Snowflake nail art

As you may or may not have noticed I haven't been posting much for the last few months. I have been studying to learn Gel nail enhancements. I have loved the course it's been really good but I have spent a lot of time practicing and studying. Once component of the course was to create a french manicure as the body of the nail rather than just polish on top. I did this a few weeks ago and have only had time to post it now!!

I used acrylic paint to paint on the snowflakes and finished it off with a very light coat of Models Own Juicy Jules.
This is the first time I have used acrylic paint for my designs. I likes that you can create very very fine lines with it - polish is thicker but it melds better with the polish around it so gives a different look.

Now I am a qualified to do manicures and gel nail enhancements. Very exciting. Now I've got to get my workspace ready for the public and I'll be off :D Can wait until after christmas though.
Stacie xoxox

The Nail Polish Tag

1. Answer the 10 questions.
2. Pass this tag to 5 other bloggers.
3. Make sure the bloggers that you tagged, knows that you tagged them, by sending them a comment on their blog.

Now, here are the questions:

How many nail polishes do you have? I have 77 nail polishes, which includes top coats, base coats, etc. I don't have very many compared to a lot of polish addicts, do I?
What is your favorite brand of nail polish? My favorite brand is probably Color Club. I don't spend a lot of money on polish and Color Club is inexpensive, has a great formula and some awesome colors!
Do you like crackle polish, or do you hate it? Oh man, are you ready for this? I have never used a crackle. Not even the oldschool crackles from the late 1990s. I like how they look but I prefer nail art to cracks!
What is your first nail polish brand? Surely it was Wet N' Wild. I'm cheap now and I was cheap when I started!
If you're going to have a nail polish line, what are you gonna name it? I will probably never have a nail polish line and if I did it would probably have the least creative name of all time like "Nevorpurify's Nail Polish." I'd rather let the girls who have an eye for color make the polishes and I'll just use them!
What nail polish color does not compliment you? I don't like light colors on my skin, they make me look washed out. Specifically like lavenders and light pinks. I also just am not a huge fan of pink, ever.
And what color does compliment you? Dark colors. I love blacks and deep reds. I also think that most green's look nice on me.
Name two of your best nail art friends? I would love to claim that Leslie from Polish Art Addition is my best nail art friend. She inspires me and is always super fun and makes me smile! I don't know if you could really call us "best nail art friends" right now, but I hope that over time our friendship grows stronger! That said, I don't really have nail art friends, but if I could say who I *want* my two best nail art friends to be it would probably be Michelle from Sonoma Nail Art (because hopefully she'd give me some pointers plus she likes great movies!) and Alexis from Je T'aime Lacquer  (because I think we have like 1 million things in common plus she's totally a nail art idol of mine).
What was the best nail polish gift you have ever received? I have two. The first one came from (the finance) Ron's sister Brittany last year. She knew I loved polish and she got me some nail art pens. I had always wanted to try nail art pens, but I'm always too cheap to buy them so it was like the perfect present for me! The second one was from Ron's mom who gave me a few beautiful polishes that I absolutely love!
Make a speech about thanking the blogger who gave you this tag. Leslie, without you would be a lot less nail art in the world. Not only because of the beautiful nails you paint on yourself, but because you have inspired so many individuals. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be this good at nail art; I wouldn't have a blog; and I wouldn't be so proud of myself. And I am sure that I'm not the only person who can say that! I hope that you continue loving what you do, always inspire others, and live a beautiful life! Thank you for what you have given me, and thank you for giving that same thing to countless others!

Pass it on to 5 bloggers:
Amber Did It!
Nail Reflections
Nails in Nippon
Je T'aime Lacquer
Sonoma Nail Art

Nail School - Day 7

Today was pedicure day for everyone! I'll just walk you through my entire day and post some pictures for you to see.

When we first got to school we had to immediately start doing pedicures because there were clients booked for the afternoon and a finite number of pedicure tubs (to supplement income, beauty schools often take clients for a discounted price and allow students to perform the procedures). First we watched our teacher do a demo. I don't find the demos particularly helpful. This is mostly because it's hard to see details in a classroom full of people and because our teacher does not usually teach this class, so she often does a different procedure than what we're supposed to do. After watching her perform a pedicure, I got a partner (let's call her L) and I began setting up to give her a pedicure! The set up is surprisingly complicated. There are a lot of things that you need to make sure you have (like alcohol, acetone, lotion, antiseptic, cuticle pushers, clippers, files, nail polish) and it's spread out all over the school! You have to go to one room to get lotion and cuticle remover, another room to get towels, another room to get acetone, and another cabinet to get a foot file. There's even one more room you have to go to if you need an electric file!

Once I had all my stuff set up, I gave L her pedicure. I think it went well, but I'm not totally sure. I didn't file her rough spots enough and I didn't use a nippers to get off dead skin. I'm not totally sure what the difference in appearance of dead and live skin is and I get worried about cutting the live skin. I think I learned a lot from it and I look forward to doing more pedicures. Well, that's not totally true. I look forward to doing more pedicures for people who don't have gross feet. The hardest part for me is filing. I can't get the hang of it at all. I never filed my own nails, so doing someone else's nails is super hard.

This is the pedicure I did on L. Polishing other people is hard!

After doing L's toes, it was her turn to do mine. I think she did a great job! My feet don't feel much different, but they do look quite pretty. She was a little sloppy with the polish and we were running out of time, so I cleaned them up myself. Here's a picture of the toes that L did for me (I smudged the big toe a little):

After we were done with pedicures I got to get caught up from yesterday and do a manicure! I got to do L's manicure which was super hard for me because she had acrylic nails on. This means that I didn't get to practice pushing back cuticles and filing was a little different. It was also totally different to paint an acrylic nail because it require sooooo much more nail polish than my tiny little baby nails. I guess I have to get used to nails of all shapes and sizes! Here's a picture of the first manicure I ever did:

After the manicure I took a test and got a 100%. Then we reviewed our book. Then I took another test and got a 100%. And that's a day at nail school!

Nail Art Party

Friday evening my friend had the grand re-opening of her vintage store. Her store, Far Out Vintage, has been open for 3 years now and she just had an amazing location change (and, for people not in Rochester, she does ship items, so take a look at some of her stock on the link above). She was initially in a relatively slow paced plaza and she moved to a store front on a very busy street. To help celebrate her big move, I set up a free nail art station and did tons of nail art for customers and friends. I did eight people's nails, three of which were children under the age of 12. I loved working with the kids, but it did reinforce a belief I had. Everyone always says to me, "oh my gosh, you should do kids parties with those nail art skills." Well, I love the idea of doing an occasional kids party, but it's not the career I want to hold, and here's why: Kids have tiny little nails that aren't good for tons of detail, kids move around a lot which makes my lines pretty wavy, kids want cutesy things when I sometimes want to do creepy things. Anyways, I painted everything from panda bears, to mod flowers, to stripes, but most excitingly I had two firsts. Here's a photograph of my first first:

That's right, I did leopard print nails! This was a total first for me because I don't think I've ever done any animal print. I was worried that it wouldn't look random enough but I ended up loving the look. In fact I love it so much that I think I might wear around some leopard print nails for a while! 

My second first was that I did diamonds on another set of nails. Unfortunately I don't have any more photographs. This is because of two reasons: First, I was so busy that I hardly had time to snap a photo, and second because I didn't want to be intrusive to the little girls by taking their photograph. 

Hope you enjoy! I know I did!

Nail School - Day 36

As I said a few days ago when I talked about the goals I've achieved/am still working on, I made some Obele nails! I'm really into shaping acrylics in interesting ways right now. I guess it's a little less boring than just forming "normal" nails. For a first attempt, I think these Obele's turned out awesome! Next time I hope to make my edges sharper. Usually the Obele nail has a much more dramatic stiletto, but I decided to try to make a more wearable Obele. According to this website (which has AWESOME explanations of nail shapes -- Obele is at the bottom of the page), the Obele is usually made from a UV gel. I assume it's usually a UV bonding gel, but at school we only have self-leveling UV gel, which as the name suggests, wouldn't be very good for building upwards. 

The Obele's were created last week, but today I worked more in 3D nail art. Here's a peek at what I was working on: 

Sponged Flowers

 

This week, I thought I'd try something a little different with the sponged designs. Since I didn't have time to edit video last week, I figured I'd just do another static tutorial this week. It was fun, though it did take quite awhile for this particular manicure...

I had a French manicure in mind, with delicate flowers just sort of hanging in the design. As usual, it turned out much differently on my nails then in my head, but I don't think it was too bad for a first try. The colors I used are OPI's "My Daddy's the King" and "Bubble Bath" (though I couldn't get BB open, so I substituted Finger Paint's "Well-Cultured Pearl" for the white), China Glaze "Wine Me, Dine Me" and another OPI, "Here Today, Aragon Tomorrow".

To start, I layered two coats of "MDTK" over a coat of Seche Vite base coat:

I couldn't get my BB open, so two coats of "Well-Cultured Pearl" at the tips, and then one more thin coat of MDTK over the whole nail, to mute the white and blend.

Then I used Here "Today, Aragon Tomorrow" applied with a fine paintbrush to create stems and leaves for my flowers:

And then a small piece of natural sponge dipped into "Wine Me, Dine Me" to apply the flowers.

Two coats of Seche Vite top coat to seal, a little clean-up, and voila! Puffy flowers!

Next time, I'll cut the sponge smaller - the larger sponge tip made it hard to maintain control, but I think a smaller tip will do the job fine. I'll also use a nail art pen or striper brush for the stems...the regular paintbrush just didn't quite give me the control I would have liked.

Nonetheless, I've gotten several compliments on this one this week, so it's definitely getting noticed. :-)

I just got a package of goodies from Glamorous Cosmetics, so next week, a manicure featuring those! Until then, happy polishing...

Hearts, stripes and dotty nail art

Hi guys
I got a new polish today from Sallys they were selling them cheaply as it was an old range it is Concrete Catwalk by China Glaze. Thought this colour would look amazing with white, pink and silver. I used oumaxi acrylic paints from ebay for the nail art
Love to you all
Stacie xoxox