Love is at your fingertips

As I learned from a fashion and beauty blog called The Beauty Department, inspiration can come from anywhere. I read this post at the perfect time since I was thinking of doing something fun with my nails. I couldn't think of a design, but then it hit me: the perfect design is just sitting in my closet!

And here's my inspiration, a hand-me-down shirt from my cousin. It looks so plain from afar but up close it has the cutest little hearts.

 

Anyway, here's what I did.

Before applying any color on my nails, I put a base coat. I then applied a white nail polish. I used San San's. It's very opaque. Some people even thought that I just painted my nails with correction fluid.

So after that I prepared the nail polishes which will make up the hearts. I didn't want to use brown like the one in my shirt, so I opted for pink instead. They look like the Powerpuff girls!

Next, I put tiny blobs of the nail colors on a piece of tin foil.

I then dipped a toothpick in a blob of color and put two dots beside each other on my nail. Gently, I dragged those two dots at a 45 degree angle and let them meet at the center. I got this technique from another Beauty Department post.

And here are the results! The hearts aren't uniform and perfect, but I am still proud of what I made.

Do you also do your own nail art? Where do you get inspiration from? :)

Gradient Nails

It's apparent that my cousins and I are so into nail polish and nail art. One rainy Saturday morning, we tried doing gradient nails. The results are just lovely.

Risa with her sunset nails

Denise featuring her two-tone soda nails

And yours truly with what I call my under the sea nails

The process is really easy. All you need is a small piece of dishwahing or make up sponge, and two nail polish colors. Use the lighter nail polish as your base, then pour a little of the two colors beside each other on a piece of plastic or aluminum foil. Stamp the colors on your nails using the sponge, et voila, you have gradient nails.

For a more detailed tutorial, here's one from the Nailasaurus.

Flowers on my fingernails

Lemme just share these with you quickly.

Our Japanese family friend, Non, came from a shopping spree in Divisoria and bought me and my cousins these cool nail polish strips! I’m sorry if I don’t have photos of the strips before we excitedly tore them from the packaging and cut them up, but here are the end results.

My youngest cousin (who went also in the shopping spree) said that four packs of strips cost a hundred pesos, but then the saleslady just sold them five for a hundred. That’s like 20 pesos for a manicure and nail art session!

you can see my nails growing, eep!

Putting it on was a bit stressful, but with a little help from my cousins and a LOT of patience, it turned out well. :)

The strips come in a variety of designs. If you ever get by these nail polish strips, I recommend you choose the ones with the complex designs, those that will be really difficult to pull off with plain nail polish.