At Home Gel Manicure

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but I'm back and I'm going to try to post more often!  Today I decided to try something that I've only tried once and kinda failed.  I did a gel manicure.  A few months ago I bought Sally Hansen's Salon Insta-gel Strips because I wanted to try an at home gel manicure and this one came with the UV light so I didn't need to buy that separately and the kit was about $20 I believe.  Once I got home I opened everything and tried it out.  I just didn't want to use the strips that came with it because they just seem like a lot of work to try to get it all flat, smooth, and filed.  So I used my own base coat, put 2 coats of nail polish, applied the gel top coat, and cured.  At first I was happy with my manicure but after a day or so it started chipping and then all of the polish peeled off like it one big piece.  I was definitely not impressed.  A few weeks later I was at the store and noticed that they had the Sally Hansen gel base coat and top coat sold separately along with the other products that come with their regular Salon Gel Polish kit, so I got the top coat to try and see if it would be different than the Insta-Gel Strips.  Today I finally had the extra time to try this out.  I didn't bother looking at the directions and did my own thing instead.  Here's the steps I took:

1.  Pushed back my cuticles, filed the edges, and lightly buffed the surface of each nail to get rid of the surface shine.
2.  Applied a layer of the Salon Gel Polish top coat and cured for 30 seconds, wipe each surface with rubbing alcohol on a napkin to remove the sticky surface.
3.  Painted 2 layers of my own nail polish, Spoiled by Wet N Wild in Tip Your Waitress, waiting for each coat to dry completely.
4.  Added a simple nail sticker on each ring finger to add an accent.
5.  Applied another layer of the Salon Gel Polish top coat and cured for 30 seconds, wiped each nail with rubbing alcohol.
6.  Enjoyed my beautiful gel manicure :)

The rubbing alcohol is very important when doing a gel manicure!!! At first I thought there was something wrong because after curing my nail for 30 seconds the surface was so sticky and wasn't dry at all.  Then I remembered to wipe it with alcohol and it was perfectly smooth, dry, and shiny.  I am so happy with how this gel manicure turned out.  Soo much better than my last one!  My nails are so shiny and smooth!  I can't stop rubbing each nail because they feel so amazing haha.  Now I'll put it to the test and see how long it lasts.  After all that is the main reason people want gel manicures; so their manicures last a long time without chipping.  Now here's the pictures:

Ugh my pinky is never even with my other fingers.

 

 

 

 I probably look crazy today because I can't stop rubbing my nails and staring at them because they're so shiny and smooth.  I will keep you updated on how long this gel manicure lasts!

 

UPDATE:  I just wanted to update everyone that this gel manicure lasted from Wednesday to Saturday with absolutely no chipping and was just as shiny as when I first did it.  It probably would've lasted even longer but I wanted to change my polish so I took it off myself.  From now on everytime I want a manicure to last long I will definitely use this gel technique!

 



Day 7- Neon

Again, I'm a day late on posting my Day 7 nails for the May Nail Art Challenge.  I can't seem to get over this sinus infection :( Today's challenge was "neon".  I only have 2 neon colors right now unfortunately, so it wasn't too hard to decide what I wanted to do.  A while back I saw a cute mani done by someone on instagram with neon colors (see it on @bedizzle's instagram) I tried doing the link but my computer isn't working with me right now.  The colors I used for this mani are Wet n Wild Megalast in Limelight, Spoiled by Wet n Wild in Tip Your Waitress, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Black Out, and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White on.  I used my only dotting tool for now, a toothpick hah, to create the dots.

This pink and green are probably my favorite colors right now.  They're so bright and pretty in real life.  The pink is also a sort of jelly polish so it's perfect for sandwiching glitter!  The green has a pretty shimmer to it, which I love.  It was hard to capture in a picture.  Unfortunately by the time I was done with the dots on this hand I didn't feel like doing it on the other...stupid sickness :/  I can't stand going anywhere with only one hand painted so I ended up taking this polish off and repainting both of my hands the green and I added a nail sticker on my two ring fingers for an accent.

I can't explain how in love with this green I am!  I guess if I actually had a lightbox you could see the true color of it better.  Sorry, that's something else I need to invest in.  I'm still newish to the nail art world so I'm lacking lots of tools.  Ok, sorry for the long post today! 
*I forgot to add, I think my nails are finally getting longer :))) They're still pretty short, but compared to my post on 4/22/13 they've grown!*

Day 4- Star Wars

I'm 2 days late posting this because I haven't been feeling too well but here it is.  Today's theme the May Nail Art Challenge is Star Wars.  I know there are plenty of people that actually attempt (and a lot of them succeed) to draw pictures of the characters or of anything else from the Star Wars movies, but I'm not that talented.  I use to be pretty good in art and drawing but I know there's no way I could draw something so detailed on my nails.  Who knows, maybe one day I'll try, but for this challenge I just went with something simple:  Galaxy Nails.  I've never tried it before I see so many beautiful pictures of other people doing them so I figured I'd attempt it.  I used a lot of colors so it would be a lot to list, so here's a picture of them:

Here's the result:

 

 

I think they actually came out good for my first try.  This is definitely one of my favorite manicures that's I've done so far.  This is one that would keep on as long as possible because I just love looking at it!  My fiancé even looked at my nails and said he really like them, which doesn't happen very often.  So that made me pretty happy :) Now onto planning my next manicure for tomorrow:  Neon!

Day 1-Flower Nails

So I'm going to try to do the May Nail Art Challenge this month.  I've tried before but I didn't keep up with it so I will try harder this month.  Here are the themes for this month:

I've never tried doing flowers on my nails before so I had no idea what to do for day 1.  I ended up going with a simple design using a toothpick (I don't have a dotting tool yet) and a few different colors.  The colors I used were Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in White On,  Blue Me Away!, and Mellow Yellow, and Spoiled by Wet n Wild in Tip Your Waitress (love this pink!).  Here is what I came up with:

That was the best picture I could get because the rest of the flowers on my other nails didn't come out that great.  I wasn't very happy with this design :( I wish I could be more creative.  Maybe next time!

Blackcatlacquer Women and Women First

Today is day 4 for using the Nail-Aid Ultra Fast Growth nail polish and I have seen a little difference in the length of my nails.  It's not very noticeable, but I can tell.  And my nails feel stronger also.  I was going to keep my nails bare and then take a picture tomorrow to compare with the day 1 picture, but today I received some awesome nail polish from Blackcatlacquer and I couldn't help but try them out!  My nails definitely aren't as long as I want them to be, (they're still very very short), so I really don't like painting them while they're this length because they don't look as good, but I couldn't help myself when I saw this polish.  I got 3 of them: Women and Women First, Lips Like Sugar, and She's in Parties.  It was so hard to choose only 3 of them because all of Blackcatlacquer's polishes are amazing! Check them out here.  But the fiance said my limit was only 3 :( so I tried to pick 3 favorites and these were it.  I decided Women and Women First looked best on nails right now for the length.  She's in Parties is beautiful, but since my nails are so short it kind of looked like a mess of glitter on them, so I will be trying this one again later when my nails grow more.  Women and Women First is a wonderful light pink crelly polish with black and white glitter.  I used 2 coats by themselves for this manicure, but I've seen this polish layered over a colored polish such as a darker pink and it looks great too.  I love how the glitter in this polish spreads well while applying it.  I've used other polishes that have bigger pieces of glitter like this and it all would go to the tip of my nail while brushing the polish on.  It was annoying to go back and try to place the glitter where I wanted it.

I know, I know, my nails are horribly short!  I can't wait for them to grow out so my manicures can actually look good!

Nail-Aid Ultra Fast Growth

Hey everyone!  As I think I've mentioned before, I have a hard time growing my nails out.  They always break or peel as soon as they get to a decent length and it drives me crazy!  Because of this I have used acrylic nails a lot (which could be the reason my nails break or peel easily in the first place.)  I have tried to stop using the acrylics and let my natural nails grow but I ended up giving up after like 3 days.  Well, I decided AGAIN that I will let my natural nails grow and stay away from acrylics!  I was in Wal Mart today and saw a product by Nail-Aid called Ultra Fast Growth so I decided to try it.  It was about $6 for the bottle.  You can also purchase it as http://nailaidcares.com/.  On their website I don't see the specific product that I bought at Wal Mart, but they have 2 other's on there that say they help with nail growth, so I'm sure that's equivalent to this one.  The package promises longer nails after 5 days of use, so I will put it to the test.  You can use this product alone by putting on 1 coat, letting it dry, and applying 1 more coat and letting that dry; or you can use it as a base coat by putting on 1 coat, letting it dry, applying 1 or 2 layers of a colored polish, then applying it again as a top coat.  The directions say to remove the polish after 3 days and redo.  I will use it alone for the first 5 days and then I think I may continue to use it as my base coat.  I just applied it a few hours ago and I think I'm already in love.  It made my nails so smooth and it feels thick like it will protect my nails from breaking or peeling (even though it doesn't claim to do that on the packaging).  It feels like if I were to apply a colored polish over it, the polish would go on nice and smooth.  I will post a picture of how my nails right now on day 1 of using Nail-Aid Ultra Fast Growth and then I will post a before and after picture on day 5 and let you all know how well this product works for me. 

Please excuse the horrible red stains around my nails and the lighting of this picture.  When I take my day 5 picture I will be sure to use better lighting you can really see the length of my nails.

Mermaid Fin Watermarble

As I've said before, I love watermarble and I think the more I practice the better I will get at it.  After seeing the awesome mermaid fin waterbarble that Mucking Fusser did, I had to attempt to recreate it.  This was a lot harder than it looks!  My lines were definitely not straight and neat, and I don't know how many times I had to remove the polish and start over because I couldn't get the design on my nail correctly.  But eventually I got it looking decent so I decided that was good enough.  I didn't want to waste anymore of my nail polish...that is the downside of doing watermarbles a lot, going through sooo much nail polish :(  That is the reason why, for this manicure, I decided to only do the watermarble on my middle and ring fingers as my "accent nails" and I painted the rest of them with Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Blue Me Away!  I also used that one, Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear White On, and Salon Perfect Baby Blues.  Please tell me what you think :)

Watermarble Tips

Ok, sad to say, I gave up on trying to grow out my natural nails :( It was just taking too long and I am pretty impatient, so I put acrylics back on. I am hoping maybe I'll have enough patience in the near future to try again!  Maybe I'll find another product that will give me the nails I dream of.  I just hate how fast my nail polish chips on my natural nails :/ if anyone knows a good top coat that prevents this please let me know!

Anyways, after I put the acrylics on I was trying to think of a design to do. I love love love watermarbles (even though I haven't mastered the technique yet), so I watched some of the amazing "simplelittlepleasures" videos on YouTube and got the idea of doing watermarble tips! See the video here! Again, I haven't mastered this technique, but I love trying, so here's my results.  Please tell me what you think :)