Peachy Nails

Today's nail art is inspired by Kerry Washington's dress from the Oscars. I think she looked absolutely fabulous and loved her in Django. I also just happened to come across a bunch of little 3D nail art charms my mom brought me back from Tokyo and wanted to attempt doing 3D nails! For the base coat I used "Peachy" by Revlon. The color in the triangle is "Big Money" by Sally Hanson Gem Crush, which is a brand new polish I bought yesterday. Thoughts? Let me know!

 

Cupcake Nail Art

I want to dedicate today's post to my love of cupcakes. I actually have more of a savory tooth than a sweet tooth usually, but gourmet cupcakes just really get me in the sweets department. My absolute favorite are Sprinkles cupcakes (Middle). Magnolia bakery (Top) in New York City also has some amazing cupcakes and I just discovered this past weekend a place called Sweet Buttons Desserts (Bottom) on the Lower Eastside in Manhattan that have not only incredible cupcakes, but delicious hot chocolate. All of the cupcakes pictured below are red velvet, except for in the picture of Sprinkles cupcakes there is a dark chocolate with sprinkles cupcake (my favorite). 

For my nails I used Milani's "Paradise Pink" for the base coat and Milani's "Draw in Pink", "White Canvas", and Sally Hanson's "I Pink I Can" for the polkadots.

Nail Polish Strips

The latest trend in nail art is nail polish strips. The brands I have tried so far are Sally Hanson's and Maybelline's Color Show. My friend just gave me nail strips by SEPHORA by OPI that I still want to try, but it's for my toes and I want to save them for when I can start wearing open toed shoes! Anyway, the Maybelline nail strips designs were so much cooler than any other nail strips I've seen out there! Unfortunately, they did not go on easily and started peeling within 48 hours. I'm not as big of a fan of the Sally Hanson designs (although I also just bought a lace design to try out in the future). The skull print I used were a special Halloween line. Let me know what you guys think of Nail Strips which brands are better quality and which have cuter designs!

Oscars 2013 and Inspired Nail Art

What I thought of the Awards

So this year I actually managed to watch all of the Oscar Movies! I thought they were all really powerful in their own unique ways! All of the wins were pretty predictable. The nominated directors were not what I had expected I'm totally surprised Quentin Tarantino and Kathryn Bigalow weren't in the category! Although in the end I am really happy Ang Lee got the oscar because I find him to be a wonderfully creative director. Daniel Day Lewis totally deserved the oscar for best actor, but personally Denzel Washington in Flight completely blew me away and I was rooting for him. Also I am completely obsessed with Jennifer Lawrence, but I think Jessica Chastain was completely robbed of the award. She said it in her Golden Globes speech that her character was completely against all Hollywood conventions and I think that is probably why she didn't get the Oscar, but I think she completely deserved it and it would have been huge of the Academy to have given it to her.

Best Dressed

This Oscar season it seemed that there were two very distinct styles going on. The first is beautiful light pale colors as seen on Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hathaway, Amy Adams, Charlize Theron, and Amanda Seyfried.  The second is embellished sparkly gowns, which I personally think were fabulous and perfect for an event such as the Oscars. Dresses in this style were worn by Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Catherine Zeta Jones, Naomi Watts, Stacy Keibler, and Adele. I think the one who combined these two styles well was Jessica Chastain wearing a gorgeous copper Armani Prive gown.  

Oscar Inspired Nail Art

The embellished gowns pictured above inspire my toe nail art. For the base I used "Goleneye" by OPI Limited Edition Holiday Lacquer and I used Milani's "Black" Nail Art polish to do the contours.

                           

Tis The Season for Dark Polishes

It's a gloomy grey day here in Tivoli, NY so I just wanted to do a post on some of my favorite dark polishes by OPI. From left to right, "Siberian Nights", "Licoln Park After Dark", "Here Today... Aragon Tomorrow", and "Kennebunk-Port". The polish on the nails is the dark green one with a cute little sparkly accent on the ring finger "Optical Illusion" by SPARITUAL.

Drippity Drip Drip Nail Art

I got totally sick of my last nail art so I decided to paint some new ones today! Also I'm going into the NYC tomorrow so I wanted to have some nails that were a little more fun and edgy. I went with a monochromatic drip effect with a splash of red on the ring finger. I used "Alpine Snow" by OPI for the base, "Black Tie" by Confetti for the black drips and finally "Kennebunk-Port" by OPI for the red drips. Let me know what you guys think!

My Collection

Today I just wanted to show you guys my extensive growing nail polish collection. Definitely missing a lot of Essie. I just bought an Essie that I showed you guys on my last post, but I never realized I didn't own many Essie nail polishes! I think I've always preferred OPI to Essie, but lately Essie has been coming out with some cool colors that I would love to get my hands on. I think my favorite cheaper polishes are Revlon's Top Speed collection. I love the colors and think they are good quality and affordable. As for expensive polishes my favorite brand is Chanel. Even though they are absurdly pricey I find that their colors are just impossible to replicate and are so unique.

                           

                       

Snake Nail Art

I have been seeing those new magnet nail art polishes at CVS a lot and noticed that Essie came out with a snake skin pattern line. I decided to buy "lil' boa peep" by Essie. I love the color of the nail polish, but frankly I didn't think the magnet worked very well. It took me so many different tries for it to show up at all and it wouldn't come up even on the entire nail. Anyways inspired by the snake skin and the snake ring pictured below, I added a a snake on the pinky using Milani's Nail Art with precision brush and then added some little dots to even out the snake skin print using Sally Hanson's "Gold" Nail Art pen. Let me know what y'all think about this nail art and magnet nail polishes!

Clouds

This is going to be a short post today. I just got back from NYC and am quite exhausted! One of my favorite Nail Polishes is "Cloud" by Revlon, which I used for the base coat (and also inspired the nail art). The clouds were done using Milani's Nail Art line. It's a simple design, but I think it is cute! Also since we are in the middle of winter I thought it would be appropriate to post these. Enjoy!

Clouds in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

Clouds in Medellin, Colombia

3D Nail Art: Thailand 2011

Happy Throwback Thursday (and Valentines Day)! For this weekly holiday I wanted to post some awesome 3D Nails I got done in Bangkok, Thailand. I collaborated with the manicurist on the design. My next nail art endeavor is definitely to learn how to do gel 3D Nails. My mom brought me all these cool nail trinkets from Japan and I have yet to use them!

Such an incredible trip! I would recommend it to everyone! I loved Bangkok so much I could even see myself living there! Below are two pictures from Thailand. The first one is at the Tiger temple 2 hours away from Bangkok. The second is a picture of my friend Jill and I at the ruins of the old capital of Thailand, Ayutthaya, which were absolutely beautiful.

         

Nail Art for Friends (Pre Valentine's Day Love)

Since tomorrow is Valentine's day I thought it would be appropriate to thank my friends for being so supportive of my nail art! ahaha A lot of my friends ask me to do nail art for them, which I don't do enough of, but here are three designs I have done for friends in the past. The first one I did for my friend Liana in the library during finals two years ago.

 The second I did this past christmas for my friend Rosh when I was tipsy off of homemade hard cider!

And the third picture is also of Liana's that I did for her on Saint Patrick's day last year. :)

Abstract Nail Art

Today, I wanted to talk about abstract nail art. I am a studio arts major so there is definitely a place in my heart for awesome geometric colorful shapes. I also find abstract nail art more often than not to be easier to create because of the simple shapes. Also, using nail art pens or Milani's nail art polishes  makes is easy to create thin and well defined lines on your nails making your design look perfectly geometrical. Here are a couple abstract nail designs I have done in the past. 

Galactic Hello Kitty Nails

New nail art! My previous post about hello kitty reminded me that I had these awesome Hello Kitty Nail stickers so I wanted to do my nails with them.

For the base coast I used one of my all time favorite dark nail polish Tuxedo Grey no 35 by Yves Saint 

Laurent.

Finally I used a sparkly polish I bought in China two years ago to do a type of sparkly french inverse manicure. Voila! Hello Kitty Galactic Manicure!