[Nail Look of the Day] Lace, florals, and polka dots; who wants a tea party?

I was inspired by a photo I found on Pinterest (if you want to see the original, you can sift through my nail inspo board here) and decided to recreate the look. I think the flowers turned out really well (I used a different blend than usual to make my petals) and I was really pleased with my pinky-peach base color.

Unfortunately, I can't really share what nail polish I used to get the base pink-peach color because I actually used two sheer nail polishes to create it. I started with a coat of a peach nail polish that had too much orange undertones for my liking (it's an Asian brand - The Face Shop - if you're interested but I doubt it's still in production). It's relatively sheer so I let it dry and then did one super thin coat of Revlon Pink Cafe nail polish (I've used this a couple of times in previous nail looks). This nail polish starts off being pretty sheer and "jelly" like (if that makes sense) which allowed me to layer the two colors without having one totally block out the other. I'm definitely pleased with the end color.

Once I let my base color dry, I created half moon shapes with my a pale pinky white nail polish. In retrospect, I would have done this layer first THEN painted on the pink-peach color because it was pretty hard to make the rounded curves this way around especially because my pale pink-white nail polish brush (a Julep polish) was super fat and not made for tight corners. I think a white would have made this layer stand out more (I actually did use a white polish for my pink nail which you can see in the photo above and it made that layer look like BAM so much more obvious. It depends on the look you're going for I suppose. While this layer was drying, I used a dotting tool dipped in that same pink-white lace color to draw half circles to create that "lace" look adn then used aother dotting tool dipped in white nail polish to create polka dots around the half circles or on the pink-peach base area. This part was tricky because I tried making some dots INSIDE the half sphere space but it wasnt very large so not sure if it made the look better or worse.

After that, I just drew on the flowers by having a small puddle of a hot pink (Sally Hansen Hot Magenta) and light pink (Sinful Colors Easy Going) and using a dotting tool to mix the too a little before placing the tip on my nail and creating a circle of swirled color that looks like a rose. Using a toothpick or a thin dotting tool, I used a green color that I created by blending Essie Mojito and Sally Hansen Emerald Express. I wouldn't suggest this and would advise just getting an actual dark green color because Emerald Express is a glitter polish but it was the only dark sort of green color I had and I wanted to tone down Essie Mojitio.

Anyways, I'm not sure if this post was terribly helpful but hopefully the pictures were inspiring or fun to look at if anything. Please excuse the dryness and wrinkliness of my cuticles and palms by the way! :) Feel free to leave a comment below with any questions, suggestions, or requests!

Disney Princess Series Nail Art: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

It's been a while since my last Disney nail art recreation but I definitely struggled deciding what I wanted to do for Snow White. There weren't too many other nail art designs with her as the theme (compared to other Disney princesses) so I had trouble finding "inspiration"/something to base the look off of. In the end, I found two designs (I forget where exactly) that I liked so I combined them to come up with this look below!

My bow was a bit messy but overall I'm pretty pleased with how it all came together. It's a simple french tip with a twist. It was a little weird putting the red rhinestones at the tips of my nails so if you aren't comfortable with that, you can just dot on red circles instead. I think this is a nice look because having red, yellow, and blue (Snow White's main colors) all over your nails can be a bit overwhelming and this was a good compromise.

 The nail polishes I used to create this look are as follows:
-Forever 21 Nail Polish in Ruby Red
-Revlon Colorstay in Coastal Surf
-Orly Nail Polish in Lemonade

I added red rhinestones that I got from a wheel palette off of Ebay for less than a dollar and drew on the bow using a dotting tool and toothpick (either or is fine). I finished off my nails with (as always) a coat of seche vite (and extra at the ends to really make sure my rhinestones stuck). Below is a step-by-step visual of what I did (sorry it's so much harder to take a step by step of my actual nails when I'm painting them!).

Anyways I hope this gives some of you inspiration for any Snow White themed occasion you might have. If not, well, it's still nice to look at right? ;)

Get the [Nail] Look: Floral Friday

Sorry I haven't been posting for a while and apparently all my photos got removed because I think I accidentally deleted the album of photos connected to my blog. So if you notice any posts with broken photos, please bare with me as I am trying to fix them all! It is taking me quite a while to find all the photos again -sigh-.

Without further ado, here is my rendition of my most recent Pinterest find.

 I started off by painting all my nails with Revlon Minted. I let that dry completely before putting 2 coats of the slightly transparent white-pink polish from Julep. I have 3 Julep polishes I got from a free trial for their Maven Box and have to say, they're really quite good! The brushes are a bit fat but the polishes themselves have a really nice gel-like quality. After getting a good semi-opaque coat of the light pink, I let it dry and started drawing on the roses and leaves. I made the roses by mixing two shades of pink and swirling them in a circular motion to make them look like roses. I then used a somewhat smaller dotting tool to make the leaves. I actually used 2 green nail polishes to create extra depth but only listed one below. I let everything dry enough so that I could apply the gold striping tape without lifting up all my hard work if I needed to reposition it.

The nail polishes I used are as follows (from left to right):

-Revlon in Minted
-Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Punk Pink
-Sinful Colors in Easy Going
-Essie in Mojito Madness
-Julep in Ava Bombshell
Overall, this nail look is one of my favorites. It definitely looks detailed and complex but it's really not that bad! All the techniques are quite simple and it just takes some time to let each layer dry. I would suggest watching your favorite TV show or movie while doing this to help the drying phase pass by. I took me less than 2 hours to do this and I finished it off with my favorite Seche Vite top coat. I hope you guys all try this out and let me know how it goes in the comment!

Disney Princess Series Nail Art: The Little Mermaid (Ariel)

I've been wanting to do the Little Mermaid for a while now but could never decide on the right design (or find one that I could feasibly do). There are a ton of wonderful mermaid inspirational nail pictures on Pinterest (which you should follow my Pinterest nail board for photo inspirations!) but some of them are too difficult to use (like how am I supposed to draw fish scales without a nail stamper?! I know you can use like.. fish net fabric and stipple nail polish over it but I didn't have that/couldn't be bothered haha). I did go onto Ebay and found some seashell jewels for super cheap and once they came, I was able to create my Little Mermaid design! It's definitely not a requirement but I think to have some sort of sea jewel like a starfish, seashell, nautical anything really... well it just helps add to the look.

Summer always seemed like the right time to do mermaid nails but I never got around to it so now in the fall it does seem my nails do look a bit little misplaced or out of season. Nevertheless, they are definitely super bright and will catch anyone's eye ;) I highly recommend you have a good strong top coat or nail adhesive so that your jewels don't fall of though. I used my standard Seche Vite topcoat without any problems.

The nail polishes I used are as follows (from left to right):
-Forever 21 Nail Polish in Red
-Barry M Nail Paint Gelly in Greenberry
-Covergirl Boundless Color in Gold Rush (discontinued)
-butter LONDON 3 Free Nail Lacquer - Marbs

I blotted on the gold nail polishes by wiping off any excess nail polish and also painting some of the gold polish on a makeup sponge and dabbing it onto my nail. If I were to redo this look I would get a thicker larger and chunkier gold glitter nail polish though as the gold glitter I have was way too fine for the look I was going for.

Well that's my nail art rant/post of the day (week? month?). I hope you guys enjoy and try to recreate it! If you do, please tag me on instagram or twitter (@creamydinner) or leave a comment below!

Get the [Nail] Look: A Pastel Galaxy

Everyone loves the good old classic galaxy nail, but adding pastel? Well that's a match made in heaven! (Okay maybe not really but you get my enthusiasm). I saw some pastel galaxy nails on Pinterest and just had to recreate them and share them with you! Honestly they're the same technique as a normal galaxy nail, you just need to pick out all your favorite pastel or light colored polishes - they can be shimmer, glitter, or cream. You can also choose only a few colors to create a different effect (maybe a more cool-toned sky or a warmer one or if you want to be fun, choose them all like me! Although I think I ended up with a more cool toned galaxy nail).

Please excuse the messiness/dryness of my cuticles. My hands were super dry the week I did this and a little on the shorter side but as you can tell, the nails still turned out beautifully!

 I used the following nail polishes (listed below) but honestly any light or pastel colors you have will work. I also used one of those cheap makeup sponges that you can get from Ulta or Sephora to stipple on the colors. I first cut the sponge into roughly 0.5 cm by 0.5 cm squares and used a cheap tweezer I got from Hong Kong to hold the sponge pieces to hold the pieces while I stippled color onto my nails. You want to make sure you have a good white base nail polish by the way to avoid any sort of dimpling or weirdness which you can tell sort of happened with mine.. -shrug- Oh well haha.

From left to right:
-L.A. Colors Art Deco Nail Art Lacquer, White
-Pop-Arazzi Nail Polish, Icing On The Cake (cheap nail polish from CVS but any white will do; I'm not sure I would recommend this.. it's not terrible but you need at least two coats and it can be thick..)
-Covergirl Coral Silk
-Orly Spark
-Revlon Minted
-Sally Hansen Breeze Blue
-H&M Beauty Bandit (not sure if this is sold anymore since they appear to have changed their packaging)

I should also mention that when I was finished, I used one of those shimmery top coat add on nail polishes (not really sure how to describe it but its super iridescent)  from Skin Food (a Korean brand). I can't seem to find a photo or name of it online so I'm not sure if it's still available but it's not necessary to get the galaxy effect. You can coat your nails with a fine white glitter nail polish if you have one to save yourself the trouble of having to spot on white 'stars'. I finished my nails with my usual Seche Vite top coat which gave them the perfect gel finish. I used dotting tools from Ebay to draw my stars but a toothpick of bobby pin will work fine.

Disney Princess Series Nail Art: Aladdin (Princess Jasmine)

I'm not sure why but I've never particularly favored Princess Jasmine or the Disney movie Aladdin. Not that I didn't like the movie or anything, but maybe it was just I didn't like the genie so much. I'm really not sure. But the reason I bring this up is that the nail look I did inspired by Princess Jasmine is actually my favorite out of my entire Disney Princess series so far. I didn't come up with this look myself, I got it from Pinterest so don't give me credit but I seriously just LOVE the look! The tips with the gold accent and single rhinestone are just.. ooh too much amazingness. I got so many compliments when I wore this so I hope some of you try to recreate this nail look too :)

 

You can see that I didn't do the lines perfectly on my thumb but it still looks nice nonetheless. The steps I took are outlined and roughly sketched below (I'm trying be more helpful for recreating any of my nail looks haha).

I used the striper brush from LA colors gold nail polish but because that gold is too sheer, I would dip the brush into my more opaque gold polish (I used Butter London's The Full Monty but you can use any brand really) before using it. I used a dotting tool to create the circles and also used it to drag the dots inward to connect them with the other lines (see nail image 5 below). I lastly added a green/turquoise gem in the middle and applied my Seche Vite top coat to make it look like shiny gel nails <3

The nail polishes I used were:
-Barry M Hi Shine Nail Paint in Green Berry
-Butter London's The Full Monty Nail Lacquer
-LA Colors in Gold Glitter

Well I hope this inspired some of you to recreate this look! It looks complicated but it's really not! It does take a bit of time and steadiness but practice makes perfect right? :) Also I think it looks nice that my finger nails were somewhat rectangle rounded shaped instead of the usual oval/circular edge that your nails naturally grow at. Which Disney Princess should I do next? Frozen, Little Mermaid, or Tangled? Or any other princess! Comment down below please! ^__^

Disney Princess Series Nail Art: Sleeping Beauty (Aurora)

In the next installation of my Disney Princess themed nail trend, I decided to do Sleeping Beauty, also known as Aurora. It's weird, the last time I watched it (which was a while ago but I still remember quite clearly), I remember thinking it was a little creepy the way Aurora gets possessed. I mean like it just looked super scary, but as a little kid, I don't remember being scared at all when she was walking to the spindle and pricked herself.. so who knows haha. Maybe I'm just a bigger scaredy cat now ^__^;

Unfortunately the photos I took of these nails aren't the best quality (I blame my phone's poor camera quality) but hopefully you get the gist of the nail look and feel inspired to do a better recreation. I got inspiration from a photo I saw on Pinterest but later added something that makes this look more my own and really adds to the overall look.

I  added strips of gold nail striping tape between the two colors but that was after I had taken photos and I realized it was missing something. The bit of gold definitely tied the entire look together so much better so if you do plan on recreating the look, I highly suggest you use the gold tape (it's super easy to use!) or, if you don't have that, use a gold polish and line the borders. You can see in the below photo the gold a little bit (sorry it's not clear, it's from another photo a friend took where the focus wasn't the nails). Doesn't the extra gold really tie this whole "princess" look together?!

I used the following nail polishes to make this look but remember you can use whatever you have! This looks is great because it only uses two colors. The hardest part is just getting that sort of triangle tip and even if you're not great at doing it, having the gold striping tape really helps to cover up any mistakes and make it LOOK like you had perfect straight lines (:

-Sally Hansen Xtreme Hard as Nails in Fuchsia Power
-Essie in Ballet Slippers
-Seche Vite top coat (the usual)
-Gold striping tape on ebay (as listed above)

Anyways I hope you guys are all enjoying the summer weather (it's so hot where I am!) and these nails are the perfect summer color so if you do recreate this look, please link me or send it over! :)

Disney Princess Series Nail Art: Beauty and the Beast

If I didn't put the princess/movie in the title would you be able to guess which Disney princess this nail look was inspired by? I went around asking a couple of my friends and almost no one would know right away like my Cinderella nails unless i told them it was Disney princess inspired and then they would get it then haha. Anyways I think I liked these ones a bit less out of all of the "princess-themed" nails I've done because my flower didn't turn out that nice and I ended up using a lot of stickers so this nail look isn't as recreatable as I would like. Also the yellow that I used has a weird quality to it that just makes it look kind of blotchy no matter how I apply it? I'm not sure but leave me a comment of what you think! By the way sorry my nails were really dry the week I did this so you can totally tell in the pictures :(

I used the following nail polishes if you want to try and at least recreate the same color scheme. If you don't have stickers like I did, you can definitely still just use a gold glitter and apply it at the tips or in a half moon at the bottom or draw more red flowers (and better than mine). I really hate how blotchy my red rose was sigh but I think my right hand flower also had ugly leaves so that didn't help.

-Zoya in Piaf
-Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Extreme Wear in 180 Monarch-y
-Essie Mojito Madness
-Forever 21 Ruby Red

Anyways I hope you at least found some inspiration in this nail look. If not, the following picture offers the main color palette of Beauty and the Beast and you should try creating your own nail look based on Belle! If you do, please link me or send me your look :)

Disney Princess Series Nail Art: Cinderella

So it's been a while since my last post but I wanted to share with you all my latest nail art creations. I'm currently doing a Disney Princess theme of nail designs and today's nail art design is inspired by Cinderella! It's a really simple look but I got so many compliments on it and I absolutely love it! If you don't already, I highly recommend you use Seche Vite as your top coat. It's what gives all my nails this beautiful glossy finish that looks like gel nails. You have no idea how many people have asked me if I got my nails done at a salon since I started using Seche Vite.

I cheated and used some stickers I got from China/Hong Kong which added the extra bling to my nails but honestly it's not necessary! Even simply having the baby blue and accent silver glitter nail is enough to make this look Cinderella-themed. You can buy nail stickers for real cheap off of Ebay like these but if you don't want to wait the 3-6 weeks it takes to ship from China, then I'd suggest just using silver glitter and decorating more nails if you wish. You can take larger glitter chunks and create a curve line like on my pinky (in the above photo) or do a glitter gradient starting from the top or bottom of one or two nails. It's really up to you!

I used the following nail polishes to create these Cinderella nails:
-Revlon in Blue Lagoon
-Essie in Set in Stone
-Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Showtime
-Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat

I only used the Sally Hansen silver nail poilsh as a base to apply Set in Stone over so I wouldn't have to use as many coasts of the Essie glitter polish to get a more "opaque" finish. You can use any silver really though. The Revlon nail polish only took two coats and its a relatively thin formula so they dry super quickly. After that I let my nails dry for at least an hour (I actually waited a whole day if I recall correctly, just because I didn't have time to finish the day before) before applying on the extra stickers. I then sealed it all in with my Seche Vite top coat. 

I hope you all enjoyed this and please send me your recreations! This look is so simple and perfect for anything like a ball (or more modernly known as prom/dances/etc) :)