manic MANI MONDAY: OUTLINED NAILS

Yay!! Manic Mani Monday is back! Well, for this week. I've tried to do these nails in so many different ways. The only way I was able to both hands was with a Sharpie. It was still challenging but it was the easiest to do. Here's what you do...

1. Paint your nails the color you want the center part to be. Let them dry completely.

2. Outline the nails with a Sharpie in any color you'd like.

3. Clean up the mess you made. My fingers were pretty bad. Let the Sharpie dry.

4. Add a clear top coat!

Pretty simple! Let us know if there are any nail trends or ideas that you would like us to try!

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does PINTEREST KNOW EVERYTHING: CUSTOM NAIL COLOR

When we read some posts a while ago that said "make your own nail polish"... we were intrigued. That sounds like it'd be a lot of work and pretty stinkin' complicated. But what everyone really meant was, "this is how you make your own custom nail color." Once we realized this, we thought it'd be fun to see how well it actually worked. First of all, you will need a bottle of clear or white nail polish and some eye shadow. It will help you to have a sheet of paper as well and something to scrape the eye shadow with- I actually can't remember what I used! The end of a pen maybe?

Anyways, FIRST- Pour out some nail polish if your bottle is completely full. You will need some room for the eye shadow. SECOND- Scrape the eye shadow(s) of your choosing until you pile up a good amount. We liked mixing colors because using just one seems kind of boring... unless you have a really awesome color. Our colors were all pretty simple. THIRD- Roll a piece of paper into and cone and use it to put the eye shadow into your nail polish bottle. FOURTH- Close the bottle and shake it up! We finished our polishes by using a label maker to put their "names" on the bottle- aren't we so creative? ha! joking.

Don't get me wrong- there is not a shortage of nail colors out there. This is just fun and we found it worked pretty well! We definitely liked starting with white nail polish better because you could use less eye shadow and the color was waaaayyyy more opaque. Starting with clear nail polish just gave our nails the slightest tint of color. In the picture, the orange polish has three coats and the purple has one coat. These polishes also have a very very matte finish- as I suspect would happen with any color. I think this method is mostly just fun. I think I'll stick to buying my colors already made for now. But, if you feel like experimenting- this would be a fun one!

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manic MANI: BIG HEART NAILS

You may have seen our other version of "Baggie Design" Nails. You can check it out here. I had been eyeing these nails on Pinterest forever so I decided to try it out today! This time I used a plastic page holder but a baggie will still work just as great.


Print out or draw hearts on a piece of paper. I made 2 of the hearts bigger- for the thumbs, 6 medium size for the pointer, middle and ring fingers, and 2 small ones for the pinky fingers. Put the paper in the plastic sleeve.
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD MY EXACT HEARTS HERE


Fill in the heart shapes with the color you want the hearts to be. I used American Apparel's Palm Springs.


Outline the hearts with black. You can see that my hearts were not all the same exact shape by the end. They will still look great on your nails and if the shape is really bad, you can use scissors to shape it up when you peel them off.


Paint your nails whatever color you want the base to be.
I used Julep's Sophie- Trina Turk Fall '12. Love this color all by itself.


After the hearts have dried for about an hour, peel off each one very slowly.


Then place the design on the center of your nail.


Cover the nails with clear nail polish and you are done! I'm excited to have fun nails again!
It has been a while.

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manic MANI MONDAY: PATRIOTIC

We got this red, blue and sliver glitter nail polish in our Julep box the other day and decided it would be perfect for a "Fourth of July" manicure. I wanted to keep it simple but obvious so here is what I did...

Paint your nails white. Coat all nails with glitter nail polish except for your ring finger.

Place a dot of navy nail polish in the center of the blank nail.

Using a nail (or pointed object of your choosing) drag the polish out into five points.

Fill in the star shape and coat with a clear top coat and it's as simple as that! I don't know if you can tell in the picture above but the Julep nail polish has little silver stars among the glitter. It's kind of fun!

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manic MANI MONDAY: ARE YOU A FAN?

 

So we've seen these nails around the internet so I had to try them out. I can't lie I was definitely hesitant to paint my nails like this and then wear them like it was normal but.. I did it anyways. I think it's super fun to have multiple colors on your nails but most of the time I just felt like two of my fingers were on the wrong hand. I did get some compliments on my mani though. So what do you think? Would you wear two different nail colors like this? Me? I'm still a little hesitant to try this again. Let us know what you think!

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manic MANI MONDAY: KIKI LA RUE INSPIRED

Today's mani was inspired by two pieces from Kiki La Rue.

To learn more about the Kiki La Rue boutique check out our current giveaway.
You could win a $50 gift card!

Let's get started...

Paint your nail pink.

Take a navy polish and swipe the brush from the middle of your nail to the upper left corner of the nail.

Then swipe the brush from the middle again to the upper right corner of your nail.

You will have created a chevron shape on your nail.

Do the same with a white nail polish. You can add as many stripes as you'd like.
I made each of my nails different.

Clean up around your nails. I am using this new Cutex Corrector Nail Polish Remover Pen I got. It's one of my new favorite things fa sheez.

Cover with a top coat and you are done!

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manic MANI MONDAY AND A GIVEAWAY! (CLOSED)

We are super excited about this giveaway! I love the idea of having this fun damask design on my nails without having to wait for the polish dry/ having to create the design in general. Below I have created a tutorial on how to apply these nail shields from Jamberry Nails. The ones that I have on my nails are called Sunflower Damask and they were provided by our new friend, Tamara Bennett. Check out her Facebook page too. You could be trying one of the many designs from Jamberry for free! Just read on to see the tutorial and learn how to enter the giveaway!

These are the nail shields as they come. Depending on your nail size situation, you could use this sheet for 2 manicures. The nails on my right hand are bigger than the nails on my left hand which....I just learned while putting these nail shields on. It's. Weird. Since this is the case, I could get 3 manicures out of one sheet. The shields also come with step by step instructions which, are very helpful.

First, clean your nail with nail polish removed to get rid of any oil on the nail.

File your nails to the shape of your liking and push back your cuticles.

Figure out which size you need for your finger. Once you know, peel back the shield without touching the bottom/sticky part.

Cut the shield in half (if your nails are short.) This will make it easier to place and you can save the other half for another mani, or for your other hand.

Heat up the back of the nail shield for 10-15 seconds to make it more sticky.

Place the shield on your nail. Make sure the shield isn't overlapping onto your skin anywhere. This happened to the first few nails I did so I heated up the shield again with the hair dryer, pulled it off slowly, and placed it in the right spot. It got much easier with each nail I did.

Rub the shield on your nail to help it stick. I just used my finger but Jamberry recommends you use a rubber cuticle pusher. I found that my finger worked just fine.

Cut off the excess shield close to your nail.

File downward against your nail to remove the extra shield. Repeat all of these steps for each nail!

Here are my nails all finished! You could also check out this video for instructions on how to apply these nail shields.

So I'm sure you want to know how you can win your own sheet of nail shields! Here's what you need to do...

1. Be a follower of our blog.
2. Leave a comment below telling us which design is your favorite and your e-mail address. Only one entry per person.
 SIMPLE ENOUGH!

Visit Tamara's Jamberry page to choose your favorite nail shield design.

The winner will be randomly chosen from the comments and must be a follower of our blog.
The winner will receive one free set of nail shields in the design of their choosing.
Winner will be announced Saturday, May 12.

This giveaway closes Friday (May 11, 2012) night at 11:59 PM (central)

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manic MANI MONDAY: 90's T-SHIRT NAILS

I call these 90's t-shirt nails because that is what they remind me of. "Lisa Frank Nails" was in the talk too, I guess either of the names work. Casey bought me a whole nail stamping set with tons of plates and it's taken me a while to do a tutorial with them. That is because they are kind of hard to get used to. I definitely took Elizabeth's advice while creating these nails. Check out her tutorial to learn to use a stamper.

These are the nail polishes I used for this tutorial:
Clear Top Coat- NYC Quick Drying
Neon Pink- Ultra Pro Punki Pink
Nude- American Apparel Palm Springs
Turquoise- Color Club Age of Aquarius
Light Blue- JULEP Jessica

This is the plate I used to stamp with- BM10.

Paint your nails light blue.

Stamp the triangle design in hot pink polish on the bottom half of the nail. When stamping, you may get some of the design on your finger and you can just clean that up at the end. Some of the design may not actually go onto your nail and when that happened, I just kept it. Every nail will not turn out the same and it's totally fine that way.

Stamp the nude polish in the middle of the nail.

Stamp the turquoise polish on the top half of the nail.

Cover your nails with a top coat. Be careful on this step- you want to make sure the designs are completely dry to make sure they don't smear into eachother.

And here are some pictures of the finished nails!

What do you think? Lisa Frank or 90's t-shirt?

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