Lohan Nails

So Lindsay Lohan is going to jail. I am not here to talk about that in any way, shape or form. What I am here to talk about, however, is her nails in court the other day. They were brought to our attention because apparently they had profanity written on them. Observe:

Photo courtesy of Perez Hilton

I am not here to talk about the profanity though, either. What I am here to talk about is the colorful, airbrushed design she had on! I decided I wanted to take a stab at a recreation and this is what I came up with:

Interested in how I did it? It was mostly a matter of sponging, which I have never done, and it turns out, it's not that hard! Here is what I did:

1) I painted all my nails with a white cream to start.

2) Next, I took one of the three colors I was going to sponge with and started sponging! Which color you start with isn't really important. I just started with pink by chance.

3) Continue sponging with the other two colors. I intentionally did all nails different. Some have more orange, more pink or more blue, and all have the colored spots arranged differently.

4) Next, I stamped white flowers with Konad plate M65 on all nails.

5) Lastly, I applied topcoat and cleaned up my messy fingers with remover and an orange stick wrapped in cotton.

There are several different sponges that you could use but I used a cosmetic wedge to accomplish my sponging.

The shades I used: Diamond Cosmetics - Tranquility, China Glaze - Sugar High, KleanColor - Mango

Side by side, how do you think I did?

Have a fantastic Friday!
-Elaine
:c)

HOOT!

First of all, can I just say: I got myself the newest NP release from MAC, In The Buff, and it is so weird! It is one of the weirdest colors I have. It is one of those "ugly pretty" shades I can't get enough of.

When I read the very first description of MAC's summer collection, I was very excited to see this because in the description it said "avocado" and so I expected a green. This is not green! It is a sand colored nude with lots of olive tone. It may match some peoples' skin to be a true nude, but it is definitely not my skin tone so I can appreciate it as a color. It looks like a brown paper bag sometimes, and sometimes more nude, and sometimes very murky olive. Strange but cool.

Anyhoot, back to the point of my post! I have recently become a huge fan of anything to do with owls. Without telling too long a story, a friend and I got these necklaces with owl pendants and call them "friendship owls" and it has made me really like anything with owls. So I figured that meant it was going to have to be on my nails somehow. I think I pulled it off>>>

If you like the owl and would like to try my hand-painted art, you are in luck! I decided to take pics as I went along so that you could have a tutorial!

Here is what I used. LA Colors Art Deco stripers in white and black, L'Oreal - Sizzling Tangerine, Barielle - A Bouquet for Ava, Seche Vite and a dotting tool. The colors you choose are not important, but you should choose well pigmented shades so that you don't have to go over the same spot several times. You will also need at least one striper polish.

1) Using one of the regular polishes you choose, make a ovalish shape in the middle of your nail, a bit below center so you leave space for the head. This will be the owl's body. Let it dry.

2) Using another color make two circles at the top of the blob you made in Step 1 and then pull them up to make an upside-down heart. I just used the nail polish brush to make these circles, but you could also use a dotting tool and a larger drop of polish if you prefer. Let it dry.

3) Using your nail art striper, make the owl's puffy feather "hairdo" on top of his head pulling the striper brush from outer to an inner point just below the tip of the "heart" we made in Step 2. Make several passes until you feel that it's puffy enough! Next, take the brush and just under the "heart" inbetween the two circles, make a little diamond shape to create his beak.

4) Using white polish and a dotting tool, make two dots for the whites of the owl's eyes. Let that dry.

5) Using black polish and the dotting tool, make a smaller dot in the center of both white dots.

6) Getting out the striper again, make two slightly curved lines on either side of the body to make wings. I made a couple passes on each side so they were a bit thicker than just a line. Then make two bunches of three little lines on the bottom of the body for his talons.

7) To finish him off, add some dots to the body with the dotting tool and whatever shades you'd like.

8) Finish off with a coat of Seche Vite, or whatever thick self-leveling top-coat you choose so that your finished owl is level and not lumpy/blobby looking.

What do you think?!
:c)

The Best Nail Tip Ever: Glitter Removal Made Easy. VERY EASY

In light of all the super dense glitter we have gotten recently, i.e. Nubar - Sparkles, Zoya - Ultra Glitter, OPI - Alice in Wonderland, I thought it was about time to post this tip for removing glitter. Some of you may be reluctant to wear glitter polish because you know what a headache it is to remove them. Well forget all that! You can rock the bling, and get it off in a snap. Sound too goo to be true? IT ISN'T!

This is the *BEST* tip I have ever gotten related to nails. It feels like you are a magician.

Necessary equipment:

• aluminum foil
• cotton balls
• nail polish remover: acetone or non-acetone*
• a clock/stopwatch
• 10 nails full of glitter!

Step 1: Start out with a rock hard glitter mani. I chose to use my Mad As A Hatter mani for this tutorial when it came time to take it off. Get yourself 10 cotton balls, and 10 pieces of tin foil cut into little rectangles. They should be about 3 inches on each side, roughly.

Step 2: Take a cotton ball and soak it in remover. it doesn't have to be sopping wet. Just get as much as you would for usual removal. Place it on your nail.

Step 3: Take a piece of foil and wrap it around your finger tip in order to keep the cotton ball in place.

Repeat Step 2 and Step 3 for the remaining nails on that hand. I say this because I think it is easier to do one hand first and take them all off before doing the next. It you try to do the second hand with foil fingers, it's a bit tricky.



Step 4: Wait for 5 minutes. 5 is the magic number. I tried this with all different times. 1-3 minutes was not enough, 4 almost made it, but 5 for sure, was when things came right off.
*This is where the asterisk come in. I tried the foil method with non-acetone remover and it worked just fine, however I didn't test it for 5 minutes. It was probably on for 7ish minutes. It may have been just fine at 5, but I don't know for sure.

Step 5: Using a little pressure on the nail, pull the whole foil/cotton ball combo off in one swoop.

Step 6: Marvel at out clean your nail is! There is still some blue on the tip as you can see, but all the glitter is gone! Check it out:

It is all in the cotton ball!

Step 7: Repeat to the other hand.

So just to really drive the message home: this manicure was on for several days and it consisted of a base coat, 2 coats of Sally Hansen - Thinking Of Blue, 1 coat of Seche Vite, 2 coats of Mad As A Hatter, and yet another coat of Seche Vite. Seven coats including 2 of a super dense glitter, and this got it all off in. one. swoop. This is not a joke, ladies!! Try the foil method. It will change your life.

I hope this was helpful and will inspire you to wear more glitter polishes!
-Elaine

Water Marbling 2.0

One of my first posts when I first started my blog was about water marbling. How many people actually read it, I don't think many. But I have made an updated tutorial on water marbling and I am sharing it today! The reason for this is because I love marbling but it is kind of a pain, but I have a couple tricks for making this semi-difficult nail art a bit easier.

Tip 1: Use 3oz Dixie Cups. When I first started doing water marbling, I had a very small Tupperware container dedicated to my water marbling. That was fine, but there are a couple reasons why using the Dixie cups is better. First, they are disposable. When you do water marbling, the polish sits on top of the water, and then you pick it up with your nail. Some of the polish stays on the water, however, and it creates a sort of invisible shield, even if you think you picked it all up, and that restricts new polish from flowing out on the water if you want to reuse the water. That means you have to change the water for every nail. Using the Dixie Cups allows you to set up ten cups of water when you begin, and then you don't have to spend time changing the water. The other reason I like this better is the area to fill is smaller. My tupperware container was small, but still much larger than this little cup. When you drop in the polish, it spreads out to the outer walls of your container. If the container is larger, you are going to have to used more polish since it keeps spreading out and out.Tip 2: Apply petroleum jelly, or "Vaseline" on all the skin on your finger, around your nail. I think the worst part about water marbling is that there is sooooo much clean up involved. It takes forever, is wildly annoying and you have to use a ton of nail polish remover, which gives me a headache! If you use petroleum jelly, you can easily wipe off the polish on your skin with a tissue.

Tip 3: Clean your nail surface with alcohol (I use OPI-Chip Skip) to clean any petroleum jelly that may have gotten on your nail. You don't want to repel the polish from your nail... just your skin.

Now pick your colors! I used 4: Zoya - Malia, Sally Hansen - All The White Stuff, Sally Hansen - Blue Me Away, and Sinful Colors - Black on Black. You don't have to use exactly 4 colors. I have done it with 2 or 3 and you could probably do it with more than 4 too. Unscrew all your colors and get ready for the dropping!

Begin by getting enough polish on your brush that it will drop off, hold it right above the water and let a drop drop in. It will spread out across the water's surface.

Add the rest of your colors into the center, one after another. The circles will get smaller and smaller.

Next, take a toothpick and swirl the colors around. There are several ways to do this. You can start at the outer edges of the polish circle and just keep pulling inward. You can go back and forth left to right and right to left, or just go all around in no particular pattern... just what looks pleasing to you!

Next you dip your finger, face down, into the swirl you made. The pattern will stick to your nail just the way it appears on the water, so pick the area that you want on your nail. With your nail still in the water, pull away all the excess polish. If you try to lift your finger out without doing that, you will get the excess following your finger out of the water and it will fold over your desired design.

Here is how it is going to look once you get your finger out of the water. Not to worry! Since you put Vaseline on first, you can just wipe the polish on your skin away with a tissue.

And here is the finished result!
I wasn't too pleased with the end result just because the colors didn't really excite me. I tried again with Blue Me Away, Zoya - Pinta and Misa - Dirty Sexy Money.

Ahhhh. That is better!

And the last tip is to use colors that are well pigmented, and that get full, or close to full, coverage with one coat. The polish ends up spreading out very thin, so if you use a polish that normally requires 4 coats, it is not going to look like much marbled. My favorite polishes to marble with are China Glaze - Romantiques because they are definitely opaque in one coat and look amazing water marbled.

The first time I ever heard of this was on the China Glaze website and there was a tutorial with still pictures. Now there is a link to a video here. I suggest you watch the video to see what I mean about the swirling technique where you pull inward and how to pull away the excess polish before taking your finger out of the water. The problem I have with the video is that they make it look so easy because they are using a false nail on a stick instead of your finger, so the issue of clean-up is not addressed.