17 Challenge: Pastel

Hello Again,

Yet another installment in the 17 Challenge Nail Design series!  Today I present to you, pastel nails.

I originally did a plain mani with my pastel peach color.   A day later, I decided to add some flower detail on my accent finger for a little more summery and floral look.

Overall, a pretty easy and simple 17 Challenge.

Shade

Colors Used:

Peach Parfait by Ulta

Luxe by Orly (gold dots)

White Out by Orly

And because the perfection and easiness of the nail polish made for pretty photos, I present you with more pictures below.

Shade

Sun (sorry for that glare)

Indoors

I will be posting a tutorial on how to do the flowers on my ring finger, so look forward to that.

Until next time <3

How To: Color Blocking

Good evening everyone!

Tonight I am going to share with you all a how-to post on how I made the color blocked accent nail from my last post: NOTW Perfect Peach.

Oh and FYI, if you are reading this post late Saturday night, look outside.  The moon is the brightest that it has been this year, and probably for a couple of years.  The sky literally looks blueish purple where I live.


So back to nails.

Step 1: Paint your nails a solid white color.  (I had to use white because these colors were very sheer when applied just to the bare nail.)  Then use a black striper to create a bunch of little sections.  

The thing I don't like about this design is that it kind of looks 

like I was trying to make a star and then messed up, 

which I wasn't.  So just be careful that the design looks varied,

like in the first picture.

Step 2:  Fill in one or two spaces with one color.  I just used the tip of a small bobby pin.  Take the nail polish brush out of the bottle and just dip the bobby pin into the brush.  I tried to put dots on paper, but I think dipping the pin directly into the polish is easier.

Step 3: Repeat step 2 until all the spaces are filled.  Be careful not to get any color right next to each other.  Here's a link to the post of the swatches from this color collection along with the names.

In this picture, I have actually two different oranges on.
The space on the top right and the space on the
bottom left is the color I painted the rest of my nails
in the last post.

Here is the pink color.

The red-orange color.

And finally the yellow.

Just take a cotton swab dipped in nail polish remover to clean up around the edges.

Overall, I like the way this nail turned out.  If it didn't look so much like a star, I think I would have liked it better.  The funny thing is that I like my accent nail on my left hand.  I'm left handed, so I thought my right hand wouldn't make the design look as pretty since it was my non-dominant hand. But I really like the effect, so I had to include a picture:

This nail design is really simple.  I even think it would look great as a design for all the nails, but I'm just too lazy and impatient to sit through and paint all of them like that.

Comment below if you like the design or if you have any questions.

See you all later <3

P.S.  I did my friend's nails yesterday for tonight's prom.  I wish I had taken a picture because it was this really pretty gold and white water marble with glitter sparkles.  Maybe later on this year I'll do it on my nails and show it to you all.  It was just that pretty.  So look forward about a month or two for that one.  But I will be doing another water marble design either for this upcoming week or the next.  I don't know...with finals and AP exams,  I'll try to find time.  Okay, this really is the end of this post.

NOTW: Perfect Peach

Happy Monday Night!

If you all looked at my post yesterday about my Ulta purchase, you already have a sneak preview for the nails I am about to show you all.  If not, here's a link to yesterday's post, or you can just keep on reading.

Sunlight

I think this type of nail design is called color blocking, but it my version may be different because they sections are not really blocks.  But anyway, I was really excited about this.  Like I said yesterday, I am finally glad I found my perfect orange.  This is Tu-Lip Service by Ulta.  It's a glittery orange-peach that has a little bit of a gold hue to it in some lights and in the bottle.

Shade

For this notw, I have two coats of Tu-Lip Service "wedged"     between Seche Clear (basecoat) and Seche Vite (topcoat).  The color really is pretty opaque, but when the sunlight hits it plus the use of my camera, it does look like the smile line is showing a little on my index and pinky fingers.  But it's hardly noticeable in real life.




I think another really cool thing about this nail polish (well all of the Ulta minis) is that it is the perfect size.  I have always complained about OPI's minis and that they are extremely tiny.  But these cuties are 7ml.  They have the perfect brush as well.  I feel like it's one of the nail polish bottles that allows you to get all the nail color out, and minis are especially hard to do that with.  Not this one.  I mean, if Ulta sold all their polishes this size for like $1.50 or $2.00 my nail polish collection would probably have three times as many nail colors as it does now.

As much as I like the little bottle, this color really is pretty enough for a full bottle.  But until Ulta makes one, I guess it's just me and the little guy for now.

Oh, and lest I forget my accent nail.
I took step by step pictures on how I did it; however, this is already a really long post, and I am kinda tired and still have history work to do, so I will post a tutorial later on this week.

But if you still want more nail polish designs, just check out some of my other posts in the archive section on the right side of my blog.

Here are some more pictures of this week's mani:

Sunlight

Shade

Ulta Skittle Nails

Hey Everyone,

It is Sunday!  Yesterday I got up really early in the morning to drive two hours to perform a three minute song for a state competition.  As tired as I was, I drove all the way back.  But when we got back in the city, my mother and I decided to stop at Oberweis to buy some ice cream.  So anyway, long story short, I decided to stop at Ulta.  I had $3.50 off coupon for a while now and decided to use it.

Here's what I bought:

This is a five pack mini nail polish called "In Bloom."  The colors are exactly what I have been wanting.  I cannot tell you how long I have been looking for a perfect orange.  These are the perfect colors for summer!

Four of the five colors are glitters and one is an opaque orangish-coral.  This colors are  (in left to right): Snap-Dragon Me Down, Voted Most Poppy-ulur, In a Daisy, Tu-lip Service, and Fleur-ever Yours).

All the glitters are pretty sheer, so for my skittles swatch, I decided to layer them over one coat of Opi's Alpine Snow.  I just have a tiny bottle of the white polish, so the white coating underneath the base color is not well done, but I didn't plan to leave this on all day.  Actually I have a new design on now.  So yeah, I apologize for the terrible nail job I did. 

Here is a sneak preview for the nail design I have on my nails now, and what I will be sharing with everyone tomorrow:

"Color Blocking"

Look for tomorrow's post for the full manicure!

Until then, <3

NOTW: Sponged Gold and Berry

Happy Friday.  I think this post managed to make it within three weeks of the last, so I'm getting better.  Lately it's been so busy with school that I really only painted my nails twice in the last two months.  So even if I wanted to post more often, I wouldn't have anything to talk about.

But on a higher note, I am going to be posting more regularly.  I have realized that when I don't have a pretty perfect nail polish on my nails, I begin to pick at it during class and then become distracted.  Yeah, sometimes I get distracted from staring at the pretty nail color a day after I paint them, but it's not as bad as literally picking the color from my nails.  So really look for some more frequent posts, I'm serious this time.

For today's Nails of the Week (that were worn three weeks ago), I have a sponged on nail design.  I started off with two coats of Ulta's Fushiamania.   I then took a makeup sponge and sponged on Orly's Luxe over top.  At first I was going to do sort of a fade going up the nail, but I decided to just sponge the gold on the entire nail.  I actually like my right better, but I took this pictures about 4 days after I painted them, and the right hand had a few chips.

However, the chips obviously weren't that bad since I continued to wear this polish for the rest of that week and the next.  I had two test coming up, a debate for English, two papers to write and a presentation for Physics.  My life is complicated...like everyone else's.

Sorry the picture is so dark.  It almost makes my hands look dead.  But I needed to hurry up and take a picture of my nails before any more chips happened and it wasn't very sunny outside at the time.  The homemade berry color is more vibrant and "poppy" in real life, and the gold glitter on top sparkles more in the sunlight.

SIDENOTE: I actually darkened Fushiamania with a good few pours of black nail polish because it looked too similar to China Glaze's Make an Entrance.  (Click here to see a NOTW of Make an Entrance)

I just cut a triangular piece from a round makeup sponge.

Apply the nail polish directly onto the corner of the
torn makeup sponge for best results.

Overall, this is a pretty fool-proof nail design.  If you are tired of the same plain nails, certainly give this a try.  All you need is a base color, a glitter nail polish, and a old makeup sponge.  I seriously got this one from my mother who bought it about 15 years ago, not even joking.

I promise promise promise that I will post more frequently.  I didn't have school today, so I might even post another nail of the week from last week, or maybe start on some of the "Other Tales" that my blog name suggests I will have.  Guess you'll just have to come back to see what the next post will be.  And yes, that just rhymed =]

Nails of the Week!

For nails this week, I decided to go with another polish with a glossy finish as opposed to an opaque solid color like last week.  (For that post click here!)  This is Chantilly Peach by Orly.  The Orly brand is really good, I have four polishes from them and would not mind getting another.  The brush is the perfect size, not too fat and not too skinny, and the rubber top makes the polish easy to open.  As far as the color of this nail polish goes, I was a little concerned about it because at Sally's, where I bought it, a sheer subtle color wasn't really what I was looking for.  But I thought the color was really pretty and elegant looking so I went ahead and bought it.

It really isn't that sheer.  With one coat you can see the smile line on your
nails, but two coats (which is what I did) the color is really opaque and matches the color in the bottle perfectly.  Unfortunately, I got those ugly tiny bubbles/bumps on my nails either because 1) I shook the bottle too much, you really should roll it in between your palms or
2) the ceiling fan caused the polish to dry while I was still applying the coat.

Either way, this nail polish is really pretty.  It's one of those polishes that you can wear in the summer or the fall that goes with practically any outfit.  It not too stand-out of a color, which in my case is beneficial since I have those ugly bubbles =]

NAILS!!! NAILS!!! NAILS!!!

I love nail polish!  Something I should have put on my Summer To-Do list is paint my nails because I have done this every week.  Why?  Let's stretch out our wings and fly back to last December.  New Years Eve actually, I made a resolution, I always do.  But this one I actually followed through with: Paint my nails every week a different color.

At first this was hard to do, I had a good amount of nail polish, but they were all winter colors (colors, lookout for a blog on that too), and when April rolls around, what am I to do?  So I went shopping.  I got a whole bunch of colors and have been painting my nails ever since.


So back to what this post was originally going to be about, I'm going to post a picture of my nails every week so that if you like them, you can get the nail color.  And if not, it's still a good way for me to keep track.  That's another thing about me, I always like to see the positive in situations.  This is not saying that I'm those people that are too happy and annoy everybody like that lady on that episode of Grey's Anatomy who was way too happy and her husband was going crazy about it.

Yes? No? Do you know what I'm talking about?  It doesn't really matter, all I'm trying to say is that I look at the good and bad parts of situations, but then eventually only focus on the good.  This post is starting to turn into a rant, and is causing me to waste time.  Success, I think yes (that rhymed) =]

Here are my nails from last week!
Ulta: Scene Steel-er

 

And this week:
China Glaze: Make An Entrance

more pinkish in real life
taken by iPod

Stay tuned for more pics next week!