12 Oct

Waterfall Nail Art Featuring Girlstuff Diana

Hey gals!

Yes, it is Monday! But my Monday is almost over, and it honestly hasn’t been too bad. I decided to turn the air conditioner on today and enjoyed a blissfully cool day at home with the kids making up goofy stories, working on cleaning their room, and doing school. We also enjoyed learning about iguanas and sea turtles!

Today I’m sharing a quick and easy nail art look that can take an already fine-looking manicure to the next level. If you follow me on Instagram, you have probably already seen the first picture below. (Keep scrolling for something new though!) I started with Girlstuff Diana which is a lovely dusty blue creme with a hint of purple to it. (Blurple! Yay!) For my accent nail, I chose L.A. Girl 3D Silver for some sparkle.

Girlstuff Diana with silver Accent nail

To add more pizzazz, I  used a thin striper brush and added some stripes at the base of my nails tapering off toward the tips. As you can see, I used gray, white, black, and silver polish for the stripes. Easy peasy! They call this “Waterfall” nail art.

Girlstuff Diana with nail art

I always love trying new, super-quick nail art looks. Don’t you? Please comment and share your favorite go-to nail art look for when you need something quick and easy.

I hope you are having a great day. Keep smiling!

Hugs,
Rach

02 Jan

The Nailinator Does Nails

Hi Gals!

Happy New Year! I’ve got a scheduled post for you today as our plans to go out of town pushed through. Hopefully the weather will have cleared up and we have had the chance to soak up some sun while we are by the beach. If not, I’m sure we are having a grand time anyway.

I thought I would do a quick post sharing some of the nail art I have done for friends and family last month. I did a few designs that are seasonal and a few that would be great for any time of the year.

First up we have some fun zebra stripes in Christmas colors that I convinced The Shutterbug (my youngest sister) to let me try on her. If anyone can pull of this look, it’s her! I did the stripes with acrylic paint and a striper brush.

Christmas Zebra Stripes

Next we have some super cute and easy winter wonderland nails I did for The Bookworm (my other younger sister). We started with a light blue base (Sansan Warm Blue), and I stamped snow flakes and an adorable snowman from my OB19 plate that I purchased last year from MyOnline Shop. I added a few tiny dots for a finishing touch.

Winter Wonderland Nail Art

Next up is a look The Queen Mother requested after seeing my Holly Jolly nails. She wanted my holly stamped accent nail with all the other nails in red. I wish I could remember the name of the red she brought along. It is a stunner. I will check with her and update this (then I’ll probably go out and buy it!).

Holly Accent Nail

Next, I’m showing you a look that I was surprised to find I ended up really liking. A friend showed me a picture and I did my best to replicate what she was asking for. First I painted the whole nail in a very light jelly pink. Then I added color to just half of each nail (alternating brown and white). On each brown nail I painted a tiny gold bow. On each white nail I taped off the non-white part of the nail and stamped an image in black over the white. The tape kept the stamping on the white part I had painted before. I added a gold stripe across the nail and was finished. I had never tried a half nail design like this and had also never tried a stamping technique like this. It is always fun to try new things.

Gold Bow

The next look is a floral design, something I’ve done several times before with different color combinations. This lovely lady picked mint green and off white as her base colors and wanted small roses and leaves. This was my first time painting such tiny roses which proved to be a challenge. I did my best, though, and she liked them so that is what counts after all.

Floral Nail Art

The last look I have to share with you is so fun and colorful! My friend wanted rainbow stripes with black strokes. I used a striping brush to paint each color in rows starting from the cuticle out toward the tip (purple, blue, green, yellow, pink and orange). I used black acrylic paint and added the black marks. We did this on her accent nails and thumbs. Since we used 6 colors I suggested we paint the other nails with those colors. They look suuuper cute!

Rainbow Nails

I love doing nails for other people. It is fun to take on the challenge of suggesting things that will suit them and colors that will go with what they have in mind. Do you do nails for family and friends? If you follow me on Instagram you have probably already seen these as I share them there most of the time.

I hope you have had a wonderful holiday vacation so far. Mine has involved lots of food and laughs with my family which is just the way I like it. I’ve been under the weather with a crazy cold that won’t go away. But on the bright side, my hubby has been a darling taking care of me and the kids most of the time. I’m a lucky lady for sure!  Whatever you ended up doing for the New Year, I hope you have had a great time and blessed year ahead!

Hugs!
Rach

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.

26 Sep

Argyle Nail Art

Greetings!
I’ve got a short and sweet post for y’all today.

Day 26 of the 31 Day Challenge is “Inspired by a pattern”. I’ve chosen to go with an Argyle pattern. I saw a tutorial by Cute Polish for this nail art way back when I was just getting into nail art and I tried it out on a nail wheel right away and it looked very nice. So when I saw it on a nail wheel the other day I thought it was time to try it out on my nails. I learned that doing my nails while watching episodes of the Doris Day Show makes for some wobbly stripes. Definitely not my neatest work. :/ Whatever! I still think they turned out cute. Don’t you?

The colors I used are San San Cloudy Gray, Caronia First Crush (purple), China Glaze For Audrey (green) and Jocarste White.

If you are just starting out with nail art I strongly suggest you check out Cute Polish on You Tube. She has some pretty cute designs that are really easy to achieve. Have a great day!

Hugs!

13 Sep

Purple and Black Woven Stripes

I’ve had a bit of a dry spell in the inspiration department lately. But I’ve noticed that several of the blogs I follow have been participating in the 31 day challenge (2013) that Chalkboard nails created and Mr. Nailinator suggested that I go with one of the prompts for that. Day 12 is stripes and I came up with this.

I started with two coats of Color Club Eternal Beauty and then used L.A. Girl 3D in Black Illusion and a striper brush to add the stripes. I’ve included a picture in warm light so you can see a bit of the holo shimmer. The sun didn’t come out all day today so there are no sunshine shots. Oh well! I think they look pretty darn cool. Don’t you?

I hope everyone is having a great day.

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