Dale's nails + lots of good news!

Over the last month I've been having weekly catch up and nail painting sessions with one of my university friends, Dale! She's had quite a range of nail designs so far, here are three of them plus another one I did on another friend :).

Leopard print! For those that follow my blog regularly you'll know that I love leopard print. It's easy enough, but still takes a while (I HAVE to spend at least half an hour on my nails, haha). I really like the pastel colours Dale chose for these too. From what I remember, the yellow and blue/purple were Revlons and the pink was an OPI.

I'm actually doing these slightly out of order - the leopard print was the second design I did on her, but I wanted all the bright colours to be in the first photo in this post. 

The first set I did on her (confusing much?) were different designs on each hand. This is because I was practicing marbling with black, brown and gold for a customer, but also wanted to do some cute girly nails :). So, cupcakes and dotty water marble!

Money Smart nail art - my entry!

Chalkboard Nails posted a Facebook status about this competition by moneysupermarket.com, and after scouring the rules I discovered that it wasn't limited to only the US or UK, so I can enter! :D

Basically, you need to write a blog entry about money smart nails. Aka, how to have nail art without spending $100 at a salon. This can involve getting a local nail artist (like me! me! pick me!) to do them for half the price, or learning how to do it yourself.

As of yesterday, I offer both of these options! I've had tutorials for months, but here I have my Trade me listing for my nail art services. So that's one option I'm putting forward - finding a local nail artist. I do nail art from as little as $10, and kids are $5 each with any appointment. I charge up to $50 for really complicated designs but considering how long they take, it's a bargain.

Now, if you want to do it yourself, I have heaps of options for that as well. I have a whole page dedicated to my tutorials, which you can find here. 

I'll post three of my most popular tutorials in this post :).

First here's my Chuck Taylors nail art tutorial. This one has had lots of praise for "turning out the way it looks!" It's not too hard, but not too easy either. And it looks amazing; this is one of my all-time favourite designs!

Nailed it NZ on TV!

Guys, I was on TV. I was on Campbell Live. I WAS ON TV. I screamed - a lot, it's kind of embarrassing in hindsight. I had to wait an hour for them to replay it just so I could hear what they actually said as I was too busy freaking out the first time round. I'm going to Christchurch! I'm getting one of the first new jars of Marmite! It's like this big, beautiful dream and I'm so happy!

If you don't know what I'm on about, check out my marmite nails and the post about them here.

Also, today I made a listing on Trade me advertising my nail art services. Things are looking up!

Nail art theft - it's a big deal!

This is a post I've been meaning to write for a long time, and is in my opinion, the most important post on my entire blog.

Nail art theft. Pretty much every nail artist has experienced it at some point. It's when someone else takes your photo of your nails and posts it somewhere else without crediting you. And oh, how it makes us nail artists angry. I've had people tell me to just "deal with it," been ignored and others I know have been sworn at and blocked. But no. I will not, and we will not "just get over it". 

This post will hopefully help others understand where we're coming from. Many culprits are naive teenage girls, who are just after 'likes' and easy popularity, and don't know what they're doing is illegal in most countries. They're not doing it maliciously, but they need to know that what they're doing is wrong.

There are different levels of theft, and the way I see it, these are:

1. Taking the photo and posting it somewhere without crediting the owner. 

This can be anywhere - on Facebook, Pinterest, a blog, Tumblr, Instagram and many more.

Crediting provides a way for viewers to find the original artist; you can credit simply by leaving their blog link or tagging them. It's a minimal amount of effort on your part, but makes a big difference to nail artists. If everyone did this, there would be no need for watermarks.

Example: Posting this photo without also posting this page's URL.

Winners of my 5000 fb follower giveaway!

This is just a quick post to announce the winners of my giveaway! You can see all six winners below - the top one got first, the next one second and so on... 

I've emailed all of them and they have a week to reply before I re-draw. Thanks to everyone who entered and I have a new giveaway coming in early March!

If you want to see what the prizes were, go here.

I recognised a couple of the winners too, which is awesome! Always nice when someone who regularly comments and visits your blog gets something!

Update: Winner number 5 never replied (after 10+ days) so I picked a new winner! Congrats Angie!

Jungle tribal print nail art

These nails were a happy accident. I had painted my nails with OPI's Greenwich village and decided later in the day that they looked a little lonely, and decided to give them some love. However, I had nooo idea what I wanted to paint on them! I thought about doing a grass pattern, which led to me getting out a bunch of green Art Deco striper polishes. Then I decided that it would look dumb, so I stared at my nails for a while, completely unsure of what to do. This was confusing for me! I rarely have this happen, normally I have plenty of ideas! I guess the challenge of having a green base colour meant my options were limited.

Anyway, I ended up with this.

Blurry photo, oops :(

I kind of pretty much actually totally love it. I just kept adding random details under suddenly it looked like tribal nails, but a bit different too, kind of a jungle or rainforest look. And they were really easy, no tricky straight lines or whatever. If this proves popular I might do a video tutorial for it, but possibly in shades of pink and purple.

Nail art for short nails #10 - Blue sky nails

Another picture tutorial! It feels like I've been doing a lot of these lately, but I guess it's just this and the sunflower YouTube tutorial. This one is quite easy, which is why I named it "simple blue sky nails." Cute though!

 It's a very happy, summery nail art design, which is nice :). White clouds, blue sky, ahhh...

I'm really hoping those horrible people don't go and edit it and crop my name out - I try to make it difficult to do now!

My nail art room!

First things first: Have you entered my giveaway?

So I finally did a video showing my nail art room, it's kind of the coolest place in the world.

It shows my nail polish collection, my nail art equipment, my camera, my light box and stuff like that. Hope you like it, my editing skills are still sub par but I'm getting better :).

Nail art for short nails - Sunflowers (on YouTube!)

First things first: Have you entered my giveaway?

Wooo! Finally got another YouTube video up, and I'm editing a nail art room tour now. This tutorial is for sunflower nails, and since I have tiny nubs at the moment it proves they can be done on short one!
I'm much happier with this video than my last one. I used Windows Movie Maker which was MUCH easier than Adobe Premeire Pro, and was so easy to add in all the cool little effects! Plus it's free! So stoked.

Russian Dolls nail art!

First things first: Have you entered my giveaway?

I love these! They look slightly hilarious but I don't care! As in the title, these are Russian Dolls nails - also known as Matryoshka dolls. If you don't know what Russian Dolls are there's a picture below the first one that shows you - they're a bunch of wooden "dolls" that all fit inside each other. I used to have a set when I was younger, pretty much the same as the one in the picture. Just less new-looking.

I can't remember why I decided to do these. My friend was over and I was doing her nails and it must have come up in our (very entertaining!) conversation. The faces are terrible - most look like little fat pigs, or a black haired Miss Piggy to be exact, but meh :P.

Skittles nail art for Sincerely Stephanie's contest!

First things first: Have you entered my giveaway?

I found this Skittles nail art competition by Sincerely Stephanie the other day, and finally did the nails for it! They're a bit random and don't match at all - but hey, they're cute and fun and I like them :). They took a surprisingly long time though! Normally it only takes an hour or so to do any one of these designs, but as I had to keep changing colours and cleaning the brushes it took agggges. Possibly 2-3 hours? Not that spending ages painting your nails is a bad thing, haha, but as these designs aren't terribly complicated I was a bit surprised.

Some of my favourite designs are in there - leopard print, monarch butterfly and chucks. My favourite nail is probably the monarch - I like how it's slightly holographic. I sponged a tiny bit of  OPI's Just Spotted the Lizard over top of the orange and I really like how it turned out. Also, me and Hannah from A Girl with some Clothes swapped polishes lately and I now have a seche vite top coat! Omg, it's the best top coat I've ever had by far! It hasn't smeared/smudged a single design so far - which is AMAZING. 

Chinese New Years nails - Year of the Snake!

First things first: Have you entered my giveaway?

Phew, got these done in time - just. It's 8.50pm on Chinese New Years (10th Feb) here in New Zealand. Someone requested these Chinese new years nails a couple of weeks ago, but I've been a bit busy and hadn't gotten around to them. However, I quickly did them before, and am quite happy at how they turned out! If the person who requested these actually sees them - sorry, I didn't get round to doing a tutorial, but they're pretty easy :).

I can't find the post on my facebook page requesting these for the life of me though. Weird. Anyway, they suggested lanterns and a few other things, but I went with a snake since it's the year of the snake. This got me interested, actually. Just last week my husband and I were talking about Chinese Zodiacs and what we thought we were... I thought I was born in the year of the dog, and he thought he was born in year of the dragon. I thought he probably just thought he was that because it's blatently the coolest one and the one your most likely to remember - but no.

Pink-to-purple gradient nails with diamantes!

First things first: Have you entered my giveaway?

I realised today that I've only updated my blog four times so far this month, and seeing it's the tenth this is pretty lousy! I've just been so busy with moving, studying, job hunting and gardening. Oh, and healthy eating, me and Chris have been using My Fitness Pal to track our food intake and so far it's been really good. Also it's been really hot, which makes me want to go outside, not stay in and paint my nails. 

Enough excuses. I took a break from study to hunt through my photos to see if there was anything I hadn't posted yet. Yay, there was - and they were even already watermarked! While I haven't been doing my own nails as regularly lately, I've been painting others - my friend's mum (first customer!) and a couple of friends.

So here are Nicole's nails!

... and my cat. He's super cute. This design was totally random and didn't have any real planning, from what I remember. Still, I liked the way it turned out! Unfortunately the diamantes left little pink stains where they were on the nail, but they should fade pretty quickly. I'll have to check with her when I see her next. My staining has gone right down lately too - finally found a good preventative base coat! I'll do another post about that soon. ish.

Valentines day nail art ideas + Born Pretty Store review

I've been so slow doing my latest Born Pretty Store review, but there's a reason - this! 

I ordered some nail wheels (BPS calls them 10 pcs Clear False Nail tips Art Display Practice Wheeland thought it'd be great to display heaps of ideas for Valentines Day nail art on it. I did one design on it weeks ago, but it's just been sitting around looking lonely until today, when I came home from a long day and did the rest of them.

Just a warning to any other bloggers thinking of getting this for review from Born Pretty - they only send you three, not the ten they state on the site. I was pretty annoyed about this to be honest, as no one told me that the sample size was three until after it arrived and I had inquired about it. Just something to bear in mind. They'll still send you all ten if you actually buy it off them, I only got three as I was doing a review on them.

Cheshire Cat nail art (Alice in Wonderland)

First things first: Have you entered my giveaway?

Someone asked for these nails a little while ago and I thought they'd be fun! I watched Alice in Wonderland (the old Disney one) many times as a kid and thought the "cat with the big mouth" was pretty cool. Turns out they've been done on nails many times before, too! I saw Robin Moses had done them at some point, but hadn't done a tutorial for them unfortunately. She inspired me to paint the face on a finger instead of my thumb though, and I'm glad I did!

The girl who asked for these also asked for a tutorial, but I didn't do that, sorry. It's too complicated to show in a picture tutorial and I wasn't sure it would even work, let alone dare film it for a video tutorial! A simple version of this could just be the stripes and maybe two yellow eyes with a black background on one nail.

This is the picture I used as inspiration.

Source

Best thing about these nails? I did them exactly the same on both hands! I thought I'd probably really screw up the right hand as the cat's face is pretty detailed, but I didn't! Not too bad, anyway. They do both look a bit like the pink panther...

Nail Polish Giveaway for 5000 Facebook Followers!

I am beyond excited about this giveaway! There are so many beautiful polishes up for grabs and I'm so happy that I get to share them with you all!

I have some wonderful indie polish makers and bloggers sponsoring this giveaway, they are:

Maggy from Daily Lacquer

Amy from Literary Lacquers

Jen from Jindie Nails

Anjali from From L&P to English Tea

Hannah from A Girl with some Clothes

and of course, me, Jessie, from Nailed it NZ.

There will be SIX winners in total! Isn't that awesome?

This picture can be used if you choose to blog about this giveaway :)

Here are some quick giveaway rules - make sure you read them all!

•  Enter through the Rafflecopter app at the bottom of this page.
• No cheating! If you haven't done one of the options, don't say you have! I'll be checking the winners and if they've cheated at all I will simply remove all entries from that person and redraw the raffle! If you accidentally do something wrong, email me (through the contact me tab up the top of the page) and I'll fix it and your entries will still be valid.
• This giveaway is open internationally! Because believe me, I know how much it sucks to miss out because you're not in the US :)
• You can get up to 32 entries, and there are heaps of different, easy ways to earn them! The only mandatory ones are to give me your first name and email address so I can contact you. Remember, enter in the rafflecopter giveaway box at the end of this post, not in the comments!
• I'll give the winners a generous seven days to reply to my email - any later than that and I'll redraw.
• The giveaway will run for three weeks, from 2 February 2013 to 12am (midnight) on 23 Feburary 2013. Please note that this is New Zealand time, we're ahead of the rest of the world.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

Are you ready to see the prizes? I am! 

I have a first, second and third prize for the nail polish part of the giveaway, and three equal prizes for the vouchers.

Water marbled nails and some tips!

Water marbling is one of my least favourite designs to do. I mean, it looks awesome, but it's so hard to make it work! The biggest problem I had today is that I didn't have the right stuff with me to make it easier - although it worked out in the end, I guess. I'll show you what I've done, tell you the problems I had and the ways to fix them.

Here's the final look! I used:

Revlon - Golden Charm

China Glaze - Call of the Wild

Sally Hansen Diamond Strength - Black Tie

China Glaze - Blonde Bombshell

CR - 58 (white)

I should note that my top coat turned "Call of the Wild" a more purply colour. It tends to do that to browns! I'm not buying it again! (It's Yello-out, by the way). I used Seche Vite's ridge filling base coat, as I always do now. It's love ♥.

Left hand

I do love the final result, I may even keep these on for longer than two days :O. It's much better in real life too, I haven't really sorted out my lightbox at the new house yet and my photos aren't that great. Still, if this was my first time doing nail art, I would never return... it took about three hours!

If you don't know what water marbling is, check out this video