Blue to pink gradient

I love this gorgeous gradient design. And I created it differently than I've ever made gradients before. This time, I used a fan nail art brush. It was *very* easy and it looks fantastic.

Instead of the hassle of sponging or the difficulty of blending with regular brushes, using a fan brush allowed me one stroke per nail to make this design. Yes, just one stroke! wow!

This is the brush I used. It is called a fan brush and it is part of a set of nail art brushes I bought from Amazon.de.

First, I practiced using the brush a bit, just to get the hang of it. I tend to practice brush strokes and make color dots on the back of tissue boxes. This is a very well-used tissue box, lol.

I played with a few color combinations before I settled on blue to purple to pink. I put color splashes of blue, purple and pink in that order one after another- close to each other but not touching.

I simply dragged the brush through the colors, pulling them downward. Then I dragged the brush from left to right across my nail. Simple as that! It does leave a good amount of polish all over your skin, though, so it requires a bit of clean up.

But, with some polish remover on q-tips for the big stains and an angled nail art brush dipped in polish remover for the cuticles, it looks perfect.

Add a top coat of Seche Vite for some shine and protection and you're done!

One of the best things about this mani is that it was just as easy to do on my right hand as it is on my left, which I know can be an issue for many DIY manicures.

Base coat: Revlon Multi Care 965
Blue: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Blue Me Away
Purple: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Deep Purple
Pink: Butter London's Primrose Hill Picnic
Top coat: Seche Vite

Rainbow Fish Nails

So who read this book when they where a little kid? I did and I always loved the colors and adventures of The Rainbow Fish. This book is where my inspiration for my latest nails came from.

These are my fish scale nails! I love the way they look so complex but how they are really so easy to do! Here's how I did mine.

These are the colors I picked to do my nails. They are (from left to right) Cosmetics Arts in neon pink I'm not positive the name because the sticker came off, China Glaze - Aquadelic, Sally Hansen - Limestone, China Glaze - Royal Tease, and Sinful Colors - Snow Me white.

I started with a base coat of course and then painted all but my ring fingers in Aquadelic and painted my ring fingers in Snow Me White so that when I put the colors on top they would really pop.

After that dried completely I put drops of all four colors on a piece of paper and used the top of a tooth pick for the dots the I layered on top of eachother.

I started at the top of the nail and did an over lapping pattern alternating colors all the way to the bottom. Once I got to the bottom I cleaned it up a little bit with my angle brush and a little acetone. After I was done I decided that it was sparkely enough for me so before my Seche Vite top coat I added a coat of China Glaze - Fairy Dust just for a little shine.



















I think they really do look like the fish scales and I'm very happy with my results. They ended up being a little time consuming, I couldn't imagine doing them on every nail! But I love them, as I do all of my nail art :)

As always thanks for reading and I hope I added a little inspiration to your day fishy style :)

Cherry blossoms

This is one of my favorite nail designs, and I totally winged it so I'm pretty proud of it. :)

They're not actually even on my nails- a friend requested I do some flowers on her nails. Fara and I went through some different designs on Pinterest and settled on a pretty cherry blossom design. We changed around the colors and like I said - I just winged it.

It's all free-handed. The black branches are done with a striper brush, the black and green dots are done with a ball-point pen dipped in polish. The dark pink flowers are down with a regular paintbrush.

Unfortunately, I never took the rest of the photos I took of this mani off my iPhone, and my phone was recently stolen. :( So this is the only photo I have of it. Here is a close-up of the design on the thumb.

Light pink: Sally Hansen's Diamond Strength Passion Flower
Dark pink: NYC's Greenwich Village
Green: NYC's Big Money Frost
Black: So Easy Stripe Rite in Blackest Black
Base and top coat: Revlon Multi-Care 965

Ten steps to my perfect manicure!

After researching different ways to prep your nails I've come up with my perfect ten steps to a perfect manicure! This is what works best for me you may need to tweak it a little to make it best for you!

These are the things I use to start and finish my manicure!

1. First I take off any polish that I have left on my nails. I normally use pure acetone and a cotton pad. If I'm wearing sparkles I use the tin foil technique to take off my polish here's the link to that tutorial - http://prettyinpolish0.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-to-remove-your-nail-polish-with-tin.html

2. I use a cuticle remover/softener to remove any access cuticles. The one I prefer is the one by Sally Hansen I'm not positive what its called but the gel is green and it says on the bottle that it is enriched with Jojoba and Kiwi Extracts. I leave the Gel on my nails for about five minutes then use my cuticle pusher to take off any access cuticles. I then wipe whats left on to a paper towel.

3. If any of my nails are really uneven then I use my nail clippers to trim them all down to the right size.

4. After they are all the same size I use a file to clean under my nails and to file them a little and make them nice and smooth.

5. After the tips are smooth I use a buffer to make sure the tops are smooth too! I used to use the ones from the store that make your nails super shiny but after a while I felt like that was just making my nails thinner then they need to be. So I switched to just a very fine buffer that I got from Sally's I'm always wearing polish so I don't really care if my actual nail is shiny or not that's what I have my top coat for!

6. By this point your nails are a little messy and full of nail dust and dried out from the acetone so I use my Mango Magic cuticle oil that I massage into all my fingers and then wash my hands to remove any left over anything.

7. Almost done! I use a little acetone to remove the cuticle oil from my nails and then I use my favorite base coat so far it is Nail Life Nail Revitilizer in Original.

8. Step 8 isn't pictured because it is always different but it is (of course) to polish your nails in any way you want weather it be sponging, nail art, french manicure, or just a single color.

9. After my fresh manicure is dry I top it with a coat of Seche Vite and ta da! Almost done!!

10. This step isn't always needed but when I'm being a little sloppy with my nail painting I use an angled brush dipped into some acetone to clean up around then edges and then All Done!!!

I hope this helped with any questions you may have had on how to prep your nails for a perfect manicure! Thanks for reading and if you want like us on Facebook for more Pretty in polish updates!
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:)
 Kristy

Neon polka dots

For a while now, I've wanted to try out neon nail polish. On Mother's Day, my husband, daughter and I went to the local Fruhlingsfest- Spring Festival. There was a cosmetic booth there selling makeup and nail polish (why at a festival? go figure...) so my husband bought me a few new polishes- three of which were neon! Yay!

I also have new dotting tools I wanted to try out...
So I used my new dotting tools with my new neon polishes and came up with this really, really cool mani. I love it way more than I was expecting.

It's pretty awesome, right?!

 And a close up...

I just love the way the color pops! I think if I were to do this again, I'd do fewer dots, but I still think this looks so great.
If I had a blacklight, this mani would be under it ASAP!

The black base is three coats of Sinful Colors Black on Black. I normally only use two coats, but I, forever being the optimist- painted the first two coats while my child was napping and my husband was at work. Duhhh... of course she woke up and you can only imagine what holding a very wiggly baby does to nails that aren't quite entirely dry... but a third coat fixed it no problem.

The neon colors are Cosmetica Fanatica. I also have neon green, which I did not use for this design. These polishes specify that they are for acrylic nails, but I used them on my natural nails.

My fabulous new dotting tools:

Black base: Sinful Colors Black on Black
Pink: Cosmetica Fanatica neon pink
Yellow: Cosmetica Fanatica neon yellow
Top coat: Revlon Base & Top Coat 965

Flower paisley stamping

As I mentioned before, I bought a new Konad stamper and some plates recently. I've mostly just played around with stamping small designs and tip designs, until now. I tried a full-cover nail art stamp and I adore it.

I used a flowers and paisley design, it's cute and feminine.
Here is a closer view of the design.

I was originally going for a lighter pink base so that the white wouldn't stand out nearly as much, but I just couldn't resist trying it on top of a matted color. I do have a clear polish that will turn any color into matte, but I didn't want to layer too much.

I chose not to use a top coat in order to preserve the matted look.

Pink base: Sinful Colors Professional Matte Collection's Dream On
White: Konad Special Polish in white
Design: Konad image plate M64

Colorful Zebra French

So I'm now realizing that I seem to like doing different styles of a French Manicure. This one is one of the coolest so far!

Because I am a Pinterest-aholic I found these on Pintrest and put my own twist on them by switching up the colors.

I used a base coat of Sally Hansen Smooth and Perfect - Linen. Then I did my french tips using Wet n Wild Megalast - I need a refresh-mint which is one of my newest colors and is absolutely awesome and I did my accent nail in Nina Ultra Pro - Pink Flamingo which in a great pink color. After everything dried I did the zebra stripes using a Color Club striper in the color Black. BTW the day I bought the Wet n Wild color I also bought a few Color Club stripers from Sally's and they are the best I've used yet! Nice thin polish to get the lines you want but also the colors show up really nice I will definitely be picking up more of these next time I go in because I have a coupon!! :)

I love these nails and I hope you do too! They are colorful and exotic and I just love them! I hope you like these as much as I do! Thanks for reading!



:)
 Kristy