What's cookin'?!

This is my entry for Copy That, Copy Cat's 'What's Cookin'?!" nail art contest.

The theme is BBQ/picnic.

My thumb is BBQ, a hamburger on my index, my middle finger is a picnic blanket with 'ants', flames on my ring finger and watermelon slice on my pinkie.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Obviously I can't draw straight lines, but I'm really happy with he hamburger and the flames.

Flowers on a gradient

This is my entry for Nails by Kayla Shevonne's nail art contest. I'll admit, I'm not very good at drawing flowers. But when I had this green and purple gradient I thought it would look good with a flower, so I gave it a shot.
Without further ado:

For this look I used the following colours.
The gradient was You Belong to Me by Essence and Buffy the Violet Slayer by Wet n' Wild and on the ring finger, Prima Gloss Silver by Orly.

For the flowers I used Porcelain Party by Maybelline, Orange by Joe Fresh, Wanna be your sunshine by Essence, with a bit of Finger Paints' Sparkle top coat.

And the leaves are Re-fresh Mint and Holly-day by China Glaze.

After painting my nails the light teal, I used a sponge to make the purple gradient. I painted right on the sponge. It seems to use more polish that way but I was really happy with how it turned out.
For the flower on the ring finger, I painted the on a sandwich bag. I hope it's not considered cheating. I just would not have been able to paint them directly on my nail. I painted the leaves first and then added the white, the orange and then the yellow. I wasn't happy at that so I added the sparkles. On the other fingers I added the dots with a straight pin.

I hope you like these.

ps. I am going to try to post weekly. I just went through and sorted all the pics I have and I have done some cute manis, I would love to share. So I just have to get my butt in gear! haha

Habs Nail Art

Not only am I known for my nail art, but I am also known as a hockey fan, so it didn't take long for me to merge the two. My favourite team is the Montreal Canadiens, aka the Habs. I've done a few different Habs nails since I started doing nail art, but here are my latest ones.

I met up with some other Habs fans at a few tweetups recently and I 'sported' these nails to the first one. 

They were super simple to do. I just painted my nails white then sponged on red and navy. I kind of cheated on the Habs logo, I put clear polish on a plastic bag, let is dry. Then I used a black gel pen to draw the logo, let it dry then added clear over top. As you can see it crackled a bit. After I let it dry for half an hour or so I carefully peeled it off the bag and since I had a lot of clear polish, I cut around the logo. I put a small spot of clear polish on my nail and added top coat. Simple as that!

This is the other look I wore for another tweetup. For the "HABS" I just a nail art pen and carefully got all the letters on the nail. Here's a tip, I started in the middle of the word, so the B and A to make sure all the letters would fit.

My right hand. I used the same nail art pen and put the number 51 for my favourite player!

bonus pic:

These ones didn't last long. I had decided that I was gig to paint my nails for the Stanley Cup playoffs, I fully intended to paint all the teams in the playoffs. However, I don't have all the right colours, brushes, etc to do them. Plus as I found out here, with the Nashville Predators, it's hard to draw some of the logos! but this Stanley Cup turned out pretty cute, so I am glad I took a a picture of it. I also may have spelt PREDS, PEDS :S so that just wasn't going to last! haha

Depending on who makes it to the finals I might re visit the idea of painting NHL nails, before the summer.

Fire Nails

Like a lot of people, I am a fan of The Hunger Games. I'll admit I was late to the party but when I got the trilogy on my Kindle I couldn't put it down! I read all three in less than a week!
So of course when I went to see the movie on the opening day I had to sport fire nails!
Here's what I did:

This look took many steps to do.

First of all here are the colours I used to achieve this look:

I started with the orange...actually I think I started with the yellow. I should have used white as a base under the orange but I think I used the yellow cuz it was there. After the orange dried, I wiped most of the yellow off the brush and did a gradient effect.

I sponged on the gold and the red shimmer to add a bit more interest.

With a striper brush I carefully made the black lines. I'll be the first to admit I am terrible with the striper brush, give me a small detail brush any day! but I didn't have one, so I took my time to achieve this.

The mocking jay, I made on a sandwich bag. I put a clear base and let that dry. Then I used a black gel pen to draw the design, there is no way it would have turned out it I used polish. I let it dry for a long time then I added another coat of clear and let it dry for a good half hour. Then I carefully peeled it off. The cracked effect on my mocking jay was a total accident, it happened when it was drying. But it was a happy accident because I LOVE how it turned out. 

Have you attempted fire nail?! or any Hunger Games inspired names?!

half leopard print

So this is first post [please be kind], it also doubles as my entry for Chalkboard Nails 'Dotting Tool Contest'.

I don't have a dotting tool so this is my weapon of choice. [as you can tell this is after I used it]

What I used to create this look, Orly Au Champagne, Orly Prisma Gloss Silver, Orly Flirty and Wet n Wild Ink Well.

And the result! [please pay no attention to the smudging, opps. haha]

In direct sun:

I had a hard time coming up with an idea and I have done this look a few times. So I decided to go with it. I hope you like it.

nail blog

Yes, I've started another blog. This one I'm going to post nail art.

I've been painting my nails regularly for close to 3 years. I had seen videos on YouTube and I knew I could do it, I just didn't have any of the nail art polishes [the script brushes]. One day I was in the drug store near where I was living at the time and I saw that they had them, so I bought one or two and went to town. I've been polishing my nails ever since. Rarely do I have them 'naked' and only in the past five months or so I stopped doing art [I moved and such so I was lucky to have polish on at all]. I also took pictures of all the designs I did but unfortunately the pictures didn't make the move with me, neither did all my polishes.

I'm not a professional manicurist, I have no training and I don't do the proper 'clean up'. I don't always take the time to 'stay in the lines' and after it dries I pick off what got on my skin.

Also I don't change my polish everyday, sometimes I leave the same design on for a week, so I will not be posting daily.

I'm a photographer by trade, but I'm lazy so if I can get away with taking pictures on my point and shoot camera I will.

I hope you like what you see and you stick around.