Youtube Tutorial Tuesday: Distressed American Flag Nail Art Tutorial

Hey everyone

Today I have a YTT from PackAPunchPolish. Her video takes Saran Wrap Manis to a whole new level. Check our her video below.

How awesome are these? Here is my attempt.

As you can see I did not add the stars in. I think it looks much better without the flags, and you can still see what it is. I used OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls, Pure Ice's Celestial, and Zoya's Quinn. I hope you guys like this edition of YTT!

4th of July 2013

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I have some nail art for you today! This is one of two designs that I did for 4th of July. The 2nd design I'm going to feature on Tuesday for YTT. This design is a drip mani. 

I started off with a base coat and 2 thin coats of OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls. I then tapped off my nails using striping tape. I added 1 coat of Zoya's Sooki and added a coat of Seche Vite. Once it was dry I then used Pure Ice's Celestial to make the drips. Using a toothpick I finally added the smaller dots and added a final top coat of Seche Vite. 

What do you guys think of my first 4th of July mani of 2013? Stay tuned for more manis!

MSMD Monday: Matte Nude Cheetah Print

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I'm cutting it awful close today! I have a very special MSMD Monday. I have been lusting after these nails for forever. Today's feature is by PackAPunchPolish. I love her name, it's so much fun to say. Anyway, she did this amazing matte cheetah print that I knew I would have to do some day. Well that day is today!

I started off with 2 coats of Love & Beauty's Camel. It's so pretty. I love it. Even if it gives me a slight case of lobster hands. 

I used Pure Ice's Beware to set up the glitter dots and then used my black striper to outline the print.

As you can see I used silver glitter for mine instead of goal. I think the gold would have looked better, but I can't seem to find the right gold. 

I then used my new favorite matte top coat, NYC's Matte Me Crazy. 

Seriously this matte finish is amazing. I love it more than Essie's. 

Here's the final product. I love it! I ended up not doing it on all of the nails and I really like the accent nails. I almost wish I would have used brown instead of black for the outlines though. What do you think?

MSMD Monday: Dotted Gradient

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Today I have a fantastic little mani for you that I honestly didn't expect to love as much as I do. Today's design comes from Laura at PolishAllTheNails. I love Laura. I honestly have not seen anyone do all of the fantastic stuff she does with glitter. Loose glitter at that. She has a tremendous amount of patience and I know I could never do what she does. Thankfully her design that I'm featuring today features glitter polish and not loose glitter. She calls these Stepping Stones. 

I love it! Super cute and simple. I'm really enjoying the glitter peaking out from behind the dots. 

Polish Used: 

1. Pure Ice's Bewear
2. Pure Ice's Kiss Me Here
3. Art Deco Long Brush's Black
4. OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls

Here's a link to Laura's blog post. I hope you guys enjoy our designs as much as I have!

MSMD Monday: Mosaic

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Today's MSMD Monday comes from a French Blogger named Pshiit. Art really is universal. I didn't realize her entire blog was in French until I actually opened it and read her blog (instead of just searching her on Google). I do not speak nor to I read French so I went to Google Translate. It can really be a hit or a miss. For example, here is a direct quote from her page after Google butchers it, "I propose today a nail art rather easy to achieve if you are a little careful, but first I present the precious which I used to carry you!" It was okay at first, but the last part had me scratching my head. Seriously Google, get it together! I ended up just skimmed through the actual writing and looked at the pictures. The best thing about Pshiiit? She has little GIFs at the end of her posts that show tutorials for her designs. I love it so much, I could not resist remaking her mosaic nails. Pshiiit did a bright spring design, I did a pastel design for Mother's Day. This design uses striping tape! I recently bought a ton of striping tape on Ebay and I'm completely in love. Every nail artist should get striping tape, there's so much you can do with it!

I love how it turned out. It's so pretty and girly. It's very Mother's Day appropriate if you ask me. 

Polish Used:

1. OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls
2. Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear's Lacey Lilac
3. China Glaze's Lemon Fizz
4. Sinful Colors' Star Fish
5. Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear's Mint Sorbet
6. Pure Ice's Beware

Here's a link to Pshiiit's blog post. I hope you guys enjoy my design and Pshiiit's as much as I have!

Youtube Tutorial Tuesday: Stitch & Hibiscus

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This week's YTT is special. I'm actually going to be showing you 2 different videos that I followed for my most recent mani. Both videos are from TotallyCoolNails. On Instagam I'm doing a challenge where certain days through the month we have a specific design. This one was for flowers. I actually found this Stitch video first.

But I wasn't a fan of the flowers, I think they are actually leaves. But I wanted to do these nails so I had to find a different flower video. So I found this one.

I thought it was perfect because it matches the color scheme that was I was using. Here is the final product!

They turned out so great! I love them. And they were super popular on Instagram which completely made my day. I was so happy with how they turned out. 

Colors Used:

1. Zoya's Sooki
2. OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls
3. Kiss Long Brush's Soft Blue
4. Sally Hansen Insta-Dri's Blue Away
5. Pure Ice's Celestial
6. Art Deco Long Brush's White
7. Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear's Black Out

I hope you guys enjoyed my nails and YTT this week!

MSMD Monday: May Flowers

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Today I have nails that I did inspired by Sammy at the Nailasaurus. I seriously love her work. She's in my top 5 nail bloggers. This mani features striping tape, accent glitter nails, and roses. It is one girly mani that's for sure. But I got a ton of compliments on it. I even got a complement from the nail salon by my work. That basically means I have arrived in case you didn't know. :)

I seriously loved these, they turned out so cute. The polishes I used were Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear's Mint Sorbet, OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls, Sinful Colors' Starfish, Zoya's Katy, Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen in Green (leaves), and Pure Ice's Beware. 

I posted these on Instagram first (like always, check me out on Instagram!!!) and Sammy even commented. She said, "Amazing. And that was so fast!" I totally had a fangirl moment. Here's a link to Sammy's nails HERE. I hope you guys love these nails as much as I did!

Cheetah, Leopard, whatever...

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I recently did 3 different cheetah manicures in the span of 2 days. I had to go on a business trip to Ohio recently. Before I left I watched the Devil Wears Prada and I was inspired by Andie's coat. That's where this first mani comes in.

This is a half moon mani using Revlon's Jaded Night, Sinful Color's Nude and Orly's Prince Charming. I love how this turned out so much. It made my nails look so long and I have little nubbins! I also took my son to his very first zoo as an early birthday present, so that's also why there's an animal print theme. 

Next my friend Courtney came with us and wanted me to do her nails. So I packed a bunch of neon colors and did a different cheetah design. 

This is using OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls, Wet N Wild's Limelight, Zoya's Paz, Essense's Wanna Be Your Sunshine, and Pure Ice's Celestial. These turned out super cute and she loved them. So it was perfect.

This last one is one of my favorite manicures I did for the month of April. This features Sinful Color's Nude and Zoya's Phoebe. I just love the color combo and I'll have to use it again. 

Smelly Cat's Pocahontas Litter Box

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Double posts today! I've been trying to find inspiration for Kayla Shevonne's Indie Nail Art Contest. I couldn't think of anything for the longest time. A lot of my polish is glitters and that can be difficult to make art with. But I've got a Friends themed collection (The One With The Witty Puns) coming soon. One of those polishes is called, "Smelly Cat's Litter Box". I instantly knew what I was going to make.

The glitter polish is "Smelly Cat's Litter Box" and the blue polish is Pocahontas from my "No Ordinary Princess" collection. Both indies! The gray is Pure Ice's Kiss Me Here. The black is Art Deco Long Brush's Black. The green is Wet N Wild's Limelight. Lastly the pink is Kiss Nail Art Paint's Pink.

Here's a secondary shot featuring the bottles. I love how these turned out. I even did a rimming to show a litter box. I really hope I win one of the prizes. They are seriously fantastic. Wish me luck! Check out the other participants HERE!

MSMD Monday: Basketball

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How are you this wonderful Monday morning? Hating the world? Not me! I'm on vacation for the next week! Yes! So I'm super excited. Today's nails are from the vault. I did these originally for Selection Sunday, but history was made today so I had to bring them out. 

Today NBA star Jason Collins came out as gay. He is the first active NBA star to come out. This is such a huge deal to me. Usually a gay sports star doesn't come out for fear of losing his fan base or even locker room issues. To see Jason Collins come out gives me hope that others will stand up for themselves and come out, regardless of their professional statuses. 

Now on to the nails. Leslie over at Polish Art Addiction did these nails first and I totally copied. I couldn't resist, they are so cute. 

I'm going to be honest, I'm not for certain which polishes I used. I know the brown is Pure Ice's Magic and I think the stamp was from a Bundle Monster plate, but that's pretty much all I remember. Leslie's wonderful post is HERE. I hope you guys enjoyed her design as much as I did. 

MSMD: Cloud Mani

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I have a new Monkey See Monkey Do Monday for you. This week I'm attempting to tackle Nailside! It's a lot of pressure believe you me. But the cloud mani is one of my favorites. It looks like it would be difficult until you see her tutorial and then you all but smack yourself in the face because it's so easy. 

One of my favorite cloud designs of hers is called Fancy Clouds. So I had to replicate it. I'm going to be in a wedding in October and the bride had just decided on her colors, yellow and gray. 

The silver I used is my go to, Silver Mercedes from Pure Ice. The white is My Boyfriend Scales Walls from OPI and the yellow is Splendid from Hard Candy. 

It's certainly brighter than her Fancy Clouds, but a similar effect. I really enjoy doing cloud manis, you should expect to see more from me. I hope I did Nailside justice, let me know what you think!

Feathers

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Today I have a gradient stamped mani for you. I was looking for a delicate design and when I think delicate I think of soft colors. I used OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls as the base. Then I sponged on Zoya's Dove followed by Zoya's Caitlin. At the time I wasn't sure if I was going to stamp it or not, but feather manis also scream delicate to me. So I used Bundle Monster's BM-214 with my favorite silver stamping polish, Pure Ice's Silver Mercedes. 

It wasn't a perfect gradient as you can see on my ring finger, but I like the imperfect gradients. The feathers stamped perfectly. I really liked this manicure. 

February Haul

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I've never done a haul post before! I collected a lot of polish this month so I thought it would be quite appropriate. Plus my quasi-resolution was to be a better blogger. This is my attempt. :)

So that's the entire haul. 21 bottles of polish, 1 mini-bottle of cuticle oil, 2 sets of nail art designs, and 5 nail art pens. I also received my February Nail Art Society box too which is why I have an odd number of polishes, I included the polished I received in this haul. I will be doing an actual review on the box soon. Before I get my March box, I promise!!!

So you saw that I bought white flocking powder. I saw this set at Rite-Aid and bought it too. Now I have black and white. I'm so tempted to attempt a zebra design, just not sure how I'd go about that. 

I got this set at Rite-Aid as well. It looks to just transfer with water. There are 30 sheets with 4 different designs. I'm quite excited to try this out!

I'm thinking my local Sally's received their Cirque du Soleil set late, because they have been trying to get rid of it. They've had it marked down buy one get one free for a while now. So I bought Creative Fantasy and Get Carried Away by China Glaze.

A few days later I went back to Sally's and saw they had new Orly bottles. The old bottles made Orly unique, now they kind of look like everyone else. At the same time, I like the new black lids. So if you bought any of the new bottles you go one of the old bottles for free. They literally had 2 boxes full of these polishes. Plus they received a ton of the cuticle oil by accident. So they were giving that away too. I got Snowcone & Des Fleures in the new bottle and Plum in the old bottle.

Did I mention I have 2 Sally's in my town? Yeah, I'm lucky. Expressionist Red came in my Nail Art Society bag. But I went to the other Sally's and they had a promo where you bought a bottle of Fingerpaints and got a cute little black purse free. I bought Micheltangelo & 15 Minutes of Frame And if you renewed your Sally's card you received any of their Ion Hair Products $8 and under for free, so I got a can of hairpsray too. I almost always walk out of Sally's with free stuff, :)

I cannot stress enough how important it is to check the end caps when you go to a store. The best deals are always at the end caps. And Target and Walgreens always have beauty stuff in their end caps. Target had the Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Co-Balt Blue marked down to $1.78! Walgreens had Loreal in Tweet Me and Revlon in Jaded Night.

Walmart still had their new Pure Ice display up so I picked through it and found more polish that I wanted, of course. We have Over You, Never Satisfied, It's Complicated, and Sheer Luck. I've bought 9 or 10 of the new collection, I need to swatch them soon and post them.

I was at Walmart the other day and happened to look through this pile of mixed up polish that doesn't have a place in the racks. Tucked in the very back was this package. Sally Hansen Nail Art Pens are about $8 a piece and this pack came with 5 for only $10. I could not pass it up. It was the only one of it's kind and I had to have it. It did come with a Red that I already have and 2 Chartreuses, but I think for $10 I can make do. :)

I fell in love with Jindie Nails over Instagram. The polishes are so pretty. Then I saw Candyland with it's neon glitter, I knew I had to have it. So I start looking all over and see it at Llarow, but they are doing a restock soon so I go to Jen's actual Instagram to see what to expect, turns out she made a Remix to Candyland named Candyland Remix. So I not so patiently waited and as soon as I got my email saying it was in stock I bought it! I love this polish so much. The picture doesn't do it justice and that's kind of on purpose because I want to have it's own special post. 

Lastly I got these little beauties. I blame Let Them Have Polish for this purchase. She posted swatches on her Instagram and I ran right to Milani's website and bought 5 out of 6. The only one I didn't buy was the dark purple because the "fuchsia" looked pretty purple to me. You guys are going to love these, I can't wait to show you the swatches. They come in Tainted in Red, Yellow Mark, Aqua Splash, Spoiled in Fuchsia, and Shady Gray. 

So there it is! My entire February Haul. I hope you enjoyed it and I cannot wait to show off all of these polishes to you!

Pure Ice My City

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I really enjoy the dynamic of Instagram. It's very easy to do my nails and then post the photo quickly. As you can see I have random spurts of blogging where I blog for a week straight and then not for another month. It's on Instagram where I post my nails everyday. I try to keep the blog up to date, but I have a 9 month old and work full time in management at a bank. My time is obviously limited, so what I propose is that everyone uses Instagram! If you want to follow my nail art and I'm just not updating this blog fast enough for you, then please follow me! My name is Tara825c! Now I will forewarn you, it's not just nail art. I also post my baby, my family, and my life. I hope you do follow me on Instagram.

It honestly seems like every week there is a new contest on Instagram. I saw Pure Ice's Pure Ice Your City contest there first. All you had to do was design your nails based on your city. I live in Bowling Green, KY. Here we have Western Kentucky University and The National Corvette Museum. So I couldn't resist drawing them on my nails. WKU has the best mascot ever and that's Big Red. Here's what he looks like:

Isn't he adorable? When I was little at all of the basketball games the cheerleaders would throw red towels into the crowd and you would spin them shouting Go Big Red! So I had to draw the towels. 

The Corvette Museum is the strangest building I've ever seen. I've never understood why it looks the way it does, granted I've never asked, but still.

Yeah that's it. Don't know why it looks like it does. They also have the logo.

Lastly, we have shirts and buttons and stickers, everything that says, I <3 BG. So what kind of Bowling Green nails would they be without that on them? Here are my nails!

I am so unbelievably proud of these nails. It took me forever to finish. But I thought they were fantastic. 

Sadly I didn't win, but a lot of really talented people were in the contest and they did fantastic work. I am just really happy with my results. And I hope you like them too. 

ACNC Day 23: Rudolph

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I had so many plans for this mani, but I ended up not really using anything like I wanted. I did 2 reindeer and put red on one of the noses so it was Rudolph. Then I made Santa on the Thumb and elves on the index and pinky finger. It was a cute mani, my only problem was a forgot antlers. :)

Polishes Used:

1. Zoya's America
2. Color Club's Feelin' Groovy
3. Pure Ice's Magic
4. OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls
5. Milani One Coat Glitter's Gold Glitz
6. Wet N Wild's Ebony Hates Chris
7. Essence;s Glamorous Life

ACNC Day 22: Fruitcake

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These nails... I was dreading doing fruitcake nails. I honestly am not even sure what Fruitcake looks like, I had to google it. I was completely at a loss so I decided to just do a drip mani. I started off by painting my nails with Pure Ice's Magic. Then I took OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls and placed dots all on my nails. Using the same color I then made the drips. Lastly I took Essence's Glamorous Life, Wanna Be Your Sunshine, and Trust in Fashion to make the "fruits". And with a little bit of Pure Ice's Silver Mercedes for the highlights, my nails were done. 

The frustrating part? I was dreading doing these nails and once I was done with them, I loved them so much I didn't want to take them off.

ACNC Day 21: Water Marble

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Day 21 was Water Marble. I actually did this exact design using the exact same colors 2 years ago. I used Pure Ice's Siren & Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear's Green With Envy. I haven't done a water marble in quite a long time, but it was required so... :) 

It was quite difficult at first. I was originally going to do black and gray since it was "The End of the World", but I became to frustrated. And just for fun here's my old water marble from forever ago.

Oh geez. My water marbling has thankfully improved. 

ACNC Day 20: Candy

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I was waiting on this day. I watch Robin Moses pretty regularly and saw the tutorial she did on a Candy Cane nail. The tutorial is here. I really enjoy chevron nails and I wanted to try to do some tiny nail art. I think for my first try at following a Robin Moses tutorial. 

The Red is Zoya's America. The Silver is Pure Ice's Silver Mercedes. The white is OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls. To make the gray for the 3D effect on the bow and cane I mixed Pure Ice's Kiss Me Here with OPI's MBSW.

ACNC Day 19: Ugly Christmas Sweater

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I did actually finish this challenge on time. Just via Instagram. It's so much easier to post photos then to write up a full post. Hence why I'm late. Sorry about that. Anyway, December 19th was Ugly Sweater Day. Everyone was doing the exact same nail art, so I had to do something different. I tried my hand at my first Aztec Print using the tutorial from JauntyJill on Youtube. You can watch the video here. Then I wanted to try Sugar Spins so I used the tutorial from XOXOAlexisLeigh on Youtube. You can watch the video here.

I was inspired by Bill Cosby's sweaters to be honest. I just happened to use Christmas like colors. Pure Ice's Kiss Me Here for the gray. Zoya's America for the red. And OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls for the white of course. :)

ACNC Day 18: Classic

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Today is a day 18 and it's Classic. This really took me a second to figure out what I wanted to do. Then I decided I wanted to do a half moon, but what kind? I didn't want to just do a plain one. So I looked through a folder of my favorite nails I've seen on the web. I then found The Nailasaurus' half moon she did for the Tadashi Shoji Nail Art Challenge. I knew I had to try them. It's very rare for me to see a stamped design and actually have the stamp these days. I still need the 2012 Bundle Monster collection. This mani features Bundle Monster Plate BM21 from their 2010 collection. Today I'm going to also show you step by step how to do this mani. I'm quite excited and I hope you are too!

Start off with your base coat. Then cut hole reinforcers in half. Put them on your fingers one at a time right above your cuticle line. I used OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls to cover anything that wasn't covered by the hole reinforcers. 

I then used Pure Ice's Celestial along with BM21 to stamp the design on my nails. Pure Ice is the go to polish when it comes to water marbling and stamping. I'm not sure what makes them so different from the bigger brands, but they are perfect for these techniques. I couldn't recommend them enough. And they are so cheap too! 

Once they stamp is done remove the hole reinforcers. This will give you a clean line. If you have any leakage from under the tape use a little bit of acetone and just wipe it away with a Q-Tip or brush.

Now you can leave it like this if you want. If you have longer nails you could even do this as a french manicure instead of a half moon mani. But I wanted to smooth everything out. So I then used a nail brush from my Bundle Monster nail brush collection and traced the line of the half moon with Celestial.

I'm quite in love with these nails. I know I've said that a bunch throughout this challenge, but I'm quite happy with myself. I haven't really done my nails a whole lot since I had my son, so I was worried I'd lost my touch. I think I'm only getting better. I hope I've done Sam justice and you guys like these! If you attempt this mani using my tutorial please send me the link to your nails, I'd love to see them!