Fresh Flowers

♥ duration: 30 mins

♥ colors/steps:
▪ Orly Bonder
▪ base color: OPI's Tutti Frutti Tonga
▪ criscrossed lines using Art Club's iridescent glitter striper
▪ accessories: nail seals from Rakuten in JPN (see below)
▪ details: dotting tool using white polish and light pink polish
▪ Seche Vite on top

Tutorial: gradient polish

In this entry, I'll talk about the gradient tips I do.



So I went a little nutty and made an image to illustrate how I do the gradient. J's always saying how well I do them, but it's probably just that I have time on my hands (no pun intended) so I can patiently do the gradient.

It's basically this:
1) Paint horizontally a thin layer of polish about 2mm wide starting at the tip of your nail & let it dry...
2) Paint horizontally a thin layer of polish about 4mm wide starting at the tip of your nail & let it dry...
3) Paint horizontally a thin layer of polish about 6mm wide starting at the tip of your nail & let it dry...
... you get where I'm going with this.
▪ You can do the width as wide or as narrow as you like.
▪ You can also paint vertically (I do that once in a while - most often on the last coat - the widest one).
▪ You can do more than 3 layers... sometimes it takes 4-5 depending on how translucent the polish is.
▪ I recommend making your layers thinner because the gradient will look more like.. well, a gradient.. instead of clumps of polish :P

But that's it. I only suggest doing the last (top) coat of gradient color as the most space covering coat (5-6mm) because it covers the texture of where the under coats end. Makes it a bit smoother. Gosh, did that make any sense at all? ** update 6.15.2012 ** I believe I've found a better way to apply certain polishes as a gradient. It's a tutorial for Ombre Nails that I found on thebeautydepartment.com. I think this would work great for gradients Here's my post on ombre nails

silver and pink gradient

This one was so subtle in color that I was afraid it'd be impossible to see in photos. I think you can see the gradient, but I guess the naked eye view is much better, in my opinion.

The silver gradient was made using a nice translucent silver color (Out Of This World) I picked up from Walgreens :) (Sinful Colors polishes are around $2!). I found a gal who swatched it in her blog: laquerlaine - towards the end of the entry. I did read in laquerlaine's entry that Sinful Colors' formula isn't good. Well.. it's $2 so that's to be expected I guess.. But on the other hand, this polish was perfect for what I wanted to do. Granted, I didn't plan on making the polish to appear 100% opaque so it worked out just fine for what I had in mind. Another comment was that it chipped immediately. In total, there were 8 thin coats of polish on my tips by the time I finished.. and I kept the polish on for an entire week or more without chipping or barely even a worn corner. I'm just in the habit of changing my polish/pattern around once a week. This set did really well for me. (Can I get off my soapbox now?)

I hardly ever use bullion b/c to be honest, it's a pain in the arse to handle. It's tiny and you need to be patient enough to push them around to suit your desired shape. But it was cute for this and I figured 1 heart on each hand wasn't going to kill me :P

♥ duration: 40 mins

♥ colors/steps:
▪ Orly Bonder
▪ base color: OPI's Tutti Frutti Tonga + Winmax Diamond Nail Enamel #7 (pink diamond)
▪ tip gradient color: Sinful Colors' Out Of This World (4 thin, gradual coats) + Winmax Nail French #5 (french silver)
▪ Accessories: silver bullion from Vietnam. Don't ask me where I got those.. (about 5 yrs ago, my parents went back to VN and I asked them to just find some fun nail things and that's one of the items they returned with).
▪ Seche Vite on top

more photos:




below is a photo of the polishes I'd bought a few months ago. The pink on the far right is one of the base colors I used. And the silver (2nd from the right) is the last coat I used over the silver gradient.

cherry pink plaid

A variation of Coral Plaid but with OPI's DC Cherry Blossom.

I still like this one a lot and get a lot of compliments on it.

I think my hand is pretty steady, but if you take your time, the lines will look fine. It doesn't have to be perfect.

And despite how busy the pattern seems, I didn't feel like it necessarily clashed with the things I was wearing.

This one lasted decently long. I wore it for a full week before changing it and wasn't that it was chipping either... I just wanted to change it up. ^_^

♥ duration: 40 mins

♥ colors/steps:
▪ Orly Bonder
▪ base color: Orly ... forgot what it's called. I'll check it later. Something neutral.
▪ tip color: OPI's DC Cherry Blossom
▪ Art Club's black striper first
▪ Art Club's white striper 2nd
▪ Kiss silver glitter striper vertically placed somewhere in between the spaced white lines
▪ Art Club's irridescent glitter striper under the french manicure tip.
▪ Corner accents: tiny plastic stars, randomly picked sets of 3 swarovski crystals (fuchsia, lt rose, rose, crystal ab, jet, crystal moonlight)
▪ top coat: Seche Vite

Disneyland is cute

See? Cutesy, huh?

I went with my honey to Disneyland a bit after Christmas. Good fun! There is something completely magical about Disneyland during the holidays. *eyes sparkle* ^_^

♥ duration: 30 mins

♥ colors/steps:
▪ Orly Bonder
▪ base color: OPI's Tutti Frutti Tonga
▪ light pink striper by Art Club
▪ randomly placed irridescent glitter stripes (Art Club) in between light pink stripes.
▪ brighter pink/orange striper polish from Art Club used with dotting tool to make hearts.
▪ Orly Liquid Vinyl polish used with dotting tool to make Mickeys
▪ top coat: Seche Vite

and 1 more photo: