TopCoatIt

Today is the second edition of Twinsie Tuesday marching orders. Amanda gave me my assignment this time. Her birthday is coming up soon so she challenged me to come up with a birthday mani for her that included one purple polish, one holo and was simple enough that “a nail art noob” like herself could replicate it.

I know how much Amanda love purple, so I ran with that color scheme.

I went with a mish mash to give Amanda a few options to choose from. Each design is done with all bottle brushes. I tried to keep them pretty simple, but I think my definition of simple isn’t necessarily the same as some others.  My thumb is a leopard, just in case you were wondering.

For this design I used Color Club Fashion Addict, OPI Vant to Bite My Neck and Do You Lilac It, Milani Rad Purple and Sinful Colors Amethyst.  Happy Birthday Amanda!  I hope I’ve given you something to work with for your birthday celebrations.  And welcome to three new Twinsies: Amber, Heather and Róisín!

Be sure the check out all the other manis today:

Amanda of Amandalandish
Amber of Nails Like Lace
Anna of Going to the Showing
Anne of Grape Fizz Nails
Ashley of Art Evolve
Chelsea of Nailed Blog
ChiChi of I’m Just Me…ChiChi
Cordia of Seriously Swatched
Elizabeth of Did My Nails
Heather of Peace, Love and Polish
Katherine of Haul of Fame
Kelly of Tuxarina
Lakeisha of Refined and Polished
Maribeth of Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite!
Marisa of Polish Obsession
Meredith of Polish and Charms
Nory of Fierce Make Up and Nails
Róisín of Cuti-CLUE-les
Sarah of See Sarah Swatch
Traci of DrinkCitra

Today is my one year blogiversary!  I can’t believe it’s already been a year!  Whoa.  In the month of October 2011 I only had 11 page views.  A bleak start, but I had high hopes.  370 posts, 2144 comments and over a quarter of a million page views later, I don’t feel quite so much like a newby anymore and am happy to say that I’m still enjoying myself.

In honor of the celebration, I’m sharing these fabulous looking festive candles that I did for my birthday.  You can find the original post here.

I’ve had a few ladies ask me recently how I polish my nails.  If this is an area you feel like you could use a little practice and how-to in,  make sure you pin or bookmark this illustration by Lacquerized for future reference.  It’s the best one I’ve seen.

Click photo to link to Lacquerized’s post.

Click photo to link to Lacquerized’s post.

The only thing I would add is to make sure you wrap your tips.  Otherwise, this is exactly how I do it.  Then I though, what the hay, I’ll make a how-to video.  These are totally on the fly.  I’m no professional videographer, but they’ll do.

First we have a video of the technique I use to polish my nails. You’ll find it’s much like the illustrations above.

Next is how I clean up as I go with an orange stick.

I hope you found some tid bit of information that was useful to you! Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions!

Happy Birthday to me!  It’s my birthday this week!  Yahoo!  To add to the festivities, I’ll be doing a few birthday themed manis.  I want to wear these birthday candles all year round.  They’re just so cute!  I must say I’m pretty impressed with my flame painting abilities.    I taught my 18 month old daughter to “blow them out.”  Cutest thing ever.

I used Cult Nails Mind Control as my base color.  Obviously these bright colors weren’t going to show up on such a dark base, so I painted the candles and flames with my white Stripe Rite acrylic paint.  The pink/purple candle is Nina Ultra Pro Punki Purple.  The green is Orly Green Apple and the blue is Sinful Colors Savage.  My flames are actually three different colors.  The yellow is Sinful Colors Pull Over, there’s some Sinful Colors Cloud 9  in there and the darker orange that you can really see is Jordana Orangesicle.

I topped this off with Jordana Quick Sine.  I was disappointed to see some considerable tip shrinkage within a few hours, but only on my middle finger.  Kinda strange that it only happened on one finger.  I do have a habit of rubbing the tip of my nails with my thumb, so that may have contributed to it.  Despite the shrinkage, Jordana Quick Shine is still my go to top coat.