My nails this week:

nude + aqua + black + matte topcoat

I like retro feel of these nails. The nude polish & matte topcoat are from e.l.f for only $1 each! A total steal! I love e.l.f because they have good products that are affordable- and their shipping is very cheap- sometimes even free! I highly recommend e.l.f for your beauty needs!

Nail Swag: silver + purple

It's been a while sine I've posted.

Here's what my nails look like this week. The purple is from H&M and I absolutely love it! All I needed was one coat and it went on smooth. The silver is LA Colors and the accents have a purple and blue glitter topcoat from Sally Girl:

Nail Swag: Spring Inspiration

Here's my new nail swag for the week. I wanted something a little funky and this was inspired by the bright colors spring brings:

Colors: Santee "Beach Blue", Love & Beauty "Yellow", Wet N' Wild "Club Havana" & Nail Art in white

Nail Swag: layered dots

Since being in Korea, I haven't had much time to blog about the different nail designs I've been doing on my nails. I take a crappy iPhone picture and that's about it (and the picture never does it justice).

But today, I had some time. I did some layered dots:

Sorry for the dry cuticles- I didn't put my cuticle cream =(

What I used: Sally Hansen's "Dazzle" as base coat. For the dots: Santee in "Beach Blue", Love & Beauty in black, Love & Beauty in fuchsia, and LA Colors in white. And of course- my trusty dotting tool (and a piece of paper for my paint palette).

My nails were just the Sally Hansen's "Dazzle" for a couple of days, but it was a bit too boring for me, so I decided to spruce it up a bit with multicolored dots.


And here are a couple of other nail designs I did, but my iPhone takes crappy pictures (I only have the 3G)- so sorry for the low quality (I promise they looked better in person!):

Nail Swag: Spots

I decided to do something a little more conservative since I leave for Korea Monday night. And as I was doing so, my mom wanted the same design. Here's the outcome:

My nails: Love & Beauty in matte dark green

My mom's nails: Avon Nailwear Pro in Brown Pearl

This is a simple, yet cute, design I got from refinery29.com.

Colors of the week: Nailpolish #3

My mom's nails

My nails

 My mom's nails have a light brown base color with white. Mine are gray, lavender, black and white.




(Sorry my pictures are crappy. I have the iPhone 3G, so the camera isn't too great.)

Nail Swag: Simple

This week, my nails are a bit simple:

Colors used: Avon's Nailwear Pro in Luxe Lavender with Sally Girl purple glitter on top. Accent Nail: L.A. Colors in white for the base coat, Love & Beauty in yellow & dark green, Avon Luxe Lavender for the dots.

I did this the other night around one in the morning. My creativity wasn't at its highest level, so they aren't anything spectacular. But, I do have something cool for my nails for next week. I'm excited to try this new technique I saw. Stay tuned.

Nail Swag: Purple tribal, dots & glitter

My mom's marbled nails were starting to chip, so I did her nails tonight (plus she's working tomorrow and wanted something fresh anyways).

Here are the tools I used:

I picked this up today from Sally's. It's a dotting tool on one end & a small-tipped brush

 on the other. I love it!

Avon base coat, Avon Vivid Violet, Wet N' Wild Spark, LA Colors white, Sally Hansen's strengthening top coat

I love this cuticle cream! And it's only $3 from Sally's.

And here are the results:

A little tribal, polka dot, glitter action going on. My mom said she got a lot of compliments at work from her marbled nails and she said she will get plenty of compliments this time around, too. I hope so!

I'm glad my mom let's me use her to practice. It's so much easier working on other peoples' nails than my own.

Nail Swag: Glitter & Stripes

This weekend I went up to Northern California with my husband and best friend to visit some friends. So of course I had to do my nails before I went. I went with something a little funky- fuchsia with black stripes, and black with confetti glitter. I used the polishes I bought the other day. 

Here's how they came out:

They're a little wild and crazy, but it's all good- I like it like that. =)

How to remove glitter nailpolish easily

Since I like to use glitter nailpolish a lot, I was so happy when I saw on Instagram @missgoob post an easy way to get the glitter off! I tried it out & it totally works. No more having to scrape & struggle with glitter!

Here's what you need:
-Nailpolish remover
-Cotton rounds, cut into 4 (just big enough to cover your fingernail)
-Aluminum foil, cut into small squares just to cover the tips of your fingers





Here's what you do:
1. Put some nail polish remover on a piece of cotton round
2. Place it on the fingernail
3. Wrap it with aluminum foil.
4. After 5 minutes, take the foil off. The cotton and glitter polish will come off with it.




You might have some residual glitter stuck on the nail. Just remove it with nailpolish remover, it will come off easily. And it's that simple and easy.




I'm so happy to have came across this awesome technique! Hope you find it awesome as well. =)

More polish

Ok, my new nailpolish obsession is getting a little out of hand. But I can't help it- especially when there's cute colors for cheap!

My mom & I went to Forever21 and not only did pick up some cute clothes that were on clearance, I also picked up 5 new bottles of polish. 4 of them were only $2.80 each and one was only $1.50. I just couldn't pass that up.

From left to right: black, fuchsia, Matte dark green, multi color glitter, and yellow

I can't wait to try them.

Marbled nails- 1st try

Following all these nail art people on Instagram has really made me addicted to nailpolishing (I just made that word up- yes). I saw my first picture on there of nails with marbled nailpolish, and I wanted to give it a try. So last night, my mom agreed to be my guinea pig.

I googled "how to do marble affect on nails" and found some great sites. I didn't know how cool the method was. It seemed simple, but I think I need some more practice to get it right.

Here are the two websites I used:
http://wowprettynails.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-do-nail-marbling-effect.html
http://www.theidearoom.net/2011/07/water-marble-nails.html

I highly recommend NOT skipping the steps to protect the cuticles & fingers. I used Scotch tape for my mom's fingers. Just put a strip above the cuticle and the sides. You will probably have to do some clean up on a little bit of the skin with some nailpolish remover. But if you skip this step altogether, you will have a mess!!

Then you will need to choose your colors. As you can see above, I used a purple for my mom's base coat (use a base coat- if you miss any spots when you marble, your base coat will show up instead!) My mom sells Avon, so I have a lot of Avon nailpolish. It's cheap and I like it. I chose 4 different colors:

Then follow the steps on the websites. You basically drop your colors in a cup of water, use a toothpick of some sort to make a design, dip your finger in the water, cleaning around the nail while the nail is submerged, and pull it out- the polish will be on the nail (hopefully marbled!). I messed up on a few of the nails, but practice will make perfect!

Thanks to my mom for letting me experiment on her.

Colors of the week: Nailpolish #2

I've been on vacation for the last month. (For those who don't know, I was teaching in Ecuador for 5 months & now I'm back home in California waiting to go off to South Korea in a few weeks to teach.) So I've had some time on my hands (some days I even stay in my pajamas literally ALL day- I'm sure we've all had days like that).

On Instagram I follow @Nailartclub and was inspired by one of their nail art designs, so I decided to give it a shot & try and replicate it the best I could with what I had.

First you need a dark base coat. I used 2 coats of dark purple. Then you need a toothpick- the ones with one end pointy & the other end flat. The flat end is a perfect little circle. Choose some bright/light colors for your dots, dab some nailpolish on a piece of paper, dip your toothpick in the colors and stamp away on your fingernails making sure you wipe the toothpick completely off when you change colors. Make sure they're completely dry before putting a top coat or else you'll smear your dots! I put gold glitter on an accent nail to give my nails a funky little twist.

And presto! You got cute nails! Simple, but a little time consuming (took me about 2 hours because I wanted to make sure everything was completely dry before I moved on to the next step).

Here are the results:

Colors of the week: Nailpolish

I was at the pharmacy today (I went to the doctor's & he said I have bronchitis- not fun- so I was dropping off a prescription). I like going to the pharmacy because I like the cosmetics section- especially the nailpolish section. There's always sales and stuff on clearance. (and believe me- I only buy the cheap stuff. If it's over $3, count me out!!)

Today I picked up some new nailpolish.

Last week, my nails were Avon's Nailwear Pro in "Aqua Fantasy" and their Mosaic Effects top coat in white (their version of that crackle nailpolish):

This week it's Wet n' Wild's Megalast in "Club Havana" (on clearance for 99cents) and their Wild Shine in "Sparked" (also 99cents) from CVS:

I don't know why, but I'm in a total glitter mood right now.