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!

My Alternative, Unique and Ghetto Nail Art Tools

***My video on this matter***


Good nail art tools can be pretty expensive and there are so many that it adds up quick fast and in a hurry. So, I find my own ways of..."creating" nail art tools of my own. So, today I decided to go ahead and talk about the things that I like to use instead of normal tools.

One of the most commonly used items in nail art is the nail dotting pen. I've seen them for as cheap as $4.00+ shipping for a set on sites like eBay, all the way to as expensive as $10-$15 dollars for a set. Well, what I like to use instead of the traditional nail dotting pen is an open bobby pin. You can buy a pack of like 100 bobby pins at places like Wal-Mart, Target and Walgreens for under a dollar and its not like you need to worry about if you buy the right color if your using it only for nail art. I personally buy the ones that match my hair color only because I like to pin my bangs up so its a win win for me!

Bobby Pins also work as a way to pick up individual rhinestones for nail designs. But, if I'm trying to be more precise with the rhinestone I'm trying to pick up, especially the smaller ones, I like to (CAREFULLY!!!) use an open safety pin. I repeat, CAREFULLY! You just dip it in a little bit of top coat and grab a rhinestone and place it on the desired area on the nail that you want. You can buy packs of 100+ safety pins at not only the previous places mentioned in my last paragraph, but at the dollar store. Buy a pack, use some for nail art and the rest for all of your safety pin needs. This is WAY cheaper than going out and buying a tool made special for picking up rhinestones. If your dealing with a huge rhinestone that a bobby pin/safety pin wont hold, feel free to use tweezers. You should also use tweezers if your using things like pieces of gold foil or the dried flowers. As for nail beads, I haven't used them yet but when I do, I'm not sure what I'll use.

If I need to do a design where I'm doing a design with something like leopard spots, I like to use something like paper to put a drop of polish on it and dip my paintbrush in that (I'll get to those later). But paper can leak polish thru and make it stick to the surface I'm working on so I like to use index cards. Their thick enough so that the polish doesn't leak thru and I can buy a pack of 100 at one of the previously mentioned places above for a couple dollars.

Instead of spending a lot of money on special nail art brushes, I like to buy a big pack of normal paintbrushes at Wal-Mart and cut them down to size. I learned how to do this thanks to the fabulous Robin Moses who shows you how to cut them in this video riiiight here...

I also like to use regular flat top brushes to clean the excess polish from the sides of my fingers when I'm done with my design.

The Nail polish remover that I like to use is the kind that comes in a little jar that you stick your fingers in and swirl them around and the polish comes out that way. When it's time to get a new jar of remover, I like to keep the old jar and use it to clean my brushes. Kind of like the way that you keep a cup of water next to you when your painting on a canvas and you need to clean your brushes. They only cost a couple of dollars at (again I refer you to one of the previous paragraphs) one of the previously mentioned places. The way that I tell if I need to get a new one is when your nails start to come out discolored like the color of the nail polish remover. If you like, you can even empty out the jar and put some from the bottle in there. I like to do that with one of them that I kept that has bristles instead of a sponge.

So, that's my post on my alternative, unique, and some may call, ghetto nail art tools. I hope you guys can find this helpful, and if you have the actual tools and DON'T find this helpful, thanks for reading anyway and now you have some tips for if (nail gods forbid) one of your tools breaks and you need a last minuet alternative. Obviously, these are for the people that do their own nail art like me because I'm sure if you work in an actual salon, you have the good stuff. Enjoy!

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Happy painting!