Dark Red French Tips with Red Glitter (Gradient Effect) with a small tutorial

I want to clarify something first: the integrity of this manicure and condition of my hands greatly diminished as I was taking these photos. I underestimated the drying time of the top coat before smashing my hands into my boxing gloves for my Boxing class. Since I have sensitive skin on my hands, all that punching reeked havoc on them. Please bear with me. :(

After seeing several of 'Chelle's French tip gradient manicures: here and here. I was feeling quite inspired to create my own without having to purchase any new polish! I decided to sorta make a small tutorial just in case there would be any questions as to how I did the gradient effect.

I decided to take pictures with flash and without flash because as you know, flash makes a huge difference on the actual color of the polish and the manicure as a whole.

• Dark Red French Tips (looks black): OPI's Midnight in Moscow (Swiss Collection). This is an extremely dark red color when it is in the bottle. I noticed that when I painted it on my nails, it was more of a black with red glitter in it.
• Red Glitter : Ozotic's 203 (which I got from 'Chelle from our Swap. Thanks again!). This is sheer red glitter with silver strips? or flakes? Not sure what they are called. Very pretty color though.
• Nude Glitter: Essie's Cool-Lots. I totally forgot to include this polish during the photo shoot! It is an extremely sheer nude glitter polish which I mainly use as a polish topper.

As you can see with the flash, you get a better picture of how dark the OPI Midnight in Moscow is. But with the flash, the red of the Ozotic Pro 203 is just a little too bright.

However, without the flash Midnight in Moscow looks reddish-brown and 203 is more on par with what the color really looks like.

This is just a close up of Ozotic Pro 203, you can see the little silver strips/flakes which I must say is what I love about this polish (besides the fact that it is a glitter polish). As you can see, the flash makes the red super bright!

Now here comes the small tutorial: How to create the "Gradient Effect".

So what I did here was create guidelines to show where you are suppose to apply the glitter polish. They are pretty self explanatory: first layer goes on first (black area), second layer goes on second (red area) and third layer goes on last (white area). Make sure to let each layer fully dry before applying!

I hope that small tutorial made sense! You can easily re-create this look any sheer glitter polish for your French Tip manicures. Let me know if this works out for those of you who tried this small tutorial!

Thanks to 'Chelle for the Ozotic Pro 203 and the inspiration to create this manicure!

Christmas and New Years Manicure!

lHappy New Years Eve!

Since I wasn't able to do a post on my Christmas manicure, I decide to do a Christmas and New Years combo.

Btw, please excuse my nasty cuticles. They have been really dry due to the weather. I guess I didn't realize how dry they were! :(

Christmas Manicure:

• Red: OPI's You Rock Acapulco Red
• Gold: Rimmel. I can't remember what its called at the moment and I'm too lazy to dig for it through my nail polish stash
• White: Non-toxic (yes, I had to put that) acrylic craft paint from any craft supplies store

I originally wanted to do the candy cane design on all my nails, but I figured it would be excessive. So I decided to improvise and this is what I ended up with. I tried to keep it simple, but it just came out very gawdy and christmas-y. But hey, it never hurts to be in the Christmas spirit right? It only comes once a year so I thought, "why not?"

New Years Manicure:

• Bright blue: OPI's Suzi Says Feng Shui (Spring/Summer Collection)
• Blue glitter: OPI's Simmer & Shimmer (Burlesque Collection)
  

For some reason I thought blue would be a good and festive color for the new years. But again, it came up quite excessive but hey, its all for fun. I used the same white craft paint from my Christmas manicure and a dotting tool to make the white dots. I used tape to make the straight edges. Believe it or not, tape has been my best friend in nail designing. It works wonders.

Tell me what you think! Thanks. :)

Red hair!

I apologize for not posting in a long time. I was so busy trying to finish my school work and projects. I am officially done with school for now, but more detail in another post to come.

I took pictures of my red hair but sadly it has faded tremendously into a more of a brown-redish color. :( I tired to get pictures of my hair in different lights, but it pretty much looks the same. I want to dye it again, but I don't want to damage my hair. What do you think?



Sunglasses: Ray Ban


P.S.Thanks again Katrina!

Currently Fancying: Red

I guess I'm back but not really at the same time. I still have tons of things to do and since I'm on a "break" right now from school work. I thought, "hey, why not sneak in a post?" So here I am before you posting away. It seems strange because I haven't updated in awhile. I've gotten out of the habit you can say. So it's weird getting back into it. Anyways, I don't have time to do any projects so bad news there. But I have TONS of ideas for new projects coming your way in Summer 2010, so stay tuned! :)

Red has never been a color of my choice, but lately it has grown on me quite a bit. Even to the point where I even dyed my hair red! But it's non-permanent because I wasn't daring enough. However, to my surprise the color came out quite lovely. I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it because it's only noticeable in the sunlight. But, I've posted some pictures of my lovely red things.

Of course, they were embellished with creations from the lovely Katrina. I swear, I can never get enough of her wonderful freebies!







Netbook: Asus
Shoes: Cole Haan

Thanks Katrina!