Aggies Do It Better

Hey guys.  Today is the one year anniversary of the bombing that happened at the Boston Marathon. As a runner it REALLY hit home for me, and still does. I wanted to do something to celebrate Boston and the Marathon. This is a blue and yellow linear watermarble. Not my best work, I still always somehow manage to smudge my first finger! ugh. Still, they turned out ok! I used Sally Hanson Mellow Yellow and Pacific Blue.  sun  shade

Hey Guys! April is Organ Donation Awareness Month so I wanted to show off one of my absolute favs, OPI Taylor Blue. It is only available on the website Taylor's Gift  at certain times of the year. Please go there and get one now!!!!  sun  shade I wore it for a full day and then the next day taped off some triangles with my striping tape. I wasn't really paying attention to the order I was doing them in, and they accidentally came out very matchy-matchy....as in my first 2 fingers are very similar and the last 2 are very similar. Oops! The triangles are OPI Black Onyx and OPI It's Frosty Outside (liquid sand)  sun  shade

Hey guys! I wanted to do some color block nails again ever since the first time I did them here with the Olympic colors. Those got me a my first feature in the magazine Nail It! I painted my nails 2 coats of Sally Hanson Xtreme in white and topped with Seche Vite. The next day, I taped off my blocks and filled in with my neons. I am so happy with how these turned out!!!  sun  shade

Hey Guys! I have something really fun for you today! The ACM's (Academy of Country Music) are next weekend and I thought I'd do some more award-show themed nails to go along with it!  They are held in Las Vegas every year! I just so happen to have access to an ACTUAL ACM award....awesome right! It's totally real and won fair and square.  No, I'm not saying exactly how, but the few of you that read this that know me in real life know how. This thing was heavy!! First off, I'd like to thank God, my family, my friends, my fingers and the sun. Hi kids, go to bed now, momma loves you.  Man, this thing is heavy! And, World Peace.  ACM Award! Here's the bottle shots. I used a ton of polishes for this! Mostly all OPI! 1st finger: gold is OPI Love.Angel.Music.Baby and black is OPI Onyx 2nd finger: green is OPI Jade is the New Black and b/w is Onyx and a white striper 3rd finger: OPI Onyx for background, mic is OPI Push and Shove with OPI Which is Witch on...

Hey guys! I don't have too much to say about this but.....PERFECTION. This is 2 coats. Ocean was number one on my Picture Polish wish list and it does not disappoint! It wasn't so much sunny this day so it does look a little darker than it is. But still. BE STILL MY TURQUOISE LOVING HEART.  natural light The 2nd day I wore this I knew I wanted to add a gold accent but couldn't quite make a decision. So this is what I came up with . The gold is OPI Honey Rider (liquid sand) done with striping tape.    natural light The sun peeked out for a minute so I thought I'd try a pose with out the bottle. Look! the outside of my house!  direct sun!  

Hi guys! Ok. Guys. This is THE HARDEST THING I HAVE EVER DONE that's nail related. I'm not even kidding! I'm not terrible at watermarbling BUT doing this clover-thingy was really getting me! I took 3 days, 9 cups, and 5 dips to get this, one that I only about 90% like. I'm calling at a win! Either my colors ran together, my clover disappeared when I tried to bring it together, I got numerous air and water bubbles, you name it. Basically every problem you could ever have watermarbling (that I don't usually have) I ran in to! I was determined to get on that was a least usable! Aside from that, how gorgeous is China Glaze Four Leaf Clover??? This was on my wish list forever and I found it at a random grocery store for super cheap. Yay! This is my first time using it! The gold is CG Angel Wings. It dries a little matte, so I added topcoat to all nails.  natural light, overcast day Then I added matte topcoat to it, because I NEED to get as much mileage out...

Hey guys! I have some fun MARDI GRAS nails for you!!! I will have full swatches of the 4 FOA polishes later in the week! My sister in law in Australia picked these up for me for Christmas. There's several more textures in this line that aren't sparkly, so yeah....out on those ;) And MAN, are these sparkly!!!!!!!!! I mean WOWZA. They really feel jewel-encrusted and nothing like any of the other textures I have. I used 3 of the four for this and I have a red one as well. If I have time I'll include some comparisons as well. The only downside...they are pretty scratchy. Like with my other textures, they definitely smooth out the longer you wear them, but these are way rougher than most of my Liquid Sands and Pixiedusts. shade sun After one day I decided to add topcoat and see if it looked any different. I used one coat of Gelous and 2 coats of Seche Vite, letting dry inbetween. shade, with topcoat Not much difference, but they felt better! ;) sun...

 Hey guys!!! It's Cinderella's turn! You can see my nails I did last year when I ran the Princess Half   here .  This year I wanted to do something different. To me Cinderella is very ethereal, fluffy, sparkly, and dainty. I knew I wanted to do a variation on a french manicure for her, but I was doubtful because I am in the process of growing out a broken corner on my middle finger. I waited a week, filed them down as short as I could, and hoped for the best. Here is proof, that, even with super nubs you can rock a french!   I took pics as I did this for a tutorial, but forgot to take a pic of the last step, then decided it was unnecessary because I can just talk you through it :)  shade Apply 2 coats of a glittery base coat. I chose China Glaze Glistening snow. I did not use anything under it. You can use any sort of glittery base for it, Fairy Dust would work also, even with out a base coat because we are going for a delicate look here. When it's dry, ...

Last up for this round is Ariel! Sooooo....... about Ariel nails.....there's been quite the internet-controversy it seems about Ariel nails lately....namely a specific design and who did it first and stealing and alllll that. I knew I wanted to do Ariel because she's one of my favorites, but I had to come up with a design that was suuuuuuuuupeeeerrrr far away from that. Not an easy task! This is what I came up with. Yes, that's a dinglehopper on my ring finger. :)  shade I was going to use a nude color as a base (namely OPI Glints of Glinda because it matches my skin exactly) but then I a)ran out of time to let it dry before taping and b)realized all the white parts of my nail would be covered anyway. So, I used used a clear basecoat. Use striping tape (or cut skinny pieces of scotch/mask/painters tape) and place them as shown. Make sure if you do have a base coat down it's super dry. Also make sure the tape is well stuck down. Use the brush or dab some o...

Hey guys! I chipped my first finger nail AGAIN and had to file them way down (square nail life for me). So I took the opportunity to wear some really dark polish, which is rare for me! I think dark nails look best SHORT so I gave it a go. I really love love love this polish, it's super dark blue! (disclamer: it was NOT fun to remove. No staining but went everywhere!) shade direct sun I wore this for almost 3 days with NO chippage-amazing! But then I get itching to change it up. Tape is a great way to make your mani last! I used my craft scissors (they had waves on them...or squigglies...not sure what to call them!) to add accents with OPI Honey Rider. Props to Honey Rider for being so opaque and covering that dark blue! No direct sun this day but WOWZA I love the way the clouds refracted the light on these. shade

Here's a quick and easy Valentines manicure! Colors I used are Sally Hanson black out and OPI Shorts Story. Use different sized dotting tools to make dots in rows! shade direct sun

This is just a fun little post to show off our offical Superbowl merch...picked up by my husband on a recent trip to NY. He tried to find a little trophy replica, but there were none to be found! I don't have any "true chrome" polishes, but this is the most beautiful silver I own..... OPI This Gown Needs a Crown. ZOMG! shade direct sun shade direct sun-blurry to show sparkles direct sun

More football nails today! These are my "Denver Broncos" nails, like I said in the past, I am unable to free hand logos and such so I like to create graphic representations of things! I really love how these came out, exactly as I had on paper. Besides the fact that they involve orange....ewwwwww. shade  direct sun (yay) Here's how I did them. For the chevron nails, I started with solid orange.  Once it was really dry (several hours) I used scotch tape strips cut with my pinking shears. I am finding that when using creme-on-creme-tape designs, scotch tape works best. I just don't get as clean of lines with painters tape. For the orange-tipped blue nails, I painted a narrow strip of white at the tips, then orange. If you just put the orange straight on the blue, it gets swallowed.  tutorial  The colors I used are NOPI Fairy Fairy Quite Contrary and OPI I saw, You saw, We saw, Warsaw. 

Hey guys!  Here's a fun and easy tape tutorial for you! BMW nails! shade direct sun Start with 3 black nails and 1 white nail. After your white  nail has dried for SEVERAL hours, cut your tape pieces. I usually use scotch tape for straight lines, but I thought I'd try painter's tape again. It doesn't matter what the pieces look like, they just need to have a right corner on them . painter's tape strips Tape the white nail so that the top right and the bottom left are covered (see pictorial below) and paint over with the blue. Remove the tape right away! I did find that I didn't get as clean of a line as I wanted, so I took a tiny brush dipped in polish and made the edges a little straighter. Here's a quick little pictorial collage of the process!   And here's the lineup: From L: SH Black out, OPI Alpine Snow, OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui, Seche vite shade direct sun