Easter Grass

 I have come to the conclusion that I only moderately tolerate textured nails in small quantities. Nonetheless, I had this idea and figured that for one day of the year, I'd give it a try. Found awesome large bar glitter at the dollar store, and it looked exactly like cellophane Easter grass! I didn't have a lot of time to put this all together, so apologies for some of the sloppy polish. I'm rather proud of how the accent nail gradient worked out. So much glitter!

Colors Used:

Sinful Colors Mint Apple

Bar Glitter in purple, teal, yellow, orange, and pink

Half-Moon and Microbeads

 I keep coming back to blue whenever I can't decide on the next color for my nails. In this case, I realized that I had a startling lack of periwinkle blue polish when I happened upon this awesome color at the Dollar Tree. I also found an awesome assortment of microbeads while I was there and totally stocked up on them. I'd been thinking about trying out and ordering microbeads for a while, so I was totally excited! These beads are more awesome than I had thought, even after a full day of work followed by a busy night, I've only lost one bead! Color is still strong too, I know I've read reviews of other microbeads losing their color.  Still getting used to the idea of texture on my nails. It's not annoying, but it's different enough that I keep running my fingers over my nails!

Anywho, this is my first attempt at a half-moon manicure. It's certainly not stellar, but it was fun and I like the final result.

Colors Used:

ColorMates Stormy Weather (I love periwinkle blue!)

China Glaze Want My Bawdy

Sephora by OPI Fancy Schmancy (Light shimmer on ring finger)

Donna Michelle Microbeads

Easter

 Time for Easter nails! These took some time, but were certainly fun! Put down a base coat of Wet n Wild I Need A Refresh-Mint, then worked in a gradient effect using Sally Hansen Breezy Blue before adding grass with China Glaze Gaga For Green. Basket, eggs, marshmallow bunnies, chickies, and butterflies were painted with a rather large assortment of polishes, but most were used in such minimal amounts that I'm not going to list 'em.

Colors Used:

Wet n Wild I Need a Refresh-Mint

Sally Hansen Breezy Blue

China Glaze Gaga for Green

Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow

China Glaze Goin' My Way (Basket)

ColorMates Mudd (Basket)

Sally Hansen Beige Blast (Basket)

Water Marbled Bands

 I wanted to experiment with pastels because I'm in the mood for spring (even if the weather continues to want to dump snow here...) Decided to do a water marble, as water marbling was what got me into doing nail art in the first place. Slightly modified things by taping off my nails to just marble a band down the middle of each nail.

Colors Used: 

Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac (Thumb)

NYC Tudor City Teal (Index)

NYC Skyline Blue (Middle)

Wet n Wild On A Trip (Ring)

Wet n Wild I Need A Refresh-Mint (Pinky and Water Marble)

L.A. Colors Purple BCC 590 (Water Marble)

Wet n Wild French White Creme (Water Marble)

KISS Nail Art White

Paisley!

I have learned that paisley is rather difficult to do freehand. I like to think I didn't do too badly at it, at least...

 Started with two layers of NYC Velvet Rope, which reminds me of beets. One coat looks like beet juice, two looks exactly like beets. And cleaning up around my nail bed was challenging because it totally wanted to dye my hand to look like I'd just punched a beet. Haha! Paisley pattern was painted freehand with a small brush.

Colors Used:

NYC Velvet Rope

Sinful Colors Unicorn

Sand and Color

 I'm totally on a roll using scrub tops for inspiration. Eventually I'll run out of tops, but not today! This particular top is a sandy light brownish color with swirlies and dots, and cartoony animals standing in front of bright wavy color sections. Since I didn't have a color that quite matched the color of the top, I improvised! I put down one layer of Confetti Silver Slippers, which is a light gray shimmer with a slightly warm tone. Then I put one layer of Wet 'n Wild Sparkling Dessert over the top of that, creating slightly grey-ish sandy brown. It matches pretty dang closely now! Anywho, for the rainbow nail I used scotch tape and edging scissors. It's not perfect, but they didn't turn out too horribly. The rest of the nails were of course decorated using a dotting tool and a small brush.

Colors Used: 

Confetti Silver Slippers (Base)

Wet 'n Wild Sparkling Dessert (Base) 

Wet 'n Wild French White Creme (accent nail base)

Sally Hansen Beige Blast (Light beige swirlies)

Revlon VIP (Dots)

Wet 'n Wild On a Trip (Dots)

Revlon Raspberry Scone (Dots & Accent nail)

Sinful Colors Rain Storm (Swirls)

Milani Dude Blue (Accent nail)

Confetti They Call Me Mellow Yellow (Accent Nail)

Butterflies!

 More nails inspired by scrubs! This time, it's butterflies and hearts. Butterflies were painted with a small brush and a variety of different nail polishes, and the hearts and loose square glitter were just from a cheap pack of glitter I nabbed at the craft store.  The base color is one of my favorite polishes, Sinful Colors Rise & Shine. It's actually a satin matte polish, but I went ahead and used a top coat over it. I'm rather proud of how the butterflies turned out on my right hand. Probably a sign I've done too much polish work when I actually like the butterflies drawn by my non-dominant hand more than the ones I did with my dominant hand...

Colors Used:

Sinful Colors Rise & Shine (base)

Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow (Red & Green butterfly)

NYC Broadway Burgundy Frost (Red butterfly)

Revlon Raspberry Scone (Pink & Green Butterfly)

Wet n' Wild How I Met Your Magenta (Pink Butterfly)

LA Colors BCC 590 (Pink Butterfly)

Sally Hansen Spark (Blue butterfly)

Sally Hansen Pacific Blue (Blue Butterfly)

China Glaze Blue Bells Ring (Blue Butterfly)

China Glaze Gaga For Green (Green Butterfly)

Blocks of Color

 Another design based off a scrub top, because... they're fun? Really, I wanted to try out some new pastel colors, but it seemed too early for Easter. So instead I just grabbed one of my more pastel-y scrubs and went from there.

Colors Used:

Spoiled Correction Tape 

Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow

Sally Hansen Pacific Blue

Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac

NYC Tudor City Teal

St. Patrick's, of course!

 Well, at least they're green! Rather than doing purely St. Patrick's Day green nails, I decided to continue with my current theme of basing nails around scrub tops. I just happened to have a green top! You can see a bit of it in the background. I'm rather happy about how the freehand hearts came out. I did a glittery nail because....that's what comes to mind when I think of the gaudy decorations in the stores? Sorry for the lack of cleanup in some spots, I swear the camera picks up and accentuates every mistake. And I used regular craft store glitter for a change, so it's square rather than hex glitter! Still fun all the same.

Colors Used:

Revlon Emerald City (base)

KISS nail art Black

ColorMates French Beige

Shany Nail Art Orange (23)

Shany Nail Art Yellow (03)

Shany Nail Art Green Glitter (15)

Blue Ripple

The effect is rather subtle, but I think that is why I like these so much. I just splotched on small patches of small glitter polish on top of a solid color base coat. So they are more exciting than flat color, while not being as eye-blinding as full shimmer. Fun times! I did have a thumbnail chip this week, so I had to cut everything way back.

Vaguely inspired by these scrubs, which have a mottled blue background.

Colors Used:

Sally Hansen Pacific Blue

Sally Hansen Frozen Solid

Butterfly 'Watercolor'

 Another pattern inspired by scrub tops! This one has a plethora of swirlies and butterflies. It also has a blue trim, hence the use of blue striping tape. I used acetone to water down my polish on my brush to make the watercolor effect. Definitely something I'll have to try again!

 

Colors Used:

Wet n Wild French White Creme

China Glaze Gaga for Green

Sally Hansen Pacific Blue

Milani Dude Blue

ColorMates Mudd

Dot Mania!

 

 These are some of my favorite nails thus far. Even though they're rather simple, there is just something fun and striking about dot grids. Or maybe that's just me, I don't know. Anywho, this starts my series of nails loosely (or closely) inspired by scrub tops I own. This one in particular I derived from a blue scrub top with a spotty background pattern (scroll down for picture). I did get quite a few comments on this one! And it was good practice with the dotting tool.

 Colors Used:

Sinful Colors Rain Storm

Pure Ice Pussy Cat