Outlined Flowers

I was originally inspired for today's manicure by Gully Nails's post, Polka Dot Flowers. After looking at her design again, I know I kind of missed the mark, but I'm still sort of giddy about my own design. Sort of seems kind of Spongebob-esque.

The base color here is Secret Peri-Wink-Le (China Glaze), overlaid with Whimsical (Revlon).  The petals are a combination of Feeling Great (Sinful Colors) and Lightening (Sally Hansen Insta-Dri). Finally, I drew the inner pollen spots with Time Off (Sinful Colors).

I will try this again to get it closer to Becky's design, because I absolutely love it.

Sunflowers in the Sun

My nails are still not the right length and my cuticles are still dry and wounded in some spots. However, I couldn't bear bare nails any longer. Fed up, I posted on Facebook this morning, calling upon my fans for what design to create. The respondent asked for flowers or blossoms of some sort, and since it has been absolutely gorgeous and sunny all day, I decided to do sunflowers. I'm pretty pleased with the results too.

The base for this is Suzi Says Feng Shui (OPI). The petals were done primarily with Design Yellow (Color Madric), but then I added a tiny bit of Me First, a neon yellow from Sinful Colors. The seeds were dotted on using another OPI, Get in the Expresso Lane.

You Dotty Girl!

Another lovers' affair, broadcast for my viewers to see. This is truly getting out of hand.

This time, I have a reason though. I'm going to enter one of my nail designs in Sarah's (Chalkboard Nails) nail art contest. She's encouraging her readers to participate in an all-dotting tool themed contest. The winners are chosen by Sarah and her panel of judges, so this isn't a plug for your votes. In fact, I think you all should enter! Entering your designs will inspire other designs for everyone to try out, so in a way, everyone wins a little. Plus, everyone knows how to use a dotting tool, homemade or store-bought. It's a great, fair way to allow nailers of all skill levels to enter and possibly win a $20 gift card to Llarowe.

Llarowe sells some of the coveted international polish lines like Glitter Gal and HITS to United States customers who can't get these polishes elsewhere. Good news...Llarowe ships just about everywhere else as well!

With that awesome prize and an additional two mystery prizes valued at $10 up for grabs, I had to enter.

I've done lots of dotting designs, so I had several to go on, but I wanted to enter something new. Hopefully I made the right choice with this design.

The base for this design is Skull and Glossbones (OPI). The various dots were done using my reliable dotting tools and Grape Pop (China Glaze), Planks A Lot (OPI), and White On (Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear) (in order of darkest to lightest). I chose to go with a purple theme to match the dotting tools themselves. Dang those little guys are inspiring!

Take On Dots

The love affair I'm having with dotting tools is hot and heavy, but they've got some fierce competition now.

Color Club polishes are scooting their way into my easy heart. I used one tonight as the base of my manicure, Rebel Spirit. This deeply dark brown is super pigmented and only takes two coats to reach its pure magic. I was sort of shocked to be honest since most of my Color Clubs came from Ross for a whopping $7.99.

I was truly tickled when it came time to clean up my clumsy right hand. Dark colors are absolutely dreadful to clean up, and usually require a few coats of cleanup before your skin looks clean. This dark brown, stuck on my cuticle area, came right off once I started cleaning up. So if you haven't already picked up some of the darker colors from Color Club, give them a shot.

Like I said already though, I have a serious love affair going with dotting tools, as expressed here.

In addition to Rebel Spirit, I used Unicorn (Sinful Colors), Sugar High (China Glaze), and Pelican Gray (China Glaze).

UPDATE 2/26/12

This manicure got great praise from you guys! I made a tutorial so you can recreate it yourself. The color combinations are endless! 

Date Night - Found Orchids!

Remember yesterday's post? Remember me saying I didn't have any orchids to take pictures of my orchid nails with?

Well, last night, while celebrating 4 years together, Andy and I went out to a nice restaurant, and lo and behold, the bathroom had orchids, just like my nails! Here's a shot for your floral pleasure. (iPhone quality picture unfortunately.)

In other news, it snowed over a foot here over night. Getting out of the driveway this morning was hilarious. I'm sure all the apartment windows around us thought it was pure comedy to see two kids trying to push their car up the driveway, slipping and falling into the snow, all to no avail. We eventually found a new way to leave, and upon our celebrated success, found out that our supervisors expected us to work from home anyway. Pure. Comedy.

Opulent Orchids

Yesterday I tried my hand at striping tools; not the striping nail polishes with the brush built in, but the brush that you can use on any color you like, and the results were less than awesome. Maybe it was the polish choice, but I'm not ready to talk about it. I'm a little ashamed of it, and not ready to share it with the world.

Instead, I'll share with you a manicure I created using dotting tools, again. They've made me so beyond happy, and I can't stop writing down ideas in my teeny little notebook that would feature them. I highly recommend grabbing a set. It's worth the $10 you'll end up spending.

After my pansies caught so much attention and flattery (I found them featured on a French blog), I decided to keep with the flora theme. The stunning, fractal patterns created by most plant life lends itself quite well to the nail world. This time, my flower of choice was an orchid. These beauties have an interesting story behind them, involving the Greek myth of Orchis. According to Wikipedia:

Orchis, the son of a nymph and a satyr, came upon a festival of Dionysios (Bacchus) in the forest. He drank too much, and attempted to rape a priestess of Dionysios. For his insult, he was torn apart by the Bacchanalians. His father prayed for him to be restored, but the gods instead changed him into a flower.

Ouch. Sorry dude. But thanks for the inspiration!

I have no real, gorgeous orchids to pose with, but I do have a vase with the silhouette of an orchid painted on it.

I used Essie Turquoise & Caicos for the base color, the stems are from Color Madric Green, the white petals are French White Creme (Wet n' Wild), the purple petals are Plum Truffle (CND) and the yellow centers are Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lightening. I had a lot of fun with this one, and my patience paid off. Even my right hand looks good. To top everything off, I used Matte Magic (China Glaze), based on the idea someone gave me when I posted my pansies. They thought I had made them matte, but that was just a photographic illusion. This time, I intentionally matted them, and it gives them a much softer, delicate feel, just like the plant.

Photo courtesy of http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/2011/04/06/how-to-parent-sensitive-orchid-children/

Maybe if I work up enough strength, I'll post what I consider to be a failed manicure another day, but for today, that's all folks.

Such a Pansy

Pansies have always been one of my favorite flowers. The contrast between the purple and the yellow and the white is so yummy! I've been wanting to do a manicure featuring pansies for a while, and this is the first attempt. I think I should've picked a different background color, but I also blame the camera for silly contrast problems. (I haven't mastered manual mode yet.)

The base is OPI, Stranger Tides. The purple petals are Kieko from Zoya, the white petals are Load from Illamasqua, and the stamens are Savina's Grape. Finally, the center yellow pollen is Color Madric's Design Yellow.

Not bad for a first attempt, but not the best.

UPDATE: 2/3/12

I've created a tutorial for this manicure. Enjoy! (I'm also trying a new layout for my tutorials, and I must say, I love it.

Popcorn

I'm so beyond wiped from this long weekend of skiing, about all I can do is sit. My legs are killing me, but luckily I never crashed hard enough on any body parts to warrant sitting impossible. Just walking. It was a blast though. We hit up Keystone (which is becoming our regular spot more and more) and Breckenridge. We never made it to any of the Ullr festivites, but lazing around in the hot tub, drinking beer and eating delicious food wasn't anything to give up for some chili. Besides, home cooked Snickerdoodle cookies and blondies always beat chili (thanks again for those Chloe and Bethany)!

The skiing was awesome. The snow, sadly, has still not hit our mountains enough to call the snow "good", but there wasn't too much ice. Just the end of the day on Saturday and certain spots in the shade on Sunday. We all definitely left happy, but totally exhausted. Amazing weekend.

So, with little energy and zero leg muscle strength, painting my nails seemed ideal. I had about a million ideas swirling in my head, so to finally put one down on paper, or rather, polish, was difficult. I'm pleased with the results.

Here are my popcorn nails!

Done using dotting tools, nail art brushes and patience, I used Wet n' Wild's French White Creme as the base. I striped the red lines on using Sinful Color's Be My Valentine (a nail art brush). Using my largest dot on my dotting tool, I randomly placed some circles of China Glaze's Lemon Fizz, then flipped that tool over to dot smaller Pull Over (Sinful Colors) dots on top of the larger ones. It was relatively easy, especially the popcorn kernels themselves. The only trying part of this manicure is creating straight red lines, and cleaning up the mess left afterward. 

I've been filling new follower requests recently, so I was in a Photoshop mood. The result is my first tutorial, inspired by Lacquerized's tutorial technique. Enjoy!

Vintage Flowers

Beautiful nail art comes from beautiful talent, and beautiful colors. The colors I used for today's manicure are really beautiful, especially when paired together. So thanks to Tzadkiel for her inspirational colors.

I don't have much else to say about it, other than I love it and dotting tools are clearly the best! The base color is Unicorn from Sinful Colors, and the dots are from For Audrey (China Glaze), Get in the Expresso Lane (OPI), Life Preserver (China Glaze), and Pull Over (Sinful Colors).

Dotting Tools...Nailed It.

I'm not sure if you're aware or not, but apparently, I am utterly unoriginal in naming my blog. I really should've done my research before deciding to use "Nailed It." as my blog's title. Let's take a look at the other blogs, also called Nailed It in some form or another. Interestingly, none of us were lucky enough to snag the URL "nailedit.blogspot.com". That goes to someone with a nerdy grudge. Instead, we nail bloggers were forced to choose a less obvious username to accompany our URLs. Here's just a few I've found:

• NAILED IT! - A woman from Washington
• Nailed It - Lisa in Florida
• You nailed it! - Renee in the Netherlands
• Totally NAILed It! - Sayra

Not to mention the countless other Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts using this popular meme phrase as their own nail tag line.

So, to those of you who happened to weed through everyone and at least find me, congrats! Though my blog's title may actually be slightly uninspired, I try not to let my nails and designs be.

Luckily, the internet is chock-full of inspiration, which I'm happy to draw from. Using my spiffy new dotting tools, I made this beautiful pattern my muse.

Gorgeous right? And just dying to be dotted out. This being my first time using the dotting tool, I was unsure how big the dots would wind up being, so in the end, adding the stitching would've made the art a little too busy. I also swapped out the burnt orange color for a hot pink. This is the final result.

I'm pleased as punch with this cute design, and beyond excited to use more dotting tools. It also feels really good to have a complete manicure that matches on all 10 fingers again. With vacation, busy weekends and swatching, my nails haven't matched since...well I think since New Year's Eve! The glimpses you've caught in swatching wasn't consistent across both hands. Take it from a Capricorn...it feels good to have everything in its place.

I used China Glaze's Electric Pineapple and Flip Flop Fantasy for some of the dots, and OPI's Mermaid's Tears for the rest. The base is Movie Star from Essence. I really love Movie Star, but I wish the bottle I had were bigger. It's a shrimpy little 0.16 fluid ounce bottle. Is this how all Essence polishes are?

Everything's topped off with my new Seche Vite, which I honestly don't understand the rage about. It dries quickly, but not too much quicker than China Glaze's Fast Forward top coat, and it smells downright toxic. Fast Forward doesn't give me the same "If I inhale much more of this I'll wind up on A&E's Intervention" feeling that Seche Vite did. It did dry in record time though, so maybe I'll have to do a side-by-side of the two to really get the full benefit of it.

Either way, the nails are dry, protected, and shiny. Not bad for a first timer eh?

UPDATE (1/22/12):

Allie-Bee asked for this tutorial. Enjoy!

Birthday, Christmas and New Year Haul

The end of the year is always full of some serious celebration for me. With a birthday right before Christmas, Christmas itself, and all the celebration and hangovers that accompany New Year's Eve, there's a lot to be happy about. In addition, I have gifts and presents to celebrate over that I know you all will also appreciate. Of course, I recieved some lovely non-nail gifts and love from my family and friends that are also reason to celebrate, but since this is a nail blog, I'll just share those with you today.

Get ready...it's picture heavy!

First up, these are the gifts my sister gave me. She understands nail polish more than anyone I personally know, so you can only imagine my joy opening her gifts. She gave me tools:

...dotting tools

...striping brushes

...and a glass nail file.

She gave me the Butter London Dressing Table duo, Black Knight and Tart with a Heart. Unfortunately, the dressing table suffered a fatility during the 17-hour car ride, so it won't be making an appearance in today's shots.

She gave me some amazing nail art brushes I've never heard of, but definitely want more of. The formula on all of these is great, and only requires one coat. That's practically unheard of with brighter striping shades. All of these are from a company called Color Madric. They're all sort of metallic, not matte as their bottles seem to indicate.

Shown here is Design Yellow, Green, Ocean Blue, and Hologram Glitter.

Hologram Glitter really is holographic, as I tried to capture here.

Shown here are the metallics from the Metal-licious collection of Color Madric brushes. These colors are Am-Ore, Platinum Rush, Lead to Riches, Metal-Licious, Iron I Lovely, and Gold Digger.

These all appear metallic, as their collection's name suggests.

She gave me part of L.A. Girl Glitter Addict collection, including the elusive Uninhibited I've been craving since I saw Rie from Nails and Noms use it.

Shown here are Uninhibited, Jostle, Animate, and Celebrate.

A few days after getting these, we stopped by a random Rite Aid to get Andy some contact solution, and I saw a glittering display of five more colors from the collection!

I added Eutopia, Nostalgic, Purge (a new nail polish name favorite in my book), Synergy, and Provocative to my infant collection.

Now it's a glittering grand collection!

She gave me some polishes we had talked about over the phone. These are randoms I mentioned liking that she had cheap access to out there in So-Cal.

Shown here is Sea Gurl from ORLY, Good Witch? from China Glaze, Cleopatra also from China Glaze, Glass Slipper from Sally Hansen Diamond Strength (one I actually snagged for myself), Lady Luck from Sally Hansen Gem Crush and January from Julep. She didn't like that color on her, so I took it off her hands. To top this load of polishes off is the amazing Load from Illamasqua. Look at it back there. Beautifully raunchy.

Rounding out my sister's amazing gifts is my first bottle...or bottles rather...of Seche Vite.

Look at this monstrosity! It's so much top coat, I don't even know what to do with it! 4 ounces!

So that's it from her...but fear not, my haul has not ended! She did an unbelievable job of making my Christmas gifts a thrill to open. Thanks Sisser, I love you!

I mentioned in Sapphire that Andy's mom's trainer, Robbie really hooked me up with some amazing CND products. Here they are!

She included in my bag of goodies some nail care items including some tasty CND Solar Oil (a cuticle conditioner), Scentsations lotion minis in Sparkling Champagne and Clementine & Mistletoe. They smell awesome! There are also several samples of CND's Spamanicure hand lotions, in Citrus Soothing Creme and Almond Hydrating Lotion. I absolutely love the smell of the almond lotion. Finally, there are a few nail buffers, showing their support for breast cancer research with the words "Nail Community Cares" written on them.

She also included some amazing colors, including Smoochie (#518), Sapphire Sparkle (#561), Plum Truffle Sparkle Effect (#586), and Plum Truffle Colour (#585).  You've seen Sapphire Sparkle already in Sapphire.

Thank you again Robbie, I love everything!

Last but not least! We have the polishes I bought myself.

You've already seen the Urban Outfitters collection I picked up here, but here's a few more shots of those beautiful bottles.

I also snagged the entire Finger Paints Special Effects collection today at Sally's!

 Not much to look at when they're in the bottles, but I'm sure you've seen them used by other ladies. My favorite shots are from Jen at The PolishAholic, from this post showing each on its own, and this post showing them all layered together. Oh many these are going to be fun to play with!

So that's it. Can you feel my excitement through the screen? It's radiating!