Guest Blog: The Painted Desert's EASY French Mani!

Friday, 3 August 2012

Happy Friday to all of my lovely ladies! I am, most likely, sipping on a mimosa at the airport with C (trying to get him as drunk as possible so he'll actually get ON the plane), preparing for our flight to Key West right now. My plan is to enter a total and complete zone of relaxation [see also: white girl wasted] on this vacay so I'm going to hand the mic over to a lovely lady I met via Instagram, over our love of nail polish, and let her take the stage here on my blog today. 

Take it away, Elise!

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Hello Everyone!

My name is Elise, and I just started a blog called The Painted Desert. I am a 27 year old wife and mom. I got into nail polish and doing my nails about a year ago, and this is my first venture into the blogosphere.

Today I'm going to be showing you how I do french tips. When I wear them, I get a lot of compliments & comments from people who think I have fake nails, or don't believe I did them myself! Now, I'm not one for the traditional white french tip, I prefer a "funky french". I usually incorporate a colored tip and stamping!

First, start off by painting your nails with your favorite base coat (I use OPI Nail Envy for sensitive and peeling nails), and then a french manicure base to hide any staining and make your nails look perfect (I use Orly Rose Colored Glasses). You can see a slight bit of yellowing on my nail here, but that is not visible outside of photos.

Second, place a notebook paper reinforcement where you would like your french tip to be. I do mine right at the natural curve of my nail, so my tips look natural.

Next, paint the tip of your nail with your desired polish (I used Color Club Peppermint Twist). It is best to use a polish that is opaque in 1 or 2 coats. Before the polish has dried, quickly remove the hole reinforcement. You will be left with a clean line.

Complete the rest of your nails, and seal with topcoat when they are dry

Now, you can stop here, but why would you?! I added 1 coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust, and stamped a flower image from BM 311 in Konad White 

 

This is a quick, easy way to do a professional looking french tip without having to free hand it or sit at the salon. I hope you all enjoyed my tutorial, I really enjoyed sharing it with you!

Thank you Whitney for having me, and giving me an opportunity to share my nails with your readers!! <3

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Tutorial Tuesday!

Tuesday, 24 July 2012

Good morning! Today I'm going all nail polish on you. A lovely group of ladies and myself decided on doing a tutorial Tuesday challenge and that day is today! 

I chose to try out Nailside's cloud tutorial. At first I was really intimidated by this mani but once I got the hang of the basic stroke it was a breeze, which was a nice surprise. In her tutorial she says to literally let the polish drip off the brush. I was skeptical but of course she was right. Worked like a charm!

The polishes I used for this mani are: 

Base: Duri Rejuvacote

Wet n Wild - I need a refresh-mint (love LOVE this color on it's own). 2 coats.

OPI - Your royal shine-ness. 2 coats.

OPI - Alpine Snow. 2 coats.

Top coat: Seche Vite

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Weekend Escapades.

Monday, 16 July 2012

Oh Monday, we meet again. This Monday is much more of a pain because I had one of those really great weekends that you never want to end. I'll get over it though, we're just that much closer to my birthday festivities that will be going down in less than 2 weeks!

Anyways, more on that later. Our weekend... let's take a look, shall we?

Friday night that charming boyfriend of mine took me out for dinner and drinks. I got all fancified for the first time in, what feels like, forever. 

By the way, check out the lashes. MAC's new False Extreme = the bombdotcom. More on that later this week. Really, it deserves it's own post.

Le boyfriend and myself getting our Friday night drink on.

These would be pitchers, yes I said pitchers - with straws in them, full of peach sangria. They were 2-4-1 and they were fantastic. Fabulous start to our weekend, if I do say so myself.

After dinner we were a total old person couple and went home. In our defense we did drink a little more and we played some good ol' Phase 10. If you've never played let me just tell you that it is a total blast and that does not make us old, thankyouverymuch. (no, I'm not at all testy that my quarter of a century birthday is near...)

Ella's way serious about hiding her cards from everyone.

See? Promise we had fun. ;)

My weekend nails, compliments of Make Up Store - Greta and the new Bundle Monster plates. The crazy holo effects of this polish is to dieeeee for.

Saturday was a really bright and sunny Florida day so we decided to make a pool day out of it.

We hung by the pool for a few hours and sipped on some cold brewskis. It was really relaxing and even better because my SPF 30 kept your girl free of sunburn, and free of wrinkles, duh. 

Brew and nails. I couldn't help myself. Bright sun and holo go together like brews at the pool.

Finally, yesterday we made our way downtown to the Farmers Market. I went for one reason and that reason is this bread.

This loaf of deliciousness would be blue cheese and garlic bread and my lawdddd it is heaven in a bag. If you ever go to the Downtown Orlando Farmers Market you need to find the vendor and get enough of this bread to make sandwiches for the rest of your life. Seriously though.

I'm ending this soon, I promise. Before I do, I need to give a big shout out to that phenomenal boyfriend of mine. Yes, it's time for me to go ham on this bad boy.

I have been on the hunt for the new Girl Scout cookie Crunch bars for a little over a week and after about 13 failed attempts at finding them, I found the last bar at a CVS. They only had one. Seriously, my luck. (it was delicious, ps) Ok, so back to the boyfriend. 

He came home with a bag full of all 3 flavors and legit made it rain Girl Scout candy bars on me. 

Ah-freak-ing-ma-zing. You ladies with your flower pictures got nothing on my candy bar picture, ya heard?  

Props to you amazingly fantastical boyfriend of mine, you are the epitome of "a keeper" in my book.

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How I Did It - Nail Stamping Tutorial

Friday, 13 July 2012

I posted my latest manicure on Instagram yesterday and got a lot of feedback, mostly wondering how I did it! I am a polish lover who thinks everyone should be too, so I figured I'd do a little tutorial so those of you who are interested can try it out.

Tools needed: 

Nail plates (I used plate 322 from Bundle Monster's newest plate set) 

Polish fit for stamping. I used Konad Special White 

Note: not all polishes will stamp correctly. 

Stamper & scraper. Mine are Konad brand.

Nail polish for base coat. I used 2 coats of China Glaze 'Turned Up Turquoise'.

Brush & polish remover for clean up.

Top coat. I used Seche Vite.

How to:

1. Paint all of your nails with your desired base color polish. Let this coat dry very well. You can even put a fast drying top coat over it if you are impatient. 

2. Paint a thin layer of your stamping polish over the image you've selected to stamp with.

3. Scrape off excess polish from plate and gently roll (think one-way rocking motion... only one way, don't actually rock it) your stamper over it. You will see the design on your stamper. If it didn't transfer how you were hoping, clean it off with remover and start over. It will stamp nearly identical to what you see on your rubber stamper.

If you are having trouble with too much polish scraping out of your image try scraping it from a different direction.

4. Just as you rolled your stamper on the plate roll it over your nail. It will get a little messy on your skin, don't worry!

5. Clean up! Use some remover or acetone and a brush or Q-tip to clean up the extra polish you stamped on your skin.

6. Finish with a top coat and enjoy your gorgeous new manicure!

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