Minty Emerald Ombre Nails

Happy Valentine's Day, bitchessssssssssss!!

Today's mani uses 3 nail polishes that have each been showcased on my blog in the last month or so. I showed you the Sally Hansen Jade Jump and Revlon Parfumerie Balsam Fir polishes in my Drugstore Madness blog, and Revlon Orchid polish was the first radiant orchid polish that I showed you in January. I was immediately interested in doing an ombre look using Jade Jump and Balsam Fir, and only by coincidence did it occur to me that I liked the look of Orchid being thrown into that mix as well. The 3 polishes just happened to be sitting near each other on my desk the other day, and I thought, "Well DAY-UM you three look like one hot ticket."

So yesterday I set out my little makeup sponge, my three polishes, my dotting tool, and some Scotch tape, and got to work on this little look:

I think my ombre is improving - this is just the third time I've done it. You can see the other two ombre looks here and here.

After applying two coats of Jade Jump to all of my nails (it was streaky after the first coat, but evened out much better after the second coat), I taped up my fingers with the tape. This ensures that less polish will get all over your fingers, and makes clean-up easier later...

Then I sponged on my ombre...

Here they are after I removed the tape - still some clean-up to do, but not nearly as much as there would have been if there'd been no tape!

You may be able to tell in that above picture that I also added a Revlon matte top coat over the ombre, because. Just because.

Finally I added my orchid heart accent using my dotting tool, and gave the heart a quick pop of top coat to make the shiny heart stand out more from the matte ombre.

What do you think of these Valentine-y ombre nails? It's definitely a bit more work to give yourself a sponged ombre mani, but it's worth it every once in awhile. Treat yo self.

Do you have any big, sexy plans tonight?

Do you exchange gifts with your lover? If so, what'd you get your S.O.?

And happy birthday to my baby sister, Markie - she turns 22 today! #MyLittleValentineAngelBaby!

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{Linking up with What I'm Loving Fridays, The Nail Files, and Friday's Fab Favorites}

All products were purchased by me!

Valentine's Day Nails: Hearts & Dots!

I kind of freaked out this week when I realized we were into the first week of February and there weren't any Valentine's Day nails posted on my blog. WERE YOU FREAKING OUT, TOO? Oh, what's that? There are a million other nail polish blogs posting Valentine-themed nails all over the internet, and you're totally all set with all your V-Day nails this year and you don't even need my ideas at all?

Oh.

Well, tough shit. I've got one for you anyway!

I used Essie's A List (red), Sinful Colors' Snow Me White, and Revlon's Stiletto (black).

It's been quite awhile since the last time I did any hearts on my nails, so there were some serious practice rounds on paper before I even brought my dotting tool to my nail. And even with the practice rounds, I still ended up mucking it up and needing to wipe it off twice!

I did several Valentine's nails last year, if you want to check out any of those:  

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 

OH, by the way. Congratulations to Joey for winning my *first ever* giveaway! I'll be sending her a bottle of Revlon Orchid and a bottle of ORLY Preamp! HOOZAH FOR THAT!

What do you have planned for the weekend? Anything fun? I've got a fun brunch to go to tomorrow morning with a few other Vancouver bloggers. I love brunch and having blogging buddies, so it should be a great combo tomorrow!

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{Linking up with The Nail Files, What I'm Loving Fridays, and Friday's Fab Favorites} 

Red Hearts & Polka Dots: Valentine's Day Nails

Creating relatively decent looking hearts on my nails is much easier now that I have a dotting tool! "Two dots and tap" and voilà! HEARTS SO REAL YOU CAN PRACTICALLY HEAR THAT SHIT BEATING.

PRACTICALLY.

Here's a new Valentine's Day nail polish look that uses the technique:

The colors I chose to use:

A List by Essie

This off-white, sort-of-unnamed Love & Beauty polish.

Hey here's something that's pretty weird. This off-white nail polish is scented. As if nail polish isn't scented enough, they wanted to try to make this one smell like - if I'm to trust the sticker on top of the bottle - Jasmine. I'm going to be honest and say I don't know what Jasmine is supposed to smell like - unless we're talking about the Disney Princess, because she smells like Arabian nights and centuries-old gold. #Obvi. The polish doesn't smell like gold, but its scent falls somewhere between "This is moderately un-terrible" and "This is full of chemicals. Stop smelling it."

So even though I'm armed with a dotting tool that would make a dalmatian jeally, I still have my Argyle Nails Fail fresh in my head so I'm trying to dial back my instinct to just go straight to my nails with the polish - thus, a few practice runs were required on a piece of paper first:

NO SHAME IN MY PRACTICE GAME. Yours either, I promise. See my attempt at a little red mustache graphic? Good thing I didn't go straight to the nails with that one!!

Alright SEW now we get started!

1. Paint all of your nails 2 coats of white:

2. Use the dotting tool to form a nice big heart in the center of each nail. Place two dots side-by-side, and then use your dotter to drag the dots down diagonally and connect the two sides of the heart. I finished the nails off by using the smaller end of my dotting tool to add some red polka dots around the hearts:

I did 3 small hearts with polka dots on my thumbnails, since I had a little more room to play around with:

If you try this, tweet me a picture @akaBailey!