Pinwheel swirls

Pinwheel swirls! Super cute, right? Ridiculously time consuming, though. :) The color choice makes it kinda hippy- looking, haha.

If I had had more time before my daughter's candy land themed birthday party, this would have been a cute design for my nails in her color theme!

White: Sally Hansen French White Tip
Blue: Sally Hansen XTreme Wear Blue Me Away
Yellow: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lightning
Pink: Cosmetica Fantica Neon Pink
Top coat: Seche Vite

Jordana - Celestial :)

This was a very pretty glitter polish I picked up at my local Kmart that is going out of business. origionally it was going to be a gift... but then I kept it lol.

I tried it over a few colors before i decided I liked it over black the most. It went on really nice and I loved that it has different sized glitters in it. The only thin gI did not like is theat it was a b#!&H to get off! But of course I knew that going into this because it was a glitter polish and those are always hard to get off! But I just used the tin foil method to take it off and it didnt suck as much as it could have.

As always thanks for reading and I hope I added a little inspiration to you day!

:)

Fireworks!

My birthday is July 3- the day before Independence Day. When I was a little kid, my parents would tell me every year that the fireworks all over were for celebrating my birthday. And of course, I believed them for a few years. LOL. So I've always loved fireworks.

I was torn this year between doing my nails birthday themed or America themed. (I know, I have so many problems, right!?) So I chose fireworks- something that for me, signifies both!

I especially love big colorful fireworks, so that's what I did.
I painted a couple coats of Sinful Colors black on black and then picked out a few colors I thought would pop. I was concerned that the non-neon colors wouldn't be as bright- but they worked so well!

I tried different firework-painting techniques. Some I did long lines, others short. Some bent and falling and others going up and spreading. I played around by drawing fireworks on paper with chalk- a super fun 4th of July craft to do with my little girl.

As you might have noticed, I did this design on artificial nails so that I could take photos for my Etsy shop, Finger Candy. You can buy this design over there, if you want! Check out the link to my shop. :)

Black: Sinful Colors black on black
Blue: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Blue Me Away
Green: Cosmetica Fanatica neon green
Yellow: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Lightning
Neon Yellow: Cosmetica Fanatica neon yellow
Purple: Essence Color n Go Passion for Fashion
Orange: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Sunkissed
Pink: Cosmetica Fanatica neon pink
Top Coat: Seche Vite

American flag nails

I also did a 4th of July mani! I actually planned to do fireworks nails for Independence Day (post to come!) instead of flag nails, but I recently bought a really pretty blue color and the mani was inspired from that. It was a really quick, easy mani that I didn't spend too much time on. After all, I do live in Germany, and most people in Germany don't celebrate America's Independence Day... LOL.

So, like I said, I started with this gorgeous cerulean blue color. It's part of Essence's "Ready for Boarding" airline collection, and it's called "via airmail."

Pretty, isnt it?
I then layered two fingers on each hand with a red from Eva Supreme color. I did quick white brush strokes with a French Mani white from Rival de Loop. I was about to draw some stars when I remembered some 3d star glitter I have.
I started with just a few stars on each blue nail, and thought it looked too plain, haha. So I clumped them on heavy trying to achieve a clumpy type of look. It kind of worked. LOL.

 I applied the glitter with a clear NYC top coat.

Finished with a couple coats of Seche Vite to lock in the glitter.

This mani took me all of 15 minutes and looked really cute!

Blue: Essence's Ready for Boarding: "Via Airmail"
Red: Eva Supreme lacquer "Flame"
White: Rival de Loop French Manicure White
Top coat: Seche Vite

Happy 4th of July!

July 4th nails!

So I'm a day late with this post but these techniques can be used for lots of different designs.

These nail where done using a simple technique and I'm sure with a little practice and tome anyone can achieve what I did!

Here's what I used; Seche Rebuild as my base coat, Essie - Boat House as my red, Sinful colors - White on white as my white, China Glaze - Frostbite as my blue and of course Seche Vite as my top coat.

First start with a base coat of White on White.

Then I used masking tape to tape off the tips just to make a nice clean line across the tip.

I painted blue over the tips. The tape makes it really easy to paint because you don't have to worry about getting the line perfectly straight.

See pretty cool huh? You want to take the tape off right after you paint your nails because if the paint dries too much then the nice clean line you want will get messed up.

I used tape for the red lines as well. If i where to do this design again I think I would just free hand the lines because I think that would have been easier then cutting up all those pieces of tape because none ended up being the same size.

This is what it looked like with out the tape. Yes it needs to be cleaned up but its not too bad :)

The thought of painting actual stars on my nails did cross my mind but I also thought that little dots would look just as good and I wouldn't rip my hair trying to get all the stars to look the same. I just used a tooth pick for the little dots.

I hope you all had a wonderful safe 4th of July, and I hope I managed to add a little inspiration to your day! As always thanks for reading! Please let me know if you have any requests or techniques you want to see :)


:)

My Take on Chevron Nails

So I like the chevron look, you know the diagonal triangles in stripes on your nails? Ya I'm not sure how to explain it so I'm just going to show you.

See what I mean? Now I did these on the fly so please ignore the slight mistakes but not everyone can be perfect! lol Plus from far away(like most people are when they look at your nails) you cant even tell!

So First I started out with a base coat of China Glaze - Aquadelic One of my favorite colors ever! The stripes are Revolon Top Speed - Royal(another favorite) and I just used a black striper for the black stripes.

Ok so this is how I did it. I used little pieces of tape to tape off the areas I wanted to stay light blue and then painted over it in the dark blue and before it was dry i took off the paint to leave the design.

I don't know if you can tell in this picture or not but the tape I was using didn't really stick that well and it bled a little but that gave me the bright idea to add the black stripe along all of the dark blue. I'm glad I did this because I think it really made the design pop!

These where super easy to do and like I said I did them on the fly and even managed to take pictures while I did them so I know any one can do these! On some fingers I alternated the way I placed the tape, either facing up or down and alternated where exactly I put them. Thats why none of them really look the same. I think next time I'll try to do lots of different colors! maybe a different one on each finger? and I'll use better tape too! There is just SO many posibilities with this design!

Thanks so much for reading and I hope I added a little inspiration to your day!

:)

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

A few days of China Glaze - Blue Iguana

I was in a nail art slump I just didn't know what to do so I decided why not just a pretty color? I looked up on my wall rack and I picked a beautiful blue that I don't think I had ever used before.

I tried to take a good picture of it but i just couldn't capture the awesomeness of this color. The blue was such a perfect blue and the sparkle in it was so fine and so pretty I was obsessed  with this color! And I was so obsessed with this color I wanted to wear it longer then most of my other colors so after a few days I decided to jazz it up a little bit with some zebra stripes :)

I used my white Sinful Colors striper to make the stripes and just made a zebra pattern on them. These got noticed way more then the just plain blue did but I loved them both :)

Thanks for reading!

:)
 Kristy