Back From The Dead!!!! And At LegoLand!!

Sorry it's been a while! With school and work and the end of the kid's school year, it's just been hectic. BUT, now I'm back from the dead and coming to you with some LegoLand inspired nail art!! More details below!

So the fam-bam and I are going to be spending the night at the LegoLand Resort here in beautiful Carlsbad, California. Now this is a bit farther away from home than we normally go for just a night, Los Angeles is a few hours away from Carlsbad. But, since "Little Bit" (aka my daughter) is going to Grorgia for a month, it's a great chance to get one last family trip in before hand! So why not LegoLand?? 

So for this mani I had to use some different materials than I normally use. I'm normally a paint and polish type of chic. I dabble with 3D acrylic and for this one I looked at it as a challenge. I've seen other girls use rhinestones or studs and, quite frankly, I just didn't feel like wasting my rhinestones by painting over them. But acrylic gives a much more solid base to cover with polish.

I just got a small bead of acrylic, took the liquid out of the back while it was on the brush, plopped it on the nail, waited for it to get matte then patted it down just a touch with the belly of my Kolinski brush. Then I painted over with the three original formula Sally Hansen colors: Pacific Blue, Mellow Yellow and Coral Reef. Lastly, I applied a matte topcoat, specifically Essie's Matte About You.

Painting the Lego logo was pretty easy. I started with a black base, added the white "Lego" then left a little bit of black and outlined with white. Then, I left a bit more black and painted the rest of the nail white to prime for the red. This gave it a black outline and background. The outline is yellow and the background is red so I used acrylic paint for the yellow lines and red polish for the background. 

Hope you guys like! I'll be posting more on Instagram and Facebook from LegoLand itself so make sure to follow! 

Twitter: @NailsByKalee

Tumblr: NailAbuse.tumblr.com

Instagram: @NailsByKalee

My Blog: OnceUponAManicure.blogspot.com

Facebook: Facebook.com/OnceUponAManicure

St. Patrick's Day Nail Art

Today on the blog, I've got some fun water marble blingy nails! I even added a bit of 3D acrylic work! Since everyone's doing shamrock and clover water marbling and hand painting, I thought some rainbow water marbled backgrounds would be fun and different. More info after the jump!! 

The colors I used for the water marble are OPI Koala Bear-y, Hot & Spicy, Need Sunglasses, Green-wich Village, No Rules For The Blues and Plugged-In Plum. Aren't they so pretty together?

So then I went over with Sephora by OPI's gold flavor polish in a bit of a swirl, then went in with pretty much every bit of gold bling and studs I have to include some additional gold leafing. 

To keep it with the St. Patrick's Day theme, I made a little cast iron looking pot out of INM black acrylic and placed it on my ring finger to make it look like the gold was swirling around out of the pot!

Hope you guys like! Be safe on St. Patrick's Day! I'll be working :( But at least my nails will look great!! Come find me:

Twitter: @NailsByKalee

Tumblr: NailAbuse.tumblr.com

Instagram: @NailsByKalee

My Blog: OnceUponAManicure.blogspot.com

Facebook: Facebook.com/OnceUponAManicure

March Nail Art Challenge - Intro and Day 1 Rainbow Brite Dotticure

So for today's nail art, I've taken inspiration from @Californails' March nail Art Challenge Day 1 which is "Dotticure". Here's her challenge:

Now, I didn't just want to do a polka dot mani cause quite frankly, it's been done. And done and done and done. So I figure it would be a cute way to integrate some actual nail art rather than just my dotting tools. To do this, I incorporated rainbow dots with Rainbow Brite!! Here's my design:

I used the Color Club Brites Collection and acrylic paint for all of the art. I did a line of dots in rainbow colors and to keep it from being super polka dotty, I framed the dots in black. Just one more picture with a little better design breakdown:

Alright, so now I'm going to go work on my painting skills since my Rainbow Brite looks stoned... Stay tuned for the next challenge post, "Gradient" which should be up tomorrow! And come find me:

Twitter: @NailsByKalee

Tumblr: NailAbuse.tumblr.com

Instagram: @NailsByKalee

My Blog: OnceUponAManicure.blogspot.com

Facebook: Facebook.com/OnceUponAManicure

Sparkly Camo Nails!

So, I've now been out of the Army long enough to officially enjoy camo nails again. Yes, they're still a bit over played but I like them when there's a less subtle form of camo. All ten nails in woodland camo is just a bit too much. Well, here's what I came up with!

I really showed my OPI drawer some love with this one showcasing My Vampire is Buff, Glitzerland, My Favorite Ornament and 4 In The Morning. I also added some blingy Swarovski elements in pink and opalescent clear with gold square stud, ring and spike accents and a pearl in the center for the middle and some square studs down 4 In The Morning for some flare.

Hope you guys like them! For more, come find me on: 

Twitter: @NailsByKalee

Tumblr: NailAbuse.tumblr.com

Instagram: @NailsByKalee

My Blog: OnceUponAManicure.blogspot.com

Facebook: Facebook.com/OnceUponAManicure

Claire's Glow in the Dark Review and Nail Art!

Today I have a fun and bright neon, glow in the dark design featuring Claire's Glow in the Dark polishes. They come in unnamed pink, yellow, green and purple shades and retail for $7 each. They even include a little light inside the cap that shines down the brush and into the polish so I guess, technically, you could even use these to polish your nails in the dark! Anyway, these were really fun to work with, so continue reading for more!

The first thing I noticed is that these polishes separate very easily so from time to time shaking may be necessary. Also they tend to be a big sheer and dry completely matte! I layered the Claire's polishes over Color Club's City Brites collection pink, yellow, green and purple shades to provide enough color.  

For the "bubbles" I just used very watered down white acrylic paint and placed circular drops then removed the middle of the droplet with a dry brush.

Now with the glow in the dark part, only once thin coat was needed in order to get amazing glowing results. So with all that, here's the design!

Wanna see it glow? Here it is!

 

Thanks guys! Hope you enjoyed! Come find me:

Twitter: @NailsByKalee

Tumblr: NailAbuse.tumblr.com

Instagram: @NailsByKalee

My Blog: OnceUponAManicure.blogspot.com

Facebook: Facebook.com/OnceUponAManicure

Round-Up of the January Nail Art Challenge

As you guys know, I took part in Californails' January "Totally Doable, I Have A Life" Nail Art Challenge. You may not know that this was also my first official nail art challenge. Contests and "inspired by" type things but never a full month-long challenge. Since I managed to stick with it, I figured I would do a round up so everyone can know which manis were which days and so on... So here's the collective round up shot and the breakdown comes after!

03: fresh

06: sparkles

09: pattern

11: pastel blue

14: nature

16: gradient

19: sweets

22: studs

25: match OOTD (ISSE weekend)

28: re-creation (@thenailboss)

31: silver

My thanks goes out to @Californails for hosting this challenge and those of you who have followed me through this whole process. This was so much fun and was really a great set of topics! Can't wait to try another one soon but I think I'll be taking a month or so off... Not because they aren't fun, just because the pace was a lot. It's alright though, stay tuned because I'll still be posting all of my personal nail art! Find me on:

Twitter: @NailsByKalee

Tumblr: NailAbuse.tumblr.com

Instagram: @NailsByKalee

My Blog: OnceUponAManicure.blogspot.com

Facebook: Facebook.com/OnceUponAManicure

Day 31 "Silver" Manicure

I couldn't ignore the last day of @Californails' January Nail Art Challenge!! And I managed to make it in time! I have had so much fun doing this challenge and I can't wait to make my little round up of all of them! Any who, the topic is "Silver" and I chose to do some fun funky disco ball looking zebra print, foil and bling!! So here they are:

 

I used a 99 Cent Store silver on the pinky and thumb, Sinful Colors' Black on Black for the ring and index and Formula X by Sephora in Radioactive for the middle finger. I added a Swarovski Crystal and silver bullion to the index and some squiggly lines on the ring. I used silver (yes, prior to top coating, it was silver) foil on the middle finger and added a bow. The zebra print was done with a Milani nail art polish in Black Sketch.

Alright so that's it for the January Nail Art Challenge! I had so much fun!! I'll be posting some hand painted stuff from now on rather than inspired stuff. I really need to get back into painting, I miss it so much!! So be ready guys, it's going to be intense! 

Come find me!

Twitter: @NailsByKalee

Tumblr: NailAbuse.tumblr.com

Instagram: @NailsByKalee

My Blog: OnceUponAManicure.blogspot.com

Facebook: Facebook.com/OnceUponAManicure