Copy Cat Sat - Nailed It!

Today, I have for you a mani inspired by one of my favorite bloggers, Katy from Nailed It! She comes up with the best ideas, so I decided to mimic this lovely manicure she did a while back. Of course, I had to put my own spin on it, so here it is.

China Glaze Desert Sun, Pure Ice Super Star!, China Glaze Prey Tell

Well, I wanted it to look autumnal, but I think it looks more 70's kitchen wallpaper. Oh well. I think I will take a stab at it again sometime. I need to make the white stripe narrower, but the stamp I used was a bad choice - too wide. Maybe I will try this again with a winter theme later this year. We shall see. Here is China Glaze Desert Sun by itself.

Thanks for looking, I'll have a new mani for you on Wednesday. :)

Copy Cat Sat - Chalkboard Nails

This week's Copy Cat Sat is featuring my mom's lovely hands. :) She saw this blogpost from Chalkboard Nails and fell in love. When she asked me if I could recreate it, we decided to give it a shot. Here is what it ended up looking like.

 
We thought it looked kind of like stained glass. :) We started with a solid white base, and then added the color. The orange is Nina Burnished Bronze, the purple is China Glaze Coconut Kiss, the Red is OPI Nice Color, Eh?, and the blue is Bath & Body Works Blue Moon Shimmer. Here it is in the shade.

And here's another sparkly sunlight photo.

We were pretty happy with how this turned out. The colors look really pretty together. Thanks for looking and see you next week!

Copy Cat Sat - Rebecca Likes Nails

Today, I decided to do a mani that I saw a while back from Rebecca Likes Nails. This is a blog that I look at at least once  a week, and I love her manicures! This floral one caught my eye, and then when she did a tutorial, I knew I had to try it out. Here is my take on her floral nails.

 

The base is Sinful Colors Cinderella. It is a lovely pale sparkly blue. For the roses, I used Black Poppy's nameless periwinkle color, and Revlon Plum Seduction, and for the leaves, I used Sinful Colors Last Chance. Here is Cinderella all by itself.

I look forward to doing some more Copy Cat Sats for you in the weeks to come. I have been extremely busy since I got back from vacation with school and work. I'm taking 3 classes this semester and working full time, so time is a bit of an issue for me. :) I will probably be posting only once a week from now until December. But whenever I get a break, you may hear from me more. Thanks for looking!

Copy Cat Sat - A Polish Addict

Today, I want to share with you some pretty nails I saw last week, and had to re-create. This is what I wore to my first day at my new job (I didn't want to scare them!). This is from A Polish Addict, and it was so sweet and pretty, I just had to do it. As usual, I'm not using the same colors, but they are pretty similar. I wanted to try out some of the polishes that I have had sitting in my stash for a little while which I haven't used.

This is a base of Zoya Lo, which my mom gifted me recently, and I am in love with - thanks Mom! Look at how pretty it is! As usual, it went on in two flawless coats (I LOVE ZOYA!) and it looks gorgeous on its own. I used Zoya Kimber for the french tip. I've been dying to use this, but it is a mini, so I feel like I have to conserve it and use it all sparingly. Who am I kidding? If I ever run out, I'll find a way to get my hands on another bottle.

Last, I did a little stripe of OPI Excuse Moi (from the Muppets Collection!). I am slowly getting better at striping. These lines are almost perfect, which I am very happy about. And I did something I RARELY do. I put something on my nails other than nailpolish. I was going to go without the rhinestone, but it just didn't look right, so I had to. I had these in with my scrapbooking supplies, and never would have used them in a scrapbook, so they have offically been moved to my nailpolish collection.

I'm pretty happy with this manicure, although I can't stop picking at the rhinestones. Thank you so much for looking. Please let me know what you think. Also, if you see anything that you would like for me to try to recreate (with my own spin on it, of course) please leave me a comment. I will eventually run out of ideas, and I would love some input from my faithful readers!

Copy Cat Sat - My Pretty Nailz

My nails this week are inspired by Deriniti at My Pretty Nailz, aka the queen of Konad. Seriously, this lady is GOOD. I was inspired by the way she used multiple plates to stamp several different designs on her nails. I decided to give it a go, and since I want something summery, I thought it would be a great time to try out Zoya Arizona. I have had this lovely color for a while now, but hadn't had a chance to wear it yet. Now that it is on, I am in love. Love. Anyway here is what I ended up with!

Zoya Arizona, Misa Party In The Masquerade, Pure Ice Black Rage and L.A. Colors Gold Glitter

Here is Arizona by herself - isn't she lovely?? Who would have thought an orange would look good on me? This is seriously one of the prettiest oranges I have ever seen. Love it!

Here it is after I added Misa Party In The Masquerade, which is a polish I won from a giveaway a while back. It is very neon. I had not realized this when I looked at it in the bottle. I really like it!

After this, I just added my stamping...which didn't go so well. I thought I picked a small enough stamp for my little nails, but it really only ended up fitting well on  my thumb. Whoops. After stamping, I added some gold glitter with a L.A. Girls striper polish I got at the dollar store, and that was that.

The plates I used are Mash-50 and Mash-43. Not my favorite mani ever, but I am really happy with the colors I picked. It is quite summery. I really do love my thumb. Here is a pic. I wish all the nails looked this good. *Sigh*

Deriniti has it down to a science, I'm telling you this girl is a stamping genius! Thanks for looking! I have a special manicure I'm working on already for next week, so make sure you don't miss it! :)

Copy Cat Wed

Late again, but better late than never, right?! Today, I have a manicure that is probably what first inspired me to start blogging my own nail art. I saw this on Pinterest, and then instantly became addicted to this blog. Chloe's Nails has some of the best tape manis I have seen, and now that I have it down, I decided to take on something a bit more challenging. She calls this a 'quilted mani'. I used different colors for mine, but kept the same general concept. Take a look!

This is Kat Von D Wonderchild, Pure Ice Kiss Me Here, Spoiled Black Mamba, and Sally Hansen Gem Crush Be-Jeweled



 Here is Kat Von D Wonderchild on it's own I won this pretty from a giveaway from Set In Lacquer! Thanks again!

Here is a closeup of my thumb. I'm really happy with how this turned out.

I realized after I finished that it would have been way easier if I had started with the triangle at the tip of the nail. This way I could have seen the lines of my 'x' and ensured that they were centered. When I attempt this one again, I will definitely try it that way to get it to look more perfect. 

Here it is with the flash!

I love the way this turned out, and was excited to get to use this polish I had won a while back. It's a great purple, and applied very nicely in just two thin coats. It will definitely be a go-to purple for me in the future. Thanks for looking! What do you think about my 'quilted mani'?

Copy Cat Sat - Nailasaurus

You may be wondering why you are reading a Copy Cat Sat on a Thursday night. Well why not? Oh right, because it's supposed to be done on Saturdays...Well, I've told you before, I am late quite frequently. I didn't want you to feel like you missed out last Saturday, and I had a little time today, so here you go.

This one is from Nailasaurus. It is because of her, that I have done my first successful gradient. So, yay! I love the way this looks, and I'm probably going to do a bunch of these in the future. It's not perfect, but it's definitely better than any of the other attempts I have made. :) This is Revlon Colorstay Cafe Pink and Spoiled Distant Memory.

A little side on Revlon Colorstay in Cafe Pink: It's kind of bad. I mean, the color is very nice, and I have used it before dotting over other colors without a problem. But when it comes to actually painting the whole nail this color, ugh. It went on very streaky/patchy. I had to do three coats to get it all to look (somewhat) even, and it just really didn't want to go on nicely. If I wasn't in such a hurry, I would have needed even more coats to look perfect, but I knew I was just going to cover it up with something else, so I didn't worry about it. Also, by day 2, even with topcoat, it had chipped up pretty bad. It was just all-around a yucky experience. Here it is on it's own - this is day two, so you can see it is chipped up, and has some tip wear.

I also wanted to show you how I kept cleanup to a minimum - tape of course! I taped off my nails, like you would for a water marble. When I was done, I only had a very small amount around the cuticle to clean up. Here's a picture of my nails all taped off.

Here's a pic of my work area, and what the sponges looked like when I was done.

Now, here is a picture of a booboo. Haha - in one spot on my thumb, I apparently taped over the nail by mistake. I was tired, so I'm not surprised. :) I am sharing this just as a reminder to be careful when taping off your nails to keep the tape off the actual nail. You would think this could go without saying, but if it happened to me, it will happen to someone else. Or at least that's what I would like to think. :)

Oh and also, I am happy to inform you that all the boring nails and hustle and bustle has paid off. I found out yesterday afternoon that I got the job I was interviewing for. Yay me! I am still working for the same company, because I love it there. It's just in a different department, where I get to learn some new things, use the skills I have learned so far in college, and get paid a little more (yay for that!). So, hopefully that can explain to a little bit about why I don't dedicate as much time to this blog as some other bloggers do. I just have a lot going on, but I love doing my nails, and I still need that time out, so you will definitely still see many more posts from me.

Copy Cat Sat - Precious Polish! + I won some AWESOME goodies!

For my Copy Cat Sat this week, I decided to do a mani I saw from Precious Polish that I absolutely fell in love with. It uses an interesting technique with the dotting tool (straight pin for me) to make some really great looking flowers. I think if I'm going to do a mani that uses so many dots in the future, I may have to get a dotting tool. That will have to go on my Christmas list (please Santa?). :) Of course I changed up the colors a bit. I had this neon green from Spoiled called Permission To Proceed that I wanted to try out and it was a pretty big disappointment. I tried using it over white polish since it is so sheer, but it still came out very streaky, so I decided I would just have to do my nail art over top to hide the streaky-ness. After I finished my flowers, it looked pretty decent! Here's it is.

I'm actually pretty happy with this one. Using the straight pin for so many dots was rough, though. It's so short, it's hard to control and be very precise with. For the flowers I used Revlon First Class for the blue (this is my new favorite bright blue!), Spoiled Let's get Sushi for the coral flowers, and Pure Ice Super Star! for the white. After I dotted all of these on, I added some topcoat, and voila!

Here's a picture of my tool of choice.

Now, for my other big news...I won a giveaway that I entered a few weeks ago from Beauty Crazed in Canada. I'm seriously so shocked by it because it is probably the biggest thing I have ever won. Ever. In my entire life. I keep feeling like I should pinch myself to make sure it's real, because the sheer quantity of awesomeness I'm about to receive is amazing. Amazing. It contains polishes that I would never have been able to afford on my own, and a set of OPI's that I have been desperate to own since they came out. That's right - it's the Muppets Collection!! The Muppets Collection(it's 4 of the minis, but that's 4 more than I thought I would ever own)! Can you believe that?! Obviously, I still can't because I can't stop smiling. And I've known since about 10 AM this morning. And I'm still smiling. Here is a link so you can see what the giveaway included. I am blown away by the generosity of these two girls, and I just hope they know how grateful I am. I could never repay them for this, but I at least want to make sure I give a big thank you from the bottom of my heart. Make sure you check out their page if you don't follow already. Everything they blog about is awesome, and they are hilarious, too.

Thanks for looking, as always. I'll have a new one to share on Wednesday!

Copy Cat Sat - Nailside

So of course most people have probably seen all of the cool tutorials that Nailside posts, but I just had to try out her clouds technique. They are so cute! Since I wanted to try out some of the new polishes that I have, I decided to use a couple of my new Julep polishes, and my beloved Zoya Wednesday-love this color! Check it out!

I started with Julep Mandy, which is a bright pinky-red. I will say that as with the other Julep I tried, the application with this color was not pleasant. You would think that for a polish that they charge $12, it would be awesome, but it really isn't any better than other polishes I have tried. In fact, it was worse than some of my cheaper polishes like NYC and Wet n Wild, which are actually pretty good polishes in my opinion. Happily I only paid a penny for mine, so I can't really complain.

After that, I started my first line of 'clouds' using Julep Jessica. This is a nice sky blue and goes on in one flawless coat. I have no complaints about this one other than the fact that I have a hard time getting the right amount of paint on the brush. I think it's because of the shape of the bottle, but it kept wanting to suddenly make giant drips, so I had to swipe it on the rim of the bottle lots of times before I got the right amount of polish on the brush. It went on really nice and smooth and is wonderfully opaque. Out of the three Julep polishes I got, this is by far the best one. And it's named after me, so what's not to love?! :) Here is how it looked at the second stage.

Here it is with the flash

Without the flash

Last, I swiped on my second set of 'clouds' with my favorite new Zoya color called Wednesday. Love love love this color! It is so pretty, and it went on like a dream just like all my Zoya polishes. After that I added some topcoat, and that was it. These were fun to do, and I can see myself using the same design in the future with all different colors. Hope you enjoyed my copy cat mani!

Copy Cat Sat - Let Them Have Polish

For today's Copy Cat Sat, I did my first water marble, using my mom as a guinea pig. I was really surprised about how well it turned out. We used Revlon Make Mine Mango for the base. Then we used OPI Nice Color, Eh? from the Canadian Collection, Zoya Snowsicle, and essie sure shot for the water marble. I decided to just do an accent nail for this one as seen in a manicure done by Let Them Have Polish. Take a look!

 I'm seriously so excited about how well these turned out. We had a little issue with some debris getting on one of the nails, but we were able to clean it off and touch up the nail without having to redo it. Look at how pretty it is!

I especially love this one!

So there you have it - I'm capable of water marbling, which means you will probably be seeing a full mani at some point!

Also, I just wanted to add that I have decided to begin a 10 Day Challenge this week, so make sure you check that out too. I'm pretty excited!

Copy Cat Sat - Meow!

Welcome to the new addition to my blog - Copy Cat Sat(urday)! I have seen so many awesome manicures that I want to try lately, so I decided to make one post a week about someone else's work and put my own spin on it. I'll be starting next week, so get pumped! :)

These are my precious kitties - haha they are like our children. :)