Happy St. Patrick's Day

Ugh! Stupid Safeway ripped off another nail :( I went to take the garmage out and my finger felt weird so I looked down and the nail was almost all ripped off :(

So the wonderful green day :) I love St. Patrick's Day, not because of the drinking but because I look great in green :)

I can't believe I forgot to do Pi-Day nails (march 14 for those who don't know). I was sitting in math class on Friday and realized it was Pi-Day and pulled out my sharpies to draw pi onto my nails, but it wasn't the same :(

So I have 2 designs for St. Patricks Day.

One I did last year but I recreated onto a nail wheel
The other my mom chose.

This is the design my mom chose. It's a light green base with dark green and white stripes making a plaid pattern. Instead of using my paintbrushes I used one of my striping polish brushes cleaned it and used it with my dark green and white polishes. 

On the thumb I convinced her to use little decals (I was really wanting to try them). So I used 3 green petal shapes and formed a clover like shape, then with one of my striping polishes I added a stem. 

Base green: Essie-Shake Your $$ Maker

Plaid: Revlon-Elf Lutin

OPI-Alpine Snow

Top coat: Sehe Wite (because it is magical so I love it)

Thumb: OPI-Alpine Snow

Stem: Quo by Orly Instant Artist-Teal Green

All right and here is my second one. Its a partial plaid with a shamrock in the corner.

To do the partial plaid tape a diagonal section of your nail.

To make the tape easier to deal with and to make sure it doesn't peel your base coat off use your fingers and hands to "dirty" the tape and make it less sticky.  

 once the tape is on paint with a light green the triangular shape the tape left

before the paint dries take the tape off.

Then in the top corner with the most room create a shamrock using a dark green

for the leaves make little hearts by just drawing lines then a stem

using the same dark green draw 2 vertical and 2 horizontal lines within the light green

Then to one side of the vertical and on top or below the horizontal lines add white lines.

For some flair add a glitter line along the boarder

And volia :)

Clover: Revlon-Elf Lutin

Plaid: Essis-Shake Your $$ Maker

Revlon-Elf Lutin

OPI-Alpine snow

Quo By Orly Instant Artist-Platinum Glitter

Nailuv kit

This Christmas I got a LED soak-off Gel kit (brand is nailuv). It took some fiddling but now that I can apply it properly it comes out looking superb. I find it does have a longer lasting power but if you are someone with their hands constantly in water than it doesn't last the 2 weeks. You might get a few days if you are lucky if you are a swimmer or a dishwasher or someone that has to for work (or whatnot) wash their hands a lot. I love the look of gel nails they look so sleek.

So this kit came with a buffer, a nail stick, an instruction leaflet,
a lamp,

a bottle of remover (acetone), a bottle of cleaner (rubbing alcohol),
a bottle of bonder (15mL),












a bottle of base/top coat (15mL)












and 5 polish colours (7mL; 0.24oz).












All-in-all a great kit, the sucky thing is at retail price it is more than $100 unless you can find it at Costco or some cheap warehouse like place.

So I am really getting into the gel polish, except for the prices of the stupid polishes.

Quo by Orly sells some 4.4mL (0.15 oz) bottles for about $10!












At Sally Beauty they had about 10mL (1/3 oz) bottles for about $15 which is getting more reasonable












and nailuv sells 15mL (0.5 oz) bottles for $10-15 which seems pretty good (if you don't include shipping). I know OPI has some gel polishes and I want to try those but I have to find them first... :P

Since we cure gel polishes under an LED or UV lamp (oh btw. all gel polishes can be cured with UV but not all can be cured with LED so make sure you buy ones that work with your type of lamp) sunlight can thicken the polish. This is why they are kept in opaque bottles (mainly black), to prevent sunlight from thickening and potentially ruining your beautiful, expensive polish.

Super Bowl

So I'm not a football person...But my dad is a little bit so just for him I made some Seahawks nails :)

For the eagle thing I made it using some refillable nail art pens.

The thumb is Suzi Says Feng Shui.

The pointer and pinky fingers are Queen Victoria Street

The ring finger is Cotton Candy with Quo by Orly Baby Yellow Instant artist

The middle finger is Suzi Loves Cowboys with Chic Chic Horray 

So this one got a really good reception :)

I love the simplicity of it. I don't usually do mix-matched art I usually prefer the look of one solid pattern, but this one worked really well. I tried to get my family to draw the eagle on my right thumb but they all laughed at me :( So I did it myself probably better than they could have done. 

Quo by Orly Polishes

Quo by Orly polishes

Quo by Orly Bubble Bath

Quo by Orly, Bubble Bath. This one was a little nicer than just plain sparkle polish because it had the faintest pink in the base so softens it from just seeing your nail itself. (the purple tint is from the polish I was wearing before :P)