Disco ball nails

I was gonna wait to post another nail update after I had a couple more designs underhand, but, I've been looking for a good Deborah Lippmann's Happy Birthday replica, and thought others might be, too, so wanted to share asap!

This is Happy Birthday, by Deborah Lippmann. It retails for a whopping $18, which I just can't justify spending on one polish(in fact, with last month's Sallys sale, I got 6 China Glaze's at that price!) I've become sort of a China Glaze only snob lately, but saw a very cheap seemingly good replica at Claires a couple weeks ago and picked it up.


This is Bedazzled. It cost a whole $4.50, and got another cute Deborah Lippmann replica for half off with it.

I did a single coat of it when I got it, but didn't like it so kind of tossed it aside. Then when looking up pics of Happy Birthday, I saw it layered over black so decided to try it, and I absolutely love it! The boyfriend calls it disco ball nails, which I can't disagree with!

Did a couple coats of China Glaze's Liquid Leather, and sealed with a coat of Seche Vite first.
I've tried sooo many black polishes, and this one is amazing.

Then did a couple pretty thick coats of Bedazzled, until I was satisfied with the coverage. I haaate seeing open spots, and usually these thick glitters leave me annoyed, but this was super easy to cover up. Instead of doing a top coat of Seche Vite, I used Konad's top coat. It works well for the thick glitters in my opinion, since it's so thick and won't smudge a thing.

Final nails(shot in a couple different modes to accurately show the glitter):


Hope this helps anyone looking for a good replica. Enjoy!

-T

Two recent manis

With the first one-photo-only set of mani's out of the way, I figured I could post two I did recently that I actually got good photos of!


This is actually my current mani. I got China Glaze's Lighthouse a few weeks ago, and while I absolutely loved it right off the bat, it was so ungodly sheer that it could not be worn alone. I had the bright idea to wear it over another yellow, but my only other yellows were also too sheer. Even over white it seemed to show every little imperfection.

Then the other day I stumbled upon some remaining polishes from the Electropop collection at one of the Sallys in town and grabbed Sunshine Pop. That worn alone is just amazing. Two coats for full coverage. And one very thin coat of Lighthouse later, I'm in absolute love! The photos do capture some of the shimmer, but there's so much of it going on it's as if the top coat is frosted.



The second is navy blue with gold half moons.


To achieve this look, first I painted all nails in gold, using Luxe by Orly, as seen above. Then using binder label stickers, I laid a circle on each nail, and painted over with my navy blue, which was Up All Night by China Glaze. The gold went on great, and looks good even on it's own. The blue is more of a DEEP blue, so unless in light it can end up looking black. The original tutorial I used was actually found on pinterest using the exact same colors. Here is that chart, for reference:


Hope you enjoyed. Many more to come!

-T

Recent crafty work

Although I don't have a whole lot of "old" crafts to upload on here, like I did nail art, I do have a few things I've completed recently. I'll try to reference back to their originating point and describe in detail best I can how to do em.

First up is my set of purple dino jars. The idea halfway came from an Etsy page, and then my own creative mind. I don't have this set on my Etsy page yet, but I do have a similar pink set on there now, if you like it but don't feel like making it :).

The concept is very simple, in theory. Glass or plastic jar, take off the lid, glue plastic/vinyl figure to it, then paint. The paint is quite tricky to get to stick to these dinos, though, and the lids were a NIGHTMARE. It must just be the material on these particular ones, as the ones on the plastic set of jars used for the previously mentioned pink ones were super easy.



Here's a closeup of the pterodactyl and some of the other 2.










The next project I worked on was again, very simple in theory, but I think turned out fantastic.

Literally, the only materials used were a blank canvas, scrapbook paper, a punch, and mod podge.

I needed some new wall art, as I just redid my bathroom in elephants, and all my framed Hello Kitty prints looked a bit odd. This turned out perfectly, and matched great. Although it is a bit too small for the area I chose to hang it up in, so I'm going to end up posting this on Etsy and re-doing the project. I'm planning on doing the identical concept, and probably very similar paper, but on a 16x20 canvas with heart shapes, to match the shower curtain a little better.

The original idea came from this blog, I was drawn to it from the butterflies punched out of paint chips, then saw the "3d" butterflies on canvas out of scrapbook paper, and combined the two.


The most current project I'm working on is doing crayon art, as seen here. My first attempt did not go so great, I thought the black background would make it stand out, turns out it just made it look like nothing. The furthest I've gotten in my next attempt is just gluing down the heart-shape and breaking the crayons, as seen in the first photo.





Here's a photo of what I'm hoping my project will come out
looking anything like:










And, last but not least, after seeing dozens of beautiful homemade apothecary jars, I decided to try my hand at it. So far I've just made a cosmetic brush holder, but I think it turned out great. This project cost a whole $3. Got the base - a candle stick holder, the jar - a candle holder, and the stones all from Dollar Tree, and then glued the jar onto the base. I apologize for the messy bathroom, but here's how that turned out.


Anyway, like I said, many more to come. I hope to add actual jars, do a better job at the crayon art, and I'll post pics of the updated canvas pop art, and some photos of the process. Any questions, feel free to ask!

-T

Old polish designs

Although I have nothing more to show you other than the finalized product, here is a short collection of some of the more recent nail designs I've done. If anyone has any questions on how I did what, or what color/brand I used, I can try to figure it out for you!

Here are the thumbnail versions, click for full image! I apologize about the crappy quality and/or surroundings, almost all of these were taken in terrible lighting in my kitchen, and all from my blackberry. moving forward I will at the least be using a nice camera to capture the true colors. The surroundings I can't do much about though, my kitties are very messy.


-T

Intro...again.

I have again decided to revamp my blog. It makes little sense to have one blog full of a bunch of random posts, with all of my new interests, so here's what I'm going to do. The main blog will link to EVERYTHING, and I'm going to tag all posts from here on out so they go into appropriate categories: personal, craft, and polish. So if you're coming here just to check out my latest nail designs, hit the "polish" tag on the right, and bam! And so on and so forth.

(I'd like to thank my wonderful boyfriend for that idea, as mine was to create, design, and keep up with three completely separate blogs. TERRIBLE idea, I know!)

That being said, I'm now going to make a decent layout if it kills me, and maybe do a few specific updates. Wish me luck!

-T