Today I have a completely adorable manicure to show you for YTT. This video is brought to you by Professional DQ. Hope you guys like it.
How cute was that video? I love the fresh take on owl nails. I've never seen anything like it and I knew I had to do it. This was based on Sunday being the first day of my Alphabet Challenge on Instagram (@Tara825c look me up!). A stood for Aztec so here we are.
I had a little bit of a hard time because my pink striper was very gloopy and I didn't have any thinner. Other than that I think these are wonderful.And I hope you like them too.
Today I have a design from Paulina's Passion. She did these amazing kite tail nails that I knew would be perfect for Bow Day. What is Bow Day you ask? I started a new challenge on Instagram. The Alphabet Challenge. Today is B for Bows. Yesterday was A for Aztec but it'll be featured tomorrow for YTT. You can view Paulina's design here!
Polishes used:
Zoya's Kristen
Zoya's Wednesday
Zoya's Katy
Zoya's Mira
Zoya's Paz
Julep's Something Blue
China Glaze's Fairy Dust
So what do you think? I love them.They were easier than I was expecting which is certainly a plus after working on a Monday. :) Hope you guys enjoyed today's Monkey See Monkey Do Monday.
Hey everyone Today I have a fantastic new spin on traditional animal prints. The design was originally done by Very Emily. She was nice enough to also include a tutorial as well.
The polishes I used today were Zoya's Sookie, Zoya's Paz, Zoya's Katy, and Julep's Alaina. I just adore how this turned out. You can read Emily's post here. I hope you enjoyed today's MSMD Monday.
Hey everyone Today I have a special mani for you. Today we are featuring an Ikat design. Funny enough I discovered I'd been mispronouncing it. I've been saying it eye-cat. It's apparently ee-kaht. Go figure. I was going to look for a Youtube video to feature an Ikat design on Youtube Tutorial Tuesday, however I couldn't find one as good as Kayla's tutorial on her blog. Who am I talking about you ask? Kayla at KaylaShevonne. She did a picture step by step tutorial that's fantastic.
Polishes Used:
Salon Perfect's Bellini
Art Deco Long Brush's White
Salon Perfect's Black
An unnamed blue polish by Sweet T Lacquer (Tara's Nail Polish aka Me!)
I love it! I've seen this design before and never really was that interested in it, but it's a design I haven't tried so I had to at least attempt it. Like I said Kayla's tutorial is fantastic, so I really didn't have a problem attempting this design. Here tutorial is HERE I recommend trying it out if you are at all interested in Ikat. I hope you enjoyed today's mani!
Hey everyone Today I have another design from CutePolish. This design was perfect for 3 different reasons.
I love CutePolish
I needed flowers for my Instagram challenge
I needed a Youtube video
Perfect right? This was a super cute design that I'm very excited to show you guys. Here's the video:
My colors are a little darker than what CutePolish picked, but I think it's cute nonetheless. My flowers are totally crazy looking too.
I probably should have used a toothpick or a dotting tool, I think they would have looked better than. But they are still cute.
Polish Used:
OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls
NYC's Midtown Mimosa
Orly's Snowcone (which seriously smells bad)
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri's Mango Motion
Salon Perfect (Long Brush)'s Black
I made sure to have the color picking out past the flower. I gives it a little something extra I think. What do you guys think? I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
Hey everyone Today I have a gradient for you. I love doing these. Granted I don't do them like other people apparently. I start by putting on the top color, this is typically the lightest color. Then I start sponging them on starting at the bottom and going up until it's smoothed in with the lightest polish. Then if I mess up I can get the top color and go back over with a sponge. Does that even remotely make sense? I might need to do a video to show you what I mean. Anyway, one of my favorite bloggers, Alice from OneNailToRuleThemAll, did this gradient palm tree design. I immediately fell in love with it. There's also a June Nail Art tag on Instagram and day 1 was Summer. (Go follow me there!) I knew this design would be perfect, it just screams summer to me.
I love it! These turned out so great. I haven't done palm trees in almost 2 years, it's like riding a bike. Seriously love these. Polish Used:
OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls (the base)
NYC's Midtown Mimosa
Salon Perfect's Bellini
Sinful Colors' Summer Peach
Salon Perfect (Long Brush)'s Black
Check out Alice's design HERE. She finished hers with a matte top coat, but I just couldn't leave them matte. I work at a computer all day and matte polish doesn't last long with me. I want these bad boys to last. Love them!
I do want to take a second to talk about Salon Perfect's long brush collection. The bottle is a nightmare. I was shaking it and the balls are obviously way to big and the bottle shattered in my hand. The brush is fantastic though, so I took an hour or so out of my life to try to salvage the black base and move it into an Art Deco bottle. Luckily the brush can screw on to those bottles. This polish is also strange. It dries matte and if you have put on a top coat before you dry, you can literally just wipe it off and start over. This can be both good and bad. Another bad thing about them is that it's a completely pain to get off if it gets on your skin. The brush is completely worth all of the trouble though. It's very firm and shorter than most long brush's. I very much enjoy drawing with it. Keep in mind this is only the long brush collection. The regular bottles are fantastic and they have great colors to chose from.
I really hope you have enjoyed today's edition of MSMD Monday!
Hey everyone I'm so sorry this post is so late! At least it's still Tuesday right? Today's video is from CutePolish again. I can't help it. I love her videos so much. This nail art is from the vaults. I did this a while ago, but for some reason never featured it on my blog. Here's the video that inspired it!
How cute is that? It looks so difficult when you just look at it. But CutePolish completely breaks it down to an easy design. But I'll be honest, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to draw the castle on all 10 nails.
Instead of doing a glitter gradient, I borrowed designs from Leslie at Polish Art Addiction. You can view them HERE under her Disney tab. I can't remember which polishes I used, but I can tell you which princesses are honored here. Index: Belle Middle: Ariel Ring: Jasmine Pink: Tiana Both Leslie and CutePolish are fantastic artists and I can only hope I become as good as them. I hope you enjoyed my post today, again sorry it was so late!
Hey everyone 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:
Pure Ice's Bewear
Pure Ice's Kiss Me Here
Art Deco Long Brush's Black
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!
Hey everyone I know where in the world have I been?! I was going to update via the app last night, but I'm such a weirdo when it comes to everything looking the same that I just couldn't do it. Plus my nails worked better with a Tuesday theme. Yesterday was the 20th and the #nailartmay challenge on Instagram for the day was Strawberries. I went on Youtube and found this tutorial.
And I totally didn't stick with just this plan. I wanted to challenge myself. I added to the design and brought back and oldie but a goodie.
Chocolate covered strawberries! And because the video was Strawberries and Cream themed I did pink strawberries with cream drips. I'll admit I like the red strawberries so much more, but I still think the overall nail design is adorable. What do you guys think? Polishes Used:
Revlon's Firefox
Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen's Green
Nail Art Long Brush's Cocoa
Kiss Long Brush's Yellow
Wet N Wild's Tickled Pink
Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen's Chartreuse
OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls
And just because I'm awesome, here's the first time I attempted this design.
Did I mention you guys aren't allowed to judge my old nails? :D I'm thinking of adding in a Throwback Thursday where I redo old designs, what do you think?
Hey everyone Today I have a special treat for you. Today's nails are dedicated to the best thing that ever happened to me, my son. Andrew is just turned one and is the best little boy you could ever ask for. He also loves the Minions from Despicable Me. The first trailer for Despicable Me 2 featured the Minions singing Barbara Ann only it was Bananas and Potatoes. The video is hilarious and I'm going to link you to it below.
Someone wonderful person on Youtube looped this song for 14 minutes. When my little boy gets fusses grocery shopping it's my go to calm down video for him. So I could not resist doing my nails to match. These are a little old (I had acrylics then!) but they are still awesome.
Andrew totally loved them and they were great to sing with. I hope you guys love them as much as we did. Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms out there! For me there's nothing better than being a mom!
Hey everyone 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:
Zoya's Sooki
OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls
Kiss Long Brush's Soft Blue
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri's Blue Away
Pure Ice's Celestial
Art Deco Long Brush's White
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear's Black Out
I hope you guys enjoyed my nails and YTT this week!
Hey everyone 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!
Hey everyone Can you tell what today's theme is? Star Wars!!! Yesterday was Star Wars Day and today is a little special too. I could not think of anything to do for these nails. I almost went with a Lego Star Wars theme. Until I thought of my nephew. He's obsessed with Angry Birds. He's played since it first came out and he's so much better at it then me. If I can't beat a level I had my phone to him and he beats it with 3 stars. He's a true genius. He became obsessed with Star Wars once they released Angry Birds Star Wars so why not!
I love how they turned out! I used a lot of polish for this one.
OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls
Zoya's Ibiza
Love & Beauty's Midnight
Zoya's Sooki
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear's Blue Me Away
Pure Ice's Kiss Me Here
Art Deco Long Brush's Black
Art Deco Long Brush's White
Sinful Colors' Star Fish
Nail Art Long Brush's Cocoa
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear's Sun Kissed
China Glaze's Trendsetter
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear's Black Out
Zoya's Trixie
So many polishes. I ended up having to go onto Youtube to see how to draw out the birds. Took me quite a bit to finish, but I'm so happy with the results. My sister showed my nephew and he said, "Oh my god. I can't believe she can do that. She needs to make Minoauk Pig and Boba Fett." Totally felt like a rockstar. Hope you enjoyed the nails!
Hey everyone 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.
Hey everyone I have a real treat for you today. This mani is actually a live update. There's 40 minutes left of Tuesday, I just did this mani and am currently still wearing it. I also really don't like the way these turned out. Typically I'm pleased with everything. Not so much this time around. And it's of no fault of the artist. I suck today. :P Today's video comes from TotallyCoolNails.
The video is wonderful. I love the way her nails turned out. I think my biggest problem is she is using paint and I'm using polish. And my striper is getting old, I need a new one.
So much smearing. I'm really disappointed by these. And I though the trunk of the tree looked so great. It's the top of the trees. Look at my middle finger! That's like some Chucky Finster hair. Polished Used:
NYC's Tudor City Teal
NYC's Midtown Mimosa
Zoya's Jancyn
Kiss' Pink
Kiss' Lilac
Art Deco Long Brush's Black
Orly's Snowcone
OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Wales
Orly's Prince Charming
I'm also going to include some full swatches of Jancyn.
These are some old swatches. Look at that old watermark. I also got this color on sale. I thought it was Arizona when I first grabbed it. Then I saw it wasn't, but was still on sale. Close enough for me.
I will say it can stain a bit, so always make sure you were a basecoat.
What do you guys think? All right comparison or epic fail?
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!
Hey everyone 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.
Hey everyone It's Tuesday! That means it's time for a Youtube Tutorial. This time I searched Youtube for nail art tutorials instead of looking for nail artists. It was this way that I found RosLion90. She did a tutorial for Snow White nails.
So cute. I loved it. I've looked through her videos and there's a few more I'd like to try as well.
My Snow White totally looks like a Lego character. These turned out so much better than I was expecting. Drawing people in general is not my strong suit. Looks like I need to draw them all like Lego Characters.
Skin: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Petal Pusher
Hair and Eyes :Art Deco long brush in Black (and white for the shine)
Hey everyone Today I bring to you a design done by Jacki at Adventures in Acetone. She did these Hungry Hungry Hippos nails that I just adore. I loved playing that game as a kid, but I didn't get to play it very often. I was always a little over eager and so I slammed on the little lever causing a lot of noise. I had to recreate these nails for the little girl that never got to play for very long.
I did do something a little different. To represent the little marbles that they were after I had to attach some pearls for that 3D look. I love how they turned out. The little blue guy is my favorite just because his smile is so cute. Polish:
Blue Hippo Skin: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Blue Away
Blue Hippo Details: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Blue Me Away
Yellow Hippo Skin: Essence in Be My Sunshine
Yellow Hippo Detail: Zoya in Pippa
Green Hippo Skin: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mint Sorbet
Green Hippo Detail: Zoya in Veruschka
Coral Hippo Skin: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Carribean Coral
Coral Hippo Detail: FingerPaints in MichelTangelo
Base and Eyes: OPI in My Boyfriend Scales Walls
Details: Art Deco Long Brush in Black
Red: Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen
Yeah that's a lot of polish, but the end result is totally worth it. Here's the link to Jacki's design: LINKAGE I hope you guys like this weeks edition of MSMD Mondays.
Hey everyone 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!
