Happy Easter!

Since it's Easter, I knew I had to do a decorated egg design for my nails.  I used "Blanc" by Essie, "Play Date" (purple) by Essie, and "Simply Divine" (pink) by Sally Hansen.  I started with a base of "Blanc" before sponging the pink and purple on in an ombre design.  I used white acrylic paint to create the final design.  I like to use acrylic paint for detailed work because it doesn't dry as fast as nail polish so you have a little more breathing room when creating your design.  I kept most of my nails simple with straight up polka dots.  On my ring fingers, I added straight and zigzag lines to make them look more like a decorated egg.  Here is the final product!

Originally I was going to use 4 colours (pink, purple, green, and yellow) but the pink and purple stood out much more than the yellow and green so I stuck with just the two colours.  I'm really happy with how they turned out!

Happy Painting!

Love, Kate xo

Nail Design Mash-Up

This week I decided to take two designs that I admire and mash them together to create my own.  I absolutely love the waterfall designs that Sammy does at TheNailasaurus.com (really, I love everything that Sammy does and you should totally check her out!).  This waterfall design is the basis for my design this week.  The second part of the mash-up is my colour inspiration for my design.  Robin Moses created a neon splatter design with a black base and bright colours over top.  You can find tons of great tutorials on her Youtube page.  

For this design, I started with a base of "Licorice" by Essie.  

I then used acrylic paint in a variety of colours to create my waterfall design.  I had to do some mixing in order to get the colours just right.  To get some of the colours to show up well over the black, I had to add a touch of white.  Here is my "palette".

I used a thin nail art brush to paint of my design.  Here is the final product!

The green and blue combo is definitely my favourite!

Happy Painting!

Love, Kate xo

I'm Back!!/Christmas Sweater Nails

The past couple months have been much busier than usual.  Between school, an online course, Christmas, and the arrival of my niece, nails have kind of been put on the back burner.  When I did get a chance to do my nails, they were unsuccessful design or didn't photograph well.  Perhaps one day I'll post some of my nail art failures!

So now that my course is done and Christmas is over, I expect to be back posting on a weekly basis.  You'll notice I've switched things up a little on the blog.  I thought it could use a new background.  What do you think?

Ok, now let's get back to some nails designs.  I know that Christmas was technically 2 days ago but I don't think it's too late to post a Christmas design.  For Christmas I got a set of nail art brushes from Amazon (thanks mom!).  The brushes are by Bundle Monster and based on my initial use of them, I really like them.  A proper striping has seriously been missing from my life!

At Christmas time, I'm always drawn towards Christmas sweater nails.  For this design, I used Blanc by Essie (base colour), dark green acrylic paint, and crimson red acrylic paint.  I used a striping brush, a small detailing brush, and a dotting tool (a real one!).

 I then used the acrylic paints and brushes to create my design.  I chose to keep each nail similar with an accent nail (Christmas tree).  Here is the final product!

I LOVE how they turned out!  

I can never get enough of a good Christmas sweater design.  Here is the sweater design I did last Christmas.

I'm very happy to be back and can't wait to create some fun designs with my new brushes and striping tape (still in the mail).

Happy Painting!

Love, Kate xo