Christmas

Christmas is still a few weeks away, but I just had to share these Christmas manicures. So I put on some Christmas Peaceful Piano Music, lit my Balsam & Cedar candle, and sat down to post this. This first one I absolutely loved. It's a French manicure, but with Christmas wreaths! The second design is a little more freestyle watercolor looking. I decided it was some very fancy wrapping paper.

Stones

Stone nails were fantastic to do, so I did them a couple times over the past year. I got the tutorial from Pinterest and thought they would be really unique. They were surprisingly easy and very fun. I loved the muted colors. It made me think of a garden pathway. It was a nice interlude between different flower designs.

Coals and fire

     When the last Hunger Games movie, Mockingjay part II, came out, I did my nails in anticipation of going to see it. When I first discovered the book series, I remember sitting down and reading all day until I finished them. With Mockingjay in particular, I read 80% of the book by the time my mom called me for dinner. We had family visiting and I was being rather withdrawn. They were such amazing books!! The movies were even more exciting because if the hype, and this was the last time that I could go to the theater to see a Hunger Games movie, so I had to show my devotion somehow. Nail art is always a fun and inexpensive way to rep.
     I started with a dark brown base coat and then sponged on red. Then I drew on some yellow squiggly lines and finished it off with golden sparkles. It's really hard to paint flames; they turned out looking more like lava than fire. Either way, they looked cool. For the coals on the accent nails, I started with my sand nail polish to give it the rough look. Then I painted over it with a silvery gray. I was worried those nails would just look sticky and I was thrilled with the metallic stone look that resulted. So there's the Catching Fire look for the Mockingjay movie.

Favorite roses

This is probably my favorite flower design that I have done. I started with one of my favorite nail polishes, a light blue-gray, for the base. Then I added roses that were my favorite dusty pink color, with some lighter pink on top to make the roses look a bit more realistic. I added teal flowers as well (though they kind of resemble leaves) simply because it was another one of my favorite colors. Finally, I put yellow spots all over to brighten the whole manicure. I remember it was a dark fall night, one of those nights where my sister and I were both home and decided to hide out and hang out in our room. I put on a good music playlist and colored on my nails while talking and laughing with her. Favorite colors, best music, great times.

Swirly colors

I saw this design on Pinterest (again) and I loved the colors. Usually what catches my eye in pictures I see is the color, but this one also happened to have a very doable design. I had some blue sand polish that worked well and gave the nails a really cool dimension. I like doing ombre designs, and pink and yellow always look really nice together. It kind of makes me think of darker clouds in front of a lovely sunset. In the original design, the blue paint on top was in the form of a flower. I kind of tried to mimic the swirl, but I ended up with spots all over. I was really happy with how they turned out, however. Super cute. 

Purple bubbles

        I found this cool OPI polish that is supposed to be light purple, but in the light, it sometimes looks a little green. I like the polish all by itself, but I got bored. I didn't really have an idea in mind when I sat down, but I started putting dots on and it ended up being a pretty cool design. I did purple dots and then white dots (dots are just really fun) and then added sparkles at the end. It resulted with banners of purple bubbles decorating each of my nails. Very purple.

Tulip time

Most of the nail designs I do include flowers. In an attempt to not be overwhelming, I have neglected to post many of them at all. Today, I shall fix that.
Every year in May my family and I attend the Tulip Festival in Holland, MI. I love flowers and can easily spend hours walking around the cute, little town, taking in the sights and colors. Having recently gotten in to nail art at the time, I decided to do my nails appropriately for the occasion. Because it's such a long event, I got to do tulip nails twice! I liked the first design a bit more, because of the sky blue and the cute, little pink & purple tulips. The second design was supposed to be the view from above of open tulips. They didn't turn out quite the way I wanted them to, but they were still pretty.