Advent Calendar Nail Challenge Day 6: White!

Today's theme for the Advent Calendar Nail Challenge is white. It's the last of the color themes. Starting tomorrow I really have to get creative. For white, I wanted to do something classy and simple. Here's what I came up with!

I started out by applying two very thin coats of the Nailtini polish in "Frappe" It's a very sheer pinky nude color that doesn't show up much, but I just wanted something to add a little shine to my nails. Then using a small dotting tool and Wet n Wild "French White Creme" I added the dots and I also painted along the very tips of the nail with that same dotter. I love the overall look! Very feminine and pretty in my opinion. And super easy to re-create!

I hope you enjoyed My White manicure! Be sure to tune in tomorrow and see what I come up with for the theme: Ornaments!

Mani Monday: Fancy French

Good morning, friends, and welcome back to my blog for another mani monday post! This time, the theme is Fancy French! Would you believe I have never given myself a french manicure? I think it's a great, classic look, but something that I would get bored with pretty quickly. So rather than your average run of the mill french mani, I decided to throw in a little twist.

I started out by applying a coat of base coat. The base coat I am currently using is the Revlon quick dry base coat. It really does dry quick and protects my natural nails. Next, I applied two thin coats of the Nailtini polish in frappe. It's a gorgeous sheer nude color, that I thought would be perfect as a classic french manicure base color.

Then I dug out my stamping gear and got to work. I chose the bundle monster plate number BM17, which is a french tip plate. And I did the stamping using te wet n wild wild shine polish in black creme. I tried it using the wet n wild wild shine white polish first, but the white didn't show up against the super pale base color, so I went with black instead.

I chose the cute little checkerboard design, and stamped it as straight as possible. You can see in the photos of the finished product that it's not perfect. Stamping straight is tricky business. So it's a little crooked here and there and maybe a little smudged, but overall I am pleased with the finished look. Not bad for my second real stab at stamping! I am really loving it!

So there's my fancy french mani for you! I admit, it's not the prettiest french manicure ever, but it's a little different and I think the pattern reminds me of tire tracks, which is fun! haha. I wanted something different and I think I definitely achieved that. what do you think of this mani? Leave me a comment down below, or hit use my contact card below and get in touch! And don't forget to check out the mani monday's facebook page and take a look at all the other oh so talented nail artists!! www.facebook.com/manimondays

Simple Nail Art: Jelly Sandwich Mani!

I have been wanting to try doing a jelly sandwich on my nails for ages! If you aren't familiar, a jelly sandwich is just a glitter polish sandwiched between layers of a sheer or Jelly polish. The combinations are endless and you can come up with some really cool looking manicures! I've wanted to do it for a while, but have always struggled with which polishes would look right together. Finally, I decided just to go for it. And I like my results a lot!

Isn't it pretty? It didn't turn out like I imagined it, but it's still quite nice for my first jelly sandwich! Here's what I did.

I started out with a base coat (I used Revlon quick dry base coat if you are interested) and then I applied two thin coats of the nailtini polish in Frappe, which is a really super sheer nude I got in an ipsy glam bag a while back.  (ignore the red in the photo below, I had some staining from a previous mani)

When that was completely dry, it was time for some glitter. I chose to use Hard Candy's Emerald's Eve. This is the newest polish in my collection and it is absolutely stunning! It's a clear base with chunky gold glitter as well as smaller pieces of green glitter. It's supposed to be a dupe for Deborah Lippman's shake your money maker. It's so pretty! I applied one coat of this polish. This polish could easily be built up and worn on it's own!

This photo really doesn't do it justice. The glitter was so pretty I almost stopped there and just rocked the mani as is. But, I really wanted to try out the jelly sandwich thing, so when the glitter polish was dry I added one more thin layer of Nailtini's frappe on top, and then when that was all dry I added my top coat (Sally Hansen insta-dri anti-chip top coat) And that gave me my finished result!

Overall I am pretty pleased with the finished look! What do you think? Do you like the whole Jelly Sandwich trend? What's your favorite combination of polishes to make the perfect Jelly Sandwich Mani? I would love to hear from you! Leave me a comment down below or else use my contact card below to get in touch! <3

January Nail Polish Picks!

Hello everyone! I hope you all had an amazing January! I cannot believe how quickly this month flew by! Seems like we were just ringing in the new year and now we're just weeks away from Valentine's day! Anyway, I decided to start a new series of videos/blog posts! This is where I will show you all of the nail polishes that I wore each month. So, this time, I will be showing you all of my nail polish picks for January. I go into full detail about each of the polishes and my reasons for picking them here in this video. But, I thought I would give you all a closer look of what the polishes looked like on my nail. Of course, if you follow me on instagram (which you should! My username is jwhackers) you will already have seen most of these. But I figured I'd show em again, since it's been a while since you have seen them!

So, the very first time I painted my nails after the ball dropped and we rang in the new year, I went with Sinful Colors Folly. This is a beautiful bright berry pink color. And then for fun, I added some sparkle with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear polish in Strobe Light on my ring fingers and thumbs for a gorgeous accent nail!

Next, I went for a darker, more winter appropriate shade. I pulled out one of my Elf mini polishes in the color Violet Velvet. This is a deep purple that I found incredibly difficult to photograph. It seemed to either turn out blue in photos or black. This was as close to it's true, deep purple as I could get!

Purple is my all time favorite color, but for whatever reason I just wasn't feeling this one of my nails. It only lasted a couple of days before I took it off. And it was quite a pain to get off, I must say. It took a lot of scrubbing on my nail. But the next mani I chose was worth all the trouble to get the purple off. I chose to do a color blocking theme. I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Pacific blue for half my nails, and Wet n Wild Megalast polish in I need a refreshmint for the other half. I gotta say, I really LOVED this manicure! I think the colors worked fantastic together!

After the brightness of the blues, I decided to take it down a little and go for a darker, a bit more of a classic winter nail. So I went with a couple more polishes from the 14 piece nail cube from Elf. This time I chose Misty Haze for my main nail color. This is a dark sort of hazy blue-grey color. It leans more towards grey than blue. And then for an accent nail I went for a very similar color called Dazzle Diva. Like I said, the color is very similar to Misty Haze, but it's got some sparkle. I thought this nail combination looked quite good together. Just a subtle accent which I thought looked pretty classy. Unfortunately, this chipped like crazy, and this mani only lasted a couple days.

About the time my pretty grey manicure bit the dust, I received my ipsy bag in the mail and one of the items inside was a nailtini nail polish in the color frappe, which is a pretty super light pinky-nude. So I figured I would give it a shot. It was pretty sheer, and it took about 4 coats to get completely opaque. I really liked the color, but I decided to jazz it up a bit, and go for some triangle accents on the nails. I used the Wet n Wild Megalast nail polish in Wet Cement. I really liked the finished look. It was the first time I had ever attempted this sort of nail design, and so it wasn't perfect, but I thought the color combination was nice, and the overall design was pretty good. (other than my thumb, I pretty much really messed up my thumb haha)

I really hated to take the triangle accent manicure off, but when it started to chip after a few days (I am pretty hard on my nails, so I change polish pretty often, in case you haven't noticed) I decided to just to go with a simple, quick manicure. I chose OPI Lucerne-tainly look marvelous. It's a little mini polish that I have from the OPI swiss collection a few years back, and I quite like the color. It's a metallic gun-metal silver color. I like OPI's formula, and this manicure took two coats, and I was out the door. I was pretty happy with it.

Next, I want to share with you the nail polish that is on my nails right now. It's a Wet n Wild fastdry polish in the color fucshiarama. First of all can I just talk to you guys about how much I love that the fast dry polishes from wet n wild are named after tv shows? I think that is so cute. I am a sucker for marketing like that, what can I say. And I really love the color of this polish too. It's a deep purply pink raspberry color. It's a jelly formula of polish which I don't have a ton of experience with, but it went on pretty sheer and needed to be layered. I did about 3 coats of this polish but I really like the way it looks on the nail. It was difficult to photograph this one, because the flash on the camera made this one look super super sheer on the nail. I guess that's just the nature of this type of polish? But Ir eally am loving it, and I think it's a great polish to round out the month of January!

Lastly, I will just share with you all the base and top coat that I used in the month of January. The base coat I actually just got, so I only used it for the most recent manicure, but I am liking it so far, so I thought I would include it. The top coat is the one I have been using all month and I adore it. The base coat is the L.A. Colors Base and Top Coat. I use it specifically as a base coat, since I already love my current top coat, which is the Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Anti-Chip top coat.

If you wanna see a closer look at each of these nail polishes in the bottle, check out my January polish picks video on my youtube channel!!



So that is going to wrap up my January Polish picks. Let me know if you guys like this sort of post, or if you would rather see me do occasional nail of the day posts instead. Thanks for visiting my blog! Hope you are all having an awesome week!