Guest Post! Kissed by a Rose

Lisl here! It's been a long time since either Arden or I posted (long story short: life happened), but Casa de Polish will not be neglected.  I'm super excited because my two best friends from elementary school guest posting today!  Take it away Karebear and Sher!

Hello, Casa de Polish followers, minions, and fans!

Karen and Sarah here, two of Lisl's longtime bffls. We are both beginner nail artists, with more passion than practice, and today we set out to try out this pink mani with black rose accent nail from one of our other favorite nail blogs, Pshiiiit.

We went through Sarah's collection to  find colors that closely matched the original and came up with:

Base coat: Essie - Feed Me

Main Pink: Unforgettable Moments - Pink Lai

Dark Pink: Essie - My Place or Yours

Light Pink: Essie - Blanc

Main Green: Julep - Courteney

Dark Green: Butter London - Thames

Gold Highlight: Nail Rock - Venus Gold

Top coat: Seche Vite

STEPS

1. Base coat, pink coat with a black accent nail

Sarah:

First, I painted my nails with Essie - Feed Me. I don't think this is actually a base coat but I've been using it as one. Next, I painted all but one of my nails with two coats of Essie - My Place or Yours and then the accent nail with one coat of the very solid, very mysterious Noir polish of unknown origin. I've never had a decent black before, so I was very excited to find this in the cupboard under my sink!

2. Roses.

Karen:

I started by dotting two dots of Unforgettable Moments - Pink Lai where I wanted to paint the basic flower shapes. I then filled them out into irregular blobs, and waited for them to dry. Protip: Make sure the pink flowers are small enough so that you can add leaves around them.

I then added shadows in the darker pink My Place or Yours with a dotting tool. While the roses dried, I added leaves in the main green color, also with a dotting tool. I finished off the roses with white highlights (light pink would work well as well). 

As you see from the photo, I started out with a dotting tool, but ended up using a mechanical pencil to do smaller dots because it had a more precise tip. I then shaded the leaves with dark green, and added gold highlights to make them pop.

Here is a handy gif if you are more of a visual learner than I am:

3. Top coat & Cleanup

Sarah:

Seche Vite is arguably one of the most useful polishes in my opinion, as it makes everything super shiny and smooth to the touch. I ran out a few weeks ago, so inviting Karen over was very strategic on my part.

4. Admire

They are so, so pretty!

We hope you enjoyed this rose mani. Try it yourself and let us know what you think!

New Technique: Marbling without Water

Arden: Hey everyone!  Today's prompt in the 33 Day Challenge is to try out a technique that is new to you.  If I were a person who embraced adversity, this probably would've been the perfect opportunity to try out water marbling again.  But everytime I've ever tried to do water marble nails I've ended up wanting to bash my head into the wall.  I've just never gotten it to work.  So instead of suffering through the same crushing defeat again, I decided to try out this marbling without water technique by Robin Moses.

First, watch this tutorial video.  It is super great!

 I started by painting my nails with a base coat, and then two coats of OPI Don't Touch My Tutu (whenever I do nude nails, I always start with this polish, because I feel like it helps me work up to a nice opacity quicker).  Then I applied a very thick coat of Julep Layne (a more pinkish nude) to my first nail.

I dabbed on white (Julep Bunny), black (Sally Hansen Black Out), and sparkly tan (Julep Cynthia) polish and used a small nail art brush to swirl them together.  I will say that I don't think my nude coat was as wet/thick as the one in the video, because my colors did not swirl that well together.  When i try this again I will definitely try to make the base coat thicker.  But the polishes still swirled pretty well.

When I finished with each nail, I went back and dabbed on some gold glitter polish using my Color Club gold striper.  I added a top coat and voila!

Obviously, not as totally awesome as the original, but still pretty good!  I'm gonna call this new technique a success.  (And not nearly as maddening as water marbling.  Which I will try again someday.  Maybe.)

Be sure to check out the rest of entries in the 33DC below!

Ladybug Nail Tutorial

Arden: Hey everyone! Today's prompt in the 33 Day Challenge is to follow someone else's tutorial.  I chose to create these cute ladybug nails, following a tutorial from the blog Swatch and Learn.

And since I haven't done one of these in a while, I decided to create my own step by step tutorial as well!

I started by painting my nails with a base coat, then two coats of Julep Jackie (aka the best red polish ever).

As you can tell in the photo, I didn't get full coverage from two coats, but knew I was about to paint the tips black so I figured it would be fine.

After that, it was really easy.

1. Paint a black line with a striper brush to help mark the face of the ladybug.

2. Fill in the tip with a black polish (I used Sally Hansen Black Out).

3. Paint another black line down the center of your nail.

4. Add black dots on either side of the line using a dotting tool.

5. Add white dots at the tip using a dotting tool.

6. Add small black dots on top of the white to finish the eyes.  (This wasn't in the original tutorial, I just thought it would make the eyes cuter.)

Here's the finished product:

I love these little guys!  They're so cute!  And for a 100% freehanded design, these were pretty quick and easy!  Definitely a good manicure design for a beginner to try.

Let me know how you like them, and check out everyone else's entry in the 33DC today below.

Splatter Paint Nails Tutorial

Arden here!  Did anybody else's family do a lot of splatter painting when they were younger?  Maybe it was just me, but I definitely had several articles of clothing that featured some home-made splatter paint when I was in elementary school.  Today's manicure brought back all that 90's awesomeness!

I had been looking to do some really colorful nails, and my original plan was to try a rainbow pattern.  But the more I thought about it, the more tedious, time-consuming, and un-fun painting on a gazillion rainbow stripes sounded.  So I decided to go in another, infinitely more fun direction.  And I'm so glad I did, because this is by far my favorite manicure I've given myself yet!

I started by painting my nails with two coats of Sally Hansen Black Out.

I then started splatter painting!  All you really need to do this technique is a straw.  I did not have a full-sized drinking straw, so I used a little red coffee stirrer straw.  I do think that no matter the diameter of your straw, it probably helps to cut them down so they're shorter.  I ended up cutting each coffee stirrer in thirds.

Next, make a little puddle of the nail polish you want to splatter on a paper plate/wax paper/Ziploc baggie/whatever water-resistant surface you want.  Dip one end of the straw in the nail polish.  Then hold it over your nail, and blow into the other end of the straw.  (Be careful not to inhale the polish!)

It will probably take you a couple of tries to work out all of the kinks.  Here I am practicing on wax paper.  As you can tell, the nail polish didn't so much splatter out of the straw as drip down.  (But that one in the lower left corner looks good!)

I found that blowing a quick sharp breath helped.  Also, it worked better for me when I made a tah sound as I blew, instead of a wah.

Here are my nails after I finished my first color.  They weren't too impressive.

Yeah, that's right, the pinky and pointer finger basically only have small drops on them.

Gradient Nail Tutorial

Have you just been sitting at home, wondering over and over to yourself, "How do you paint gradient nails?"  Great!  Today's post is just for you.

Start off with a base coat (I use Essie's All in One Base Coat) then pick out the two colors you want to use.  I chose Essie Butler Please and Essie Mint Candy Apple (currently one of my most favoritest colors).  Paint your nails the lighter of the two colors.  (You can do gradients with more than two colors, but we're starting small today.  Baby steps!)

I painted my ring finger white (OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls) because I wanted to show you all what a gradient looks like when you sponge it on over white, and not one of the colors used.