Tag Archives: NYC

20 Dec

Christmas Tree Accent Nail with Bobbie Star Gazer

Nothing says Christmas quite like a pretty tree filled with lights and sparkly baubles and topped with a glittering star. Right?

I wanted to do some Christmas tree nail art this year, but I didn’t really want to have a tree on every nail so I decided to go with an accent nail instead. I started with two coats of NYC Fashion Safari on all my nails and then applied  Klean Colors Military Green with a small brush and small strokes to make the tree for the accent. I decked it out with a dotting tool and a glitter star for the topper. For the rest of the nails, I added one coat of Bobbie Star Gazer over the base. Star Gazer was so pretty in the bottle, but I have to admit I was disappointed when I tried it. By itself, it was so faintly pigmented that I’m positive I would have had VNL even after 3 or more coats. The glitter may have been dense enough to cover everything up, but choosing NYC Fashion Safari as my base gave me the color I was looking for and everything ended up alright. Being a VNL-aphobe means I don’t play with jellies very much, but I will have to experiment more to make use of the pretty jellies I do have.

Anyway, this isn’t my best work and I don’t LOVE it like I did my snowflake nails. I’m not a huge fan of nudes on my nails so, honestly, it doesn’t really stand a chance. That being said, it IS cute and I still learned something important: Elmer’s School Glue Gel (the blue stuff) works as a fantastic peel-off base for glitter polish. I squeezed some into an clean polish bottle, applied one thick coat, and let it dry well before applying my polish. I only sported this look for a day before taking it off, so I’m not sure about the wear time.

That’s it for me today. It’s been a long week for me. I hope you are having a great one. Do you use anything as a peel off base for glitter polish? What polish/es have you used recently that looked the bomb in the bottle but bombed when swatched?

14 Oct

Wheel Of Time Nail Art – The Stole of the Amyrlin Seat and The Flame of Tar Valon

Howdy!

Wow! That is quite a title huh? I decided to put all that in the title in hopes that this would be easily found by anyone searching for Wheel Of Time (WOT) nail art. I couldn’t find any when I Googled it although I know I have seen something somewhere a long time ago.
If you have read the EPIC 14 book (plus a prequel) series by Robert Jordan then you can probably interpret and enjoy this design easily. But in case you have not, I’ll give you a brief explanation.
In the WOT world, the Amyrlin Seat is basically the queen of the whole world as all kingdoms bow to her and submit to the will of the “White Tower”. The White Tower is where all women who can channel (do “magic”) go to be trained and when they graduate to a full fledged “Aes Sedai” they pick an “Ajah” based on their personal preference. Each Ajah goes by a color (Brown Ajah, Grey Ajah, White Ajah, Red Ajah, Yellow Ajah, Green Ajah and Blue Ajah) and they dress according to their Ajah’s color. The Amyrlin is head of all Ajahs. She is “from all Ajahs and yet of none” and to symbolize that, she wears a stole with a stripe of each of the 7 Ajah’s colors. That’s where I came up with the stripes. The accent nail is “The Flame of Tar Valon” which is the official symbol of the Amyrlin and the White Tower. That is just a tiny bit of info about the series. It is a REALLY long story!

I imagine if you haven’t read the books then this won’t be much of a manicure to you. But, even if you aren’t familiar with the MASSIVE back story behind the inspiration of these nails, consider how hard it was to free hand these stripes. Ha! It did take a while and I know they are not perfect. I planned to do both hands but it was so late after I finished these that my Cinderella hand just got skittles so I could get to bed at a decent hour. Then my topcoat bubbled in the middle of the nail. Oh well, sometimes topcoat kills the mani. I struggle at times to float the brush to avoid smudging and to avoid bubbling at the same time.

That’s all for now. I meant to get this up on Saturday but time got away from me. It tends to do that with two kids to run after. I hope you all have a great week.

31 Jan

Buried treasure

Day 11 of the Pre-Spring Challenge is “beach”.

This manicure was pretty easy actually. I tried the tape method used here the index finger which is supposed to be a nautical pattern (makes me think of old school bathing suits) and I used bits of striping tape for the treasure map on the middle finger. The ring finger is supposed to be sand glittering in the water and obviously the pinky is an anchor.

The colors I used were:
Sinful colors – nirvana
Sinful colors – Why not
Chic – silky white
Chic – Pure gold
NYC – sidewalkers (grey)
Scotch tape, dotting tool and a small paintbrush

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