OPI Christmas Sweater Nails!

Hi everyone! Today I have some Christmas/winter sweater nail art to share!

I accidentally planned the painting of these perfectly; I get to wear them from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day. Considering they're the most festive nails I've done recently I'm glad I decided to paint these today!

For these nails I started off with two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, a very, very light grey polish that you can see several pictures down!

I then went in with a lovely brick red creme, OPI Lost On Lombard and a small nail art brush! These nails are inspired by all of the Christmas sweater nail art I've seen recently, namely Lindsey's from Wondrously Polished and Margee's from Nailuminium!

Silly little reindeer shot!

I'm really getting into snowflake nail art so I'm super glad winter isn't over when December is! I watched MrCandiipants' tutorial for snowflakes before I did them last time, and though it's exactly how I would have done them myself I thought I should mention it! She's so hilarious, you guys should really check her out if you haven't already! I feel like I talk about her a lot but her lovely personality and original designs really inspire me!

Here are two pictures of my right hand, my four fingers and my thumb! I thought the execution of these was quite good (for my non-dominant hand) but the weird wrinkling and bubbles afterwards made them look a lot less nice. Oh well, live and learn!

What do you guys think of these nails? Thanks so much for taking a look everyone, I hope you're all having a lovely week! :)

Born Pretty Store Flower Water Decal Review and a Gradient!

Hey guys! Today I have some flower-covered gradient nails to share! I will also be reviewing the floral water decals seen here from Born Pretty Store!

Sorry about posting these late guys, I was crashing while editing the pictures so I decided to write it up this morning instead. I try really hard to post every three days but sometimes life (for me, school) gets in the way! I've been exhausted for the last week or so and I'm so glad today's the last day of school! Anything exciting happening in your guys' lives? Let me know!

A bunch of people from Will Paint Nails For Food's Beginner Blogger's Bootcamp Group Critique commented on my last post saying that my fingers were blurry and that it was a bit distracting, and I had seriously never noticed! When I saw my pictures after that, I realized I looked like some weird alien without any lines or wrinkles on my fingers haha! I increased the depth of field before taking these pictures and I think you can see some detail on my fingers now, what do you guys think? :)

For these nails I started with one coat of Essie Mesmerize, painted on NYX Girls Inkheart and Revlon Espresso, and then patted on mixtures of the two colours where they met! I think the gradient looks better and smoother in person, so I'm excited to improve on my gradient skills so they look good in pictures too! Lindsay from Wondrously Polished always does literally perfect gradients (they look like the ones you can make in a photo editing program) and often puts nail art on top, so these nails were definitely inspired by her! I really think it's an amazing and beautiful idea to use a gradient as a background for nail art rather than a plain creme!

As for the decals (link here, they're the BLE422 ones), I was completely silly at first and applied one like a tattoo, and of course the design was upside down and all black and white (see my left hand's thumbnail). I asked my boyfriend if he thought it'd be possible to slide them off and on to the nail so the designs would show, and he ended up trying it for me and it worked! I just wetted a reasonably soft brush (my cleanup brush), let the decal soak in water for 15-20 seconds and slid it off of the paper carefully and onto my nail! You can move them around once they're on your nail for a period of time (especially if you wet your nail first) so you certainly don't have to get the perfect placement right away! I decided to place two decals on top of each other on some nails and I think they look really nice layered! I accidentally crumpled and folded one up, and I was still able to flatten it back out and put it on my nail which really impressed me! The only negative thing I have to say about these is still totally avoidable; top coat can smudge the decals a bit but as long as you apply it carefully (as you would on top of nail art) they won't smudge! I was being very careless when applying my topcoat because I didn't think they would smudge, and they still hardly did! :)

Off-topic, but do you guys think I should spread my text out between the pictures so it's not a huge block of text and then a huge block of pictures? I think I'll start doing that so let me know if you'd prefer I didn't!

Onto the nails!

Here's the gradient I started with as a base!

My right hand!

If you're looking for any other nail art stuff Born Pretty Store is a good place to check! Here's my coupon for 10% off!

Thanks so much for reading everyone! Have any plans for the weekend? I'll be studying for the three back-to-back finals I have coming up and finishing a biochemistry assignment! :)

Born Pretty Store Shell Studs Review and Beach Nail Art!

Hey everyone! Today I have a review of some super cute shell studs from Born Pretty Store to show you all!

I was recently contacted by the lovely Daisy from Born Pretty Store and asked if I would like to review some products from them, and of course I said yes! I've bought from them before and everything's always packaged really well and lovely to work with! I was sent three items of my choice so stay tuned for two more Born Pretty Store reviews and nail art using those products!

The adorable gold shells featured in this post can be bought here, there are slightly bigger ones and silver ones in both sizes available, I chose the 3mm gold ones. They are curved slightly to sit flat on the nail, so one coat of top coat is all I needed to cover them and hold them in place! I tested these charms to see if they were reusable by scrubbing one with non-acetone remover for approximately a minute, and they seem to be! The stud was the same gold colour and a little less shiny after the scrubbing, but a coat of top coat would easily fix that.

And now, how I did these nails! I started with one coat of Essie Sand Tropez for the sand, then dotted on some thinned out Sally Hansen Wet Cement and finally, smeared some thinned out OPI My Vampire Is Buff on top! For the water I used Essie Go Overboard, some thinned out smears of Essie Going Incognito, and lastly, a mixture of Go Overboard and My Vampire Is Buff for the waves! I then applied dots of top coat in the places I wanted the shells to go and stuck them in! A coat of top coat and some cleanup and I was all finished :).

I'm playing around with some hand positions that I've never tried before, but I'm trying to use most of the other ones I recently decided on too! Bear with me as I figure out which poses I like best haha!

Onto the pictures!

Be sure to check out their site for other nail art stuff if there's anything you're looking for! They have an amazingly huge selection of products so there's bound to be something for everyone! Also, don't forget to use my coupon for 10% off! This picture is also in my sidebar, so it's really easy to find from any of my posts!

Thanks so much for reading everyone, I hope you're having a lovely Monday! I'll have some indie polish swatches coming your ways soon, so keep an eye out! :)

Frosty Dot Nail Art!

Hey everyone! Today I have some simple dot nail art to share! When do I not have simple nail art for you, you ask? Seldom or never because I always do both of my hands the same and my left hand is not so skilled :P.

I have my last midterm next week and my last week of school for the semester! Crazy right, a midterm in the last week of school? I agree, but obviously there's nothing I can do about it! I guess I could study for it (and I really should) but I've yet to start and the test is Monday! That's just typical Bailey though, and I do get good grades, I swear! Is there anything exciting or stressful happening next week for you guys? Let me know in the comments!

And now, onto nail stuff! If you read my last post about deciding which hand positions to use in my pictures, you'll notice I chose C, F and H thanks to your help! I really love when you guys comment about anything at all, so never refrain from commenting if you're thinking about it! :)

Finally, onto these nails specifically. I was going for a bit of a wintery fish scale design, but I didn't go full out fish scale because if you guys don't know already, I have an irrational fear of fish. It's called ichtyrophobia and it's real haha! The only fish I don't find horrendously ugly and disgusting are tropical ones. When my family and I went to Fiji two summers ago I saw some Nemos (clownfish) and my sister said it was the cutest thing because I swam down towards one (keeping my distance) and waved at it :).

So many tangents today! I started with one coat of Sally Hansen Pacific Blue (pictured below) and that's really all you need; it's amazingly opaque! I then went in with Revlon Dreamer and put a ton of dots on each nail. I included a picture of me holding Dreamer because I wanted to bring out the small amount of it that hadn't been covered up! After that, I repeated this step with American Apparel Mount Royale and finally OPI Solitare! I think some of the dots look 3-D because they're placed not quite on top of other ones (you can see one in the middle of my middle finger nail). Even though only about half of each of my nails is covered in OPI Solitare, I find this look too frosty and shiny looking for my taste. We can't love all of the manis we do though! I do find it deliciously wintery because of the frost finish, so it has that going for it!

Onto the pictures!

Sally Hansen Pacific Blue- one coat, no top coat

Thanks for reading everyone! I hope you're all doing well on this lovely Friday morning! What do you think of these nails? :)

Black Sheep Lacquer Confused Canary over a Subtle Green to Blue Gradient!

Hey everyone! Today I have another simple glitter-topped gradient to share!

I was planning to paint my nails all day yesterday, but due to a cell biology lab assignment I only ended up having time to do something quick and simple (read: I procrastinated by watching Star Trek Next Generation and shopping all weekend)! I can't honestly say the shopping was unproductive though, my mom, sister, boyfriend and I now all have wondrously soft and warm hoodies (and we match)! :P They're lined with fluffy amazingness so if anyone's looking for a hoodie like that, we got ours in the men's section of Tommy Hilfiger for 40% off! I'd seriously recommend them!

Anyways, back to the nails! I was a bit surprised by how subtle the gradient came out because I've done this same gradient before on my mom and the fact that it was two colours was more obvious. Maybe it's because I gave myself little nubbins before I painted these? Regardless, I absolutely love the two colours I used for this; China Glaze For Audrey (the greener one at the cuticle) and China Glaze Bahamian Escape (the bluer one on my tips)! I also completely adore the glitter topper I chucked on top, Black Sheep Lacquer Confused Canary! It has these silver holographic microglitters in it, so when the Sun makes an appearance on frosty mornings like this, looking at my nails makes me even happier! I topped all of this off with two coats of top coat, again, for maximum squishiness!

I saw that I hit 55 Google Friend Connect Followers yesterday I believe, and I just want to thank each and every one of you for following me! I seem to be gaining a following on most of my social media accounts and it makes me so incredibly happy, you have no idea! Thank you all so much! <3

Onto the pictures!

What do you guys think about these, are you a fan of subtle gradients? And do you love Confused Canary as much as I do? Thanks so much for reading everybody, happy Monday! =)

Giving Credit and Manis on my Family Inspired by Other Nail Art Bloggers!

Hey everyone! Today I have a slightly different kind of post for you all today, I want to talk a bit about being inspired by or following a tutorial by someone and the issue of giving credit. I also want to show you four manis I've done on my sister, mom and grandma recently because I think they're pretty cute! They even tie in with the topic I'm going to discuss!

Just recently a Youtuber more popular than MrCandiipants made a tutorial for a MrCandiipants original design without crediting that fact. She could have not known who originally came up with the design, apologized and given MrCandiipants the credit she deserved. Instead, she deleted and blocked all of the comments (including the nice ones) saying that it was MrCandiipants' design and that she should credit her. I even commented very sweetly on her Instagram picture about it and on her blog post and guess what? They're both gone and I can't even find her Instagram when I search her username. Curious as to who this is yet? The perpetrator was the one and only MissJenFabulous.

I swear to you I'm not writing this to turn you against MissJenFabulous or anything like that, this is just an example of how bad this issue has gotten. You can read more about it here, it sounds like Jen has done the same thing to many other people :(.

On the other end of this, about two weeks ago I made the new banner you see here out of some bottle shots of my favourite (mostly indie) polishes. Later that day I clicked on a new post from Harriet, the author of the blog Nailhilism, and realized I must have gotten my inspiration from her (click the link if you'd like to see her banner). She had given her blog a makeover in celebration of it being a year old, and a local indie brand even made a nail polish in honour of her one year blogiversary. I took my new banner down from every social media site I had posted it to and waited a week or so before even contacting Harriet to ask if she was okay with me putting it up. There were so many exciting things going on with her blog turning one and I didn't want to make it any less happy and exciting! Clearly she was amazing about the whole thing and we both decided we should talk about this issue on our blogs!

It's not hard to give credit where it's due or to admit your mistake and give credit later rather than never.  I guess I'm hoping MissJenFabulous will read this and it will convince her haha? Let's just all try and make sure we give credit where it's due, at least in the nail polish community okay? :) I think I'll start writing out what inspired me to do each bit of nail art I do, whether it was food, an outfit, an object, or another nail art blogger!

Anyways, onto the manis!

These are my sister's nails that I did using some holographic diamond glitter, inspired by Laura at PolishalltheNails!

This mani was done on my mom to go with her new paisley dress! I think I was mostly inspired by paisley designs that you'd find on a stamping plate.

These zig-zags on my grandma were inspired by MrCandiipants' zig-zag tutorial!

And last but not least, these nails were also inspired by a MrCandiipants tutorial, her peach one of course!

Thanks so much for reading everyone! Does someone not crediting someone else's design when they know they've stolen it from them bug anyone else? :P Which of these manis is your favourite? Let me know in the comments! =)

Plaid Nails Inspired by MrCandiipants!

Hey guys! Today I have some plaid nails inspired by MrCandiipants' flannel tutorial (here)!

After doing this mani I was feeling flannel and plaid so hard that I actually ran to my favourite thrift store and picked a few shirts up! One of them had a rip in the armpit, but my grandma came over and fixed it after I painted her nails! She definitely did a better job than I could have done haha! I'm going to go ahead and insert a picture because we took a cute one of my hand, my mom's and my grandma's last night (she's wearing Emily de Molly Turbulence by the way)!

It was just a lovely evening to top off a lovely day! I even found an American Apparel skirt for only four dollars! Score!

Anyways, let me tell you about the nails! I watched Mrcandiipants' tutorial on Youtube (linked above) a week or more ago and I've wanted to do plaid nails ever since! I know mine aren't that similar to hers, but I like them nonetheless! I do wish that I had done the yellow (Color Club Almost Famous) stripes before (under) the black (Orly Liquid Vinyl… duh!) and blue (Essie Mesmerized) ones, but it had already taken a while so I decided to keep them like this! Also, the red base isn't just one colour like it looks in the picture, the middle square is NYX Girls Bloody Mary, the four corners outside of the black lines are Sally Hansen Nail Growth Miracle Stunning Scarlet, and the colour that makes a huge plus sign under the middle square is American Apparel Poppy! I'm so sad that the plus sign and the square on top look like the same colour in these pictures, I made the overlapping part darker like most plaid looks and you can tell in real life! :P

Anyways, onto the pictures!

Here's my right hand! I think it looks pretty similar to my left hand and for that I'm pretty proud!

Thank you so much for reading everyone! What do you guys think of plaid or flannel nails? Or more specifically, what do you think of these? Talk to you soon! :)

Dollish Polish Toad-ally Awesome and Striping Tape!

Hi everyone! Today I have some super simple mix and match nail art to share!

I've seen this alternating glitter polish and striping tape over a creme polish mani all over the internet lately! I really like it, so I decided to try it myself!

The blue seen here is Essie Mesmerize, the striping tape is just off of eBay or Amazon, the black creme is Orly Liquid Vinyl (as always), and the super cute glitter topper is Dollish Polish Toad-ally Awesome!

It's been a while since I posted any kind of nail art on here (the last time was Halloween) so let's get on to the pictures! :)

My right hand!

Thanks so much for having a look everyone, I hope you're having a lovely weekend! :)

Cartoony Halloween Nails!

Hi everyone! Today I have a Halloween skittle mani to share!

Yesterday we went to my boyfriend's house for the night, so I brought a bunch of nail polish stuff to school so I could do my nails at his house. This means I've been carrying around the ten polishes I used for these nails plus my base and top coat and other supplies for two days now haha! There is one colour I can't tell you the name of in this mani, because I ended up mixing my green, orange and purple to make it! Except for forgetting to pack a brown (though I guess I could have done the stem bit green if I had used a different base colour for the pumpkin nails) I actually feel like I prepared really well for this mani. I ended up using every polish I brought with me on at least one nail!

After dinner I painted my boyfriend's stepmom's toes with the purple seen here (Color Club Pucci-licious) and I added cute little square gold studs to her big toes! In other words, I had a super polished-packed night, the best kind of night!

Sorry I didn't post these any sooner, I didn't have access to my sister's camera and my light box and lamps until now! I posted these nails when I was almost done with them yesterday on Instagram, so definitely follow me there because between here and Instagram, I usually post every three days or less! I also post ridiculous pictures of myself which I also did yesterday! I'm going to go ahead and embed the picture here because I want to show off my adorable new cat ear hat! Isn't it the best? :)

Anyway, asides aside, for these nails I only used two (well three if you count my cleanup brush) brushes! I picked up four new brushes from Michaels on the weekend and I love them all! Well, I haven't actually tried one of them yet, but I'm very excited to! For everything except the gradient I used a 12/0 liner brush, and for the gradient I used a big fluffy brush to mix the different proportions of blue and black and to apply the mixtures to my nails! I almost forgot, I also used an eyeshadow sponge because I bought a pack of them at the dollar store for gradient purposes! I used the sponge to lightly apply my black holographic polish on the tips of my thumbs!

Anyways, onto the polishes used and then the pictures!

Red creme- American Apparel Poppy
Holographic red- Northern Star Polish Ki-Ki-Ma-Ma
Orange- China Glaze Oh How Street It Is
Yellow- Color Club Almost Famous
Green- Essie Mojito Madness
Blue- Essie Mesmerized
Purple- Color Club Pucci-licious
White- OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls
Black creme- Orly Liquid Vinyl
Holographic black- Color Club Beyond

Here's my right hand! I'll only ever do a design I can do on both hands, so I kind of have to stick to simple cartoony designs haha!

Thanks so much for reading everyone, let me know what you think of these in the comments! Happy Halloween! :)