Doughnut Nail Art

Hey everybody! Guess who got a new camera. ME! Guess who doesn't know how to work all the fancy new settings. ME! Seriously though, it's a struggle. I had a DSLR before, but my new one is a lot more fancy than the one I had. It's still the same, but completely different. I've also realized that adjusting photos in Lightroom is A LOT easier than adjusting the color in Photoshop. That's another thing I'm trying to get used to. Hang in there while I get all my settings to the way I like them.

ANYWAY... Nail art! I did some doughnuts! Donuts? Doughnuts? They're both the same to me. Apparently "doughnuts" is the proper term, but "donuts" is also correct. They both date back pretty far, so if you're crunched for time, you can be like me and always use "donut".

Products used:

• Beauty Secrets Base Coat
• OPI - Don't Pretzel My Buttons
• Essie - Pinkadelic
• Apple Barrel Acrylic Paint
• Butter London P.D. Quick Top Coat
• Dotting tool
• Liner brush

I bet I made you hungry for some donuts, yeah? ;)

If you want to see me create this design on my nails, and want to give it a try yourself, then check out my video tutorial below!

Mix and Match Christmas Nail Art 2012

Hello gorgeous blog readers! This is a late post. Here in PA in the US it's no longer Christmas, but I wanted to share what I had on my nails for all of the festivities! Lot's of red, green, white, silver, and glitter took over my nails for my Christmas design. By the way, say hello to my right hand! You guys don't see it very often. I swear I have one. I'm not one handed.

I went with some mix and match designs because I have been loving them lately and you can never go wrong with mix and match Christmas designs! I used an array of polishes to do this so I will start on my thumbs and go to my pinkies.

On my thumbs I have one coat of OPI Wocka Wocka with two coats of OPI Gettin' Miss Piggy With It. These two polishes make such a gorgeous combo! At first I wasn't feelin' it, but then I went out into the light and saw how much it sparkled and was like.. WOAH! and then I fell in love.

On my index fingers I have three coats of LA Colors Color Craze in the color Live. It's a cheap 50 cent polish I picked up at a dollar store, but holy cheese balls I seriously need to go scout out more bottles of this polish. It's the best foil-y silver polish EVER! On top of the silver I hand painted a little white snowflake with a medium length striping brush and acrylic paint (I will be reviewing the set of brushes that it belongs to shortly!). Then, like it wasn't already shiny enough, I added a few loose holographic silver hex glitters (I will be reviewing them soon too!).

On my middle finger I started out with a base of Essie Tennis Corset. If I remember correctly I used three or four coats to get it to a nice opaqueness for a candy cane. It has a beautiful gold shimmer which made it an amazing base for the shimmery stripes. For the stripes I used China Glaze Running In Circles and OPI Meep-Meep-Meep. I love how they all had similar shimmer so they were nice and uniform, but still different.

My ring fingers have a glitter placement technique. My base polish I used underneath the glitter was China Glaze Adventure Red-Y. I took the same loose holographic silver hex glitter that I used on my index fingers and placed every single piece of one by one with a dotting tool and some top coat. Time consuming... I know, but it's totally worth it in the end. My mother made fun of me because at one point during the day all I did was sit and stare at my nails because I had nothing better to do after stuffing my face with ham and mashed potatoes and a mass amount of cookies. YUM!

My pinkies have one coat of China Glaze Running In Circles and two coats of OPI Fresh Frog Of Bel Air. Another gorgeous combination as well!

I topped everything off with a good coat of Out The Door top coat. Either one coat, or two. My ring fingers definitely had two coats of top coat to smooth out the glitters.

My right hand isn't too bad right? Ha. Ha! I just realized what I said. Right, right? Did you get it? Maybe? Yeah I know, I have lame jokes. No biggie. 

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Available Polishes In This Post On Amazon:

I hope everyone had, or is still having, a fantastic holiday season! I know I sure did! Happy Holidays!!

Essie Tennis Corset

So on my laptop I have a folder called "Things That Need To Be Posted" and it is slowly getting jam packed with swatches and a video or two. I'm doing my best to get it cleared out without overwhelming everyone with posts. I'm not a big fan of putting more than one polish into a blog post because personally, when I go searching for a polish online, I like to read about one polish in particular and I don't like sifting through tons of pictures and texts looking for that individual polish. Therefore, I try to blog so that I would enjoy it myself, hoping that others will enjoy it the same way.

shade

Anyway, here is Essie Tennis Corset! It's a very, sheer milky white polish with subtle gold shimmer. When I say sheer... I seriously mean sheer! All of the photos shown are four coats without top coat and you can still see my bare nail and nail line. If you aren't a fan of sheer polishes you can easily use this over a white polish, or other colors to give them a cloudy finish.

sunlight

This polish is really thin also. Very runny. You don't need much on the brush at all to get a thin coat. You could probably wipe almost all of it off the brush and still be able to apply it. Maybe I just got a bad bottle, but it's still something to take into consideration. This dries fairly quick if you apply thin coats so you don't have to wait very long in between applications. That's a good thing considering it needs many coats in order to build it up by itself.

sunlight, blurred to see gold shimmer

I'm not usually a fan of sheer polishes, but if it has gold shimmer, I'm a sucker for it. I'm sure I can't be the only one like that... right?

Essie Absolutely Shore

I have Essie Absolutely Shore to show you for this blog post! I picked this up at TJ Maxx for about $3.50. What a steal! Not literally of course, but with a price like that it's pretty close to stealing. Essie is a really pale seafoam green. That's the closest color I can use to describe it. However, it isn't purely a seafoam green. It's a greyed out based with a hint of blue and a hint of green. It's one of those polishes where it's almost white, but it basically has the slightest amount of color.

By the look of the bottle, I was really hoping it would be more opaque than it was. This one was extremely streaky on the first couple coats. I used three coats for all of these photos, but I applied it really thick, so I would say it would be the equivalent to four really thin coats. This is also without top coat. It does smooth out nicely, but I'm definitely not a fan on the application at all.

sunlight

Overall, it's a beautiful color, but it's a pain to apply! I'll for sure wear this polish again, but only when I have the extra time to apply all of the coats and wait for it to dry. I still love it no matter what!

shade

Grey and Gold Skittles

I only have one photo of these nails. If you read my last post you already know that I hurt my fingernail and I was trying to keep polish off of it... but I couldn't help myself! I HAD to do something! I got really bored and just started doing my nails with some random patterns and this is what I came up with. I don't have a tutorial for these, they are pretty obvious patterns. The thumb is zebra print. The index finger is giraffe print. The middle finger is leopard print. The ring finger was made using striping tape and the pinky was done using a dotting tool.

The polish I used for the base is Essie Chinchilly. The darker color is Essie Armed and Ready and the gold glitter is China Glaze I'm Not Lion. I LOVE the way these turned out and I wish I would have taken more pictures.

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