Throwback Thursday: St. Patrick’s Day 2016

For the holiday, let’s take a look at some festive nails I did last year!

My mom loves having sheer sparkly nails, so I did two coats of ASP “Shimmer Top Coat” as a base. I then removed the tacky layer and added some shamrock stickers, and a couple kitties she really liked. These stickers are nice and thin so you couldn’t even really tell they were there under the topcoat.

I went a little bit more bold with my nails:

Used the same stickers over LeChat Mood Changing “Limelight”. I am obsessed with these gel polishes because they change color depending on how hot or cold your fingers are. This color turns a dark green, and I love the subtle gold shimmer.

Gel Polish Used:

LeChat “Limelight”
ASP “Shimmer Top Coat”

ASP “Rendezvous in Red”

A simple summer no chip done with ASP “Rendezvous in Red”. This gel polish is super smooth to apply and doesn’t run easily despite feeling thin. It’s great because it doesn’t make the nails look thick, but even though it feels thin it is very pigmented and only requires two coats.

Finger Paints “Main Art-Traction”

Practicing my no chips while I was on a mini vacation to Woodsmoke-

Here we’ve got Finger Paints gel polish in “Main Art-Traction”. It’s a nice neon fuschia/purple that’s very creamy and completely opaque in two coats. My client wanted an accent nail of ASP “Studio 54” and some bling, and told me to do whatever I want which I always love hearing!

 

Back to school nails!

I felt like I couldn’t walk into my first day of nail school with naked nails or ugly polish on, so I did a quick no chip the night before. I decided on a bright summery purple with a simple glitter accent nail.

Gel Polishes Used:

Finger Paints “Main Art-Traction”
ASP “Studio 54”

Is it 2002 again?

Pretty much from the beginning of when I started painting my nails regularly, my go to polish was black- possibly with a glitter top coat. I was pretty into the punk/metal/grunge look much to my parents dismay. Even now when I really can’t make up my mind and don’t feel strongly about doing my nails any certain color I still head for the black or so dark they might as well be black bottles.

This is a great combo, and would have delighted my 8th grade self.

Gel Polishes Used:

ASP “Black Beauty”
ASP “Shimmer Top Coat”

Exciting news!

So much has happened lately, I know I haven’t posted in forever. March was such a busy month! The most exciting thing to happen though- Kyle proposed! I kind of knew it was coming, we had picked out the ring together and I knew he had it; so when he texted me while I was at work asking if I wanted to go out later that evening I was already excited with anticipation. Since I knew what the ring looked like I made him keep everything about how he was going to do it a secret.

 

I got home from work and put myself together and we were off. In the car, he told me he had wanted to take me to Los Burritos Tapatios where we had our second date for dinner, but unfortunately they don’t exist anymore. So we went to Casa Margarita instead to keep with the Mexican food theme! After dinner we got in the car and headed to another mystery destination. I only figured it out once we got pretty close! It was The Ashbary Coffee House, where we met face to face for the first time over 7 years ago (we met online for those that don’t know). I ordered a mocha milkshake and he got some coffee and we sat by the window chatting about memories from so many years ago. Eventually he pulled the cute little heart shaped blue box out, and asked if I would marry him. He knew the answer was yes!

We couldn’t have found a more perfect antique ring!

We took a quick photo outside the coffee house, and went home to relax. It was a lovely night and very “us”. Easily the happiest night of my life so far, I waited for that moment for so long! I’m so excited to be planning our wedding.

My coworker recently got married! She actually asked me to do her nails, and that ended up being more like her nails and 9 other bridesmaids/family members! Certainly the most nails I’ve done back to back, about 7 hours of work! She’s such a sweetheart though, how could I say no?

The beautiful bride Mariana and myself

I didn’t take the time to get pictures of all their nails since all but one of the ladies just wanted plain french tips, but I did my nails to match the dress I wore and also to get a great picture to show off my ring!

I finally got to use these cute little 3D roses I had gotten in a bulk nail charm order, they’re kinda squishy which is cool. I surrounded them with rhinestones and silver caviar beads on the ring finger. Since the dress has roses on it I hand painted antique roses on the other fingers, and broke up the plain blue a little bit with some polka dots. Antique roses are super easy to paint but look so great!

The blue is a gel polish, but the roses are painted with regular nail polish. I used a gel top coat for maximum shine! I also put on acrylic extensions since my real nails are kind of a wreck right now…

Gel Polish Used:

ASP “Blue Crush”

Nail Polish Used:

Sinful Colors “Soul Mate”
Victoria’s Secret Pink “Now or Never”
Kleancolor “Green Grass”
Sally Hansen “In Record Lime”
Sinful Colors “White on White”

Five Guys Fanatic Burger Nails

Nails isn’t my full time job yet, currently I work for Five Guys! (I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned that on the blog before.) Last weekend they flew all of their gm’s out to Washington D.C. for a conference, and I had a great time. It’s nice to get out of the store and put some faces to names. Here’s me dressed up for the 80’s themed costume party they threw the last night:

If you can’t tell, I’m wearing burger plug earrings, and of course I had to do my nails for the occasion.

This is my best attempt at stamping ever! It took me a couple tries on each nail to get it right, but luckily since I was stamping normal polish on top of a gel base I could easily wipe the mistake off with some cleanser and try again. The adorable burger charm is from Daily Charme, and the stamping plates are from MoYou London which I purchased from What’s Up Nails.

Polishes Used:
Color Club “Harp On It” (Gel)
ASP “Selfish” (Gel)
Kleancolor “Light Red”

Valentine’s Day Nails

I’m sorry I haven’t had much time to blog lately! I’ve just been super busy with work and family stuff and haven’t even had time to be doing my nails, much less writing about them!

I did get to go out to a super fancy Italian restaurant for Valentine’s day though, which was a much welcome break from the craziness February has been. My boyfriend Kyle and I went on a double date with his brother Richie and his girlfriend Taylor to Vivere in the Italian Village downtown. It was super classy and everything was delicious.

Bathroom selfies are necessary when you get this dressed up…

Since I haven’t done anything neat with my nails lately, I felt like I needed to step it up for this dinner. One of my favorite nail artists I follow on Instagram is @getbuffednails, who inspired the swirly heart nail with one of her sets.

I used Lechat mood changing gel polish “Heart’s Desire”, which in this picture you can see the different shades on my pointer finger. The dark red is the color of the polish when your hands are cold, and the bright red is when your hands are warm.

Cold Lechat “Heart’s Desire”

I used Color Club Halo Hues “Harp On It” for the base of the bling nail for extra sparkle, as well as the base for the negative space heart on my ring finger. I outlined the heart in ASP “Selfish” with a very thin coat so some of the holographic-ness still shows through.

Warm Lechat “Heart’s Desire”

We also went to the Chicago Auto Show afterwords, and I was super tempted to pretend I was one of the models showing off the cars. Can I please have that little red car? Haha.

 

Gel Polishes Used:

ASP “Selfish”
ASP “Black Beauty”
Lechat “Heart’s Desire”
Color Club “Harp On It”

Rockin’ silver and black nails

I have been obsessed with the Color Club Halo Hues collection for a while, and I finally bought my first! I got Harp On It, a gorgeous silver holographic polish. I love that they sell their gels in packs with the regular polish as well!

Gel Polishes Used:

Color Club “Harp On It”
ASP “Black Beauty”

A little blue glitter for Mom

I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure this manicure was my mom’s first experience with gel nails! She also bought me these silver dot stickers for christmas a couple years ago, and we both love them so much that I just keep buying them again when I run out. (If you like them, they’re from Sally Beauty!)

She’s not huge into having super colorful nails, but since this glitter is somewhat sheer she liked it. Only used one coat of ASP “Blue-pers” so that it didn’t get too dark.