When in doubt, galaxies!

Hello everyone!

I have been kind of in a nail rut... I keep going back to my standard gradient nails and although I really like them, I don't want to overflow you lovely readers with a million different gradient combinations! To get me motivated again, I decided to try a mani that I had really been hesitant about doing: the galaxy nails!

I know you have seen a million and one of these already but I've never had the heart to try them before. As pretty as they are, they also look really difficult to make. You have to make sure you are getting the right color balance and that you are actually making a galaxy shape... I've never had any kind of of formal training, so this seemed like a lot of work and something I would probably just end up taking off because they looked like blobs... you know what I mean?

Anyhow, I pulled out my trusty cardboard and made a few attempts at it before moving on to my tiny nail canvases. I found it was best to start out larger and then later on go back and redefine the shapes with darker polish around the edges. It was pretty time consuming but since I hadn't played with polish like this in a while, I had some fun. After I made a few "examples" I started on my actual nails! I decided to make blueish galaxies and some pinkish ones as well for variety.

Left hand!

Right hand!

I'm actually very proud of how they turned out! so here are a few more picture of them ^_^

I decided not to list the polishes I used because there are so many of them, but I did take a picture of them all for you!

see, I told you there were a lot! the few glitter toppers that I used are also not pictured since I added them afterwards...

Also, one thing I did differently then a lot of other galaxy nails out there is I decided to make my dotted stars silver instead of white. I found the white stars to look just a little too... bright? anyhow, other than that, I used the small eye-makeup sponge applicators and a lot of pictures for NASA to create the different shapes.

alright well that is all for now friends! Have you ever tried galaxy nails before? what did you think of them?

Until next time ^_^

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*

Sinful Colors Holiday Edition- Swatches and Nail Art

I have for you today the Sinful Colors Holiday 2011- WISH collection. 

As far as I am aware, all of these are part of the core collection and so are readily available to almost everyone!

SinfulColors Holiday Nail Wheel

Here are the polishes Ill be showing:

Picture from SinfulColors news release

3 coats

Out of this World- A cool silver loaded with shimmer. This one is a little bit on the sheer side... It's great layered over almost anything. Keep reading and Ill show some examples :)

2 Coats

Midnight Blue- A nice bright navy with metallic finish

2 Coats

Sugar Sugar- Shimmery bright red. A  little streaky on the first coat but beautiful on the second

3 Coats

Daddy's Girl- A violet jelly with a lot of shimmers and micro glitter. It takes a little work to get it opaque but this color is amazing and totally worth it!

2 Coats

Last Chance- A very opaque dark green creme. Perfect for nail art but, compared to all the other holiday colors, a little lacking in oomph.

2 Coats each

Fashionista- A simple silver glitter liner. Reminds me a lot of the quality of ArtDeco stripers: Not the greatest but does the job. It's great for half-moon or french manis!

Flower Girl- a warm metallic gold liner. This shade is much better, it's opaque after one stroke, something I favor strongly in stripers.

*********************************

Since these are from the holiday collection, I thought I could show a holiday/winter nail art you can achieve using only these polishes and a basic white creme.

1- (present/gift) Last Chance striped with Flower Girl

2- (snowy french) Midnight blue tipped with Out of this World and Fashionista and outlined with Sugar Sugar

3- (purple stripes) Daddy's Girl striped with Out of this World and Fashionista

4- (Christmas tree) Sugar Sugar with Last Chance tree and Flower Girl star

1- (mistletoe) Out of this World layered over white, stamped with Last Chance and dotted with Sugar Sugar

2- (holiday half moon) Last Chance with Sugar Sugar half moon outlined in Flower Girl

3- (Christmas lights) Midnight blue with Last Chance cord and Flower Girl, Sugar Sugar, and Out of this World lights

4- (wreath)- Sugar Sugar with Last Chance wreath accented with Flower girl and Sugar Sugar

1- (snow drift) Midnight Blue with Out of this World sponged and dotted snow and Fashionista accent

2- (tree ornaments) Last Chance with Flower Girl, Sugar Sugar, and Midnight Blue ornaments

3- (snowflakes) Daddy's Girl stamped with white (purple pigments bled into it...)

4- (candy cane) Sugar Sugar striped with white (red bled too!) and Fashionista

There you have it! You dont need expensive polish to make pretty nail art. SinfulColors retail for about $1.99 and are available at Walgreens (online and in store) and  Cherry Culture as well as many other retailers.

Until next time ^_^

*these were sent to me for review*

More stars! yay!

Wow... Definitely welcome to all of my new followers. I must say I was quite surprised when I logged on today to see so many people! So hello to all old friends and new ^_^

Life has been busy here at the Nail Spot. Between interviews for grad school, working on senior projects, and getting together my presentation for my summer research I have been sporting bare nails... Also, maybe it's stress, maybe it's the new basecoat Ive been using, but my nails have become quite weak. I dont mind if I break a nail.... In fact I expect it since I use them as tools (I know I know...) quite often, but right now, my nails are looking quite raunchy. Theyre short, theyre uneven, they just keep breaking... Hopefully the OPI strengthener will fix that up!

Since youre probably not interested in seeing my pathetic excuse for nails at the moment, here is something I dug up from the not labeled folder, or as I like to call it "the archives"

BB Couture in Sea of Cortez

LuciDarling in Silver Spangle

Sally Hansen in Celeb City

So celeb city was probably not the best stamping polish choice, as you can see it's kind of grainy looking... But it does have a cool effect if thats what youre looking for. 

Sea of Cortez is quite amazing. Beautiful shade with fantastic microglitter. It's really a unique polish.

Of course I cant get enough of the LuciDarling collection by Etude House. If you dont have them yet, buy them! they are truly amazing!

So its the last week to enter the giveaway, so if you haven't done that, go and submit the form now.

Little reminder, comment entries dont count.... you have to fill the form. 

other than that, I am quite amazed at the number of people who have entered. That google Doc is getting intense looking!

So good luck to everyone!

Until next time ^_^

Glittery Star

I was trying to figure out a nice mani to use mty Etude House "black" polish for and all I could come up with is a night sky... Original I know...

But I remembered this amazing tutorial by Blue Tape and Nail Tips for super cute shooting star nails. You can see her original blog entry here.

Since I dont have blue painter's tape, I use regular scotch tape.
Here are a few tips I have learned for taping manicures.

• cut all your tape pieces BEFORE you begin painting your nails. Scissors are not wet  polish friendly
• before you put the tape on your nail, stick it on the palm of your hand to remove some of the stickyness. This will prevent it from taking up the base layer.
• after you've placed your tape and painted one nail, remove tape immediately. Dont go on to the other nail until  the tape is off of the first one. You dont want the polish to dry on top of the tape and take off all of your hard work right?
• finally, wait until your base polish is just dry to the touch to tape things up. If it's too dry (like day after you painted your nails dry) the tape is more likely chip it off. If it's not dry enough... well you know...

tip wear. Partially due to seche vite and partially due to doing the dishes before taking the picture >_<

Green shimmer!

Purple shimmer!

Etude House in Black

OPI in Simmer  and Shimmer

Star is from Bundle Monster on Amazon

Thank you to everyone who has entered the giveaway and welcome to the new followers!

If you haven't done so already, enter the giveaway now! do it do it! Enter the Giveaway here :)

Until next time ^_^