My polish is lasting pretty good. It’s the polish I have on from the previous post. Today makes it 6 days. My nails have grown pretty long, so it was tempting to take my polish off and just re-polishing it with the same color. But I want to see how long this color will stay on. I’m sure it’s going to last longer now that I applied another coat of topcoat. That’s a tip, if your polish is applied correctly (from yourself or from a manicurist/nail tech) apply another coat of topcoat a few days later; it’ll make the color stay on longer and give your nails a boost of shine again.
(The picture above is the same polish as the picture below. It’s just different lighting).

I decided to bling up my nails by adding glitter. Lately I’ve been loving glitter on nails. Not on the entire nails though.
Here is just applied glitter to the corners on a diagonal. You know those glitter polishes you can get that have small flecks and big flecks of glitter…sometimes the big flecks are different shapes like hearts, stars, flowers, etc? I used one of those.
I just polished the path that I wanted first, then fished out the bigger flecks and dabbed it on.
Then I took craft paint, and added some light blue & black dots.
Then I painted on a few strokes of silver glitter polish.
Then added some curvy strokes of gold and dark blue glitter.
Add some gray dots following one of the gold strokes.
Finished with topcoat.
Yes, it’s going to be a bitch to take off, but that’s where I have pure acetone polish remover for.

Oh yeah, I think I jinxed myself. A friend asked if my nails were pretty much killed by all the pure acetone I’ve been using because I change my polish so much (everyday almost). I said “no” at the time. After a few weeks off wearing all the colors in the rainbow, my nails were getting weak. I switched to a non-acetone polish remover. It’s alot less harsh than straight up pure acetone. From now on, I’m just using the pure stuff for when I have to take glitters and glittered nail polishes off. Yeah, pure acetone is soooo much faster and easier to take any polish off, but it can really do some damage to your natural nails.
I also keep my polish on longer now.

In case if you were wondering, whenever I take my polish off to put on another, I don’t buff them nails. If I did that every time, my nails would be so thinned out and break off. I only buff them at the most, once a month. I have ridges on my nails, so when I do buff, I just buff the regrowth. So keep in mind, don’t buff too much on your natural nails, it thins them every time.

Products I used»
Seche Vite Crystal Clear Base Coat.
Sally Hansen Salon Complete in Commander in Chic
N.Y.C. Long-Wearing Nail Enamel in 105A: Starry Silver Glitter
Sally Hansen Salon Nail Lacquer in Shooting Star
Striping paint in a shimmery gold & a dark blue glitter
folkArt acrylic paint in:
524 Calypso Sky
938 Licorice
2561 Steel Gray
Seche Vite Dry Fast Topcoat

Acrylic craft paint is great for making designs. I got mine at Walmart in the craft/scrapbook section. They’re like a dollar each. You get a lot more product from these than you do with striping paint. And also, they’re water-based, so if you mess up, just wipe it off with a damp paper towel instead of having to take the polish off. ^^ I’ll think of more designs to do with just the craft paint later.

I thought drawing feathers on nails would be hard, but it’s actually quite easy. You’re simply drawing a stem with short strokes pointing in the same direction. The strokes towards the tip of the feather is a bit longer than the strokes towards the base. Practice with pencil and paper first. =)
My nails were at their longest when I did this design. Crazy long for me. I could draw the full feathers on shorter nails, but the details won’t really show. So the “partial feathers” are for the short nails. There suppose to be the tips of feathers. From far away, the partial feathered design looks better. I still like the full feathers though.

Inspiration: I love feathers and it didn’t come to mind ’til a friend requested it. =) Hope this is what you meant when you said feathers…lol. People have different meanings for feathers/feathering when it comes to nail designs.

All pictures: click to enlarge

Products»
Essie in Au Natural
Striping paint in light blue, silver, white, and black

Hope you guys liked it! ^^

I tried keeping it simple, but I just can’t. I keep picking at it and picking at it.

Almost done. Gotta work alot more shadows & definition into it, work the hair, fix the mouth, and add the ring. =)

Oh my…
Didn’t think I would start another vector since I got a Wacom tab, but I could resist. I did use the pen/tablet with the pen tool. Lol. Don’t think I’ll ever use a mouse for anything anymore.

Anyways, I did my usual stalking on Facebook. When I see a picture I like of a friend, I save it in my “Potentials” folder. Saw this one the other day:

Melissa T.
Hope she doesn’t mind.

This vector is a little different from the previous ones I’ve done.

First, I usually do vexels, hardly anymore vectors because they’re easier. Again, if you don’t know the difference: with vectors, you can create a shape that can be resized whatever size without messing up the picture/keeping the image looking how you’ve created it. Vexels…when resized, the image looks pixelized/blurred/yucky. Get it?
Click here if not: vexel vs. vector image

Second, I usually work with Adobe Photoshop. I’m doing this vector in Adobe Illustrator, which I should have done with my past work. Ai is meant for vector work. So if you ever want to start making vectors, use Ai. Much much better. It’s not easy for me, only because I’m soo used to Ps.
I really just started using Ai a few months now.

Here’s what I have so far. I’m not going to get too detailed with this one, like I did with my Kandee Johnson one. I want to make a simplier one this time. But knowing me, I probably won’t.
I know, I know…I have alot to fix. Just getting the bulk of it done.

__________

Random No.03

*sigh…I woke up at 2:30pm yesterday. =X Still up. Don’t know if I should just stay up.
Ha ha…right.

I hate Kesha. Not her personally, ’cause I don’t know her. I just don’t like her music and stage image. I checked out her live performances on youtube (I’m always looking up live performances, to see if they really have talent). She doesn’t really sing, its more like talking with rhythm. And when she does sing, there’s so much auto tone/voice tweaking on it. Dancing is horrible on the live stuff. Her image just seems like she’s careless/drunk/trying-to-hard-to-be-careless. She makeup is crazy cool, but her MUA gets the credit for that. I do get her credit for doing what she does, but I know alot of people who feel the same way as I do. ^^

I want to go to culinary school. I am a way better cook than baker. If I do, I’d be the go to person for skin, nails, hair, makeup, graphic work, cupcakes, and a five course meal. Lol. Such talent.
Kidding. “A person good at everything is great at nothing.” I heard that quote from somewhere. Still working on what I’m great at…aka, still figuring out what I’m truly passionate about.

I guess it’s pretty normal to feel lost in the world around my age. Couple people have been feeling the same way as I do. Don’t know what we want to do with our lives. Don’t know what careers we want. Starting to doubt our own beliefs on becoming more…becoming more than just another Vietnamese girl doing nails. Become typical or different?

I want to be different. ^^

I’m addicted to playing Scrabble on my iTouch before I go to bed. I actually play it until I’m on the verge of falling asleep. Lol. I’ve been playing is a lot. Pretty much every night for three weeks. The CPU and I are pretty tie. :P

I mad at xbox live. Can’t play most of my downloaded songs on Rockband 2. So I stopped playing that. Started playing GH World Tour. Never finished it because I was addicted to RB. My GH guitar decided to die on me, but to my surprise, I could use my RB guitar for World Tour. I couldn’t for GH3. I like RB’s guitar way better; it’s quieter…the strum bar doesn’t have that stupid click to it like GH does. So I’m halfway done with it..playing it on Hard.
I’m a dork…

Can’t wait for God of War 3 and Fable 3! ^^

My right eye itches. Can’t stop rubbing my finger across my lid cause it feels so good to. lol.

I want to throw my Yorkie out the window sometimes ’cause she’s just a trouble maker. I haven’t posted any pictures of her on here yet. She’s so fricken cute though. Her name is Kiwi. She’s called Killer Ki too.

I want to do a makeup tutorial and I don’t. I hate editing. And I’m not sure what look to do. Spring?

I miss singing. I usually sang while driving, but I don’t have a car anymore. I miss singing really loud. I don’t her because the apt walls are thin, which makes me shy.

Okay..I’m going to go play Scrabble now.

I need a part-time job. I’m thinking about finding a bakery to work at. ^^ Of course, being around sweets would be awesome and delicious, but I want to learn more about baking. I’m a pretty good baker, but I want to be better at creating recipes and decorating. I have friends that went to college for pastry but they’re across the country. I could learn by just doing it at home, but it would be nice seeing how a real bakery works and stuff. Ever watch Ace of Cakes on the Food Network? That would be a sweet place to work at for me. Working with gumpaste, fondant, etc.

I worked with gumpaste for the first time last week. It was alittle like working with play-doh, only it’s stickier and dries out quicker.

The grass took me forever because I didn’t have a specific decorating tip to make it easier (the one that has a bunch of holes in it). I had a tip that had two holes, but didn’t have the decorating bags. So I just used ziploc bags with a corner snipped off for piping. Yup, I piped the grass leaves one by one. Took me about 30 minutes to do a full cupcake. Lol. The ones with a gumpaste disk I only filled with grass halfway. You can tell where I began to get lazy with the grass by seeing long bent leaves. Lol. I used regular frosting from the grocery store. Vanilla with food coloring. I added more confectioners’ sugar (powdered) to the green frosting to make it a little stiffer.
The “happy” disk was sticking up but decided to fall on me. The dimples on the golfballs were achieved with my nail art dotters (sanitized of course). The black handles of the golf clubs were painted with my nail art craft brushes. The paint I used was a bit of regular vanilla frosting, food coloring, and thinned out with some milk.
The cake itself was just from a box. I knew I was going to spend alot of time decorating, so I didn’t bother making it from scratch.
Eventually I want to get real cake decorating tools.

Here’s golf cupcakes I did a few weeks before I made the ones with the gumpaste. Gumpaste looks way nicer and cleaner. These were still cute though. ^^

Cupcakes I made a little over year ago for fun. Piping is shaky, but came out pretty cute too. The Heart You is like my signature. I always do that design.

Such noob work.
I will get better!

My brother & friend got me this book for my last year birthday.

Love it! ^^ I used to take baths while reading this. Lol. Great tips and real cute designs in here.

I want a cupcake now…