Don't Stop Beleafing

To kick off what should be the beginning of a blowout summer for me and my nails...

GO LEAFS GOOOOOOOO!

If you're wondering what kind of a genius I must be, painting the logo onto my ring finger, don't. I used a temporary tattoo! I did 2 coats of Sally Hansen White On and waited for it to dry completely before I pressed the tattoo onto it. I sealed the whole thing in with 2 coats of INM Out the Door Topcoat. The other nails are done in Joe Fresh Indigo.

The wear time for this mani was pretty unbelievable. I didn't expect the logo to last that long -- I put it on right after the last game of the regular season, and I fully expected it to be chipped off by Game 1. However, the logo outlasted Game 3, and I eventually took it off myself after more than a week of wear! I credit the 2 coats of topcoat -- the second incarnation of this Leafs manicure only got one coat, and it barely lasted through the day...

My life has been so busy for the last few months, I haven't had a chance to come on here and post about my nails! I'm studying up for licensing exams, so I obviously won't be posting too often in the next 2 weeks, but I fully plan on getting back on track once all that is done! This is my last summer before entering THE REAL WORLD (dun dun dun!) and I intend on wearing the heck out of the wildest numbers in my collection.

If you want to check out my other hockey-themed manis, you can click right HERE.

I haven't been getting too much done in the way of studying with all this hockey madness going  on...OMG OMG GAME 7 CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?? (For real, last time this happened in this city, I was graduating from elementary school.)

-K

Flashback: Happy Halloween!

(EDIT: So I totally just failed at technology -- I wrote this post ON HALLOWEEN, thinking that I had published it, but it turns out that I never did. WHOOPS! Secondly, I actually never had time to post that "more on that later" since Halloween because I've been so swamped with schoolwork and I took a me-day yesterday, so... :$)

I told myself I would never write a blog post in class, but here we are. (I'm bored as f*** right now, but I can't be bothered to do anything more interesting.)

With Halloween being only 3 days after my birthday, I actually did not do a Halloween-themed manicure this year because my birthday one was so labour intensive that I had to keep it on for at least a few days. I did have some Sally Hansen Salon Effects on last week to make up for it, but more on that later. Instead, I'm going to show you what I had on last year. LAME.

Except not, because it was pretty epic.

I used Color Club Almost Famous as a base and then I used scotch tape to mark off the bottom part of my nail before putting on one coat of Joe Fresh Crush. I ended up free-handing the white tips with Sally Hansen White On because I simply did not have the patience to wait for the lower coats of polish to dry enough to stick tape onto them -- I remember trying after a coat of Seche Vite, but even still the polish underneath lifted straight off.

I did this on my birthday last year, as a treat to myself for finishing my patho midterm. Can you guess what it is? If you can't, I hope you know that I'm judging you pretty hard right now.

Can you at least guess what (or who) my thumb was supposed to be?

I couldn't resist. .Cute little Frankenstein thumbs? Be still my beating heart!

I used China Glaze Entourage which is a light lime green with green shimmer running through it. The hair was painted on with a black striper in no particular pattern over the tip of my nail. The eyes were done using the end of a paintbrush, as this was my pre-dotting tool era. (Can you tell?)

Here's the whole hand:

Pretty!

Needless to say, I didn't go out that Halloween. Can't remember exactly why not, but it was probably some BS (cPhm) midterm or another. My cuticles were looking pretty awful...must have been my pre-body butter days, as well.

This year, I totally copped out. I only wish I had the time to do an epic design, but...oh well. Nail strips next?

Cupcakes, Glitter, and Rhinestones, oh my!

At the beginning of the school year, I told myself that I wouldn't let myself get behind on anything: school work, social life, extracurriculars, and this blog. Sixty days later, and I'm 0 for 4 -- especially when it comes to posting on here. 

BUT today is my BIRTHDAY, so as a present to myself, I'm going to try and get caught up. (Or, at the very least, I'm going to post my birthday mani.) It's my last year of school, and it's only fitting that, after 4 consecutive years of birthday midterms, I should have one last birthday midterm to deal with before I get the heck outta here. 

The concept for my birthday mani flip flopped through a number of different concepts, many involving Halloween nail appliques, gold leaf, and glow in the dark nail polish. I tried to combine all the ideas in my head, but when I finally got down to painting in all the base colours, it looked so tacky I could have died...sort of like a skittles mani on acid. So I made an executive decision: to bring on the bling.

Lightbox (more colour accurate)

Flash

Lightbox

I used Nubar Violet Sparkle (3 coats) on the pinky, middle, and index fingers. Violet Sparkle is mixture of densely packed, finely milled glitter in a purple base. The purple leans more to the red side than to the blue, as seen in the lightbox pictures, which are more colour accurate. I do have to warn you, however, that this one is topcoat hungry. I used 2 coats of clear polish + 1 coat of Revlon Quick Dry, and it still feels gritty.

The cupcake was a last minute addition to this ensemble. I love cupcakes, I love to make them, so why wouldn't they be featured in my birthday mani? I painted a french tip on my ring finger with Essie's She's Picture Perfect and used a striping brush to paint on the stripes in Joe Fresh Iris. The icing was painted on using a large dotting tool, and the sprinkles with a small dotting tool.

And just in case there wasn't enough bling already:

I have never actually used rhinestones before, and when I bought these at Walmart I thought that they were simply rhinestone "stickers", so I waited for my 2 coats of Iris to dry before I even opened the package. Lesson learned.

Blurry shot to show off the SPARKLE

I ended up using a wooden cuticle stick dipped in clear polish to help me place the rhinestones, which worked well enough. The sheer number of rhinestones I used was just cray. The second "2" is a little wonky just because I didn't have enough space for it. :S

By the time I finished the "22" on my left thumb, I was in no mood to do it all over again on my right, so instead I stuck with a simpler (but by no means easier) heart design:

Right Thumb

Despite the fact that I didn't end up putting in my most extravagant ideas into my birthday manicure, I'm pretty pleased by how it turned out. It took forever to do, but I would say it was worth it if only just to have awesome nails on this gloomy, rainy day.

Back to work, I guess. :(  Happy Birthday to Me!

Electric!

Brace yourselves. I was really excited about this when I did it, and I hope you will be too.

YES. IT IS WHAT YOU THINK IT IS.

Pikachu Nails! Love!

Pokemon used to be my life. I ran home from school every single day to watch the show on TV, and I used to play the games for hours on end, mashing that B button in hopes of catching every Pokemon worth catching. And by that, I mean running away from every damn Caterpie I came across while wandering through the bushes.

The yellow I used was, no surprise, Color Club Almost Famous. I used Wet 'n' Wild Red Red for the cheeks, and Black Creme for the eyes. I used a dotting tool to make the mouth and nose.

Before you all die of cuteness overload, I should show you my attempt at making Jigglypuff nails. Brace yourselves again. You might want to have a trash can near...or a toilet.

It looks so retarded. I almost didn't post it, but I thought you had the right to know: I suck sometimes. Jigglypuff was always my favourite: such a shit disturber. Sad that it didn't turn out well.

ANYWAY, I'll snap out of this elementary school flashback for long enough to get back to work on reality and all the problems that it brings. See you on the flip.

Pretty Plumerias

When I was 14, I went to the Philippines on vacation with my parents. There were these cute white flowers that I would pick off trees and magical stuff like that, just collecting them and putting them in my hair.

These flowers are just so darned pretty! I hadn't thought much about these flowers until I saw them when I went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens at the beginning of this summer.

And then again when I bought these really cute earrings at the CNE!

Obviously, the last step was to put them onto my nails.

If you notice the black spots underneath the pinky, that was simply an experiment to see if permanent marker would mark my nails permanently. They did. But the focal point is really the flowers, so please pay the spots no mind. (They also spell out OMG, which is kind of embarrassing, so...don't look at it, LOL)

The base colour is Coral Reef from Sally Hansen, and the flowers were painted in white and yellow acrylic paints. I would have wanted the flowers to be more white, but I only had slightly off-white acrylic paint left, and since I did this on Labour Day I could go and get some. 

It turned out just okay, but I have to work on my art skills, clearly. I really liked the white on this pink, though. PRETTY.

Back To School!

It's happening. It's really happening.

This will be, as far as I can tell, my last first day of school. I think it's kind of ridiculous, to be honest. I feel like I'm five. I can't have possibly gone through 19 first days of school. That shit cray.

For weeks, the plan was to go all out for today and do rainbow leopard print to inject some colour into an otherwise miserable day. That changed when I realized that this might be (probably will be) my last first day of school and I won't ever have the chance to do another first day of school themed manicure! So the leopard print was scrapped. And I did this:

This definitely is not an original idea. The pencil was from cutepolish (who apparently got the idea from a magazine), and the lined paper has been there and done that all over the interwebs. Most of my notes are taken on my laptop these days, and I haven't used a non-mechanical pencil for years, but these made for some pretty cute nail art. I also hope you've noticed that I'm holding pens instead of a polish bottle. (Tee hee.)

I've seen versions of the lined paper mani with doodles all over them, but I liked the look of the plain lined paper so much that I left it alone.

The white base I used was Sally Hansen White On, the lines were Sally Hansen Coral Reef and Tip Toe (Old Navy) Bubblegum scented polish. The pencil top is Joe Fresh Caramel, the orange is  Wet 'n' Wild Sunny Side Up, the ridges are Joe Fresh Crush, the erase is Coral Reef again, and the silver part is Sally Hansen Celeb City.

I did end up doing one doodle, on my thumb, which is not visible in the above pictures:

So, to everybody going back to school, I wish you good luck and a wonderful year. And, to the future Class of 2013: let's kick some ass this year, huh?

Green Velvet

On the list of nail art trends that I've wanted to try but haven't due to lack of time (as well as fear of judgement from my friends) is the so-called "Velvet" manicure, or whatever it is Ciate is trying to market at 1000% markup.

It started when I saw a blog post on using flocking powder from the scrapbook aisle at the craft store. I was really into scrapbooking the summer after I graduated high school, and I can tell you that flocking powder had me completely stumped. Still am.

In fact, although I wanted so badly to try it out, the reason behind this becoming a trend mystifies me. Was it just curiosity about what crazy thing we could stick onto our nails next? Or maybe it was a muppet fetish?

I was thinking myself that these nails channeled a bit of everyone's favourite talking frog.

I used 2 coats of Essie Navigate Her and some lime green flocking powder that I got on sale in a card-making kit with a bunch of other glitters. It was a much less messy effort in comparison to the microbead manicure. This time I was smart enough to use a plate to catch the excess powder after I shook it onto and pressed it into my nails. Also, fluff balls are not round and do not roll!

This manicure was an adventure in texture, which I loved. I could not stop feeling my nails or brushing them against my cheek. Amazing. But, of course, it had no staying power. Little bits of flocking powder would fall off periodically and I can only imagine that a whole day's worth of hand washing would wreak all sorts of havoc on this. It also reminded me of a tennis ball, which I did try to replicate on the nail (e.g. white lines), but I failed terribly and pictures do not even exist of this fail.

This was definitely a fun manicure to try out, but don't expect it to last too long. It would probably last a day, more if you don't eat or bathe or live...I'm not one to judge.

Turtle, Turtle

On the third day of my vacation, we met up with a turtle patrol.

No, not these guys. Sadly.

It was a group who was monitoring a leatherback turtle's nest. They invited us to go and see the turtle babies at sunset, but there was a wicked crazy thunderstorm that started around dinnertime and lasted the whole night, so it never happened.

So distraught was I about missing TURTLE BABIES, that this happened:

Yes. I channeled my sadness over missing the turtle babies into a manicure.

The base colour is China Glaze Sexy in The City. I mentioned in my earlier post that the colour reminded me of the ocean, which is where the inspiration really started. (As cute as turtle babies are, my disappointment was rather short lived. I was on VACATION. Sue me.)

The turtles were stamped on using a plate set I bought from Walmart's "As Seen on TV" section. I'm not sure if this Konad rip-off has a name, but it was a pretty good price for 5 plates. The polish I used was Nubar Reclaim. Reclaim was probably not the best polish to use for stamping, but it worked well enough for the design to be seen. I really wanted the holo of the polish to show up more, as you can tell by the multiple failed attempts at capturing it above. It did show more of Reclaim's super awesome holo in real life, but it was definitely toned down from stamping it on top of a darker colour.

Overall, I was pleased with my first stamping attempt using real polish. Although I must say that I enjoy free-hand nail art more, and at this point I feel like I am much better at doing that than I am at lining up nail stamps!

Countdown to The Olympics #2

What are the Olympics really about?

Just kidding. (Or am I?)

Clearly, I am. This is the Summer Olympics. My people are only good at sports in cold climates. And my actual people (and by this I mean athletes from the Philippines) don't really win so much at global competitions, see Miss Philippines 2010 and her mistake-free life.

The answer would be something along the lines of global unity and camaraderie. Good sportsmanship. Recognizing that we are all one. World peace. Nothing major major. (Goddamnit, Miss Philippines, was it so hard to think of a single thing you'd done wrong?)

Anyway. Since I don't have hundreds of fingers, I only did 3 flags. Where I'm from, where my parents are from, and the host country. The pinky was supposed to be the American flag, but in the end I decided that it would have been too much effort for such a small fingernail. Instead, I went with the "WINNING!" theme and painted it gold, OPI's Bling Dynasty.

The maple leaf was a temporary tattoo, the stripes on the British flag were done using a striper brush, and the sun on the Philippine flag was made with a dotting tool.

The colours I used were: Wet 'n' Wild Red Red, Sally Hansen White On, Color Club Almost Famous (yellow), and Essence Walk on Air (navy blue).

Here's the whole hand, with the Olympic flag showing as well. Amazingly, I did this without the aid of any striping or scotch tape. In the second picture you can see that my lines and edges are not 100% perfect, but they were definitely good enough to show you guys, haha.

That's it for now. Tomorrow I'll be posting my final Olympics manicure! :D

Canada Day, part 2

Good morning, and Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canadians out there!

I'm here to show you what ultimately became of my Canada Day mani. To recap, here are the materials that I used:

The remedy to the lack of Canadian-ness in the last version of my Canada Day mani was to add more RED!

First, I intended to only have the ring finger accent nail, but along the way I decided I wanted a couple of maple leaves in the design. Switched it up a bit by putting them on my middle finger instead of my thumb, like I would usually do.

The middle and ring fingers have 1 coat of Sally Hansen White On. The rest of my fingers have 1 coat of Wet n Wild Red Red with 2 coats of Nubar White Polka Dot.

Like I said before, the leaves and the lettering were pieces of a set of temporary tattoos that I applied to my nail using a wet cotton pad, then covered with 1 coat of Revlon Quick Dry Topcoat.

The tattoos were a lot easier to apply than I had expected, but I do have a few tips for easy application:

1. Cut as close as you can to the actual tattoo when you're cutting it out of the sheet: the leaves on my right middle finger are pretty spaced out because I left a fair bit of the white border around the 2 pieces I cut out. When I laid them side by side, they were a lot more spaced out than I wanted them to be.






2. Try as much as is possible to cut the tattoo to the size of your nail or smaller: if it is bigger, you'll have some of it stuck to your skin instead, or hanging off the nail. You'll have to do some pulling to take the excess off, which runs the risk of ruining your design.
3. When applying pressure, try to apply pressure evenly across the curvature of your nail: in the above picture, there is a crack in the letter due to one of the edges lifting off with the side of the paper backing that I didn't apply pressure to.
4. When applying pressure, try not to move the tattoo around on the nail: although the tattoo sticks on pretty well from the start, it's really easy to push it around as the paper slips off, so be careful!

Needless to say, I'm in love. I stepped out shortly after doing this mani to Wal-Mart and the cashier would not stop gushing over how much she loved my nails! She was really sweet, and I was ultra flattered. This is one mani that I'm really proud of. Here's another picture:

Hope everyone enjoys the long weekend! :D