Halloween 2013: Starfire Nail Art

Happy Halloween! I was going to post a Halloween-themed manicure today, but my Macbook's SD card drive has decided not to work and thus the pictures are now trapped in a weird limbo. I'll show that to you as soon as I solve that problem, but in the meantime, I have the nail art I'm wearing to go with my costume for this year! So it's still Halloween themed. Sorta.

Anyway, this year, I'm being Starfire! She's an alien princess superhero from the DC universe. She appears in the comics, but my costume is based on the popular cartoon, Teen Titans (not her comic book counterparts - those costumes show WAY too much skin for me!). I was/am obsessed with that show, and this year, my friend and I decided to dress up as characters from the cartoon. She's being Raven. We made our costumes by hand, which in retrospect was an insane idea. I can hardly sew, but I managed to create Starfire's entire outfit by hand! I haven't had a chance to take a lot of pictures yet (which is why I wanted to post this manicure later), but you can get the gist of the costume from the picture I've included at the end of the post.

Okay, so after that long introduction, here's the nail art! Starfire's powers include shooting bright green starbolts from her hands, so I did a manicure that was mostly a bright green. I also wanted to give a nod to her alien heritage by adding some futuristic detailing.

I started with a base of China Glaze in White on White so the neon would really pop. I layered China Glaze I'm With the Lifeguard over that, which is a great, shimmery neon green. Then I added a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust for some tiny holographic sparkles. I let all of that dry, and then used a striper brush and Sephora by OPI Queen of Everything to freehand the striped pattern. I added purple rhinestones for a pop of contrast (and to match the purple of her outfit).

I'm pretty pleased with how these came out. They're super bright, and my freehanding skills are definitely improving. Even my right hand doesn't look bad!

Here's my costume! Starfire has really bright green eyes, so I used makeup to show that. I really wanted to use colored contacts, but sadly, my eyesight is absolutely awful so buying a pair of green contacts in my prescription would have been too expensive to justify. But I'm really proud of myself! I think the costume came out really well (especially since this is the first time I've attempted to make any sort of clothing). I also have really long boot covers on my legs, but you can't see those here. But trust me, the whole effect is really great.

I hope you all have a really awesome Halloween!

American Flag Nails

Happy 4th of July to everyone in the USA! In honor of this most patriotic holiday, I have some appropriately festive nail art.

My inspiration for today's nail was the American flag! To break it down, I'll start with my red-and-white striped nails. I started with a base of ORLY Au Champagne, a shimmery white. I used three coats to even everything out. I let that dry completely, then I used some striping tape and a thick coat of Milani One Coat Glitter in Red Sparkle. One thing I have to note is that I have two versions of Red Sparkle - one with gold glitter and one without. The latter is older than the gold glitter version, and it's the version I used here. I added a coat of Seche Vite to smooth things out.

Now for the star nails, I started with a base of ORLY Stone Cold, a beautiful shimmery blue. I let that dry, then I used Konad Special Polish in White and a Bundle Monster plate to stamp the star designs onto my nails. My stamping skills (while improving) are not the best, so I fixed any mistakes using White and a nail art brush. I let that dry, then I added a coat of Seche Vite.

I'm really excited that these came out so well! The stamping isn't 100% perfect, but you can only see the imperfections from close up.

Everyone at my internship loved my nails. Now we're having a good ol' American barbecue to celebrate Independence Day! Hopefully swimming doesn't ruin my nail art.

I hope you all have a great 4th of July!

Dotted Christmas Trees

As I said in my last post, my original Christmas nails chipped before Christmas :( Of course, I couldn't have chipped nails for the holiday, so I did some new nail art.

I'd seen some dotted Christmas trees on some other blogs, and I loved the look of them. So I tried my own!

I started with a base of ORLY Au Champagne, a white with a soft shimmer. I used various size of dotting tools and some green polishes to make triangle shapes on each nail. The greens I used were China Glaze Glittering Garland, China Glaze Running in Circles, and Sinful Colors Exotic Green. I added some red "ornaments" using China Glaze Hey Sailor. Then I topped each tree with a dot of Sinful Colors Pull Over for a star.

I think this design is easy enough for nail art beginners to do if they're looking for a holiday look, but it's still really cool! I love the abstractness. It feels artsy :)

HARE Holiday Hoopla: Christmas Trees

Merry (belated) Christmas to all of my readers who celebrate! I'm so sad that Christmas is over already, but I'm still going to my grandparents' house on Sunday for some more holiday celebrations :) My Christmas was actually rather quiet, but still nice.

I have some holiday nails to show to you today, featuring one of HARE's limited edition holiday polishes. I did these the Saturday before Christmas; I had hoped that they would last until Tuesday, but they wound up chipping the very next day! No bueno.

Even though I only wound up wearing them for two days, I love how these nails came out! I started out with a base of China Glaze Holly-Day, a forest green creme that covered in one coat. Then I added just one coat of HARE's Holiday Hoopla, a limited edition holiday polish and their first glitter topcoat.

Holiday Hoopla is a mix of red, pink, and gold glitters in a clear base. There are various sizes of hexes and squares, and some nice shimmer in there as well. As usual for HARE, it's a very complex, dense glitter. It's really lovely; I think the edition of pink really helps make this a unique holiday glitter.

For the accent nail, I started with two coats of OPI Goldeneye. I waited for that to dry, then I used tape to section off a triangle section. I painted the triangle first with Holly-Day, then a coat of Lynnderella New Year's Eve Eve for "ornaments". Then I added a silver star-shaped rhinestone that I got from the Born Pretty online store to top the tree. And voila: Christmas trees! I think the tree is super cute.

I really loved how these nails came out! Christmas nails are so fun. I'm excited about this new HARE polish as well, since it's their first glitter topper. Holiday Hoopla is limited edition, but it's still available on Llarowe at the time of writing! Get it while you can.

Happy holidays, everyone :)