Saturday, December 18, 2010
All that glitters....
Is not gold. Today I have for you a hand painted nail design done with glitter polish and strip rites. I will happily admit I copied this design from a terrific you tube gal. Her you tube channel is: LOVE4NAILS. Her link is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/LOVE4NAILS . She does simple yet beautiful designs all by her own hand. I love watching her videos and I always am excited for Fridays which is when she puts out new ones. I really liked this design on her gorgeous nails and it sorta sang "Christmasy" to me so I did it on me with a little bit of my own touches and I like it. Hope you guys do to. I used a glittery teal strip rite, a silver stripe rite, a clear glitter polish on nail bed and white acrylic paint for dots. I also think this is a good summertime "ocean waves" sort of design. Of course, I think I'll try it in future with other colors too to put a different spin on it. What do you guys think of it? As always, pictures are clickable for enlargement.
Until next time.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Christmas kitteh
This is charlie, a rescue my husband found along a road side back in August. He was about 5 weeks old when found. He's quite a naughty boy now so try not to be deceived by his "who me" expression. He wreaks havoc throughout the household...even our great dane is fearful of him. :o) However, he does have his cute side and this is it.
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| Here is Charlie...the official Christmas present inspector |
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| Still inspecting the present...apparently he takes this job very seriously....or....he fell asleep. :o) |
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Teeny baby fingers...
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
NSI Illusion Soak Off Gel nails system
Hello all. Today I thought I'd do a post about the new gel system I've recently obtained. It is NSI Illusion soak off gel nail system. Now this was my first endeavor with doing my own gels. Truth be known I had put it off for a couple of reasons:
1. I had a set of gels done some years ago and it was a 4 hour fiasco with the nail tech and then they all popped off within a few days.
2. It just seemed to be a tedious multi-step process that I wasn't keen on going through
3. The expense.
Well I watched many a video/tutorial on You Tube and kept finding myself drawn back to the idea of doing my own gels if for no other reason then to just be able to say that I had tried them and had some knowledge to draw on. I found a tutorial on You Tube from NSI that showed the process with their Illusion Soak Off Gels and it seemed simple...simple enough for even I to think I might be able to attempt it. So I did some online research and happened upon NSI's kit for the illusion soak off gels at Beauty West's online store. It was inexpensive and included everything I would need save the brush which Beauty West also sold separately and inexpensively so I purchaswed everything and awaited their arrival. I tried it as soon as I got it and... I love them! It really is simple and I find them to be pretty durable and a bit thinner in terms of finished product thickness than acrylics thus more natural looking. Following are the steps I took to create my gel nails. This time I used glue on tips and cut and filed them but in the very near future I'm going to attempt sculpting them fully with nail forms.
1. You simply prep your nails as usual for fake enhancements, including primer.
2. Glue on tips
3. Apply one thinner layer of base gel and cure in UV light for 2-3 minutes
4. Apply thinner layer of "Dove" white to tips (for french manicure) and cure 2-3 minutes
5. Apply another layer of base gel just a bit thicker than the first and concentrate a bit on the stress area and cure for 2-3 minutes
6. Wipe off dispersion layer.
You can buff or file lightly if needed to even out the surface just like you would with acrylics but only light filing or buffing is needed...not heavy filing or e-filing to remove bulk as with acrylics because this gel is self-leveling. Apply "glaze and go" uv gel sealer (another NSI product) as your topcoat and cure or just apply a ail polish top coat after buffing and filing and voila! Your done.
I found I have a visible line of shadow where the nail tip is glued to my own nail that shows on some of my nails but that's not due to the product as I get that with acrylics as well. I haven't figured out what I'm doing wrong in my applications yet that's causing this. So you will see this on the enclosed pics but just know that it's not due to the product but the tech. :o) Let me say that I've had them on a week now and I have had no that's NO lifting! Also there is absolutely NO offenive, painful odor during application. I love that as I have compromised lungs and I also have a small bird in my home so I cannot use acrylics in the winter. Yes I've tried odorless acrylics and they truly are odorless (at least NSI is) but the odorless liquid makes the acrylic less workable when doing 3d nail art (at least that's been my experience). I wore my gels as created (french mani) and then I painted them...with my new BB Couture polish (check yesterday's post for that). I simply use a non-acetone remover to remove the polish and they're perfect underneath. I just couldn't be more pleased. I even did a gel french overlay on my daughter's toes over the weekend and she's very pleased (I'll post pics of that soon). So overall, a good buy on the NSI Illusion Soak Off Gel system, simple to do with a great finished look. I recommend this product. Please keep in mind that this was my very first attempt at doing gels...and on myself, so I am very aware they are not even close to perfect but I'm ok with that. I'll get more precise with practice. I also purposely didn't make them uniform in length because in reality...my nails are never all the same length when I grow my own. So those disclaimers being stated....here ya go.
Until next time.
1. I had a set of gels done some years ago and it was a 4 hour fiasco with the nail tech and then they all popped off within a few days.
2. It just seemed to be a tedious multi-step process that I wasn't keen on going through
3. The expense.
Well I watched many a video/tutorial on You Tube and kept finding myself drawn back to the idea of doing my own gels if for no other reason then to just be able to say that I had tried them and had some knowledge to draw on. I found a tutorial on You Tube from NSI that showed the process with their Illusion Soak Off Gels and it seemed simple...simple enough for even I to think I might be able to attempt it. So I did some online research and happened upon NSI's kit for the illusion soak off gels at Beauty West's online store. It was inexpensive and included everything I would need save the brush which Beauty West also sold separately and inexpensively so I purchaswed everything and awaited their arrival. I tried it as soon as I got it and... I love them! It really is simple and I find them to be pretty durable and a bit thinner in terms of finished product thickness than acrylics thus more natural looking. Following are the steps I took to create my gel nails. This time I used glue on tips and cut and filed them but in the very near future I'm going to attempt sculpting them fully with nail forms.
1. You simply prep your nails as usual for fake enhancements, including primer.
2. Glue on tips
3. Apply one thinner layer of base gel and cure in UV light for 2-3 minutes
4. Apply thinner layer of "Dove" white to tips (for french manicure) and cure 2-3 minutes
5. Apply another layer of base gel just a bit thicker than the first and concentrate a bit on the stress area and cure for 2-3 minutes
6. Wipe off dispersion layer.
You can buff or file lightly if needed to even out the surface just like you would with acrylics but only light filing or buffing is needed...not heavy filing or e-filing to remove bulk as with acrylics because this gel is self-leveling. Apply "glaze and go" uv gel sealer (another NSI product) as your topcoat and cure or just apply a ail polish top coat after buffing and filing and voila! Your done.
I found I have a visible line of shadow where the nail tip is glued to my own nail that shows on some of my nails but that's not due to the product as I get that with acrylics as well. I haven't figured out what I'm doing wrong in my applications yet that's causing this. So you will see this on the enclosed pics but just know that it's not due to the product but the tech. :o) Let me say that I've had them on a week now and I have had no that's NO lifting! Also there is absolutely NO offenive, painful odor during application. I love that as I have compromised lungs and I also have a small bird in my home so I cannot use acrylics in the winter. Yes I've tried odorless acrylics and they truly are odorless (at least NSI is) but the odorless liquid makes the acrylic less workable when doing 3d nail art (at least that's been my experience). I wore my gels as created (french mani) and then I painted them...with my new BB Couture polish (check yesterday's post for that). I simply use a non-acetone remover to remove the polish and they're perfect underneath. I just couldn't be more pleased. I even did a gel french overlay on my daughter's toes over the weekend and she's very pleased (I'll post pics of that soon). So overall, a good buy on the NSI Illusion Soak Off Gel system, simple to do with a great finished look. I recommend this product. Please keep in mind that this was my very first attempt at doing gels...and on myself, so I am very aware they are not even close to perfect but I'm ok with that. I'll get more precise with practice. I also purposely didn't make them uniform in length because in reality...my nails are never all the same length when I grow my own. So those disclaimers being stated....here ya go.
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| you can see the little white line on my pinky nail in this pic that is the shadow of where the tip is glued to my natural nail |
Until next time.
My first BB Coutures
Hi all. I am very excited. I received my very first BB Couture polishes yesterday. :o) I now have "Dragon's Breath" and "Erotic Night". Can I just say these are such beautiful colors, especially Dragon's Breath! I put Erotic Night as my pedi (no pedi pic tho) and Dragon's Breath as my mani. I like the formula, coverage is good, brush is good. I used three coats each, one coat of SV as top coat. I am including pics of my mani but my camera didn't capture the true color I'm sorry to say. The nails I have are gel nails (I've got an upcoming post of the gel system I'm using now). Customer service at Overall Beauty was great. Great communication and pretty fast shipping. I got them in about a week. On the whole, I'm very satisfied with my BB Coutures and will be obtaining more in the future. I have my eye on "Love Bug". :o)
Enjoy and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! Until next time.
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| Dragon's Breath on left, Erotic Night on right |
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| Dragon's Breath. I love the shimmer in this |
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| Erotic Night |
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