Wednesday, July 27, 2016

#Sharingfortheloveofaneli - Avenged Sevenfold Recreation

Hello everyone!


For those who don't know, the lovely and talented Ane Li (@ane_li) passed away on July 11th. Those of us who were inspired by her art have decided to recreate some of our favorite designs that she had made over the years under the hashtag #sharingfortheloveofaneli. I chose to recreate her Avenged Sevenfold tribute. Check out the rest of the post for her original design and some more information..




Here is my recreation of her design:






Here is her original:





For my recreation I used Sally Hansen's Get Mod for the white background and black acrylic for the design. I followed Ane Li's video tutorial for this, you can find it here on Instagram. Her picture taking skills are definitely something for me to envy though! I think what the nail community is doing for Ane Li is wonderful and I am so happy to have been so well accepted into such a loving community.


I am so happy to have honored Ane Li through this recreation. I wish her friends and family all the best in this difficult time. You can go through all of her designs here on her Instagram page.

Until next time- 


<3 Randi
 


Friday, July 22, 2016

Pokemon GO Mani!

In honor of the latest craze sweeping the world today. I have for y'all a Pokemon GO themed manicure that has a bit of dotting, some vinyls, and some freehand work. This will be the final look:



The list of things you will need:
  1. Polish- White, Light Green, Yellow, Blue, Red, Pink-ish and Tan
  2. Acrylics- Light Blue, Light Green, Black
  3. Tools- Large dotting tool, short paintbrush, toothpick, straight vinyls
So to start, clean your nails and put on your favorite base coat. Then paint your nails with the following colors: Thumb- White; Pointer- Lgt Green; Middle- White; Ring- Lgt Blue; Pinky- Tan. Then cover all of them with a quick dry top coat.



Now, let's start on the thumb first. This one is going to be our Pokeball. Make absolutely sure that your top coat is completely dry since we are going to use vinyls. Put your straight vinyl across the white as close to the middle as you can. After securing the vinyl, paint the top half of your nail red. Be sure to remove the vinyl as soon as possible so it doesn't start to dry and get stringy. Get your paintbrush and black acrylic and paint a line to separate the red and white. Using your large dotting tool, create a big circle in the middle of the line. Then get your white polish and put a white dot in the center of the black dot using your dotting tool. Here is a final picture:



Pointer finger next! This one I made into an activated Pokestop, where pokemon trainers get all their supplies. This one is a little difficult to explain but I will try. All you will need is your light blue acrylic, paintbrush and the toothpick. Make sure your original top coat is completely dry. Start with a semi-large circle in the center of your nail. Then paint a complete circle around it with space in-between. Now as long as your original top coat is completely dry you can do this... Take your toothpick and lightly scratch away the acrylic on either side to make two half circles. Your end result should look something like this:





Now your middle finger. This one I used the colors of the teams on the game for inspiration. Red for Valor, Blue for Mystic and Yellow for Instinct. The white we put on originally will make the colors pop more than if we hadn't used it. Again make sure your top coat is completely dry before you use the vinyls. Get two straight vinyls and separate your nail length-wise in 3 sections. Now you can do whatever order you would like to here for the colors. For instance, put your team in the middle or as an alternative you can also not do the vinyls and just have red, yellow or blue for your team. I did all three just for solidarity. :) Here is that final look:



For your ring finger you will need: Large dotting tool, light green acrylic, and a pink-ish polish. The design for this finger is the Razz Berry, used in the game to help tame the pokemon to make them easier to catch. So for this design you kind of build an upside down pyramid starting with 4 large dots then 3, 2 and 1. I used the light green acrylic to make 2 little leaves at the top. And that's it for this one, here's roughly what you should have:



Finally the pinky! This design is going for the eggs that you hatch in the game. Using the light green acrylic and your paintbrush, make random splotches in whatever pattern you would like. This one is by far the easiest one in this design set. Here is what mine ended up looking like:




Once you are done and you are happy with how they look. Make sure they are all completely dry and put on a quick dry glossy top coat. Wait for about 20-30 minutes then have fun & go "Catch 'em All!" (Just please stay aware of your surroundings)


Well, that sums up this nail art set. What did y'all think? I had a lot of fun doing this design! Send me a shot if you try it! Here is another shot of the completed look:




See y'all in a couple of days for the Sunday Swatch-Off!


Thanks for reading!

 
-Randi

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Sunday Swatch-Off!: All In VS Teal On Fire

Okay so I am trying something different that I think people may like so... Here it goes!

My main idea with this concept is to get two similar polishes from two different brands and do a face-off. A head to head comparison for a battle of the best! So I thought I would start off with an easy one for my first attempt. We have two multi-chrome polishes that both have a blue-to-purple shift in the polish.

Our first contestant is Revlon's All In:

 

Our second contestant is Covergirl's Teal On Fire:


   


The first game is the Application Games. Here I am comparing the brushes and how they applied. The brush for Covergirl (Right) is kind of short. For me personally it's a little hard to control because of the length. However, the square shape of the lid helps keep klutzy people such as myself from dropping the brush (I have a stain on my carpet still to this day). This one applied pretty smooth with no troubles. Now the Revlon brush is wider, which I like. I have a wider nail bed and it helps the coverage go a bit faster. It applied alright had some odd points that are a little hard to explain. This one has the typical cylindrical shape to the lid which means I dropped it... Given the pros and cons in this round I will have to issue a tie..

     

The second game is the Opacity Game. The one on the left is the Revlon All In and as you can see it's... All Out. You can clearly see the tips of my nail through the single coat. However, on the right is Covergirl's Teal On Fire, not too bad. It has a few spots that are thin, but overall Covergirl wins the opacity games. Next Game!!

       

The final game is the Layer Games. How many coats to reach full opacity??? Well, to be honest it's kind of hard to get pictures of this but I will try my best to give you the swatch-off commentary... I thought Revlon would be completely opaque after 2 coats but I was horribly wrong. Unfortunately it took not 3... but 4 coats to be completely covered. Now, Covergirl covered me up completely in 2 coats. Which I was expecting since it was already pretty well covered in the single coat competition. So, sorry Revlon, Covergirl wins the Layer Games!

The final score in this session of Sunday Swatch-Off is... *insert drum roll here*

Covergirl's Teal On Fire:  3
Revlon's All In:  1

Congratulations Covergirl's Teal On Fire! 

 

Did you like this? Hope everyone enjoyed it! If you would like to see this again let me know in the comments or sent me an email! I will also consider any suggestions on changes I should try for this series. 

Thanks for reading!

-Randi

P.S....
Check out this shift!!

Friday, July 15, 2016

Christmas in July Mani Collab with 'A Certain Becca Nails'

  So my brother texts me and says "I have a challenge for you... a Christmas in July manicure." Being who I am I just had to accept this challenge. I mentioned it to the wonderful Becca with A Certain Becca Nails  and she jumped on my 'oh-so-tiny' bandwagon and is coming along for the ride. So now I'm draggin' you along too! Hope you enjoy!



For those of you that live on the edge and just want to try it with no instructions, here is the finished manicure:






For the rest of you, let's get this design on your nails! Start out with a base coat on all of your nails and make sure this layer is completely dry before the next step. (I didn't get a picture of that but that part is pretty easy lol) Here is a list of things you will need for this manicure:



- A red polish
- A green polish
- A white polish
- A large dotting tool
- A long nail art brush
- A toothpick or a small dotting tool
-French tip vinyls
-Acrylic paints in red, green, orange, brown, gold and black.

Okay for your first step put the vinyls on your nails backwards like you see in the picture on the left. Then use your white and create your snowy hills. You should end up with something like the picture on the right.




After that, put more vinyls on your nails the normal way (like you see on my pinkie finger) and alternate the red and green polish as you see below.



Now we get to the fun part! Get the large dotting tool and create to different sized circles on your thumb stacked on top of each other. Kinda resembles a certain frozen Christmas friend, doesn't it? ;) With the acrylic paints and the long thin paint brush add your details to your snowman. I gave mine a little red scarf and a carrot nose, but be as creative as you want!


 
On my ring finger I decided to do a christmas tree. All I did for the tree was paint on 3 stacked triangles and filled them in. I topped it with a gold star and a bit of white acrylic for snow (Feel free to use some additional colors to put in ornaments too!). On the rest of my fingers I just did random snowflakes.



Cover everything with a thick top coat and allow to dry for about 20 minutes. I usually just watch a 30 min show on Netflix to dry my nails :)






I had so much fun doing these Christmas in July Collaboration nails with Becca from A Certain Becca Nails. What do y'all think? Will this be filed away for your list of Christmas manicures?

Stay tuned in! Subscribe to my blog to get notified about new posts.  

Thanks everybody!

-Randi

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Saturday, July 9, 2016

The Best of My Past!

I just thought for the first post on my new blog I would show y'all some of my past manicures. I am thinking of doing some tutorials on my previous work. If you see any of the pictures that really interest you, please comment or send me a email under the contact tab.

Well.. here it goes! Hope y'all enjoy :)

I called this one my Blue Me Away Flame Gradient mani. It was very simple to do and with only two accents nails took a very short time to complete.



This one is actually a YouTube Re-Do. Called a "Holographic Galaxy" by the holosexual queen herself SimplyNailogical (If you haven't seen her, go check her out she's amazing!). This one was also simple to do and also allows for a lot of creativity. The "galaxy" can go in any direction or design that you want it to.



Also a YouTube Re-do by Simply Nailogical. This "Holo Highlighter Mani" was a lot of fun to do. Liquid highlighters and a dense holo polish are a must for this manicure to work correctly. The end result is completely worth it though!



My "Almost Irish" Gradient. After I randomly did this I kept thinking that it looks vaguely like a flag lol.



Beach Mani! I wore this one when I went to South Padre Island for a vacation. It was a little tricky to create the 'shore-bubble' look on top but nothing a couple rounds of practice couldn't fix.



This is one of my few free hand designs. Anyone who familiar with YouTubers will recognize this little character. JackSepticEye's floating eye friend "Septic Eye Sam". I don't know how well I would be able to recreate this one but if requested I will certainly try lol.



"Freedom Swirls" Mani. This one took some practice lol. Red, White and Blue swirled with a toothpick, covered with a beautiful scattered holo topcoat. The stickers you see in it are completely optional and would look fantastic without them as well. :)



I believe that completes the best of my past. Coverage of my personal favorites over the past year or so. Again, if you have one of these you would like the see a tutorial on, I would be happy to do it!

Hope y'all enjoyed my first post, if you have any ideas for future posts I am always open to suggestions.

Thanks for reading!

-Randi