Summer Challenge Day 6: Favorite Summer Color

Hey everyone! Here is my manicure showing my favorite summer color! I couldn't pick just one because my favorite colors to wear when it's hot out are pink, and orange! I really wanted to try water marbling again since I've had such tough experiences with it in the past, but I picked two really opaque colors so I was hoping it would turn out well. I used Julie G "Oh Em Gee!", which is a bright neon pink, and Love & Beauty in Orange (it reminds me of sherbet). Overall I like it! It could always be better, my technique is still not that great but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong!

Sorry I've not been so talkative lately, like I said a lot going on...I'm going to try to keep up with the challenge but I've got some personal stuff happening at the moment so we will have to see. I plan to do my best.

Kelly

Summer Challenge Day 5: Fruits

Ah sorry this is so late! A lot going on today.

I know these have all been done to death, but I made a pineapple, a strawberry, an orange, a watermelon and a grape! Overall this is one of my favorite manis I've done so far. I've gotten so many compliments at work and I feel like looking at this in retrospect, I can really see how far my nail art has come since when I first started. Hope you guys like them!!

Here's what I've been doing lately..

So, like I mentioned before I haven't updated in forever because the tutorial I made and my last few hauls are on my boyfriend's camera. But I have some updates on the rest of what I've been doing lately! I finished school the first week of May and finished my practicum the week after. So I didn't have a whole lot of time to do anything super creative with my nails. I've been doing a lot of gradients 1)to practice new techniques and 2)because they're quick and easy and I like them! So here are a few I've done in the past couple weeks!

Here's a pink and gold gradient I did before my last day of work because the weather was beautiful and I felt like doing something sunny! The colors are Wet n Wild Fast Dry - How I Met Your Magenta and Revlon - Copper Penny. For my accent nail I just added a couple coats of Sally Hansen's Diamond Strength in Multi-Faceted - which I LOVE! It's a chunky black, blue and silver glitter. Anyway, for this gradient, I did a few (I think 3) coats of the Wet n Wild, then I started at the tip and painted layers of the Revlon, painting gradually more and more of the nail each time and staggering it a bit so it wasn't straight across. This would have been easier if the Revlon wasn't so opaque - it was definitely a 1-coater which I didn't know at the time.

Another angle. I really loved this mani!

This is a mani I did last week when I was getting ready to come back home to Pennsylvania to work for a couple of weeks. Again I felt summer and wanted something super bright. For this gradient, I tried a tutorial that I found at thenailasaurus.com. The picture really doesn't do it justice because of the flash - the graduation was much more subtle and cool looking than it appears to be here. I got a lot of compliments on this mani, and I liked this sponging technique better than the one I tried in my FA at gradients. I switched up my accent nail because I got a few more bumps than normal on my pointer fingers for some reason! I added a couple coats of this pretty confetti-ish glitter I got from Icing, the name is escaping me right now. The colors here are Sinful Colors - Tangerine (something or other) and Sally Hansen X-treme Colors in Pacific Blue.

And lastly, like I said I came home and since I don't have a lot of money for presents, I told my mom she could pick any mani she wanted and I would do her nails for her. She picked "tie-dye" which I begrudgingly agreed to even though as I've said before water marbling and I are not best friends. She wanted bright colors, which turned out kind of pastel over a white basecoat but she was happy. Here it is!

Mother's day mani :] It came out better than I hoped it would but I still think my swirling technique still needs work! Anyway, that's basically what I've been up to lately, more updates soon when I get my pictures off the camera. Hope everyone's summers are starting out wonderful! Mine has been full of work but I am thinking of the paycheck...  ;]



Kelly