Dream-catcher Nails

I've seen lots of dream catcher nails around lately - they seem to be the new thing. I decided I'd give it a try, after all, they make a pretty cool design.

I decided against copying anyone elses nails. Obviously, there are only so many ways you can do them, so mine will resemble others. Buuuut I kind of wish I had now. I don't really like these - they look very amateur if you ask me. I only have one brown polish and it's a $2 shop shimmery dotting/lining tool - not very good for this. Excuses aside, I just didn't pull it off. The lines are thick and bumpy and they didn't turn out to be the cute design I wanted them to be - I removed them the same day! I'll try them again sometime :).

Some nail stamping

I'm actually writing this on Saturday, but am going to organise this to post in a couple of days time, since I'll be away. I'm really hoping I don't screw it up!! As you can see, these nails are the same pattern, but slightly different colours. The first two photos are of plate BM-321, with a yellow base coat and red stamped over the top. I can't remember exactly what they're all called, but if you're interested just ask. The third photo is the same plate, but with orange stamped over.

Vintage rose pattern - tattooed!

I'm quite excited about these nails. For a start they were purely my design AND I used temporary tattoos for the first time! I wanted to mix it up a bit and do some other designs too, and this is what I came up with.

Here's what I used:

China Glaze: Fast Track (which went over...)

Jordana: Soft White

OPI: Gouda Gouda Two Shoes

Jordana striper brushes: black and white

Oops, that grey in the photo I didn't end up using. So just ignore that. Annnd I used a dotting tool for the black dots. I kept adding things as I went along with this, and now it looks quite busy. I still like it though, even if the lines aren't very straight and the dots are a bit special.

Oh and before I carry on, I have a tumblr! So if you have one of them, check me out at http://naileditnz.tumblr.com/.

Blue-to-green striped gradient

Today I woke up with the wonderful realisation that a) I had finished my latest essay and b) It was almost the holidays! I couldn't really do anything else at home for my other assignments, so decided to paint my nails (the first time without feeling guilty for a looong time, to be honest!). I roughly followed this tutorial, which you should definitely check out. It's by MrCandiipants, who is super weird at times, but still really cool. Mine turned out a bit different to hers - not as straight lines, and green-to-blue instead of dark-to-light.

I had to mix a lot of colours - I only used three colours straight from the bottle and the rest were some kind of mix of the ones next to it. I think it turned out okay though!

There's a party on my nails!

I've seen a lot of these nails around lately, and decided I'd give it a try. However, I wanted to make it a little different - my own style. This was a really fun mani to do, and really cute!

Here's the end result - but I must say, I like the photo of my nails pre-sparkle better, but they look better with sparkle in real life!

As you can see, I decided to use the colours of the rainbow. I ended up using one acrylic paint (red), because I didn't want to waste any of my quickly-emptying Nutrimetics Ruby Rose! It's honestly one of my favourite polishes, one easy coat and you're done. Anyway, I also used:

White: Jordana - White

Orange: Jordana - Orangesicle

Yellow: LA Colors - Pineapple

Green: CR - 119

Blue: CR - 93

Purple: Mode - Party Crasher

Glitter coat: China Glaze - Luxe and Lush

At the end of this entry I'm finally posting a few swatches of some GORGEOUS colours I recently bought. Hope you like them!

Zig-Zags and Stripes!

These are my current nails. I actually painted them yesterday, but was a bit too busy with essays and 21sts and family to post it. Plus it had only been a day since my last post.

This was my first time doing zig-zags, so I was a bit nervous. I had always thought zig-zags were only for those "awesome-amazing-look-I-have-10000-followers" bloggers, but after seeing a post on Mr Candiipant's blog I decided to give it a try.

Patchwork nails tutorial

I'm a bit iffy about posting this on here, because since facebook gave me advertising credit the vast majority of the people following or liking Nailed it NZ are on my facebook page! And I feel that may be a better place for showing tutorials rather than here, although this is sooo much easier to work with. If you have an opinion about this, speak up! 

Anyway, after asking facebookians if they wanted me to do a tutorial on my last post the answer was yes - and I soon wished I had suggested a nail design I felt more comfortable with!! But all done now.

Obviously, I painted my nails in a patchwork design again. Here's the finished product.

Patchwork nails!

I got the idea for this one off weheartit, which led me to a page on this blog. I think it's so cute! And actually quite simple to do. However, simple is not equal to quick, and it still took quite a while. If anyone else tries this, make sure you use colours that are completely opaque! I had to go over mine about three times for some of the colours, which was the biggest problem time-wise. 

I don't have any photo tutorials for this one, but I'll try to start doing them properly soon.

Another girl who did these nails did a tutorial actually, which is how I figured out how to do it. If you want to give it a try you can find it here. 

My first OPI polish! + lace stamping

When I first started this blog, I was adamant that all nail polishes were the same - $2 shop, China Glaze, LA Colors, OPI... but I have changed my mind!

First, here's my latest design:

Converse shoes/chucks take two nail art

Oops, second post in one day! Hey, it's the weekend.

As I've gone on a bit about lately, I previously had painted some Converse Chuck Taylors on my nails in this post. Then someone else stole my picture (which wasn't watermarked, silly me when I started) and it went viral on their page.

Anyway, it worked out for the better for me, as my blog and facebook page has received a lot more attention since then, from my constant spamming of the picture! An old friend of mine was keen for me to do a tutorial on how to do them, so that's what I did this afternoon. These ones are (in my opinion) a lot nicer than my old ones - more laces (therefore more recognisable as chucks), softer colours, longer nails and finer detail. The laces were a pain to paint though! Here's the final result, and if you're reading this from the homepage click the link below to see the tutorial.

Pink Roses - nail stamping

I'm going to be using jump breaks now in my posts - I'll post a picture of the finished nails at the beginning and if you want to read the rest of the post just click the link at the bottom of the post.

I decided to play around with nail stamping again. I just bought 25 bundle monster nail plates for just $30! Considering konad stamping plates are around $20 each, this is an amazing deal. The ones in that link aren't my ones, but they'll be the same or similar. I can't wait for them to arrive!

Liebster Award and Naked nails!

Twice this week I've been given a "Liebster award," so I've decided I should probably play the game and do it, even if it does remind me a little of a chain letter. According to The Painted Pony, "the Liebster Award is passed along to up and coming blogs with less than 200 followers to help them promote themselves and congratulate them on coming this far!"

Chickens and polka dots!

Just realised this is my sixth blog post in the last week. Now that's dedication.. or maybe just obsession. 

These nails are done on my sister - I still want my snowmen for another day! 

Her nails are so much better now! If you've seen my old pictures of her nails, they were quite yucky - long cuticles, grubby etc. But she's been very good and taken care of them so that her mean old big sister won't tell her off :P.

I was flicking through nail ideas I have saved on my computer and she was quite keen on some that had both chickens (or chicks, whatever you call them) and bunnies on them. I don't know where that picture came from and it has no watermark on it, so I won't post it unlike SOME plagiarising people! (If you don't know what I'm talking about see my NZ flag nails post). I didn't want to straight copy someone else nor have a manicure that took too long to do. So this is what we came up with! 

It's definitely much simpler than my last few posts, but it's quite nice for a kid. Which reminds me, as much as I liked my Despicable Me nails, they were terribly childish and I was a bit embarrassed walking around University with them on! Hence why they came off after a day.

I recently bought four new polishes off ebay, now I have to wait a horrible two weeks until I get them (I hate living in the middle of the pacific sometimes!). But it'll be worth it. Four full-sized China Glaze polishes, some beautiful glittery ones too! I'll be doing swatches as soon as they arrive.

Snowmen & Snowflakes

I've heard all about the horrible high temperatures in some parts of America recently, but it is FREEZING here! Our winter is technically June-July-August, but sometimes lasts a lot longer. And just to mix it up a bit more, last night a volcano erupted - Mount Tongariro. So fun times in New Zealand! 

I decided I needed to do a mani that matched the lack-of-warmth here, so I went hunting for some cool ideas. I found two cool designs that I put on my facebook page and asked what one people preferred.

The second one won, so here you go!

My snowflakes were more similar to the one in the first picture, as I liked them better. I also added some glitter polish to the smaller dots/snowflakes, although the picture below was taken before I did that.

This is the polish I used for the background - Revlon's Midnight Affair (791). I think it's just gorgeous, and just had to do a swatch for it. It's actually my sisters, but she may have forgotten I have it... I'm in trouble if she reads this!

Despicable Me - Minions

I re-watched Despicable Me a week or two ago - and oh man, I had forgotten how fantastic is was. 

Cutest. Movie. Ever. When the little yellow minions came on I remembered seeing photos of them painted on people's nails and decided to do it. I had to wait for a day where I had enough time and patience to though, as it's not a simple manicure! Here's how it turned out...

I took photos as I went, so you can see how it's done. 

First I chose my colours and brushes. I did a base coat, then used a MIKI yellow polish for the skin. I have two other yellows but they weren't quite right - one too bright, the other has a shimmer. I needed to do three coats of the MIKI yellow to make it completely opaque which was a bit of a pain, but at least it was the right colour.

I then did a coat of clear, as I've found it helps stop the colours running into themselves when I apply the top coat. Next I started with the eyes, I used cheapie nail art pens/polish for the white and silver bits, and the black with a 'brush' that is really more like a dotting tool or toothpick at the end. This gave me a lot of control.

Next I had to do the mouths and hair. The hair was simple enough but the mouth I was a bit nervous about, as if I accidentally moved the brush it'd ruin the whole look. It ended up pretty good though!

I then used another MIKI colour - blue, for the overalls, painting it on with a small brush. Again with the black, I added in the little details.

And there you go!

Left hand

Right hand

Hope you like my little minions, and if you do, don't forget to push the 'like' button!

New Zealand Flag - Olympic nails

First, NEWSFLASH! 

My friend alerted me to the fact that my nails had been shared with no watermark on someone else's facebook page. This makes me so mad! All the pictures on my site are watermarked now, but for about a month some weren't. So either they sneakily copied it ages ago, they edited the watermark out or they got some of the old photos off weheartit. I'm thinking probably the latter. Still, time to get a new watermark - I'll work on that this week. Worst part? It got 56,000 likes for nails that I painted! If you scroll down you'll see my blog has less than 2000 views!
If anyone has been in a similar position I'd LOVE to hear your stories.
Also, if you wanted to share the link on your own facebook page and say it was mine with a link to my blog/facebook page I would be stoked! Jeez, power of the internet, right?

Click here for the link!

My facebook page is: http://www.facebook.com/NaileditNZ

And obviously, my blog is: http://nailedit1.blogspot.co.nz/
Oh, and this is my original post about the shoes. http://nailedit1.blogspot.co.nz/2012/06/whole-lot-of-everything.html

Okay, moving on!

So, Olympics are on! And New Zealand's doing well!! 

So I decided to paint my nails like the New Zealand flag. I did a google search to see if anyone else had done it, but couldn't find anything. Lots of British and American ones, which I must say, look pretty amazing.

I'm pretty happy with now my ones turned out too, however!

Pink and yellow border nails

Just did a total blog makeover, most of it on my tiny and extremely slow netbook. That was fun. As you can see, it is now all green - maybe an upgrade from the mass of colours it was previously? I was originally going to go for white, but that looked too boring, so here we are. I got the background from this great not-so-little site called The Cutest Blog on the Block. It too has had a makeover and it is amazing!! So bloggers, this is the place to go.

These border nails were done with a some nail polish that my sister gave me for my birthday. I have no idea what brand it is - the stickers had been peeled off! Similar to MIKI, but smaller and with a black lid. Next time I'm bored I'll google it. No matter what brand it is, I love the polish. Beautiful colours with a lovely sheen. So here you go!

Haha, my thumbnail on my right hand is so short... But the rest are slowly growing back!

Checkered nails and "Electrify" by China Glaze

Everyone needs to visit this site! It has a whole bunch of cool nail art designs using tape - it's very clever. As you can see, I had a go at the checkered nails. Unfortunately my black polish takes ages to fully dry, so even though I waited about 45 minutes before applying the tape it still pulled the nail polish off on some of the nails :/. Still, it's a cool idea. I might get some fast-drying stuff and try it again. 

I still finished the design, just freehanded the rest with my black striper brush.

Sorry, photo quality is really bad here.

Who's heard of the China Glaze Hunger Games collection? It's called Capitol Colours apparently. Anyway, I had my eye on one called "electrify," and managed to get it for $11 (NZD) including shipping.

Today it finally arrived! And it is AMAZING! My new favourite colour, I love glitter polishes.