4th of July Nail styles

Pin It These were a couple of very quick Independence Day manicures I tried out over the past week. Forgive them for being kind of sloppy. They were done very quickly to see what I liked the best.

Quick Fireworks Nails:  I painted all my nails with the darkest blue I own, Revlon Midnight Affair and topped it with a quick-drying topcoat. Once it was completely dry, I used a dotting tool (a toothpick would work too) a gold polish and silver polish, Revlon Gold Coin and Silver Dollar and created spots reminescent of fireworks sparks flying. I then dotted some of the silver with a red glitter polish, China Glaze Ruby Pumps. The whole manicure was topped with a fast-drying topcoat.

Red, White, & Blue Star Cut-out Nails:  For this manicure, I painted each of my nails a different color, Revlon Silver Dollar, Sinful Colors Ruby, Ruby, Revlon Royal, and I did a water marble using all those colors on my ring finger. I then topped all the nails except the water marbled nail with Julep America. I topped my nails with a quick-drying topcoat. Once it was completely dry, I added foil stars to my nails and painted 2 coats of Revlon Midnight Affair over the top. I had to use a toothpick to make sure the star stickers were completely stuck on all the corners before painting each coat. Unfortunately I was impatient and peeled off the star stickers early, but you can see what I was going for. I topped the whole manicure with another coat of fast-drying topcoat.

Stamped American Flag manicure:  I painted all my nails except my pinky with 2 coats of Sinful Colors Ruby, Ruby and then added a coat of China Glaze Ruby Pumps to my ring finger. I painted my pinky with 2 coats of Revlon Midnight Affair. Once that was dry, I used a stamping plate with stripes and and polka dots to create my stars and stripes using Revlon Silver Dollar. This manicure was inspired by a couple of the pretty manicures on the Nouveau Cheap Independence Day manicure roundup.

 Old Glory Tie Dye Nails:  You can see instructions to create this kind of manicure here.

So, what will you sport on your nails for Independence Day? Do you have great plans for the holiday?

Take care.
~Alexis

Rainbow Watercolor Nails

Pin It

This manicure was the result of my creation of a Fourth of July manicure a couple of weeks ago. It was too early to sport the red, white, and blue manicure for more than just pictures. But it was easy to transform the Old Glory Tie dye nails (seen below in High Five for Friday) into Rainbow Watercolor Nails with the addition of a few dots of yellow polish, Sinful Colors Let's Meet.

Old Glory Tie dye Nails:  To achieve this look, I painted my nails with two coats of Orly Softest White and a thick layer of fast-drying topcoat. After that dried thoroughly, I worked each color on each nail individually. I placed about three small dots of Julep Amy on my nail and then using a nail art brush soaked with acetone, thinned and spread the color a bit on my nail. After doing that to each nail, I did the same thing with China Glaze Dorethy Who? and then Revlon Fearless, and finally Orly Softest White. I kept each color separate for the most part, but allowed a little bit of overlap and blending. I topped with fast-drying topcoat.

Rainbow Watercolor Nails:  Create Old Glory Tie dye Nails. Using Sinful Colors Let's Meet, place about two or three dots on each nail and gently blend the colors using an acetone dipped nail art brush. Top with fast-drying topcoat. I then stamped my nails with Orly Softest White using bornprettystore's plate m65 and one final topcoat. Thanks to Colores de Carole for her willingness to take a bold manicure and add even more pop with some stamping. I followed her lead on that and I like the way it turned out.

Considering how many layers of topcoat I was wearing, I'm surprised that this polish didn't just peel off in sheets after two days. It was a really fun manicure and garnered a few compliments. However, once it started chipping, at about four days in, there was no stopping it. By day six, there was severe chipping on both thumbs, index, and middle fingers. I enjoyed this mani a lot and the acetone blending technique gave me some other ideas for prolonging my nail polish wear time, but I'll post about that next week.

What do you think of the rainbow nails? Have you tried out watercolor nails? If so, did  you enjoy creating a watercolor manicure?

1. Drive-in movies:  I love drive in movies, the stars, the sliver of moon overhead. We saw Brave, which was a really sweet story about a daughter and mother reconnecting and discovering one another. It was a double feature and the second film was The Avengers. It was a great, action-packed movie.

2. A lazy, breezy afternoon in the park:  My girlie and I took a trip to the park the other afternoon. We saw a deer in a field, found some raspberries, threw rocks in the creek, and played on the playground.

3. A fortunate trip out to the garden:  I was making guacamole the other day and was not content with the jalapeno I had in the house. I decided to go out to the garden to pick one. While walking to the backyard, I saw the back end of a bird that seemed to have strangled itself in the slats of our neighbor's fence. I gasped, "Oh, no! Poor birdie," and then the little bird began struggling, apparently not strangled. I ran to the house and got my husband outside with his work gloves. He grabbed a tennis racket and flicked the back end of the bird, giving him the boost he needed to get unstuck. I don't know if he survived, but he was exhausted and stunned, so we just left him alone to catch his breath and regain his energy. There was no evidence of the little bird the next day, so I'll imagine him living a happy bird life . . .  Oh yeah, and about the jalapeno, we decided that the ones in the garden weren't ripe enough, so I used the one from the house anyway.

4. Unexpected tomatoes:  My garden had a couple of random plants growing this spring. There were three tomato plants. I hope that they are from the heirloom tomatoes I planted last year and not the hybrid tomato, but either way, all three plants are beginning to set fruit. They are my fun mystery tomato plants.

5. Old Glory Tie dye Nails:  I feel very lucky that my Independence Day inspired manicure was included in  Nouveau Cheap's "Indpendence Day Manicure Roundup." There are some really fun and beautiful manicures in that roundup.