Steel Nails

Hi girls, just a quick mani to show you today. I am in LOVE with the SH gem crush line of polishes, and I have 3 of them but secretly (or not so secretly lol) want all of them! This is a mani with a diagonal overlay of the SH gem crush "Glitz Gal"

Here is the base color, Revlon's "blah" on its own.

And...I had to mattify it, of course.

Tell me which you like better, the shiny or the matte? And would you like seeing my other two gem crushes in a mani like this?

Neon Pink!

Hi everyone! I know it's been a few months since I've posted, I just wanted to let you know I'm still updating this, and posts will be more regular from now on. This past semester has had a lot of changes for me, and I'm not even in school! With my hubby's classes and other life stuff I've just been so busy, you know. Now that summer's here I'm excited to do some more flowery, bright, girly nail tutorials for you!

This is a pink manicure I did with the Sally Hansen "Fruitie Petutie" polish as the base coat (it's also my #1 fave pink EVER) and a Billie neon on top, I forget the color name.

Here's my fave pink by itself (don't ask why I'm holding the other bottle lol)

Here's after I put the neon on top.

And everything is better with glitter... right?

Roses & Butterfly Mani

I'm sad that I missed two of the biggest holidays for nail designs: Halloween and Thanksgiving, but I've been soooooo busy the last several weeks. Here's a nail design that turned out way better than I thought, and I want to do something similar again soon!

I used these polishes:

Here are pictures of the plates I stamped with:

(The rectangular plates are an unnamed brand I got on eBay, just search for "oblong nail plates", I got the 12 pack, there's also and 18 pack)

Sponge on the first layer of gradient.

Sponge on a darker color to continue the gradient.

And stamping time :) I did some leafy flowers all in green to just look like a bunch of leaves, then a rose with part pink and green polish, then the purple butterfly on my thumbs only.

Crackle over Glitter

This manicure was super fun, and super easy! I love experimenting with crackle in different ways. This time I was trying crackle over a very glittery polish to see how much of the sparkle would show through.

The base is an unnamed Wet N Wild pink polish, Sally Hansen Rockstar Pink, and Cherimoya crackle polish in Innocence.

Here's the base color on its own, very pretty.

A good layer of glitter.

This is the matte crackle finish with no topcoat. Tell me in the comments below if you like the shiny one at the top better, or this glitter/matte combo.

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Polishes Review

I know everybody's probably seen these already; they're nothing new. I just wanted to share swatches of the colors I have, and my opinion on them.

First up, Yellow Kitty. This one is fairly sheer, I think I did 2-3 coats. I have to say I really love this soft yellow.

Gray by Gray: a perfect bluish gray, I LOVE this color! This is 2 coats.

Raisin the Bar: Very sheer, I think I did 3 coats (first pic is only one coat)

Even after any number of coats I still see brush strokes :( Maybe it's just my bottle, but this gorgeous color is kind of ruined for me because of that.

My FAVORITE PINK EVER! This is Frutti Petutti, one coat.

Grass Slipper, the best yellowy green I have in my collection (the pics lower down are more accurate of color, this one not so much). The only thing is, it stains SO bad, wear a base coat under this one for sure.

This happened a while ago, I've only ever seen a few polishes do this, and usually SH polishes never do. This is the shade of green that Grass Slipper really looks like:

Tell me in the comments which color is your favorite, or if there are any you have that you'd recommend I buy!

Pink Camouflage Nails

So this turned out to be more of a pink zebra stripe, mostly because I used a zebra stamp. I saw this design in a video on Youtube (for the life of me I can't remember which nail guru uploaded it) and I had to try it for myself. First of all, she did light pink as the base, then medium splotches and dark pink stripes, and she used a plate I don't have for the camo-looking stripes rather than zebra-looking stripes.

Supplies:

SH Complete Salon Manicure in Frutti Petutti, Tivoli (no name) and Wet N Wild (no name)

Base and top coats pictured below.

Stamp was from Bundle Monster plate 223

So I started off with the dark pink (sorry no photos for this part!) and once it dried, I used the middle pink and just with the polish brush it came with, made uneven splotches like paint splatters, a few on each nail. They're hard to see in the finished design though :( And then I did the stamp with the lightest pink.

Peach with Gold Stamp & Glitter

This manicure is very subtle, but gorgeous, IMO. I wore it for a long time before it got so chipped I was forced to remove it.

Sorry about the photos, but the gold stamp (a flower pattern, if you can't tell) didn't pick up on my camera; it isn't this subtle in real life, you can tell its flowers.

The stamp I used, from Bundle Monster, I don't remember which plate lol

Revlon Peachy, by itself. I don't have a photo of the stamping polish, but I used Sally Hansen complete salon manicure in Gilty Pleasure.

After the stamp, I added these loose, hexagonal gold glitters to the center of a few flowers on each nail.

2 New YouTube Videos Up!

I haven't done posts on this blog for my 2 recent video tutorials I posted on YouTube, so that's what this post will be about.

The first is a green manicure with vertical cut between two colors. You can watch this Green Split manicure video on my YouTube channel, artistrynails.

The second video is a sponging tutorial with a stamp over top. You can watch this White and Green Sponge Gradient with Dots video on my YouTube channel as well.

I hope you guys enjoy!

Grey with Stripes

So I saw this package of skinny, colored tape on eBay for very cheap and decided to try it. It's called striping tape in the nail art world, and you just stick it on like normal tape!

I have a coat of Wet Cement by Sally Hansen on under the tape.

This is the order I put the tape on

Here's a closer photo of the tape itself:

The only thing about this tape is it doesn't stay on for long, after a few hours even under the best top coat, the ends will start peeling up. I also noticed just with the light blue tape, that it fades in color to silver so after a while it looked like I only used dark blue and silver, instead of all three colors. Maybe that's just the light blue tape I got...