LDTTWC Day 6- They Sure Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To

 I agree, they certainly don't make things like they used to- although in my opinion, I do prefer the toys of today (perhaps it's because I  wasn't around for many of the older ones :) But for day 6, I had to choose an old-fashioned toy, so I picked the sock monkey.

 Not only are they cute, but they're pretty popular too! And today, sock monkeys are still made and sold in all different styles and colors. One of my friends even has one which is dressed with a birthday hat! :) Another I've seen has multiple colored stripes, and others wear costumes! How cute! :)

I do have a funny story though to tell for this post, so here it goes. When I came up with this idea, I figured everyone had at least seen, a sock monkey once in their life. But boy was I wrong! While sharing the idea with my family, I learned that my dad had never seen, nor owned, nor even heard of a sock monkey before! This was a shock, and I promptly introduced him to this wonderful little toy. :)

I'm really excited for Monday's post, and I already have my idea! So be sure to check back soon!

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LDTTWC Day 5- We Can Do It!

 We Can Do It!!!! said Rosie the Riveter. In her honor, the day's them is one based on an influential woman. I had a really hard to deciding!! There's just too many fabulous females. :D In the end, I picked a lady that I thought I could effectively recreate in a manicure: Coco Chanel! I think nail art would have been right up her alley too. :D

 On four of my fingers, we have pearl necklaces courtesy of my dotting brush and Wet n Wild French White Cream. In photos, Coco Chanel usually had on a black dress with white pearl necklaces, hence this design. Now, the reason they are doubled is simply because my first string of pearls was way too short, and the only way to lengthen it was to add another necklace below it. :D LOL!

And on my thumb, I painted Coco's logo, backwards and forwards interlacing C's.

This manicure has also been dubbed the "Coco Cha-nail" by me :)

I hope you like it!!
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LDTTWC: Day 4- Lights, Camera, Action!

 Lights, Camera, Action! Get ready for today's theme, straight from Hollywood (1997 :). So, my "nostalgic" movie mani is: Titanic. This could probably also fit in the historical event category too. :) Now I've never personally seen the movie (although I might now :), this was a pretty fun design to paint.

 I didn't want a blue sky and blue water, so I decided to try a sunset. I'm not quite sure if I like the color though... On my middle finger, I also painted a setting sun. My first idea to do the waves was to use masking tape (which might be my favorite nail tool :); I cut a wave shape and then put the tape on my first finger. That didn't work quite so well, so for the rest of the nails, I free-handed my water.

 And here sadly, we have our sinking ship right behind an iceberg. :( I'm also not sure if you can see in the picture, but below the windows, I started the word Titanic with a "T, i, t."

Now on my left hand, I chose not to do a ship, but rather paint a sun. The rest of my nails had clouds on them. I do really like the cloud color, which was pretty easy to do; after painting them in white, I used a light blue shimmer polish to tone them done, and sparkle them up! :D

I hope you like it! (Although, can you really even like the Titanic story??? Well, at least you can enjoy the mani!)

This was another polish heavy design:

• White- Wet n Wild French White Cream
• Orange- Wet n Wild Wild Shine in Blazed
• Yellow- Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Lightening
• Blue (for clouds and iceberg)- Pure Ice Polish in Frosted Ice Sky
• Blue (for water)- Wet n Wild Fast Dry in Teal or No Teal
• Black (my Sally Hansen was running out :(, so I got a new black color :)- Wet n Wild Wild Shine in Black Creme

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LDTTWC: Day 3- I Remember When

 Today's manicure I have been anticipating since before the challenge even started! The idea for the day is, "I Remember When,": design a manicure based on a historical event- well-known or personal. I'm pretty sure this one would fall under the VERY well-known category. :) So in case you couldn't tell, I chose the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. Unfortunately, I was too young to witness it, but I've definitely heard about! And space stuff has always thrilled me.

Here is a "nail by nail blow" of this mani. :)

• First Finger: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Most people have heard these famous words, so in honor of Neil Armstrong (who very coincidentally just passed away a week ago), I painted a small step and a giant leap.
• Middle Finger: We have the Apollo rocket sailing through space surrounded by the stars; how exciting!
• Ring Finger: On this finger, I painted the number eleven to look like the moon too.
• Pinky Finger: And since all of the Apollo 11 astronauts were earthlings, I had to paint the Blue Marble somewhere! :) I even tried to make it look a little bit like North America as well as Central America. LOL :)

 And on this finger, I painted a half moon proudly displaying the American flag. I think I will call this design, "The Nail Armstrong" in honor of the first man on the moon.

 Now, I'm left-handed, so it is often VERY challenging to paint with my right hand. I knew to do this manicure while painting with my non-dominant hand would be a disaster so I tried out a galaxy nail design with stars on these nails.

I think the design is awesome, but it was so simple to do with a cosmetic sponge! I then added stars and streaks with a dotter and fine tip brush.

If you would like to try this design out yourself, here's a link to the tutorial that I used from, The Daily Nail: http://www.thedailynailblog.com/2012/08/galaxy-nails-nail-art-tutorial.html

Well this mani sure used a TON of polishes, so here they are:

• Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Black Out (black)
• Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Lightening (yellow)
• Sinful Colors Nail Art in Sour Apple (green) and Hey Dear! (blue for flag and earth)
• NYC Long Wearing in Times Square in Tangerine Creme (orange)
• Wet n Wild Fast Dry in Teal or No Teal (blue for galaxy nails)
• Wet n Wild in French White Creme (white)
• Wet n Wild Wild Shine in Metallica (gray/silver)
• L'Oreal Creme in Infrared (red)

I hope you like this, "out of this world," manicure! And be sure to check out all of the other great designs!
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LDTTWC: Day 2- It's Vintage Darling

 Here is Day 2 of the Let's Do the Time Warp Challenge! The day's theme was "It's Vintage Darling"- a manicure inspired by a fashion look from the past. So I chose the 50's poodle skirts and saddle shoes.

A poodle decorates my pink thumbs and ring fingers. The rest of my fingers were painted like mini saddle shoes with laces. To create the "saddle" shape, I used painter's tape which I cut to be curved; I think it worked really well! Be sure to let me know what you think, and check out the other day 2 designs!

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LDTTWC: Day 1- I Should Have Been Born In...

 All right everyone, here is my first post for the "Let's Do the Time Warp Challenge" hosted by the Neverland Nail Blog!

The theme for today is the year or decade I should have been born in. As I'm sure you could tell from the picture, I chose the 70s. I love tie-dye and neon colors, and peace signs and hearts are my favorite! That pretty much sums up the 70s, doesn't it? :)

So, I did a tie-dye effect manicure design with a peace sign/heart design on my middle finger. Then I finished with a top coat to make everything shiny. Come back again soon for my manicure inspired by "It's Vintage Darling": fashion from the past!

Colors Used:

• Pink- Creative Nail Design Inc. polish in Tropinkal
• Orange- Wet n Wild, Wild Shine in Blazed
• Yellow- Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Lightening
• Green- Sinful Colors Nail Art in Sour Apple
• Blue- Sinful Colors Nail Art in Hey Dear!
• White- Wet n Wild Nail Color in French White Creme.

I hope you like it, and be sure to check out all of the other entries for Day 1!
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Exciting News!

Hi everyone! I mentioned in my last post that I had some exciting news coming up, and (drum roll please) here it is: I have entered the "Let's Do the Time Warp Challenge," hosted by Lindsey from Neverland Nail Blog. The theme is back in time, and there will be eight "subthemes" or daily themes for the challenge. Each week until the challenge is over I will be posting two manicures for two of the daily themes. There will also be prizes for the best manicure design, as well as a randomly chosen one.

Look for the first post to be up sometime later today! I hope you enjoy this as much as I will!

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Orange You Pumped

 Here in Baltimore, Maryland, we love our Baltimore Orioles MLB team. And for once, they are finally playing well and are in the running for a playoff position! Woo hoo!! :) Thursday was declared "Orange You Pumped Day" in honor of our Orioles. So that is what inspired this manicure. I also got the opportunity to go to the O's game last night against the Yankees; unfortunately, we did lose, but I have some awesome nails to make up for it. :)

 I started with an orange base of NYC Long Wearing Polish in Times Square Tangerine Cream. I then drew an "Orioles 'O'" with a fine tip brush and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear polish in Black Out.

Now, my fine tip nail brush is pretty cool because it has a dotting tool on the other end which I used for the above fingers. I again used Black Out as well as Wet n Wild in French White Cream. For these, I did two different dotting patterns.

On my first and ring fingers, I made diagonal stripes of dots, alternating black and white. For my middle and pinky fingers I did a "checkerboard" design.

For those of you non-Orioles fans, I'm sorry, and I promise there will be something else up shortly (as well as some exciting news!). For the rest of you, "LET'S GO O'S!!!"

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Rock n Ombre

Good news! I have another post for you guys from this past weekend!

This is an ombre manicure that I tried out on another friend that came over. The colors are black and pink, and I think they look very cool together. Another idea I had was to "reverse" the colors. You will notice that some nails have black on the bottom, and every other will have black on the tip. My friend couldn't decide which design she liked better, so I alternated and did both.

Colors Used: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Black Out and NYC Long Wearing polish in Fuchsia Shock Creme

If you want to try an ombre manicure yourself, check out my Ombre Tutorial Post.

Keep checking back, as I'll have a new nail design up in the next couple of days. :) I just have to find the time (which is hard to do now that school has started again).

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Water Marble Weekend!

I've had a busy weekend filled with friends, fun, and lots of water marbling! Yesterday, I spent some time giving two friends and their mom water manicures. Check them out! (I think they look great!)

 This one was done with pretty coral and white nail polishes. Very summery and pretty.

 These colors may be my favorite of the three: bright yellow, hot pink, and white. They were really cute together!

This one may be hard to tell from the picture, but it actually uses a light mint green and a pretty aqua nail polish. The effect is very cool and fun.

Thanks again guys! You were awesome hand models! :)
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P.S. If you want to try water marbling yourself, check out my Labor Day Water Marbling post and tutorial! Happy Labor Day!

Labor Day Water Marble

 Have you ever wanted to know how to create an awesome water marble mani? Well, with this tutorial, now you can! The colors I chose are patriotic for Labor Day. :) I started with a white base on all of my nails; this step is optional, however it helps your water marble design to really pop.

 Before you start the technique, you need to tape up your fingers. Wrap one piece of tape around your finger at the base of your nail. Then use another piece to wrap around the sides and tip of your finger. Do this for one whole hand. Warning: don't tape too tightly (like I did :); it really hurts.

 Now you need a bowl/cup filled with room temperature water. Take one of your polishes and add a drop of it to the water just like the photo above.

 Switch colors, and keep adding drops of polish; each drop should land within the previous drop. You will notice that the paint spreads out. (See the above photo.)

 Once the polish drops stop spreading out, you know it's time to stop. Take a toothpick and start swirling it like I did above in the picture. I recommend dragging your toothpick from the edge to the center; however, don't start at the VERY edge, begin a couple drops in. The first drops harden first, and therefore aren't good for swirling.

 As soon as you have a design in the water that you like, get ready to dunk. Dip 1-2 fingers in, so that your nail will horizontally touch the water. Dunk the nail(s) all of the way down, and leave them in the water. Take a toothpick or Q-tip and swirl that around the top of the water to pick up the excess paint. Then you can remove your fingers. Let them dry for a minute or two before taking off the tape. Repeat these steps for the rest of your fingers and apply top coat. You may also have to do a little cleanup on your fingers if some of the paint got on them.

And you're now finished!

Colors Used: Revlon Love That Red, Sally Hansen Extreme Wear Blue, Wet n Wild French White Creme

Have a happy Labor Day everyone!
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