Another blog revival?! Unexpected saran wrap nail art favorite

Hey guys! Welcome back to my blog. Whoaaaaa, was February really the last time I posted something?! -_- Oops.

If you've still been coming by, thank you so much. If not, well, fresh starts are always good, right? I took a much needed break (but in no way did that mean that I stopped painting my nails; I just stopped doing nail art) and will be back... once this chip on my nail grows out.

In the meantime, here's a design I did quite a while back ago (ahem, last year):

I used the saran wrap method to achieve this look. I started out with the pink base then dabbed on the grey with a ball of saran wrap. The first two nails look alright but please direct your attention to my ring and little finger. Aren't the colors just magical together?!

I used China Glaze - Strawberry Fields as the base then dabbed on Maybelline - Impeccable Greys. The shimmer from Strawberry Fields gives it such an enchanting look... like a dusty pink galaxy. Or a nebula... I could start pulling up names from my astronomy class but that would bore you haha. You know I'm a sucker for pretty grey combos.

If you look at the closeup of Impeccable Greys, you'll notice the purple ring at the top of the bottle. Impeccable Greys is not just a grey polish; it's a gorgeous amethyst grey. Yup, it's like the color of a car. The hint of purple is really what makes Impeccable Greys my favorite grey everrr. The bottle is tiny though so I try not to use it a lot. What's the point, right? Haha, maybe I'll get another bottle so that I can use it freely. That's what I did with China Glaze - Turned Up Turquoise (ugh, such a lovely neon matte polish).

Let me know what you think of this color combo. Do you own Impeccable Greys? Best grey polish you own? Let me know, I want them aaaaalllllllll.

Thanks for reading!

Love,
Raine

Valentine's Day nail art - it's raining hearts

Hey everyone!

I'm back with Valentine's Day nail art! I think this calls for a round of celebrations. I managed to edit my pictures (tedious work on PicMonkey since I don't have Photoshop installed on this PC), I'm actually posting BEFORE Valentine's Day and this is a fresh design aka I'm still wearing it, haha.

I'm not big on Valentine's Day and wasn't actually going to do any specific design but I've been seeing some V-day nail art contests (?) and decided, what the heck I'll just try to come up with something and if I think it's worthy and if I don't miss the contest entry date, I'll submit my entry.

Okay, anyway, here's what I did:

This is the finished look! I love it! It's so me in the sense that it's so pretty yet imperfect. I don't think I could ever claim to be a perfect nail artist since my lines are usually always slightly off and sometimes I make a smudge or two. And that's fine because I've embraced my imperfections to be kind of like my style.

Here is what I started with:

Thumb: China Glaze - White on White

Index: China Glaze - Strawberry Fields

Middle: Essie - The Girls Are Out

Ring: Orly - Hot Shot (holla, new purchase!)

Little: Love & Beauty - pink

I used two coats of each polish as the base.

Next, I was inspired by a picture of a tree with hearts hanging off it and decided to draw one on my thumb nail. I have no idea why I left my brown nail polish back home and I was bummed when I realized that. I made do with my black nail art pen as the tree trunk and branches.

I used Sally Hansen - Mint Sprint (love this color!) and China Glaze - Salsa and a nail art brush to paint the leaves and hearts respectively. I didn't spend too long on drawing them on. It was more like dab and go. :D

My idea for the other nails was to do rows of hearts and one accent nail with XOXOs on it. I used the black nail art pen to draw the XOs. By now you can already tell that the white hearts on my middle finger are much more prominent. 

That's because I used my white nail art pen to draw them on. I only wanted the white polish as a base for the colors I was going to paint over it so the pen wasn't such a good idea. The polish flowed out and was rather thick and hard to control so I switched over to China Glaze - White on White and a nail art brush.

Then it became a bit of a mess around this part. I envisioned the different shades of red/pink to stand out but they... didn't. Haha. Well, I guess sometimes things don't turn out the way you picture them. I wanted to just leave them be and call it a day but stubborn me wanted to make this design work... So I...

... grabbed the black pen again and outlined all the hearts. Granted the outline wasn't as smooth as it should have been but I'm glad I outlined them. Don't they just pop against the base colors? Yup, then I sealed the designs in with top coat and called it a day.

Here's a close-up of my heart tree. :)

And here is my biggest accomplishment yet, haha. I labeled the polishes in the picture. It took me sooo long to squeeze everything in and align the arrows and stuff but I really wanted to point out the nail polish bottles behind.

I only labeled the red and pink polishes, all of which I used to color the rows of hearts. The rest are my base coat, top coat, Orly - Liquid Vinyl and China Glaze - White on White. Oh, and those are the two brushes I used for the entire design.

Here's a better picture of Essie - The Girls Are Out and Love & Beauty - pink. I had no idea I had so many red/pink polishes. I initially started out with ONE red polish, thinking I wouldn't buy any other reds... Who was I kidding?

And here's a shot of blurry heart-shaped goodness.

This design actually reminds me of a notebook I used to have when I was younger. It was by Happy House and just the cutest notebook with rows of multi-colored hearts.

So what do you think of my Valentine's Day nail art? Good? Meh? Messy? Boring? So spuddylicious? Do you want to try this out? Let me know in the comments! :)

If you have a V-day nail art post, definitely include the link in the comments, I'd love to check it out! If you want to send me a V-day gift, let me know as well, haha. ;)

How will you be celebrating Valentine's Day? Is it a big deal for you or do you just let it slide by? 

Thanks for reading! <3

P.S: All pictures taken with my phone and inside the house.

Shades of red nail polish

Hey guys! So I used to think that red polish looked kinda tacky because I used to see a lot of people wearing chipped red polish (why, I don't know lol). Well, I take that right back... or rather, I'll amend my statement. Red polish is awesome!

Taken with flash

Taken with flash

• Thumb: China Glaze - Infra Red
• Index: China Glaze - Ruby Pumps
• Middle: China Glaze - Salsa
• Ring: China Glaze - Strawberry Fields
• Little: Essie - The Girls Are Out

Taken with flash

Taken with flash

Taken indoors

Taken indoors (poor lighting, I'm sorry)

Hmm, Strawberry Fields looks a little orange in these pictures but I assure you that it's as pink as pink can get.

Taken with flash

Some blurry goodness, anyone?

Which is your favorite polish out of these five? Red nail polish - yay or nay?

Thanks so much for reading!

China Glaze - Strawberry Fields

I feel like a broken tape recorder every time I post and go 'this is my favorite nail polish' but it's all true and today I have another favorite to show you.

Taken with flash

Taken in natural sunlight

Taken in natural sunlight

Taken in natural sunlight

This beauty is China Glaze - Strawberry Fields. It's on their permanent line so never fear, go grab it; I got mine at Sally Beauty.

Strawberry Fields is a pink jelly-like polish with beautiful gold shimmer. The gold shimmer is what makes this polish so amazing. I have never seen anything like this before. The formula was lovely and the application was smooth but the coverage was slightly sheer on the first coat. I used 2 coats here to make sure there was no visible nail line.

I would be lying if I said that this wasn't my favorite pink polish with gold shimmer. It's so beautiful, I could stare at it for hours.

I have to say, I was also attracted by the name. Like, Strawberry Fields. Could a name get more visually pleasing to the mind?

Thanks for reading!