pattern because I'm less likely to mess up.

Connect another short line to finish the criss-cross, and fill in the left and right triangles.

To make the dotted lines, I found that it was more precise and even if I first made four dots where the four corners of your dotted square will be.

On these, make small 'v' shapes, then in between your v's make short lines.

There you go! Easy argyle! Don't mind my smeared ring finger. I banged it a bit but I have no time to fix it!

So who of you watches Glee and was REALLY angry with the ending of tonight's episode!! Wah!

Zoya - Luna

I swear that Friday the 13th is totally killing me today! I'm not one of those people who believe in Friday the 13th, but today may have made me a believer. No, nothing terrible happened but it did take me literally five tries to do my nails! For some reason, every time I did them either I would ruin them in the last moment or just hate it and start over. Finally I went to my fall back - sparkles.

I got my first two Zoyas the other day and this brand is awesome! Luna is a silver glitter in a dove grey base. I used one coat of China Glaze Pelican Grey as a base and one coat of Luna. It had really good coverage and the only reason I put a base coat on was because swatches I saw on other blogs that alone the glitter made it look sparse but I think if applied with an even hand that two coats would  give full coverage. I'll be sure to try it soon, I just could. not. bear. doing my nails again.

Look at that shine! I'm so easily distracted by glittery things...

So, do you believe in Friday the 13th?

China Glaze - Secret Periwinkle

Today's a simple color and glitter, mostly because I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary today or tomorrow. I got China Glaze Secret Periwinkle from Sally's with gift cards on a whim, and it's a really pretty color that I don't already have.

two coats, top coat, no flash

I thought that this was going to be a no good polish because after one coat it was really thin and just seemed like it would take a few more coats than I'd like for full coverage, but nope! Only two! Also, Look how weird the color came out when I put the flash on!

I thought that the plain color, while lovely, could use some oomff, so I added Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Set the Stage. It's a clear polish with small gold glitter and big hexagon glitters. I love it for putting on top of so so colors.

two coats of CG, one coat SH, no flash.

That's it for today! I did pick up three of the six Nicki Minaj colors the other day, so keep an eye out for those!

dog paw prints!

As promised, here's how I did my right hand. I'm not so talented to be able to do much on my right hand since I'm a righty, but I kept with the dog theme and did puppy prints! Here's a really simple tutorial I made on paint for how to do quick paw prints with a dotter, tooth pick, or anything that can made dots. (I used to use an empty mechanical pencil.)

 Super easy and super cute. I've done this with silver glitter as the background and black paw prints and it looks awesome. The best part is that they don't have to be perfect because dog's feet aren't perfect and you can stagger them to look like they were walking! Here's how mine looked finished.

So, what do you guys think!? Do you have an suggestions for future nail art? I'm open to any suggestions! Just let me know in the comments or in a quick e-mail!

my dog in nail art, pt 1

Three years ago, I rescued a chihuahua dachshund puppy, who is now my little baby. His name is Milo, and I decided today that I'd make him in to nail art!

I started with a base of China Glaze's For Audrey. It's a tiffany blue creme that get full coverage in two coats.

 no flash, artificial light.

with flash.

Then using Revlon's Espresso, I made the outline I wanted. This worked best for my dog because he's a dachshund, making him notoriously long. Espresso is a brown shimmer. I'll be sure to swatch it separately one of these days because it's actually a really nice polish for a cheap price.

Then I used Finger Paint's Putty in my hands along with black and white acrylic paints to add the details. All I really needed was a lighter belly, feet and ears, then an eye and nose. It was all pretty simple since none of it had to be perfect. This picture is post-top coat. I don't know why, but my camera picked up some smearing that I didn't even notice on my nails. I'm actually pretty annoyed by this, especially since I haven't had this happen in quite a while. Oh well. 

On my thumb I decided to do a comic style speech bubble. For this, I used acrylic paints. I did a black base first so I could have a small outline around the white because I wanted it to be comic book-esque. This isn't necessary, but I like how it turned out. 

After you do the basic black bubble in the shape you want, carefully re-draw it in white leaving a small gap. Don't worry about the middle just yet. As you can see, I had to wipe off the paint a few times from mess-ups and some residue is left in the middle. That's fine.

Fill in the bubble with white! Then you can write whatever you want in it.

This is how it looked in the end! I love it a lot. 

And  here is my inspiration! 

I didn't do the same thing on my left hand, but this is getting too long for one post, so I'm gonna put it in another post!

China Glaze - Designer Satin

I'm still sick from Saturday. Because of this I have been doing nothing but sitting in my bed, reading and watching my favorite 'feel good' movies. (Beauty and the Beast... It's been my go-to sick movie since I was six and had pneumonia.) Reading books requires me to stare at my nails a lot, and having two chipped thumbs was getting to me. So I decided to try out one of the new polished I got for Christmas, and am I glad I did!

This is China Glaze Designer Satin. Designer Satin is a purple-y magenta creme. With the flash for some reason it looks a little more purple but without the flash it looks more red. So it was almost impossible to get a good picture of it. My favorite part about this polish it.. wait for it.. it's only one coat! So exciting!

As you can see, in this picture it looks more pink/red (and blurry, wooomp) but I promise you it looks a little more purple in real life. This polish took a little longer to dry, but I was okay with it because of the whole one coat thing. Plus, with one quick coat of Out the Door and I was able to take a nap with out worrying about sheet prints! Well, I'm off to watch Beauty and the Beast.. again.

So, are any of you guys reading any good books lately?