The Tea Bag Method

I have a lot of people come to me asking me how I repair My broken nails.

Well, here is the answer to that question:
first of all, there is a difference to a "broken" nail and a chipped/cracked nail.

Broken nails can not be fixed because they are, in a word, broken. When you tell me that your nail is broken, I am assuming that your nail has gone from one long one to a short one and a tip that has come off.

Chipped nails are nails that have become uneven. Mine usually chip around the tips and start to peel. but sometimes, a piece of your nails can come off and i count that as a chip too.

Cracked nails are the most annoying in my opinion. They always seem to crack in the most inconvenient and possibly painful places. For example below the tip of the nail where your nerves are sensitive. Or, that ONE nail that decides to be a pain in the ass and start to crack right at the tip of your nail while the others are still nice long and pretty.

Now, for two out of three of those scenarios, I have a solution that can help you to save your chipped or cracked nails. If their broken, sorry but I'm not a magician. This solution is called the Tea Bag Method.

Now you cold of course go out of your way to go to the store and buy a the nail wraps and gel and a UV lamp to cure it and all that good and expensive stuff. OR, you could grab a tea bag or buy a cheap box of tea and try this.

Here is what you will need to do this. Well, my way anyway.




-An empty tea bag
-Scissors
-Base coat
-Acetone
(optional) Paintbrush or Cotton Ball/Q-tip

Now what you want to do first is to clean your nail. Your going to need acetone to do this but rubbing alcohol is an option if you don't have acetone. I have the one in the jar that you just stick your finger in but if you have a bottle, you can use a paintbrush and dip it into the acetone or put some onto a cotton ball or Q-tip and rub it onto the nail. The acetone takes off the natural oils and anything else like lotion or normal everyday hand gunk that may build up on your nails.
If your just repairing one nail and have the rest of your nails polished and dont plan on taking the polish off because you just want to fix that one nail, then here is what I do when I'm using a cotton ball. Put it on the top of the bottle of acetone, place your palm firmly against the cotton ball and turn the bottle upside down CAREFULLY. Then use tweezers to hold the cotton ball and clean the nail.

Ok, after your nail has been cleaned, your going to want to take your tea bag and make sure its empty.
Open it up completely into a big rectangle. Then take the open tea bag and measure it against your nail and cut out a piece to fit the crack of your nail.


Then your going to want to take your base coat and put a thin coat on your entire nail.

Then, take the strip of the tea bag that you cut off and sized to your nail and put it FIRMLY against the area thats cracked. Your going to want to put the edge of the tea bag as close to the edge with the crack as possible. If some of it gets onto your skin and off of the nail thats ok, when your done and its completely dry then you can file it off. Any bubbles you see you can squeeze out or pop with a pin.


after you have that piece of the tea bag firmly against your nail and have gotten rid of the bubbles and your first coat is dry (so that the bag doesnt move from where you have placed it), put a second coat of your base coat and seal your free edges.


When that dries, then you can file off (GENTLY) any excess that you see.

Now, if your trying to cover your entire nail because of peeling, the only thing different that your going to do is instead of cutting off a small strip of the tea bag, your going to cut a piece that fits your ENTIRE nail and then put down your base coat and press the piece of the tea bag against it. A cool trick i learned from YouTube is to grad a piece of plastic wrap and hold it against your nail to help smooth it out. Now if you use the plastic wrap, be very careful to not leave it on the nail too long or you can end up gluing it to your nail and THAT is definitely not part of this process.

Leopard Number Two!!!

Ok so I decided to try something new with the blog and so I added pictures of what my nails looked like as i went a long. I hope it's not TOO much. So, here is my second attempt at leopard print and I think I am getting the hang of this... So here is the look


And from another view...

Video tutorial for this look!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTYQOIJKLmw


After my first attempt at leopard print (see "Fall and Leopard Print") I fell absolutely IN LOVE with it and decided to dedicate more nail space to it and came up with that.

Here are my products used


***DISCLAIMER***
I purchased all of these products with my own money and did not use them for the company I just honestly love these products and chose to use them with my own free will. My opinions are simply mine and not biased by the companies. And I am not sponsored by an of these companies.

Base coat- Salon Sciences Fiberglass Networks
NUDE- Sally Hansen Nail Growth Miracle in Innocent Nude
BLUE- Kiss Nail Art Paint in Soft Blue
PINK- Kiss Nail Art Paint in Beach Pink
SILVER Glitter- Sinful Colors Nail Art in Fashionista
LIGHT GREEN- China Glaze in Re-Fresh Mint
GOLD Glitter- Sinful Colors Nail Art in Flower Girl
BRIGHT GREEN Kiss Nail Art Paint in Beach Green
BROWN- Revlon in Hot For Chocolate
BLACK- Revlon in Black Lingerie
top coat- Salon Sciences Instant Artificials

Paint brush for the dots
A paper to use as a pallet

1. I applied my favorite base coat twice to clean nails.



After one coat...

After the second coat.

2. I applied one coat of the nude color because two of the Fiberglass Networks base coat is kind of opaque in its self. So, in my personal opinion one coat is enough.




3. I took the blue and pink polish and the piece of scrap paper and dropped big spots of polish on the paper so that I could use it as sort of a make shift artists pallet and took the paint brush and made small pink and blue dots all over my nails for the main big spots.

Here is what it looked like


4. Then I took the silver glitter and made a line separating the are with the spots from the area with just the nude shade of polish

Here is what it looked like


5. I took the light green and made dots with the scrap paper and paint brush in a "v" shape Which I outlined with the gold glitter. I did this on my ring fingers only.




6. With the lime green I decided to make zebra stripes in the space on my ring finger that was open. I had to go over it about three times to get it opaque enough.


7. Then I took my scrap paper and dropped some black for all of my nails EXCEPT my ring finger and used the pain brush to make little "c" like shapes around my nail as well as Random little tiny black dots. Then I took the brown polish to do the same thing with the brown polish because i figured that brown would look better against the green.


8. With my usual top coat and after all my nails had completely dried of course, I put two coats of my Instant Artificials top coat to seal and protect my design and my nails.


As always make sure to hit your free edges with at least one coat of each polish you use to help thicken your nails, protect them and to seal and protect your nail art!

Fall and Leopard Print

I am a huge animal print lover as well as a definite earth tone color lover. I recently went on a trip to Six Flags over GA and saw a girl who had gold and leopard print nails and was so inspired by them and I have been dying to try out my own version. But, I also have been wanting to try out a design incorporating leopard print for some time now and finally got around to doing it. This nail art design was my first time ever attempting to recreate leopard print and i think it turned out pretty good. In fact, I am definitely not looking forward to this design growing out because then it will be all gone :(

So, here is how the design came out (please excuse how dry my hands look. I had JUST finished my nails when i took the pic and they were drying and so i didn't get a chance to get some lotion and acetone can be SO drying on the skin!)






Ok, so here are the products that I used:
***DISCLAIMER***
I have purchased all of these products with my own money and I am in no way shape or form sponsored by these companies and they did not ask me to speak about these. ALSO, this is more of an announcement, but the colors that i chose and the ay i do the designs are simply more of suggestions. These are just the colors that i chose to use you can of course use any colors you like or any part of the design that you like.



***PRODUCTS USED***
Base coat- Salon Sciences Fiberglass Network
NUDE- Sally Hansen Nail Growth Miracle in Innocent Nude
BRONZE- China Glaze in In Awe of Amber
GOLD GLITTER- Sinful Colors Nail Art in Flower Girl
PINK- Kiss Nail Art Paint in Beach Pink
BLACK- Revlon in Black Lingerie
Top coat- Salon Sciences Instant Artificials
Paint Brush

As ALWAYS, the first thing you want to do is put on your base coat. If you have long nails or your trying to strengthen your shorter nails to be longer then I can not stress how important base coats are. I know that I said in a previous post that I don't put too much into base coats, but as my nails grew longer and I decided to try and keep them long for as long as I possibly can, I had a major change of heart. So, first step for me was to apply my Salon Sciences Fiberglass Network base coat. I applied two coats of this and let completely dry.


My next step was to apply one coat of my nude nail polish. The fiberglass base dries opaque so I only felt the need to apply one coat of this base color.


After the nude base color dried, I did a side swipe on half of the nail with the bronze color. When that is completely dry, I added a stripe of the gold glitter. Of all the glitter nail art polishes I have ever tried, Flower Girl by Sinful Colors has been the best one by far. Its opaque and just one stroke gives you perfect coverage.


The next step for me was to add a few pink dots to the side of the nail that was still just with the nude color. I only added 2-4 pink dots to each nail so that there would be room for the rest of the leopard spots. The pink dots were for the inside of the leopards spots. After the pink dots had a little drying time, I used the black to make little almost like "c" shapes around the pink. I also added a few just tiny little black dots randomly around the pink wherever I thought it was needed. For this, I used my paintbrush that I cut specially for my nail art thanks to Robin Moses who is one of my biggest inspirations (there is a link to her blog on the side, you should check out her blog she does AMAZING work!).


As my final touch, and as I end all of my nail art looks, I add my favorite top coat, my Salon Sciences Instant Artificials.



Don't forget to hit all of your free edges with your polishes to not only seal your polish but to protect your nail art and to help make it last and to help make your nails a little thicker so that they are that much stronger.

1st Non-Nail Post

So I, as many of you may be, am an online shopper. One of my favorite websites to shop from is eBay. I havent sold anything on there yet, but I do shop on there and have been for about a year or so.

My most recent purchase has been a rhinestone silver and gray zebra print cell phone case seen here...
Gaudy, I know haha. I have been dying for a rhinestone phone case for a WHILE now and finally had a little extra money so i went ahead and ordered one. this was on October 6th. My phone case was supposed to be here between October 11th and October 14th. Since Columbus Day happened to fall in this time frame, i allowed an extra day for shipping since all the banks and post offices were closed.

So, on the 16th, I contacted the shipper and politely expressed my concerns that my item had not arrived yet and they responded right away that it may take a couple days extra to ship from their warehouse. Fine, thats cool i can understand that.

Well, today is officially the 21st of October and still, NO PHONE CASE. So i contacted the seller AGAIN about being an irate customer and waiting for my package to arrive that i paid for on the 5th and was supposed to arrive like a friggin WEEK ago.

They claim to be looking into it, but then said they need my address again in case it was sent to the wrong place. Um, HELLO?! I use PayPal and my CORRECT address is on there because uh, I WANT MY SHIT SENT TO ME NOT SOMEWHERE ELSE! UGH!

Anyway, there's my rant on that.

Next order of business is about my 2nd favorite online shopping website, HauteLook.com.

If you havent heard of this website it is amazing. Basically what HauteLook does is sell expensive stuff and brands and what not but for an amazing discount. As I mentioned in a previous paragraph, I recently had a little extra money so i shopped a little on HauteLook and got some stuff from the brand Booty Parlor. Yes, it is really called Booty Parlor don't judge me.



What I ordered from them is a pheromone infused perfume and an aphrodisiac infused breath spray. I havent tried them yet, but when I do, I'm pretty sure i will not do a review on the spray lol but i will talk about if the boyfriend notices anything with the perfume. I just figured that it was a fun little thing to try out and see if it works. Besides, even if it doesnt, who doesnt like smelling good and having fresh breath?

Oh, and just mentioning this, the order from HauteLook came to my house the day it was SUPPOSED TO. And if you are interested in HauteLook.com, I'll post this link where I can invite you to join this website because I think that its invitation only, but its not a scam type thing, and they only email you about new deals and specials going on. Its definitely worth a look and I am definitely promoting them because I want to, I am not sponsored by them nor do I work for them and I do not recieve free stuff for mentioning them. So, here is the link if you are interested http://www.hautelook.com/invite/VMajeed542

Magneto Nails??

SO, I have been notified by Sephora that there is a new nail polish out that is MAGNETIC. Yes, I said it, magnetic.

It is the Nails Inc. Magnetic Polish seen riiiiiight here...

Basically Nails Inc. has come out with 3 colors for their new magnetic formula. There is iron in the polish that interacts with the magnet but we will get into that later...

There is a grey, a purple and a gold color and all of the bottles have a small magnet on the top. Basically, you paint your nails and the put the magnet close to your nails and then the iron in the polish makes a wave pattern in the polish. Then of course let dry, top coat, etc. Its like nail polish and nail art all in one! Mega time saver there...

I have not personally tried this polish yet, but it definitely is on my list and i will report back with results. :)

As always, I am just reporting this because i voluntarily wanted to and thought that this was some of the coolest nail polish ever! I am not sponsored by Nails Inc. or Sephora and will be buying this polish with my own money and reporting back my opinions of it as a customer not a sponsored person.

That Super Bass

As many people have, I have joined the Nicki Minaj bandwagon recently. But thats only because I now understand her and her concept of her different personalities and that thats why she makes the different voices and faces and what not.

SO, that being said, I decided to honor Nicki with my Super Bass inspired nails.

Sooo here are my materials used. I know the pics bright, I'm sorry :/ and of COURSE I'll go into detail.


****PRODUCTS USED*****
**DISCLAIMER**
I paid for all of these products with MY OWN money. I am Not sponsored by these companies NOR did I receive them for free.

(Base Coat) Salon Sciences Fiberglass Network
(WHITE) China Glaze - White On White
(PINK) China Glaze - Rich & Famous
(NUDE) Sally Hansen - Innocent Nude
(PINK) Love My Nails - Rose Garden
(PINK STRIPER) Kiss Nail Art Paint - Beach Paint
(GREEN) Sinful Colors Professionals - Irish Green
(GLITTER) China Glaze - Carnival Lights
(Top Coat) Salon Sciences Instant Artificials
a paintbrush
a safety pin (be careful NOT to stab yourself please!)

1. Since my nails are long again, I am utilizing my base coat too keep them strong, long and healthy. For this I am using my Salon Sciences Fiberglass Network. Use two coats of this to give your nails the added strength of fiberglass. Be sure to get your free edge too!

2. When my base coat dried, I put down all of my base colors so that they had time to dry. On my thumbs, I put two coats of China Glaze White On White. On my pointer, middle and pinky fingers I put two coats of China Glaze Rich & Famous. On my ring fingers, I used just one coat of Sally Hansen Innocent Nude, on all your fingers except your ring fingers, make sure that you use two THIN coats not two thick coats.


3. Going back to the thumbs, which should have had time to dry by now (make sure they are 10000000% dry before moving on to this step!) I took my paint brush to use for the giraffe print. All that I did was dip the paint brush into the lighter pink, Love My Nails Rose Garden and start making random geometric shapes to resemble giraffe print. My advice, just make like rounded rectangle-ish shapes and then once you do that, add the rest of your shapes to fit around the rest. be sure to randomize it in shapes, placement and size for the best effect :)


4. On the ring fingers, I had to make splatter looking things to represent the part of the video when shes in the pink pool with the green wig splashing the pink water on the guy. I used my Beach Pink Kiss Nail Art to do the pink splatters which represented the water. Then I dipped my paintbrush in the Sinful Colors Irish Green to make the green splatters which represented her green wig. To add some color, I dipped the safety pin into the China Glaze Carnival Lights and just added some random dots of pink glitter to add some shine.


5. After all of this, add two coats of Salon Sciences Instant Artificials for that strong acrylic-like hold.


Make sure that all the free edges of the nails have been coated at least once with each product that you use to protect your design.

Who Inspires Me Most

There are a lot of things that inspire me. But, before I got to the point where I am now, people were my inspirations. I am at a point now where I can look at something and put together a nail design in my head based on colors, patterns, whatever. But before that, I used some very talented women on YouTube as my inspiration. If you are ever bored, have extra time, etc., you NEED to look them up. LOVE4NAILS, SimpleLittlePleasures, cutepolish and best of all, Robin Moses at robinmosesnailart.

Now, let me just say, Robin Moses's nail art is some of the most beautiful, most mind blowing amazing work I have ever seen. She can make it look like there is an actual person or an actual Picasso on your damn hand. She has amazing talent and has such a wide variety of tutorials for you to look through that you are almost guaranteed to find something. I would go as far as saying that I guarantee that there is something for everyone on her channel. Go check her out you wont be disappointed. I hope I can get to be half the artist that she is! God bless that woman and her magic hands! She uses not just nail polish, but acrylic paint, glitters and pigments that are normally used for make up and foils too! Simply mind blowing.

http://www.youtube.com/user/robinmosesnailart

ZOMBIES!!! And Other Stuff

So last night, as I was searching for Halloween stuff online, I randomly got the idea to do some zombie themed nails in the spirit of Halloween (which just so happens to be my favorite holiday!)

I had recently (recently being like...3 weeks ago haha) been to Walgreen's and bought a green Sinful Colors polish from their Halloween display that they had up and I have been trying to think of a way to use it and yesterday it hit me, zombie nails!

***DISCLAIMER***
The products I am about to list are ones that I have purchased with MY OWN money. I am in no way shape or form sponsored by these companies, nor did I receive them for free.

Products Used:
RED - China Glaze - Rose Among Thorns (Neon)
GREEN - Sinful Colors Professional - Irish Green
RED GLITTER - Sephora by OPI - What's Your Poison?
BLUE - Kiss Nail Art Paint - Pearl Blue
TOP COAT - Salon Sciences Instant Artificials Protect



So, here is how I did them.

1. USUALLY I do use a base coat but its a fiberglass one that I only use when my nails start getting long as an added form of strength. I know that base coats are important and protect your natural nails, provide a "base" or "foundation" for your nail polish (kind of like eyeshadow primer for you make up girls out there) and help avoid stains/discoloration and what not, but I dont really put too much into them personally.

2. I first decided to do a reverse french manicure with the red and green. When I first purchased the green, I tried it out and found out that it is EXTREMELY sheer so I knew going into this that I would need to think of a way to work around that. Since they are zombie nails, I decided to put the red (Rose Among Thorns China Glaze) first and just painted a small half moon on the bottom of my nails for the reverse french part. since they were zombie themed, I didn't put too much emphasis on perfection. i only did one coat of the red.

3. On top of the red, I put two coats of green (Sinful Colors Irish Green). This over the red made it look like a weird warped red color, perfect for the zombie virus theme I had going :).

4. Since I am ALL ABOUT the bling and the glamor, I decided to put a thin coat of the red glitter (Sephora by OPI What's Your Poison?) over the red that was showing through the green. It still let a bit of the original red show through, but added a bit of sparkle at the same time. Who said zombies can't be glamorous? hahaha...(ew)

5. After that, I decided to put like...stitches I guess you would call it too because it looked a bit strange with just the red and green and besides, were trying to go for Halloween, NOT Christmas, thats a whole different blog and nail design right there. For this I just used the blue nail art polish and the brush that comes with it (Kiss Nail Art Paint Pearl Blue). I know that this can make it more Frankenstein-ish...but I decided on zombies so whatever I ended up doing to them, no matter what, they were going to be zombies.

6. I had to go to work so I had to wait until I got home to top coat. which can be a very dangerous move. I always use the same one, my Instant Artificials by Salon Sciences. I am in LOVE with this product. I used to use it as a base coat actually but now I use it as a top coat. It adds a nice shine to my nails and adds the strength of acrylic to them as well. love love love it.

So, my finished product looked something like this...


I hopefully, will be able to upload a video on this and how I did it so that I'm not just attempting to talk you through it. Because if your anything like me, you learn better by watching.

Confessions of a Nail Junkie...

Hi, I'm Vikki. First off, let me start my intro by saying that I am in NO way shape or form a licensed nail tech, NOR am i sponsored by anyone. Everything that I know and do is all from being self taught by either trial and error or the internet, mainly YouTube. And the products that I use are ones that I have bought with MY OWN money. This blog will be dedicated to all things nail art related and of course some rants here and there too about whatever happened to be on my mind that day.

Now, on to more about myself. I am a 19 year old multi racial woman born and raised in Miami Florida (shout out to the 305 :D) but now I live in Chattanooga Tennessee which is....quite..different to say the least. I love to draw and paint and recently was inspired to start blogging about my painting and nail stuff by some of the people I follow on YouTube. I also have my own YouTube channel and will be uploading some of my own tutorials on there shortly. But for now, I'm starting out with just this blog. I will be uploading pictures and what not on here and then my tutorials on my YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/ViktoriusME(<----there's the link to it). I also have a Facebook but I dont really have anything on there nail related yet... Well no let me correct myself, I have some pics uploaded but that is all that is there.

I enjoy doing nails very much and hopefully will become a certified nail tech one day. I update my twitter more often than I do my Facebook about my nail stuff http://twitter.com/#!/viktoriusME so go ahead and follow me there if you would like ;)

Thank you for taking the time to read this and be sure to keep checking back here or on my channel to see my new stuff :)
I havent uploaded any videos yet but I will tweet and update the blog when I do!