How to clean up your manicure to make it look fantastic

Hiya! Today I've got a tutorial that I've had lots of questions about- how I make my nails look like they're "perfectly polished." Friends have told me that I must have incredibly steady hands to polish  my nails so neatly, and yet nothing could be farther from the truth!

Instead, I've got a pretty noticeable tremor. My hands shake most of the time, and there's not really anything I can do about it. This means when I paint my nails, I get polish on the skin surrounding my nails as well. This makes it look like my nails were painted by a distracted toddler!

Thankfully, I learned how to fix it from several blogs, and I'm going to share the technique with you. It's fast and easy, and gives me that fresh-from-the-salon look. Have a look:



See? You can do this too, and with a bit of practice it won't take you long at all! Here are the details you'll need:

Supplies:
Acetone or nail polish remover
A paintbrush of your choice

I use a brush that came with a cream eyeliner from Black Radiance. It's almost the same brush that came with my Wet n Wild cream eyeliner, which isn't surprising the same parent company owns both Black Radiance and Wet n Wild! My brush looks weird because I taped it to a length of wooden dowel to make it longer.

I like this brush because it's nice and firm, and the angled tip lets me get into spaces I can't quite reach with a square brush. Still, brush preference is a very personal thing, and you might not like this brush. Try out several to see what you prefer!

You don't need a special nail art brush for this, either. You can use any brush you like. I've gotten brushes from art supplies and from WalMart, and they all work equally well for this.

Unfortunately, brushes don't last forever. As you can see, the fibers of the older (silver) Wet n Wild brush are kind of splayed out and going every-which-way. This doesn't work well when I'm trying to clean up my nails. The newer Black Radiance (gold) brush is also thinner, but that hasn't made much difference in my cleanup.

Unfortunately, the fibers in the newer brush are starting to get a bit wonky as well. I think it's time for a new one. Still, I think the eyeliner cost a whopping $3, so I'm not breaking the bank whenever I need a new one!

I hope this helps you, and that you can get neat nails too! Leave me a comment if you find this helpful.

Have a great day!

Polishes were provided by the brand for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

It's a gradient day at the Zoya beach!

I'm sorry, that title is just puntastic. Anyway, I've been wearing this for a few days and I really like it! Not a whole lot of art to it, but it's sparklelicious and you should know by now how much I like the sparkles!

I started with my base coat, then did one coat of Zoya Arizona from their Beach and Surf collection. I knew I was going to be doing a gradient, so I did a base coat of my lighter color. Then I sponged on a gradient of Arizona and Reagan (also from the Beach and Surf collection).

Arizona and Reagan are both rich, intensely-saturated creme polishes. Arizona is a gorgeous, sunny orange that makes me smile, and Reagan is a deep magenta. The two blended together smoothly, creating a gorgeous transition.

I did make one booboo though... while sponging, I accidentally turned the sponge upside down when I reached my middle finger. I was annoyed, but quickly decided to call it an accent nail. :D

Once my gradient was finished, I thought they needed something else. I decided to go with glitter, adding Love My Nails Angel Baby. It's a fun mix of tiny glitter and larger iridescent rounds. Gorgeous! Also, I added a coat of my super-glitter polish for more blingy goodness to turn this into a rainbow sparkly monster!

... nooo, what do you mean I seem like I need a nap? I feel fine!!! Super! WONDERFUL!!

... Ummm, ok. Maybe I am a touch giddy. Maybe I should go back to the video I'm editing for you. I was hoping to have it up today, but that just didn't happen. I'm not that good yet. But soon.

Ok, you look at the rest of these photos while I go have a bit of a rest work on video. More tomorrow, hopefully.

Polishes were provided by the brand for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Some of my favorite YouTube nail artists

Ok, this weekend was filled with much whining and sleeping, but practically no nail art. That's ok, though... I'm finally starting to feel better, so I expect to get some fun stuff done today. I figured I'd share some of my favorite YouTube nail artists for today, since I get so much joy and inspiration from them! If you like me, you'll LOVE them!

These are in no real order, by the way. Consider it a random selection based on what I remember at the moment, and I'm almost positive I'm leaving people out. But feel free to look through my subscriptions to find other awesome nail art channels, as well as other fun stuff like kitties and science!

I am currently spoonless, so have some flowers.

An in-progress shot...

For whatever reason, I feel like Hurricane Fibro has blown through and seriously wreaked havoc on me. This might have something to do with trying to play Just Dance 3...

Not that I'm complaining. I had so much fun and laughed lots. But still, the poor blog suffers when I have no spoons! I definitely need to stretch more, and sleep more. Come to think of it, I should probably color more too, since it is such a nice distraction!

I'm hoping I can get some nails and video-ing done this weekend. If so, I'll have fun things coming up for next week. If not? You'll get more flowers, like today. This is an example of what I do when I'm hurting, both an in-progress and a "finished" piece. (I put finished in quotes because as Leonardo da Vinci said, "Art is never finished, only abandoned.")

I'm not sure when I started drawing roses this way. I vaguely remember seeing a black-and-white illustration of a rose that resembled this, and I played with it until I had something I liked. It's really simple to draw (if a bit time-consuming) and tends to wow people when they see them. Lots of fun, especially when I teach the person who was so impressed how to draw their own!

I actually started this page when I was at my friend's house. Her daughter wanted to draw a bouquet of flowers, so we were playing with this design. I drew her a bunch of roses in a vase, and added her name to it. Then I decided I wanted to draw my own!

After drawing the first 4 or 5 roses, I realized I didn't want to stop with just a few... instead, I wanted to fill the page with them! And yes, I carry all those pens in my purse, plus many more. Off the top of my head, I have 4 highlighters (pink, orange, yellow, and... blue maybe? Green? Ooh, maybe it's 5...), 10 ballpoint pens in rainbow colors, 4 gel pens (pink, blue, purple, and green), and a set of 6 glitter gel pens (pink, orange, yellow, blue, purple and silver). Then there are the assorted sharpies and black gel pens in various sizes, and the glue stick, and the scissors...

Why yes, I am an artist, why do you ask? :D

Yea. I need to go to sleep, I'm babbling again. Ah well... tomorrow is another day, right? At least, it will be if I get some sleep. Wish me luck!

I think I need to dig out my colorful marker set to play with.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

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.

Another Fail...

Once again, I've got a total failed manicure to share with you today. I was experimenting with the Jessica Heavy Petal collection polishes again, this time going for a pink look. Unfortunately, it was a complete disaster.

I'm not sure what I was going for, but this clearly isn't it. I started with a base coat of Dazed Dahlia, which is such a beautiful deep hot pink. It's vibrant, but not too vibrant in my opinion.

I then wanted some texture to the background before I started stamping. I used Rolling Rose on my striping brush and added some slashy, stripey bits. I expected the Rolling Rose to add just a bit of texture and shimmer, but instead the stripes really showed up against the background! Not ideal, but I kept right on, hoping I could salvage something from this.

I pulled out my Salon Express stamping set to add some interest to my nails. I started with CND's Green Scene and stamped a swirly sun-type design on my ring finger. BLEAH! This just did NOT work. The green is too similar in value to Dazed Dahlia, so the colors meld into each other visually. No bueno!!

At this point, I knew I was basically not going to be able to save this one. I just stamped random designs from the Salon Express plates, mainly to see how they worked. I was happy with the stamps, I just with the overall design worked better!

Finally, I'll show you a closeup of my thumb... I think I went over this with the Jessica Holographic topcoat too, but I'm not sure. The sparkles are pretty, but this is just not a good look.

I apologize for not cleaning this one up, but I knew I was taking this off as soon as I got photos of it. Keep in mind, this is not a failure of the polishes. This is purely user error- I'm the failing part of this experiment!

So, help me out here- what do you do when you try a nail design that just doesn't work? Do you keep adding to it, hoping it'll work out? Do you say to heck with it before you're finished and take it off? Do you just shrug and keep it on? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Til next time!

Polishes were provided by the brand for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

KITTY! CHICKENS! MADNESS!!

This is Dusty. She is a gorgeous, long-haired lump of love!

I had the most awesome time last night. We went to visit a friend and her daughter, and stayed through lunch, all through the afternoon and til around 7pm! Craziness, but it was lots of fun. We played on the xBox Kinect (loads of fun, although my fibro disagreed!), told silly stories and laughed entirely too much.

Best of all were the kitty snuggles! Dusty (seen to the right) spent a while on the arm of the sofa next to me, and finally I couldn't take it any longer- I had to lift her into my lap. She stayed there for an hour at least!

And yes, for the record I am allergic to cats. I took Benadryl before I got to her house, and took another dose while I was there. My face still swelled a bit and my eyes were itchy, but it's so totally worth it to get kitty snuggles!

Rico is gorgeous, but uninterested in us at the moment.

Then there was Rico, the most adorable orange tabby ever! He's just as beautiful as Dusty, but he's got a slightly neurotic obsession... he loves paper. Specifically, he loves to lie down on paper. He was snuggling on my lap when he saw someone had put a piece of paper on the floor, and he actually jumped and ran to plop down onto it! So funny...

As you can see, he also likes being under the paper. My son got the idea to put the paper on Rico and he just stayed like this for quite a while!

Then my son decided to see what all he could put on top of the kitty. Turns out? Quite a bit.



Yea.We laughed our tushies off! Too much fun... I love his reaction at the end, like, "Whoa, what the heck was THAT?!"

And with that, I think I'm going to head to bed. I'm pooped! Later!

There isn't much kitty snuggles can't cure, other than cat allergies.

See my disclosure statement for more information.