Black n' Red

This is definitely one of the most simple nail looks that I have ever done. Literally the only thing more simple would be if I just painted my nails one solid color, which I was going to do, but you guys know me, I couldn't leave it just like that! So, I'm here to tell you about this simple nail look that turned out better than I planned for it to.



So, here is the story behind why my nails are so short. (If you don't feel like reading this part and my rant, feel free to skip down to the next paragraph, OR where you see the pic of the products used and go from there, I won't mind.) A very rude man decided to snatch his credit card from me at work because we no longer carry something that he really liked and was mad. Because of this, my middle finger nail on my right hand was clipped on the weak side and broke almost straight across. So, I had to cut my nails and find a quick fix for them polish wise until I had a chance to get my claws on some on the new Muppet nail polish from the new collection at Ulta, WHICH I will have a post on later. I also will have a post on the nail design that I had before the mean man broke my nail. And just for the record, I am not one of those girls that's like "OMFG i like broke an effing nail" I definitely wouldn't have cared as much if I hadn't just done them the night BEFORE lol. I was actually trying to decide whether to cut them or not and I guess I got my answer!

Ok, so I wanted something simple just to hold me over until I got my Muppet polish and I had painted them black and decided to put a thin coat of red glitter over them. When I did this, I didn't think that they looked that great and i didn't think that I was going to upload a post about them because they were so simple that I thought it was pointless. But people were actually asking me what kind of polish it was and how I did it so, here goes!

Here are my products used.



***DISCLAIMER***
I paid for all the products used with my own money. I use these products because I like them and I feel like they fit this nail look the best. I am not sponsored by these companies in any way.

base coat- Salon Sciences Fiberglass Networks
BLACK- Revlon Black Lingerie
GLITTER- Sephora by O.P.I. What's Your Poison
top coat- Salon Sciences Instant Artificials

What I did first was to put one coat of my base coat on my nails. Since they were short and I didn't have a free edge I only put one kind of thin coat on. When you have short nails, and you don't have a free edge, you don't have a way to seal your polish and your design in which ends up just making your polish pile up on your nails. If you have ever put too many layers of nail polish on your nails and ended up peeling off the polish because it was too much and too thick, you know what I mean.


The nest thing that I did was to put two thin coats of the black polish on. Revlon polishes tend to be thin (in my personal experience of course) and as I mentioned in my previous paragraph (see nail polish peeling), you want to avoid thick coats of polish. Be careful if you do have a thinner polish. They have a tendency to run like water off of the brush and off of your nail and onto your cuticle/skin.


***(TIP! If you do get polish on your skin, you can use a Q-tip soaked in acetone/nail polish remover or a paintbrush dipped in acetone/nail polish remover and take the polish off of the sides or wherever it is you don't want it. Just make sure that your careful to not get it on your design! You don't want to mess up all your hard work or even worse, have to start over!)***

I was originally going to leave my nails like this just plain regular solid black, but I couldn't leave it like that so I decided to add a thin coat of red glitter polish on top. Just one thin coat though (see previous paragraph on peeling). Every things better when you add glitter!


Last step, after the polish was completely dry, add one thin coat of top coat!


This polish look is very simple but the effect in the light is so pretty. Especially when its darker and you cant really see the black you just get some of the red shimmer catching the light. I hope you guys liked my simple nail look and give it a shot! Its good for fall because of the darker colors and you could even do a brown instead of black if you wanted. Let your creativity loose!

Rachaels Pandas

I've been neglecting my blog a bit this past week I do apologize. Ok, so one of my best friends likes pandas a lot and Sailor Moon to. I was planning on doing some Sailor Moon nails on her but my navy polish decided to commit suicide down the stairs so I had to come up with another idea for her so I decided on pandas.

Here they are

I was inspired by a panda nail tutorial done by Cutepolish on YouTube Here is the link for anyone interested. Shes Amazing.



Ok, so here are the products used


***DISCLAIMER***
I paid for all of these products on my own with my own money. I am in no way Sponsored by these companies nor did I receive these for free. I just use them because I like them best and for this tutorial.

base coat- Salon Sciences Fiberglass Network
WHITE- China Glaze White on White
BLACK- Revlon Black Lingerie
RED- China Glaze Rose Among Thorns
GLITTER- China Glaze Carnival Lights
top coat- Salon Sciences Instant Artificials
and
a paintbrush but you could use an open bobby pin as well

The first step to the pandas was to use a base coat. Since Rays nails are short, I only used one thin coat of base coat. I find that thicker coats of polish on short nails dont always end up well and tend to peel off easier especially if they are too short to seal the free edge. So, thinner coats will definitely be your friend if you have short nails.


Next step was to make a circular shape with the white polish. This is to make the pandas head. It doesnt have to be perfect because we still need to add the ears and (for the girl) a bow. As long as you can tell its a circle-ish shape, your good.


After the pandas head shape has been done and completely dries, the next step is to add the first layer of the eyes, the ears and the noses. We decided to make one of the pandas a girl so, we gave all of them black noses except for two, one on each hand. They got red noses.



After the first layer of the eyes dried, it was time to add the whites of the pandas eyes.


Then I added the bows for the red nose girl pandas.


After the design completely dried, I used a thin coat of my favorite top coat to protect the little pandas.


As always, AND if your nails are long enough, make sure that you put at least one coat of each polish on your free edges to protect your nail art. And put at least one thin coat of top coat on your nails if they are short. A good top coat will work wonders for you and your nail art.

Also, these are simply the colors I used because we were making traditional pandas. So, if you want to get creative and make different crazy colored pandas, feel free to do so. Art is in the eye of the beholder and nail art even more so because they are your nails. So if you LOVE the color purple and want the pandas to have purple eyes instead of black, go for it and more power to you! Your nails and your nail art should be what you love no matter what.