Velvety Party Mani

Hello everyone
Today I am going to show you my New Years Eve nails :D
I received a flocking powder kit from the Born Pretty Store to review and thought a nice night out like New Years Eve would be the perfect time to rock such a neat textured nail!

The item I received is the fun flocking powder manicure kit in blue (you can click the link to get your own!) and it retails for $7.99
With the kit you get this massive jar of manicure grade flocking powder, a large pair of tweezers to pick up the stuff, and a little brush for clean up so it's a very good deal!

Unlike the flocking powder you can get at Micheal's or other craft stores, this one is really fine and creates velvety nails. No furry nails here!

Here is my first attempt with the flocking powder kit:

It was actually really simple to do, surprisingly. 

1. You have to find a polish that is close to the shade of powder you have (I used Barry M in Indigo)
2. Apply a thin coat of polish on each nail, let it dry                                                                                                                                                       !Do the rest of these steps on 1 finger at a time!                                                                                                                                    
3. Apply a thicker coat of polish, don't worry if it isn't perfect, just make sure your whole nail is covered in wet polish
4. Immediately dip your nail into the jar of flocking powder, or use the tweezer to pick up the powder and drop it on to your nail
5. Make sure the entire nail is covered in flocking powder and using your other hand apply a light pressure all over the nail
6. Wait a minute or 2 and brush off the excess powder back into the jar
7. When both of your hands are done, use a moistened towel to remove any powder that is still on your skin

here is what my little set up looked like

The powder does get everywhere so make sure to do this over a paper towel or a sheet of paper...

This manicure was seriously easy peasy!

Since I would be wearing these on New Years, I decided to add a couple of rhinestones... That, my dear friends, was much harder. 

I applied a drop of clear polish to the back of my rhinestone, but as soon as I placed it on my nail, the flocking powder absorbed it all away!

I did eventually manage to get them on there but it required a little bit more clear polish than usual and I also had to apply pressure on each stone until it was dry... 

It was more time consuming than I had anticipated but I really liked the contrast of matte velvety nails and shiny rhinestones!

I took this picture the day after I did them...

This highlights one of the flaws of the velvet mani... fuzzies fuzzies everywhere!

I tried to pick them out but they just kept coming back! Short of using a lint roller on my nails, I'm not really sure how one would get rid of these... 

So the velvet mani is a great and easy way to make your hands stand out, but they're more a of one night deal. After the fuzzy stage, you get to the matted stage. Basically after you get them wet a couple of times, the velvet stuff starts to wear off. It starts to resemble suede more than velvet. 

So if you are looking for a really fun short term mani, I would totally give flocking powder a try :D

Also, because the Born Pretty Store is super awesome, they have given my readers a special code that you can use to get 10% off your purchase of anything on their website. It is HYL91 and if you ever need to find it again, the code is also located on my sidebar!

Have you ever tried flocking powder? what did you think of it?

Until next time ^_^

*The product in this post was provided to me for honest review. Please see my disclosure policy for more information*

Corset Nails

Welcome to week 8 of the Year of Polish challenge!

Corset Mani

I had seen a few of these on other people's blogs before. They are usually composed of 2 swipes of color on either side of the nail and are connected by a lace that crisscrosses between the 2 (just like my ring finger). So that's what I was going to do!

However, as I was browsing some other blogger's pages, I came across Nail Stories: Hearty Half Moons and they reminded me of the top of a corset! I thought they were so pretty that I had to try it out for this week's challenge!

As you can see, I did the traditional corset nail on my ring finger, but I used Nail Stories "curtain nails" on the rest of my fingers. To make them look corset-ier I added some frillies and bows :)

This mani was super easy to do! For the corset tops, you just need to do 2 quick swipes from side to middle. They don't have to be super straight since you can fix it with the frillies. Then using a migi pen, make little bouncy half circles along the edge and do a quick bow in the center.
The corset back is made up of 2 semi circle swipes of each side of the nail. Make a few dots, those will be the eyelets. Then using your migi pen (or even a striping brush) crisscross the lines.

Easy peasy!

What I used

Base- Franken Lady Fingers

Corset- Essie in Sassy Satchel

Eyelets- GOSH in Silver

Lace and frillies- Migi Nail Art pen in Shimmering White

I've never been able to find the right shade of nude for me so I ended up making my own... It's the closest I have ever come to true mannequin hands!
All you need to make your own nude polish is a lot of white, a dash of brown, some yellow, and a hint of red. If you have darker skin tone, add more brown. If you have cool undertones, more red.
I'm very pale with warm undertones so I needed a lot of yellow and only a little brown :)

Don't forget to check out my Year of Polish page to see other bloggers who are undertaking this challenge as well as to check out past manis and future challenges!

Until next time ^_^

Half Moon Lace and Swap Haul

On to week 6 of the challenge! this time we're doing a half moon manicure. 

This is a very simple idea, especially if you have binder reinforcement stickers. Then all you have to do is paint your base color, wait for it to dry, stick on half a reinforcement sticker, paint your accent color, peel of sticker and tadah! instant clean lines!

Since so many of you have been posting up valentine's manis, I thought I would try and make this half moon a little valentine's friendly.

I chose very girly colors, pink and purple to start with. Then I added some lacey looking accents. Some of them ended up looking more like tiaras but oh well right?
You will have to excuse my sorry looking middle finger nub. I broke it on my car door a week or so ago (which is why I you only saw my right hand for the newspaper mani) and it is only now starting to look like a nail again. I would have shown you my right hand instead but my freehand was not quite up to par on that one... Hence nubbin!

Essie in Cute as a Button

L'oreal in Violet Vixen

White acrylic paint

I have also been swapping like crazy for the past month so I thought I would share the polish related exchanges with you :)

 I managed to get nearly all of the Kleancolor metallic polishes, which are amazzzzing!

Group shot!

Clicky to see them in their full glory!

I also got my paws on a few other goodies

Revvolution, Holo Glitter, Spectraflair Topcoat, Glitz and Glamour

I now have fulfilled all of my black holo desires :) plus the spectraflair topcoat turns any polish into a linear holo! how freaking neat is that! I got my from Panduhh on MUA. She makes some neat frankens!

Sweet Peacock, Clarins 230 dupe, Zoya Valerie

I also got a Clarins 230 dupe from Panduhh. It's not quite as flashy with green as what I have seen from the real 230 but it truly is gorgeous and I love it!

Ocean, Pedal to the Metal, Cute as a Button

My first GOSH polish! I am so excited! I have been eyeing this beauty for a long time now. I just have to come up with the perfect design for it now >_<

I also got a new stamping plate and the wonderful Rainbow's End nic stick. Since I really hate the brushes on these type of applicators, I followed some instructions on MUA on how to decant these bad boys and ended up with this:

The bottle is only about 1/3 full since the nic stick really doesn't contain that much polish but it is gorgeous! If you want to try this yourself, let me know and I can direct you to the instructions I found. It was actually super easy to do...

Techno, City never sleeps, Sparkle Blue

lastly I have some neat-o glitters. The Sparkle blue is actually much more purple than blue but it has great flakies in it which is always awesome!

Well that's all folks, I hope you enjoyed my pic spam! I have some international swaps in the work right now so I may post up those whenever I receive everything :)

 Do you ever get into a swap frenzy? 

Until next time ^_^

Plaid Nails

On to week 4 of the Year of Polish challenge!

this time we are attempting plaid nails.
There are lots of different kinds of plaid out there, so there were a lot of different interpretation of this mani. I tried my hand at 2 different styles

Neon Plaid!

Sally Hansen in Whirlwind White

China Glaze in Yellow Polka Dot Bikini

China Glaze in Japanese Koi (Neon)

SinfulColors in Pink

LA Colors in Purple (from the Brights mini set)

I also wanted to try a more traditional plaid:

Sally Hansen in Ru-by or not to be

Naturistics in Quartz

Sally Hansen color quick in Gold Chrome

SinfulColors in Flower Girl

Don't forget to check our my Year of Polish challenge page to check out past manis as well as other bloggers who are undertaking this challenge!

What kind of plaid do you prefer? Traditional or modern?

Until next time ^_^

sometimes it just doesn't work...

Browsing on Fuck Yeah Nail Art always inspires me. I found a cute mani with houndstooth (which I am a big fan of) so I pulled out my Fauxnad and happily discovered that I did indeed have a houndstooth pattern. woo! 

so what happened?? I was having a bad night I suppose because it would not work! the stamper wouldn't line up. The polish kept smudging. The nail art bullions kept sliding around... I did my best to clean things up, and from a distance, these puppies looked pretty good. But a closer look reveals the sloppiness. Oh well. Sometimes it just doesn't work.

I ended up wearing these for only a day :( 

Sally Hansen in White on

Sally Hansen in Black out

Sinful colors in Gogo Girl

Black nail art bullions from Bundle Monster

Closet Nails

Dress.Stripes. Floral. It must be made for me.

The Dress

Left Hand

Right Hand

 

OPI in Suzi Skis in the Pyrenees (Suede)

Rimmel in Posh Pink

Sally Hansen in Mellow Yellow

Sally Hansen in Brisk Blue

Sinful Colors in GoGo Girl

Stripe Rite in White

Kiss Nail Art pain in green