Stars and Stripes for Sochi

I try not to post two days in a row—I only have time for a few posts per week and I like to spread them out a bit more—but this week is special! So I'm making an exception.

Anyone who's followed me for a while might know that I'm a big hockey fan. I generally follow NHL hockey, but right now there's Olympic hockey happening, too. The US women's team is playing Canada for the gold medal today (as I'm writing this, in fact), and the men's team plays Canada tomorrow morning for a chance to go to the final. So, needless to say, it's a big day for USA hockey, and I couldn't let the opportunity to do some USA hockey–themed nail art pass me by!

When I first started kicking around the idea of doing some USA hockey nail art, I knew from the beginning that more than just doing a red, white, and blue design, I really wanted to capture the three main elements of the jerseys Team USA is wearing in Sochi this year: the crest on the front, the thick red and white armbands, and the shiny stars across the shoulders.

Team USA hockey jersey

Conveniently, all these elements lend themselves really well to nail art!

I'm going to write out all the steps I used in a numbered list to help keep things organized. It may still be somewhat long-winded, though, so if you're not interested in the process, just hit the jump (link below the sharing buttons)/scroll down for more pictures!

Sweet, Sprinkled Skittle

I don't often find myself gravitating toward super girly pinks and pastels, but as soon as I saw piCture pOlish Frosting online, I knew I had to have it. It just looked so sweet and delicious! However, because this color palette isn't my usual thing, I struggled a bit with how to incorporate the polish into a manicure once it arrived. After pulling out lots of polishes and playing with them for a bit, I finally settled on a good ol' skittle mani to highlight the beautiful, creamy base and colorful glitters in Frosting.

My pointer and middle fingers are two coats of Frosting (and a few coats of topcoat to make everything super smooth). It went on really well and I got exactly one heart glitter per hand, which is what I wanted. My ring finger is a gradient of Julep Nellie and China Glaze Spontaneous (applied with a makeup sponge), and my thumb and pinky are Spontaneous stamped with Zoya Marley and plate 03 from the MoYou Fairytale Collection.

Please excuse the slightly botched stamping job on the corner of my thumbnail—the section of the plate I was using wasn't quite big enough, so I patched it as best I could. (My patching skills still need work, ahem. Adding that to the list of stamping stuff I need to improve!)

As is usually the case whenever I do a skittle mani, I have a favorite nail from the group: this time it's the gradient. I just love how perfectly the two colors transition from one to the other!

Here's a closeup of Frosting, just for fun—don't you wish you had a cupcake or cookie that looked like that on top? I know I do!

I'd love to hear what you think of this look—please hit me up in the comments!

Thanks for looking!

Let's Leopard

I've been doing nail art regularly for about eight months now, but there's one classic look I hadn't tried creating until recently: leopard print!

Now that I've leopard print, I can't believe I didn't do it sooner (and I'll definitely be playing with it more in the future)! I used the technique demonstrated by Sarah at Chalkboard Nails in her video tutorial, and it couldn't have been easier! Because the print doesn't have to look perfect or uniform—and, in fact, looks best when it's not either of those things—her method of using a dotting tool to create the spots works really well.

I used Zoya Odette (a shade from their new Naturel Collection) for the base, and then applied Zoya Marley for the light spots and China Glaze Rendezvous With You for the dark accents.

And just because it's such a lovely color and is my hands-down favorite from the Naturel Collection, here are a couple of swatches of Odette on its own. I think I'll be using this as a base for art quite a bit! It's a perfect transition color between winter and spring, in my opinion.

What about you—do you ever do leopard print nail art? What technique(s) and color combos do you like best?

Thanks for looking!

Pinky-Purple Waterfall

I read The Nailasaurus regularly, so I've really fallen in love with all of Sammy's waterfall manis during the last several months. So much so that I can't resist doing more of them myself! Here's a recent one featuring several of my pinky-purple polishes:

The base here is China Glaze Sweet Hook, and I used a striping brush to create the waterfall with four other colors:

• Lancôme Vernis In Love Brilliance Gloss Polish Rose Boudoir
• Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Trouble Maker
• Zoya Areetha
• China Glaze Rendezvous With You

I took an extra-close shot of my pinky finger to get a good look at the detail of the brush strokes, so I thought I'd include that one here as well for fun.

Thanks for looking!

31DC2013 Day 2: Orange Nails

I've been so busy lately that I haven't had any time to queue up posts—and, I have to admit, I haven't been super excited about days 2 and 3 of the 31 Day Challenge. Orange is one of my least favorite colors (second only to yellow!), so I had a hard time coming up with something I liked okay that featured orange prominently. I know that's the whole point of the challenge, however, so here we go!

When thinking about orange as an inspiration, I kept thinking about blood oranges, so that's what was in my head when I did this manicure: the vibrant orange of the rinds and the ruby red fruit inside.

The base color here is China Glaze Jamaican Out and the bloody red tips are Zoya Blaze. After the base color dried, I used a nail art brush to roughly outline the wavy edges of the accent color and then filled them in with the brush from the polish bottle. The color palette here still isn't my favorite, but I do like the way this kind of looks like I had a plain orange manicure and then started digging into the juicy insides of a blood orange. Also, Blaze is a really gorgeous, sparkly polish and my camera didn't really do it justice here.