Valentine's Day Candy Cane Water Marble- a Layniefingers tutorial

A while back I mentioned that I was finally figuring out how to water marble nails! I still haven't managed to do both hands with water marble, but I'm finally getting the concept down at least. Once I'd finished with today's design, I was struck by a couple of things: the colors were very traditionally Valentine's day to me, and the pattern reminded me of a candy cane for some reason. That's why this is a Valentine's Day Candy Cane Water Marble in July... because that's what it felt like!

If you like the look of this one, why not check out the video? It shows step by step how I achieved this look. Thanks for watching!

Some polishes may have been provided by the brand for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

New Animated Nail Art Tutorial- Tropical Garden

Oops. I completely forgot to share my latest animated tutorial from YouTube. I'm starting a series of these, since people seem to be enjoying them. They're fast and easy to follow, and fun for times I haven't got something more complex recorded.

So tell me what your feelings are on these animated tutorials: Do you like them? Would you like to see more? Do they need music or a voice-over? Tell me what else you'd like to see!

Some polishes were provided by Jessica Cosmetics. I used them because they're gorgeous!

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Acrylic Rainbow- a new take on an easy gradient

Hey, does anyone remember when I teased this photo, and said I was working on a video for it? Well, this is the finished nail from the video, and I absolutely love it! I FINALLY finished the darn thing, and maybe figured a bit more out about how to do some video editing. Whatever, I suck...

But it's READY! And it's EASY! Seriously, if you can brush back and forth, you can do this! And look at the finished product! They're filled with brush strokes and beautifully imperfect, so no matter what you do with it, it comes out gorgeous!

The video is right here, so if you'd like to learn how to do this, spend 5 minutes with me and see how it's done! If you like it, you can always subscribe, hit the thumbs up, tell your friends, whatever... it's all good. :D

 

 Rainbows!! Color!! I'm such a child...

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Rainbows... yes, it's ANOTHER gradient video!

Does anyone remember a nail design I did a couple of years ago that looked like this?

I got quite a few requests for a tutorial on how to achieve this look, but I was never able to capture the process using photographs. Now, however, I have a brand-new tutorial showing you what you need to make your own soft, streaky rainbow! It's coming soon, so let me know if you're interested!

Yea, it's a teaser. Sue me. :D

See my disclosure statement for more information.

It's finally here- a tutorial on how to do laser print nail transfers!

Some of you may remember that a while back I posted a pretty photo of colorful nail art, saying I was working on a technique to share with everyone. I finally figured it out, and then the world blew up, so to speak. However, a few people gently reminded me they were still anxiously awaiting this technique, so I finally got off my butt and finished editing the video that's been waiting all this time. I'm so happy to finally share this technique with all of you!

As you may have noticed from the title of today's blog, these nails were done using color laser prints. That's right- no special tools needed, no store-bought decals or fancy papers or anything. The supplies to create these nails are very basic, aside from the laser prints themselves.

You'll need:

• Color laser prints - inkjet prints will not work for this project.
• Acetone or nail polish remover
• A soft paintbrush
• White or very-light nail polish
• Base coat and top coat as usual

The process to apply these transfers is simple, but it can be fiddly at times. It took me over two weeks of playing with this daily to achieve what you see in the top image of this post. But if you take your time and make sure your image is actually transferring to your nail before you lift the paper you can come out with a fantastic finished image.

Once your transfers are done, you can finish your nails off any way you like. You can add glitters, stones, stickers or even additional nail polish. The only real limit here is your imagination!

So what are you waiting for? Watch the video!



That's it! You can use your own scanned-in images, things you've drawn or photographed, images from the internet... anything you can print can go on your nails!

Remember, if you do your nails with something inspired by my blog, leave me a comment and a photo. I love seeing what you come up with, and I love knowing I've inspired someone!

Hope you have a fantastic weekend!

Haven't you always wanted a monkey?

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Rainbow Zebra- how to do the zebra print

Whew, I finally got this one edited and uploaded! Here's the second half of the rainbow zebra tutorial... Hopefully it makes sense!

I love the metallic sparkle of the left nail. It's sponged over silver, as opposed to the right which is over white.

I love zebras. They're cute!

See my disclosure statement for more information.

A video tutorial on doing a sponged gradient nail!

I got such a great response to the sponged gradient tutorial I did. Unfortunately, quite a few people posted that they didn't quite follow my steps, so I decided the best thing to do was to do a video tutorial! That way, it's clear what I'm doing and when.

Recording the video didn't take all that long, but holy cow did editing it take a long time! Thankfully it didn't make me want to scream or cry this time. I just need more experience editing, which is a good thing. That means you'll get lots more videos to come!



I'm also working on the followup to this video, where I'll show you how to add the zebra stripes. That's actually a pretty doable process, if I can get the energy and the time to shoot it!

Since I'm doing more videos now, why not leave me a comment to let me know what sort of tutorials you'd like to see? I have several planned, but I'm always looking for more ideas.

Thanks for watching, and if you liked this video why not thumb it up and subscribe? It would totally make my day!

Wheee, I'm finally enjoying making videos!.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Watermarking your images...

The internet is fantastic, but unfortunately lots of people blog/reblog images they see without including a link back to where they found them. Watermarking your images is one way to help make sure people can find your stuff, but it can seem intimidating sometimes. After a conversation with xSparkage on twitter tonight, I decided to do a tutorial to help everyone watermark their images. It's easier than it seems!

I've got a series of photos that will walk you through it. Remember, if you have any questions at all, feel free to leave me a comment, or drop me an email. I like helping people! This tutorial is for Adobe Photoshop CS5, but I think it's similar enough to earlier versions that you can figure it out.

Once you've got your action saved, you can play it on any image, and your watermark text layer will appear. Then, you can drag it into place, resize it if you like, change the color or opacity... whatever you want. You can also set the color and size and things when you set up your action. Just make sure the watermark looks basically how you want it when you're recording it, and you can save yourself lots of time and headache in the future!

Hope this helps, and I hope you have a great day.

A Closer Look At KKCenterHK's Water Decals

Whew! I finally get to share my somewhat exciting news! Ok, it's not all that exciting unless you're me, but I'm so pumped I can barely contain myself! It's been a busy weekend...

If you've been a long-time reader here, you know I've been wanting to do videos for a long time. Unfortunately, I kept running into problems- I didn't have a camera, then my camera's video files didn't play nicely with video editors. Once I figured that out, the actual editing of video sent me into near nervous breakdown territory! Finally, once I overcame that obstacle, I found that youtube was chewing up my pretty video and spitting out really icky compressed stuff.

I wasn't happy... but finally after years of longing and working and trying to make sense of things, I have finally figured it out! Well, actually, my husband figured it out, and helped show me what to do, but I had the good sense to marry him, so I'm still claiming this one! So, here's my first almost-awesome video! Let's take a look at how to use these super-awesome water decals from KKCenterHK!



I've got a couple of photos of the nails I did, as well... and again, I got bubbles. I should have used the new topcoat instead of the old thick one, but live and learn. :D

So yay! Now that I've got the how down, hopefully I can start working on video tutorials for fun stuff! I'm so excited that I actually didn't sleep last night... I love what I do!

Some products in this post were provided for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Tutorial- How to make custom sponge tools

Whew, it's been a busy few days! But I'm finally back with the tutorial I referred to a few days back. I'm going to show you how to make your own sponge tools for fun and interesting nail art!

Before you start, you need to gather your supplies so you won't have to stop halfway through and bug your family about helping you find the glue stick, the way I might have done here.

The list is simple enough. Basically, you can use whatever you have on hand!

Supplies for sponge tools:

• Sponges
• Don't feel like you have to use what I used! Use whatever you have around the house...
• Kitchen sponges, makeup sponges, whatever sponges you
• Scissors
• Sticks of some kind. I used coffee stirrers and bamboo skewers.
• Some sort of adhesive. (Not pictured)

After that, it's really simple- cut the sponges and stick them on the end of the sticks! However, I went to a bit more trouble and showed different options you have.

To start with, I used the sponge from an old set of sponge rollers I have on hand. This particular roller had broken, so I decided to recycle the sponge into a tool for sponging.

I decided to cut it into different shapes to see what sort of effects I could create. I cut off small round sections from the end of the sponge, then cut them into half-circles and quarter-circle wedges.

I also cut the sticks into small segments that would be easier to control. I eventually cut the ends of the sticks into points, but I don't have pictures of that. I kind of forgot...  oops!

Then, I decided to cut a small opening into the sponge so that the stick would go inside of it. That would make it a bit more stable when stamping, I think.

This was so awkward to photograph, since I needed two hands to actually work the scissors and hold the sponge! So, pretend this photo is of me snipping into the bottom of the sponge segment.

You can also use your sticks to just sort of tear into the bottom, if you like. It all depends on what shape the bottoms of your sticks are. If you're using a bamboo skewer, you can just sort of shove it into the end of the sponge.

At this point, you would put glue on the end of your stick and shove it into the little hole you'd made in the base of the sponge. Unfortunately, I'd lost the glue stick I'd gotten out to do this tutorial with as soon as I started photographing, so after looking for a good 45 minutes, I decided glue wasn't important and I made do with what I had.

Instead, I painted the stick with a glob of nail polish and shoved it in. Surprisingly enough, this worked really well! I did find the glue stick after I'd finished this tutorial (of course!), and used it on later sponge tools... but the ones with nail polish held up just as well!



Who knew?

And now comes the fun part... seeing the different patterns and stamp styles you can get with the different tools! Believe it or not, they really do look different...

No matter how I tweaked this, it was hard to make it understandable. The colors basically match up the sponge shapes
to their patterns when stamped onto paper.

Stamp pattern of the center of the flat side of the half-circle section.

Stamp pattern of the edge of the quarter-circle wedge.

Stamp pattern of the flat edge of the quarter-circle wedge.

Stamp pattern of the side of the round.

Stamp pattern of the flat portion of the round, by the hole.

Stamp pattern of the flat portion of the round, by the hole.

Stamp pattern of the scratchy side of a kitchen sponge.

That last photo shows what the scratchy side of a kitchen sponge looks like when you stamp with it! I actually think it's pretty... very interesting, almost like when you splatter nail polish from a straw!

So, the idea here is simple: don't feel like you always need to spend money on expensive nail art tools. Sometimes you can do cool things with stuff you already have around the house!

Til next time!

My mind never stops with the ideas...

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Tutorial- How to Create Sponged Gradient Ombre Nails

Yes, this is the same
gradient as the tutorial
title image! :D

Ombre- it's everywhere right now. Ombre hair, ombre clothes, and ombre nails. While I can't help with the clothes or hair, I can show you how easy it is to do your own ombre manicure!

It's much easier than it sounds! It is time-consuming, though, and it uses up quite a bit of polish. Still, you could do this with any polishes, even going from black to white if you wanted to! You only need a few things...

This one's a LONG post, so I'll be cutting it to save your blog reader!

Scrapbook Punch Nail Decals

This Studio G punch cost
$0.97 at WalMart!

I've done a post about this before, but I'm doing it again because I found the most adorable punch while walking! I love being able to customize my nail art, so the idea of punching decals from whatever polish combinations I choose makes me super happy. As you can see, it make four tiny little hearts with each punch!

I had to test it out as soon as I got home. Sure enough, it made absolutely adorable decals that are the perfect size for nails. Seriously, these things are adorable!

So- how would you go about making these? It's seriously simple. You need a few items to start with...

• The punch(es) of your choice
• Nail polish- can be nail art polish, colored, or clear
• Any other items for decorating the nail polish sheets:
• glitter
• nail art pens
• brushes or dotting tools
• Plastic zipper sandwich bags

I painted strips a bit wider than the punch.

It's a very simple process. First, you paint strips of your choice of nail polishes across the zipper bag. I'm using a small bag used for packaging jewelry, but lots of smooth plastics will work. Do a test spot first, though, to make sure the polish will come off once it's dried.

I find it helps to do two or three coats of polish, to make sure the resulting sheet is strong enough to hold together. This is a perfect opportunity to use cheap clear polish just to build up the thickness.

Also, this is a great time to play with wet marbling. On the bottom row, you can see where I experimented with marbling different colors together. You can also do stripes, dots, wavy lines... whatever you like!

The next step is the hardest for me- waiting. The polish needs to be completely dry before you remove it from the plastic, otherwise it can bunch and tear, wasting your polish and your time. You can give it a day to dry, or even a week or more. The longer you wait, the easier it is to remove from the plastic as well.

Eek! I'd been wiping the tip of my
skewer on my thumbnail while
marbling the bottom row. Sorry!

Once it's thoroughly dry, removal is a snap. I fold back the corner of the bag under the polish and sort of roll it away from the polish. The polish lifts away easily, leaving you with a sheet that's entirely polish.

The benefit of using these instead of nail stickers is that they're so easy to remove! Because they're nail polish, they meld into your background polish, and easily dissolve in nail polish remover.

Unfortunately, that's the same reason they can't be used as glitter in nail polish- they'll melt back into the liquid polish. Such a shame... =/

An interesting thing about the polish strips: I noticed that the various polishes have much different textures and qualities. I applied basically the same thickness of polish for all of the strips. However, they had very different textures once they were dry. The neon polish (middle of the top row) was very thin, had dried very quickly, and was very brittle. The glass fleck polish on the top right was flexible and sturdy, and the black on the bottom right seemed almost like latex- very pliable and sticking to itself easily.

It would seem that the brittle polishes wouldn't wear as well as the pliable ones. I'm not sure if that's the case... it would be interesting to experiment with!

Ah well, I digress. Back to the tutorial... the next thing is pretty much the last thing- punching the hearts. I find it much easier to use the punch upside down, because I can see exactly where I'm lining up the punch on the polish surface. This is especially useful when punching patterned polish strips.

Unfortunately, when you punch upside down, you often get little hearts everywhere. I found hearts in interesting places after doing this. It's amazing how those little things can fly!

Now I'll share some pic spam showing the finished results. It's really cute!! I'm thinking you could also use the leftover polish bits as well... trip them to fit your nail and apply them in a band. It's an idea!

Four marbled harts in a row. Black on red is striking!

Hearts, hearts everywhere!

Stored in a plastic bag, you can see the variety of hearts I made. What, me obsessive? Noooooo..... :D

So, the next thing to do is to use some of these in a manicure! Sounds like a plan, eh? But first, I've got another tutorial I shot last night to use for sponge painting your nails! I'm all about frugal...

Til next time!

Some polishes were provided for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.