Doctor Who- Dalek Inspired Nails

Here's what I painted on my sister's nails!  She is a fan of Doctor Who and has me watching it too.  It's fun to watch!  After a failed attempt at painting the TARDIS on her nails, I decided to give her Dalek inspired nails instead (don't worry- I'll try the TARDIS again sometime!)

For her Dalek nails, I painted them a metallic silver color then painted dots on them that lined up. Here's the result:

Here's a picture of a Dalek:

Source: Wikipedia

The nails are inspired by the lower half of it.  All this talk of Doctor Who has me wanting to watch another episode!  Have a good rest of the week!

Water Marble Nails

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving last weekend!  I was able to spend mine with my family in Texas and while I was there I painted my sisters' nails.  I'll share some of what I did for their manicures later this week but first I want to share what one of my sisters did with my nails!  She had learned about how to water marble nails recently and wanted to try it out so I volunteered.  The result was awesome!

I'd read about how to get a marble effect on your nails and had always been curious about how it worked. My sister did a great job! She got a cup of water and dropped a couple drops of polish into it.  Then she used a toothpick to make cool designs in the polish. Once ready I put my nails that were already painted in white polish through the design.  It was really neat!  I will have to try this sometime and take more pictures of the process.

Didn't my sister do great?  I've been rocking these nails all week!  Thanks to my sister for showing me how to do water marble nails! 

101 Dalmatian Nails

Today I'm sharing what nail art I did to match my Halloween costume.  A couple days before Halloween, I went to Mickey's Halloween Party at Disneyland.  Everyone can wear a costume to these parties even the grown ups and we all get to trick or treat around the park!  My husband and I decided we'd be Roger and Anita from 101 Dalmatians this year.  So of course I painted my nails with some dalmatian spots!

Candy Corn Nails

Trick or Treat!  It's Halloween and to celebrate I painted my nails to look like candy corn!

This is actually the third year I've done this mani!  A couple years ago I found a polish named "Candy Corn"   while I was at Target.  I love candy corn so of course I was a big fan of the name.  I had to have it!

CG Boundless Color- Candy Corn Polish

I took my polish home and decided that it wasn't enough that my polish was called "candy corn," I wanted my nails to look like actual candy corn candy!  So after some playing around with my polish, I accomplished my first bit of nail art!  Here it is back in 2010!

My nails in 2010!

I did my candy corn nails again last year as my interest in nail art started to grow.  This year I decided to keep tradition going and did them again!  They're so bright and fun that everyone notices them!  I really like them. I hope all of you have a happy Halloween!

Halloween Ghost Nails

I've got another Halloween mani to share with you today!  Meet my friend Mr. Ghostly! 

I painted him on my thumbnail and then spelled out "Boooooo" on the rest of my nails.  (My sister pointed out that the o's also kind of look like eyes in the dark!)

I didn't like this mani very much when I first did it but the following Monday I was having a long day and seeing my nails would cheer me up because it seemed like Mr. Ghostly was saying "Boooooo!" to any of the bad stuff for me.  I ended up keeping these on until Thursday when I had to change them so I could do a mani that would match my Halloween costume.

Thanks Mr. Ghostly for being my cheerleader this week!  Or is it uncheerleader?  haha!  

Have a great couple days before Halloween!

Halloween Haunted House Nails!

The time has come for Halloween nail art!  Since Halloween is coming up quick the rest of my nail art this month will be Halloween inspired.  This first mani is actually inspired by the Halloween tablecloth and plates that we bought for my husband's birthday. There is a haunted looking house on it along with creepy trees and bats!  I tried to paint a landscape of the house, trees, bat, and moon onto my nails to match!

 

On my thumbnail I painted the house again but bigger.

I had fun with this one and it came out better than I expected! 

What is your favorite part of Halloween?  I think mine is a tie between the candy and getting to dress up in a costume!

Wedding Anniversary Nails

Last week I celebrated my one year wedding anniversary!  To dress up my nails for the occasion I used polishes in our wedding colors to do different designs inspired by the wedding on each nail.  This is the completed mani!

Here's what each nail represented:

Thumb- For my wedding my cousin gave me a French mani so I did a colorful French tip on my thumbnail.

Index Finger- This nail is meant to look like the Mickey stamp design on our wedding cake.

photo by Beverly Hills Photography

Middle Finger- This nail represents our blue aisle runner with white rose petals.  I loved how this one came out.  I may have to do a full mani of just this design sometime!

Photo by Beverly Hills Photography

Ring Finger- For this nail I painted on our wedding date!

Pinkie- On this nail I used the two polishes my sisters used for my wedding pedi!  You may recognize the colors from the ones I shared in my first post! I gave myself a pedi with this same look as well.

On my other hand I used the same designs except for the thumbnail on which I freehanded a Tron identity disc.  We had some Tron items in our DJ's section at our wedding to represent ElecTronica, a temporary nightly event at Disneyland that my husband and I really loved!

I was really happy with this mani and it went well with all the reminiscing we did that day.

Photo by Beverly Hills Photography

I kept them the rest of the week and even rocked them at a blogging conference I went to called Bloggy Boot Camp.  I hope you enjoyed my mani and the peek at a couple of my wedding photos! 

Colorful Mani inspired by Disneyland iPhone Case!

I'm excited to share this next mani!  I really loved how it came out and ended up keeping it for 2 weeks which is a lot longer than usual for me.
A couple weeks ago we celebrated my husband's birthday and even though it was his day he surprised me with a gift- a Disneyland iPhone case that I had really wanted!  It's colorful and I love the design.  I love it so much that I decided to try to make my nails match!

I looked through all my polish and tried to find colors similar to those on the case and then painted rectangles using a thin brush onto a light blue base color. Then I outlined the rectangles with white polish.  I didn't add the letters because I liked how it looked as it was.  

I was surprised by how many compliments I got on this mani!  A few people thought it looked like artwork and it was always fun to show them how they matched my case.

 Here are a couple more photos because I took a million of them and had a hard time narrowing them down!

 

I was really happy with this one!  It lasted a long time and I was sad when it came time to remove the polish!  It was fun to match my cheerful phone case for a couple weeks!  What do you all think? 

OPI Warm & Fozzie

Hi everyone! My sister pointed out I didn't post this week and she's right!  I'm sorry about that!  I've been taking care of some maintenance on my blogs and had to hold off on a couple posts.  I actually did a mani two weeks ago that I really liked and I still have that same design on right now!  I'll be sharing that mani with you all this week but until then here is a mani I did on a Friday before meeting my friend Courtney at California Adventure!

I have an OPI nail polish called "Warm & Fozzie" that I hadn't used yet and I wanted to see what the color looked like on my nails so I painted them with just that polish.  I liked the color almost as much as I love Fozzie Bear!  I wanted to add something more though so I used some silver polish as well!

I went and met my friend and we had a nice time catching up!  She even gave me the cutest gift- a little Oswald!  When I got home I tried to take another photo of my nails and he jumped into the picture.  Isn't he the cutest?

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!  

Pink Ombre Nails

I did this mani when my sister was in town a couple weeks ago!  She had actually emailed me a video tutorial she found online on how to get an ombre look with your polish and I decided to try it out while she was here!

I tried to do a pink ombre since a friend of mine was running her first marathon that weekend and she loves pink ombre!  I thought maybe it would send invisible pixie dust waves her way. 

Here’s what I did!

I picked out 3 polishes that were different shades of pink and a white polish.  I painted my nails with the white polish first.  After it dried I used a makeup sponge and painted the 3 pink colors on it.  Then I used the sponge to dab the paint onto each nail, reapplying polish onto the sponge for each nail.

Nails right after sponging on the polish

It was really messy but the results were great and most the work is just cleaning up afterwards! Literally!  It took a while to remove the excess polish off my fingers and I spilled some polish while putting the bottles away.  My poor hubby had to help me get the stain out of the carpet!

I really loved the effect of this technique and it was easier than I thought!  Here is a link to the video tutorial I used that my sister had sent me.

MissJenFABULOUS Tutorial- One Step Ombre Nails-  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OAvvtPEsng

The tutorial is by MissJenFabulous of  polishandpearls.com.  She has other tutorials too that I’ll probably check out sometime.

When my nails were dry I added some Mickey shapes to add a dash of Disney to it.  I was happy with my first attempt using this ombre technique and am looking forward to trying it again sometime to see if I can get even better results.  

The next pic has cameras and a park map in the background because my sister and I were getting ready to go to Disneyland!  Thanks to her again for sending me the link to that tutorial! 

Incredibles Nails!

This next design was inspired by a Pixar movie I really enjoy- The Incredibles!

I had the idea to paint the logo onto red polish and one evening finally decided to give it a try.  I wasn’t sure I could pull it off but when I was done I sent my sisters a photo of my nails without telling them the inspiration and they guessed it right away!  So my attempt to paint the logo passed the test!

I freehanded the logos using a thin brush and some of the polish from a nail art kit I got at Target a few months ago called “Kiss Nail Artist."  The red I used was OPI “Off with her Red.”  I referred to the DVD cover while I did the logo.

I really had to take my time when I painted the design but I think it paid off!  What do you think?

Stars Mani

This next mani is a simple one I did last week.  It consisted of some new polishes I had bought at Target a couple days before.  I didn’t have a lot of time so I decided to just try the new polishes out!

This was the result!

The two new polishes I had bought were wet n wild Fergie "Going Platinum" and wet n wild Fergie "Hollywood Walk of Fame" (the star polish).  Honestly I bought them thinking they were on sale without realizing they were sitting in the wrong spot on the shelf but I was happy to have new stuff to try anyway!  (They are around $4 each. Not bad but I had thought it was $2, oops!)

I used the "Going Platinum" color for my ring finger and a black polish I already had for the rest of my nails (Sally Hansen Black Out).  I used the "Hollywood Walk of Fame" polish as a top coat on the nails I had painted black.  I really liked the stars in this polish but it was hard to get them on the brush and to paint them onto the nails.  I think next time I will maybe try pouring a bit out and using the brush and maybe a toothpick to get the stars where I want them.  Despite that though I still liked the result and even got a couple compliments on them throughout the weekend.  I think Mickey liked them too!

The Backside of Water!

My next mani is one I worked on this past weekend. There is a nail art contest on an awesome blog I like called Chalkboard Nails and I thought I would give it a try!  The task is to do a mani using warm colors or cool colors.  It's been pretty hot so I decided using cool colors sounded more refreshing! ;)

I did some brainstorming on what I could do with cool colors.  I have a few different blues and thought I'd try to do something related to water and then it came to me!

I present to you the amazing, astounding, eighth wonder of the world... the backside of water!!!!!!

As some of you may have guessed I used one of my favorite parts of the Jungle Cruise as inspiration.  There is a part on the ride where you go by Schweitzer Falls a second time but you go behind it which usually leads to a pun by the skipper about seeing the back side of the water!  I decided I'd paint the boat on my thumb and use different blues and greens on my nails to try to portray the backside of the waterfall. It took 2 tries but I'm very happy with it!

 

Here is a list of the colors I used:

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear "White On" (for the base and top of boat)

Sinful Colors "Nirvana" (for the bottom of the boat)

Sally Hansen Hard as Nails "Sturdy Sapphire" (Waterfall)

L.A. Colors Color Craze "Wired" (Waterfall)

L.A. Colors Color Craze "Sea Siren" (Waterfall)

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear "Black Out" (boat and people on boat)

I thought I'd take a fun picture of my mani in water! I tried to take a picture of the backside of the water but I hit my head on the faucet.  Haha!  Sorry but I had to sneak in another corny pun!  ;-)  

I hope you enjoyed today's mani!  Special thanks to my sisters who put up with my many texts last weekend and gave me helpful feedback!

Flower Nails

Recently one of my sisters was in town!  My husband arranged it and it was so wonderful to see her!  I hadn't seen her since Christmas which is much too long.  While she was here we had an evening where I painted her nails.  Here is what I did!

I let her pick the colors and I used them to paint a design that had flowers and a couple hidden Mickeys (since we were going to Disneyland the next day!).  She liked Sephora by OPI "Traffic-Stopper Copper" so I used that on one of her nails as well.  Here's a picture of the mani I took while waiting for our lunch in California Adventure.

While at the parks I got her a 2012 Duffy during her visit since my other sisters all have one and she should have a travel buddy too! We bought him a Pluto shirt since it was too hot for his sweatshirt!  ;-)  He liked her mani!

I think my sister seemed really happy with her nails and I was delighted to have her here. I miss her lots!

IT Crowd Nails

This mani is inspired by a BBC TV show I love called The IT Crowd!  The cast is great and it always makes me laugh!  My favorite character is Moss played by Richard Ayoade.  When I heard he was in the movie The Watch I had to go see it.  After the movie I went home and started re-watching the series while painting my nails and voila!- I ended up painting IT Crowd nails!

The design might not make a lot of sense if you haven't seen the show but I'll do my best to explain!

The IT Crowd- Source- Channel4.com

I painted my nails green to try to match the opening titles of the show.  On my pinkie I painted a sea lion surrounded by fire- yes, seriously!   Without giving too much away- there is an episode where one of the characters tries to figure out how there could be a fire at a "Sea Parks." You see a sea lion on one of the DVD menus!

"A fire? At a Sea Parks?"

On my thumb I painted Moss' (Richard Ayoade) signature hair and his glasses.  Here's a close up of my thumb along with a picture I took of The Watch poster when I saw the movie.

If you haven't seen The IT Crowd you should check it out sometime! It's pretty funny!  Happy Friday everyone!

Star Wars- Darth Maul Nails

This is my attempt at nail art inspired by Darth Maul from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace!

 

I did this mani about 2 weeks ago.  I wanted to try to do a design on my nails that resembled the one Darth Maul has on his face.  I printed out some pictures to use as reference and freehanded the black with a thin brush. The results were a bit messy and my triangles didn't come out quite right.  I wasn't very happy with them at the time but looking back at the photos, I think they were okay for a first attempt!

Fun little tidbit- this past May, my husband and I went to Disney World for our honeymoon and were able to check out Star Wars weekends at  Disney's Hollywood Studios.  We were pretty excited when we saw Ray Park there.  He plays Darth Maul in the Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace!

Ray Park!  (I love that he's wearing a Darth Maul button!)  personal photo

I'm a little behind on posting my nail art so I'm hoping to catch up!  I've got a different kind of post coming up next week as well!  :)