Slow Swatching: A England - She Walks in Beauty

Hey y'all it's Lisl!  Today I'm starting a new feature I dreamed up when I got a lot of new nail polish for my birthday.  It's called slow swatching, and it's where I swatch a single color at a time and dream up a little bit of nail art to go with it!  

Today I'm showing you A England's She Walks in Beauty, which is one of the three excellent polishes Arden got me for my birthday!  My ultimate goal for this swatch was to do a manicure inspired by one of my favorite places in the world, the Metolius River in Oregon, where my family and I have gone camping every year since I was but a babe.

I started off with a coat of OPI On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is, well, gorgeous.

Nail Art Fail: Rose Nails

Arden: Hi, friends!  After Lisl made rose nail art for the tri-color challenge in May, I decided that I'd like to try them out myself.

Full disclosure: I was SUPER tempted not to blog these nails because they did NOT GO WELL.  But Lisl encouraged me to put them out there so you guys can see what it's like when nail bloggers try something and fail.  So here's to failure!

It started innocently enough.  I decided to use Sally Hansen I Lilac You (which I found in the clearance bin at Target two weeks ago) as my base.  It's the palest lilac purple I own, and I love it!

I then followed the Nailasaurus' tutorial on how to make rose nails.  I painted on splotches in New York & Company Peony Blossom and then added some outlining using Revlon Cherries in the Snow.  I first tried using our smallest nail art brush for this task, then our smallest dotting tool, and ultimately a toothpick.

NOTHING WORKED.  As much as I wanted to paint on nice artsy contour lines, what kept coming out onto my nails were ugly blobs.  I tried to make it better by adding some lighter colored lines using CoverGirl Pink Lady, but that didn't go well either.  This is what I was left with:

As you can tell, this manicure wasn't helped by the fact that Cherries in the Snow bleeds TERRIBLY when you apply a top coat over it.  Both the pointer and ring finger were hit hard by streakage.  

Not that I cared a whole lot, since my poor roses just looked like sad pink blotches.  I don't know, maybe I'll try this design again sometime, when I'm better at using our brushes (or maybe I have a different one?).  But for now, I can attest that this style is not nearly as simple as it looks.

Quilted Nails

Arden: I've been googling "quilted nails" for a couple weeks now, but have just never really found any manicures I wanted to emulate.  Until now!  I was actually just searching for "nail designs" when I came across a manicure made up of larger dots connected by little bitty diagonal rows of dots and thought they reminded me of a quilted pattern.  (Unfortunately, I now cannot find the picture that inspired me, but if I do, I will definitely update this post.)

I started by painting my nails with two coats of Essie Mint Candy Apple.

Here are the tools I used to make my dots: two different sized dotting tools.  But I promise you can get similar results using whatever tapered utensils you have at home: nails, paper clips, toothpicks, etc.

I then made a uniform pattern of dots using OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls and the larger dotting tool.

Star Trek Nails

Arden: I just discovered these pictures on my computer and can't believe I never blogged them!  To celebrate going to see Star Trek Into Darkness at midnight the night it opened last month, I did a Star Trek-inspired manicure.  These nails are meant to evoke the uniforms worn by Starfleet officers.

I started by painting my nails Essie Red Label, Butter London Blagger, and Sally Hansen Butterscotch.  (I bought Butterscotch because I had a coupon at CVS, and also because I had never seen a mustard yellow polish before.  It really is a unique shade of yellow.)

I Can't Afford That: Stella McCartney Roseberry Lace Dress + Debut of my Mash Nail Art Brush Set

Aaaah!!!! So much to write about today, guys!  (By the by, this is Lisl, if you can't tell by the fact that I opened with "Aaaah!!!!")  Today I'm writing about my obsession with this amazing, amazeballs (that's right - two different kinds of amaze) Stella McCartney dress, and I am ALSO showing off my new nail art brush set.  Can we handle that many things at once? 

Keep reading to find out if we can handle that many things at once!

I Can't Afford That: Peter Som for Anthropologie Zebra Dress

Hey guys, it's Lisl.  So a couple nights ago I was scanning Pinterest for more clothes that I can't afford, but can use as manicure inspiration.  I found this Peter Som for Anthropologie zebra print dress, which is amazing, because it is not printed with zebra stripes, but printed with ZEBRAS.  It was 12:30 AM at this point, but I could not be deterred: I would paint my nails with zebras too.  This turned out to be misguided.

I started with a base of my trusty Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White Out.

Crumpet's Nail Tarts: April Tri-Polish Challenge (Belated) Day 4

Helloo!  So, this is very late (my life, and lab work, went "AAAAAAAH"), but here is my fourth and last Tri-Polish Challenge for April!  Tri-Polish Challenge refresher course: it's run by Crumpet's Nail Tarts, and every month we are assigned three colors, choose three corresponding nail polishes, then make four manicures using those polishes!

So, here is number 4!

Nail Art Nail-Off: Newspaper Nails

If you've spent any time on Pinterest recently, you've probably seen a picture like this floating around:

From this video by Cutepolish

 Those look so cool, right?  And all the videos make them seem not that hard, so we decided to try it.  Arden's attempt first:

I started by painting my nails OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls (I use this so much I don't know why I keep taking pictures of it; I could easily just use an old one.)  I didn't want to wait too long for them to dry, so I then painted a fast-drying top coat (Essie Good to Go) on top.

Next, I cut out small sections of newspaper.  A cursory look at all the newspaper nails tutorials led me to think that one shortfall to most of them is that only a few words of newsprint can fit on each nail.  I decided to try to avoid this issue by cutting out pages with smaller type; specifically, the baseball highlights.

Crumpet's Nail Tarts: April Tri-Polish Challenge Day 3

Hey guys,  here (a little late) is my third manicure for April's Tri-Polish Challenge!  For a quick catch up on the challenge, you can check out the rules here and see the first two manicures I did here and here.  The basic premise is that there are three official colors for each month, and you do four manicures using the same three polishes!  For April I chose L'Oreal Not A Cloud In Sight, Essie Fear Or Desire and China Glaze Make An Entrance.

So for my third manicure I wanted to do a simple and easy leopard print.  I'd played around with making leopard designs for fun on scrap paper so I figured it couldn't be too difficult. Well, I have to say what came out at the end isn't very leopard-y.

One of My Favorite Things: TOMS Outreach Women's Shoes

Today's nails are inspired by one of my new favorite possessions: my TOMS Outreach Classics that benefit the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project.  To give you an idea of just how much I love these shoes, let me tell you the story of how I ended up ordering them three different times.

A History of My Pretty Sun TOMS, as Told Through Twitter & Instagram:

My new toms arrives and I love them! instagram.com/p/XTSxLxCYDN/
— Arden Ratcliff (@arden_elise) March 26, 2013

Tragic news, friends: my new sunshine Toms were too big! I've had to return then & order smaller ones. Bummed I have to wait.
— Arden Ratcliff (@arden_elise) March 27, 2013

My second pair of these toms arrived & this pair I can keep on my feet! instagram.com/p/XlbyrLCYOn/
— Arden Ratcliff (@arden_elise) April 2, 2013

Crumpet's Nail Tarts: April Tri-Polish Challenge Day 2

Alrightie.  I am back again with my second manicure for the Tri-Polish Challenge.  If you're unclear about what I'm talking about you can check out the rules and learn how to participate here.  I brought back my trusty DIY decals for this manicure, and started out by making a giant block of zig-zag print on a ziplock with a toothpick (this was not a quick process, I really just need to get me a nail art brush).

Then I cut out the decals into fun shapes and applied away:

Crumpet's Nail Tarts: April Tri-Polish Challenge Day 1

Hey everyone! I'm so excited to share my first "challenge" nail art with y'all.  The Tri-Polish challenge is hosted by Crumpet's Nail Tarts and it goes a little something like this: every month there are three official colors chosen, you pick three corresponding polishes and create four manicures using those polishes.  This month the colors are pink, orange and turquoise and I am using China Glaze Make an Entrance, Essie Fear or Desire, and L'Oreal Not A Cloud In Sight.

For my first manicure I did a "sunset" sort of thing.

Nail Art Nail-Off: Happy Easter! (Part 2)

Happy Easter, everyone!  I hope you enjoyed Lisl's Easter nails and decal tutorial!  Here is my take on Easter nails. 

I started by painting my nails with Revlon Dreamer.  Then I sponged on OPI Did it On 'Em  for grass.  I carved an egg shape out of a pencil eraser (no picture cause I'm a little embarrassed how makeshift my egg stamp looks).

I used the erase egg stamp to stamp eggs onto the nails using L'Oreal Creme Puffs,  Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Pink Blink, L'Oreal Royalty Reinvented, and Cover Girl Outlast Stay Brilliant Coral Silk.  I used the same colors to decorate the eggs using a "dotting tool" (read: a super small wall nail).  I also stamped some Revlon Snow Flurries onto the remaining eggs for some sparkle.  (Disclaimer: I have had Snow Flurries since I was in 9th grade or something, so I have NO IDEA if they still make it or not.)

Please excuse the cut on my pointer finger

Nail Art Nail-Off: Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Nail Art Nail-Off: Two Takes on One Nail Art Technique!

Our theme for today: St. Patrick's Day!  Let's break out the green polish!

Hi!  It's Arden here.  For my St. Patrick's Day nails, I went with a simple gradient, plus a crosshatch pattern on my accent nail.  (Lisl: it's just so amazing).

This wasn't my first attempt at gradient nails, but it was definitely the most successful!  This time, I followed the instructions from the Nailasaurus' gradient tutorial and they worked like a dream!  I definitely recommend swirling the two colors together before putting them on the sponge-- that might be the secret to making it work!

As Seen on Pinterest: Reverse Dot Manicure

Welcome to the first post in our recurring feature: "As Seen on Pinterest!"  Today, I've got a nail art design that I've been admiring on Pinterest for quite some time.

This design was originally blogged by Emerald Sparkled.  Here's her picture, that I stumbled upon on Pinterest:

from http://www.emeraldsparkled.com/2010/10/notd-bubblegum.html

I don't own that many pink polishes (for some reason, pink nail polish just never seems like it looks good on my nails), so I decided to do mine in shades of orange!