Birthday Nails!

Hey folks! This is going to be a quicky post because I've spent the entire day at school, and then a family dinner, all with no break, and this girl is ready to go to bed! Anyhoo, today is my eighteenth birthday, which is very exciting, but also kind of scary! I can get a tattoo. I can buy lottery tickets. I can vote. It's a wild time. As usual, I had to do some sort of nail art design to celebrate the occasion, so here are my birthday nails!

Okay, I can't complain enough about how difficult numbers are to paint with nail polish. They're really difficult! I spent over twenty minutes on them on the one hand, and decided it wasn't even worth attempting with my non-dominant hand. I'm not 100% happy with them, but there was no way they were going to get any better. Plus, imperfect nail art has character, right? Right? 

As usual, I used a huge amount of colors in this design. On the cupcakes, the light pink is OPI - Steady as she Rose, and the darker pink stripes are OPI - Sparrow Me the Drama. The white cupcake frosting is China Glaze - Snow, the raspberry sprinkles are Sally Hansen - Cinna-snap (my current favorite color!), and the cherry on top is OPI - Cajun Shrimp. 

The black background is China Glaze - Smoke and Ashes, the white on the numbers is from a dollar store nail art striper, and the pink is Sparrow Me the Drama again. 

I feel like I'm starting to run out of birthday nail ideas here. I've done candles, and I've done cupcakes several times. What's there to do next? Maybe I should try switching up colors next time... but I love pink too much to do anything else on my birthday!

Do you have any fun birthday traditions you like to do? I spent tonight at Biaggi's with my parents and grandparents -- that place has some incredible tiramisu. Are there also any silly things any of you have done to celebrate becoming an adult? I'm still saving up for a tattoo (I really want a blacklight one, so that no one will know it's there except for me -- unless I'm at a rave or something!) but dang, those things are expensive, so in the meantime I've got to find so me other way to celebrate being eighteen. Let me know in the comments, and also let me know if you have any requests for nail art designs/tutorials in the future! I've been having trouble getting the creative juices flowing recently, so any suggestions would be really helpful. 

Thanks for reading!

- Allie

Santa Hats

Eek, it's been so long since I last posted anything! It feels good to be back, though.

Anyway, since it's almost Christmas, I had to do a fun little design to celebrate the holiday. What better design to do than Santa Hats?

What's more simple and recognizable for Christmas than a Santa hat? These only took me about ten minutes to do, but (I hope!) they still have a festive spirit.

The red is Sinful Colors - No Text Red, and the white is China Glaze - Snow.

If anyone else wants to try these, all I did was lay down a base coat, paint on a triangle with my red, and use a dotting tool to add the white accent. Two coats of HK Girl later, it was a shiny finished manicure!

I'm hoping to be back with one more holiday manicure before Christmas (I'm thinking snowmen... or maybe Christmas lights?) so I'll see you all then, but to anyone going away for the week to distant lands without WiFi, travel safely, and enjoy your holiday!

Bonus picture: Abraham wearing a Santa hat (because what could be cuter than this!)

ESSC 2014: #inspired by one or more techniques

Hey folks!

Okay, I really hope this isn't cheating, but today I pulled out a design from a month ago I wanted to post but ran out of time for. I've got a lot on my plate right now with college applications and all the crazy stuff of senior year, so I figured this would be a good time to pull out an older design. It still fits the theme, though, because as I did this just as school was really getting into full swing, I thought of it as a goodbye to summer and hello to the rest of the year. 

There's actually a funny story behind this one; it started out as summery flowers, but they completely failed, so in anger I smashed the brush against my fingers. And then I thought... abstract art?

I have seen this kind of design online before as a grunge nail art style, but I thought it was fun to mix it up and make it something very subtle and soft.

My base color is Essie - Navigate Her. I then wiped off the brushes of my other polishes and painted on the remaining color, alternating going horizontally and vertically. The three polishes used for that are Essie - Mojito Madness, China Glaze - Secret Peri-wink-le, and China Glaze - First Mate.

Okay, I'm off! Time to ask some teachers about writing college recommendations. Gotta love senior year, right?

Oh, and this is the last day of ESSC! Aww, who else is sad. I love doing nail art challenges; even if I'm not always happy with what design I made each day, it forces me to step out of my comfort zone a bit and try new things. Thanks soooo much to Fuxia91 and Pedrìnails for making this challenge happen! You ladies are the greatest!

Catch you all later!

ESSC 2014: #Tropical

Hey everyone! It's day 6 of the Endless Summer September Challenge, and the theme for today is Tropical!

Okay, so if you guys hadn't figured this out yet... I really love gradients. So whenever there's an opportunity to do one, you can bet I'm going to take it! For my tropical design, I decided to do a sunset with a palm tree in the foreground. 

(Oh, if anyone's curious, I sort of attempted to do a better, updated version of this very old nail art post). 

Y'all ready for this?

I started out with two coats of China Glaze - Snow to make my gradient pop. 

Wee, it's gradient time! From top to bottom I have Sally Hansen - Perfect Plum, OPI - Cajun Shrimp, and Sally Hansen - Sun Kissed.

Then with my cheap dollar store nail striper, I added the palm tree in black. First I drew the trunk, then the branches coming out of it. I finished up with the leaves and a little island detail on the bottom. I also tried to make the tree extend onto the pinkie nail because I thought it looked kinda funky on its own, but I rather stupidly forgot that the two fingers don't like up right, so... woops.

Time for a top coat!

There ya have it! After this there's only one day left of the challenge.. aww! I'm going to have to do a bit of brainstorming to figure out what I want to do for the last day. Lemme know in the comments if you have any suggestions for that, as well as what you thought of today's design! :)

ESSC 2014: #Summer Fruits

Hey folks! It's time for day 5 of the Endless Summer September Challenge! Let's just jump right into it today.

I chose pineapples for the summer fruits prompt because... oh, they're just cute. I also have a fun pineapple pattern tank top that I figured I could use for inspiration, so that made things way easier.

Here I've got Julep - Winona for the base, Sally Hansen - Lightening for the pineapple, and Essie - Mojito Madness for the stem (I used a dollar store nail striper for the black dots).

I had a little trouble getting the pineapples in the right shape, because today I learned that my poor yellow nail polish is really getting pretty old and icky... but hey, pineapples are never perfectly smooth anyway, right?

So... two more prompts left for ESSC! Aw, I'm already getting sad. Until next time... anyone have any other summer fruits they love?  I'm a pretty huge fan of raspberries (we grow a little patch of them and always end up with a ton over the summer), but I figured those wouldn't look as cute translated into a nail art design, hehe. 

See y'all later!