Just Keep Swimming- a Mint Mani for Talia

I have a different type of post to share with you today… Today we remember Talia Joy Castellano.

This past Tuesday, Talia Joy lost her 6 year battle with cancer.   She was only 13 and she still managed to inspire so many people with her amazing spirit and courage.  She was a talented make-up artist with make-up tutorials on youtube who often sported some beautiful nail art.   A lot of people remember her from her appearance on Ellen where she was made an honorary Cover Girl.  When Ellen DeGeneres asked her how she stays positive, she replied that "a little fishy told her to just keep swimming…" 

The last photo Talia posted on her Instagram account was of her, her friend's, and her mother's hands in their mint manicures.  On Wednesday, Nicole from NailPolishWars.com asked other nail bloggers to all wear mint manis today in honor of Talia.  I thought it was such a nice idea that even though I didn't own any mint nail polish, I went out and bought some and put something together last night.

For my nails I used my new bottle of LVX polish "Mynt".   On my ring finger I painted the shape of Dory from Finding Nemo and then added some white dots to represent bubbles.

So in honor of Talia Joy, here is my first mint mani. 

Just keep swimming.

Bastille Day- France Nail Art

This past Sunday was Bastille Day.  It's like France's fourth of July!  We like to celebrate it because my husband is a small part French and because we love all things France.  We almost forgot about it this year because we had been traveling the weekend before but my brother-in-law reminded us just in time for us to put something together.  We even found a little French boutique to visit for some supplies!
I of course had to do some France inspired nail art for the occasion!  Last year I painted my nails to look like France's flag.  This year I wanted to do something different but with the same colors.  Here is what I came up with:

I am so happy with how these turned out!  I knew I wanted some stripes in there so on my index finger and pinkie I used a L'oreal blue polish called "Jet Set to Paris" (perfect name!).  Then I painted on the white stripes.

On the middle finger I used a Maybelline red polish called "Speedy Hot Tamale" and then I painted on white hearts using a dotting tool.  On my ring finger I tried to paint the shape of the Eiffel Tower.  I used a thin brush and a tooth pick to paint it on there.

Finally on my thumb I painted some roses!  I've always wanted to paint roses like this on my nails but could never figure out how to get the design right.  I found this tutorial on a blog called "Follow That Way".  Here is the link to it:  Follow That Way:  Rose Nail Art Tutorial.  The tutorial helped a lot and I was finally able to accomplish these roses using a small dotting tool!  I skipped the leaves because I wanted to stick to mostly just the red, white, and blue colors and the shape of the rose seemed fine on it's own.  Here are my roses with my Disney French children's book that I found at the French boutique!  I think Belle would be a fan of the roses, don't you? ;)

We had a very nice Bastille day and my nails really fit in with everything!  I found some great ideas on Pinterest that I was able to use for decor!  Here are some photos from our day!

The little French boutique we visited the day before!

French snacks and champagne!

Found templates for this bunting on Pinterest.  It came from the blog Creature Comforts

Hubby made Croque Monsieur- YUM!

It was a great day!  I had a lot of fun coming up with a new manicure for it.  What do you think of my France nail art?

Pink with Silver Chevron Stripes

It's time to share a new mani!  I had less time to work on my nails the evening I did these so I decided to do something simple and then do something more challenging over the weekend.   I ended up liking the result so much that I ended up keeping it on for much longer!  Here it is:

I used a pretty pink polish for all my nails.  I was going to leave it at that but I like having a bit more so I tried to add some chevron stripes on the ring finger with silver polish.  I loved it!  I really like how chevron stripes look and will probably try to use that again in other manis!  Unfortunately I didn't get many photos of this one that weren't too dark.

I thought I'd share the next picture too though since you can see my manicure in it.  My mother-in-law is very talented at knitting and she found some yarn that had my name "Nerissa".  Spelled exactly the same and everything!  I don't see my name around very often.  It's in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and is the name of the awesome villain in Enchanted (spelled slightly different- Queen Narissa) but other than that it's not very common.
So as you can guess I was pretty excited when I received my scarf made of "Nerissa" yarn and it was my favorite color too!  She even included the tag the yarn came with since it had my name on it!  Here it is!

I hope you enjoyed today's post!  What do you think of this mani?  Do you like the stripes?