Polka dots and Glittery Nails

Hello everyone! :)

  So this time I decided to make up some new designs that I've never used before, and they turned out to be beautiful. 

  It's been a warm temperature nowadays, so I went to the beach a few times and I fell in love with a polka dots swimsuit I've seen there. So, as you can tell, I was inspired by it! 

  

  Now, to explain you how I've made my design, I will tell you first about my thumbs and ring fingers nails, and then my other nails. It's really simple to do!

  For my thumbs and ring finger nails:

1) Take a good care of your nails and apply a base coat to protect your natural nail.

2) Apply a few layers of white polish.

3) Right after applying the white layers (be carefull and don't let it dry!), dip your nail onto the glitter and let it be for a few seconds. And apply a top coat to prevent the glitter from falling.

  For the remaining nails:

 1) Take a good care of your nails and apply a base coat to protect your natural nail. Apply a few layers of white nail polish.

 2) With a makeup sponge (like one of these: 

http://shop.cinemasecrets.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/s/p/sp001.jpg), start making a gradient between a sweet purple and white, by applying gently a few layers of purple from the top of your nail, to the bottom. 

 3) With a dotting tool, make tons of white dots. Apply a top coat to protect your design.

  Really simple to do, right? Hope you enjoyed it.

  Kisses,

  Patrícia :)

Psychedelic Neon Nails

Hello everyone! :)

  So these are my weekly nails. I needed something to cheer me up lately, so why not some psychedelic nails? Hehe. 

  It ain't great for formal events, but, if you want something to use casually, this is a really good design.

  To make these nails you'll have to follow some steps, at the beggining they can turn out to be super confusing, but the result it's just beautiful.

1) Take care of your nail and apply a base coat to protect your nail. After that, apply a white coat.

2) Start by making a swirl with a really neon pink polish. Try using a thin brush. In these nails I used an old brush and cutted out leaving just a few hairs. 

3) Make a new swirl, around the pink one, with a bright neon yellow-orange.

4) Around the yellow-orange swirl, make some blue and green stripes. 

5) I didn't enjoyed the way that green stripe was looking, so I corrected it with a darker blue. Apply a darker blue on top of the blue stripe. Paint the remaining white with a sweet purple.

6) Make some black stripes to help your design to look less filthy and make some dots to make it look funny. Last, but not least, apply a top coat to protect your design.

  Didn't that turned out to be really funny? Hope you enjoyed it.

  Kisses, 

  Patrícia :)

Strawberries Nails

Hello everyone! :)

  I've been really sick so I haven't been able to come here and make some new posts.

  But... Today I'm feeling better and I can now show you my sister's nails.

  These ones are really simple, cause she's only 9 years old, so I decided to make her some designs that didn't look so heavy on her nails.

  I got inspired on the up coming summer. When I think of summer I remember fruits, mostly strawberries and watermelon. They're so yummi!

  And now, explaining to you step by step:

  At first, the thumb and ring finger:

1) Take some good care of your nail and apply a base coat to protect your nail.
2) Make a green stripe on the tip of your nail, some call it a green french nail.
3) With a tooth pick or a dotting tool, do a rounded shape with some red nail polish.
4) Apply a green leaf on the top of the circle and make some black dots to make it look like a strawberry.

  To the remaining nails:

1) Take some good care of your nail and apply a base coat to protect your nail. After that, apply a green coat.

2)  Make 3 stripes on your nail with a red nail polish.

3) Apply 3 dots between each stripe with black.

  Last, but not least, apply a top coat, on every nail, to protect your design.

  It ain't much of a deal, but I enjoyed it. Hope you liked it too! 

  Kisses,

  Patrícia. :)

Green nails with White Daisies

Hello everyone! :)

  Today I'm gonna show you my favorite nails so far. They seem really complicated to do, but in fact, they're extremely easy to do! 

  

  This time I took pictures of my nails step by step to help you out. :)

1) At first I took care of my nails to make them really confortable to my work, I can't let my edges sharpened 'cause I keep breaking them.

2) Apply a transparent base coat to protect your nails. After that, apply a green coat to every nails of yours.

3) With a thin brush and white polish, make some flowers. I did them this way 'cause I thought that they realy looked like daisies. Ain't that pretty?

4) With my dotting tool, I applied a green circle on the inside of every flower to make it more complete and more fancy.

5) At last, apply a transparent top coat to protect your design.

  See? Ain't that really easy to do and don't they look so beautifull?

  Hope you liked it!

  Kisses,

  Patrícia. :)

By the way: my inspiration to this nail art was Robin Moses. I love her designs.

Daily tip - Acetone or Nail Polish Remover?

Hello everyone! :)

  Well, I've been working with acetone on my laboratory, on college, and I kept wondering if such a powerfull solvent would harm my nails. So I've been thinking a lot in how bad am I doing to my nails everytime I clean them with acetone. And today I went for a little research. I'll just post it in here so you can be aware of everything.

  "Acetone is a clear, harsh-smelling and highly flammable liquid. It's a solvent, capable of disintegrating even plastic. This explains why it works so quickly breaking apart and removing your nail polish. Isopropyl alcohol is typically used in the making of acetone.

   The key active ingredient in non-acetone removers is usually ethyl acetate. Made from ethanol and acetic acid, ethyl acetate is colorless and also flammable. In addition to also being used as a solvent, its fragrant smell has led to its use in perfumes.

  Most of your nail polish removers are going to include solvents as ingredients. If you can remember your lesson about polymers from high school chemistry class, think of it like this: Your nail polish remover is an organic liquid solvent. Nail polish is a hardened organic polymer. When the remover is applied to the polish, the molecules of the solvent will force their way through the polymer molecules, causing the polish to disintegrate.

  Because of acetone's strength as a solvent, it shouldn't be used on your fake nails. The solvent in the polish remover will weaken your extensions and cause them to separate from your natural nail. One of the reasons non-acetone nail polish removers were created was to be used on nail extensions.

  But for removing sparkly, glitter nail polish, it's best to go with the big guns -- acetone polish remover. The chemicals in glitter nail polish make it more difficult than other polishes to break down.

   If you have strong health concerns about the chemicals used in both acetone and non-acetone polish removers, you should consider switching to a nail polish remover that doesn't use toxic ingredients. There are also many polish removers on the market today that boast of being fully "natural" and biodegradable."

  Hope it was usefull.

  Kiss,
  Patrícia :)

Daily tip - Nail art tools

Hello everyone! :)

  I'm always talking about brushes, dotting tools, and other stuff like that all the time, and I bet some people don't have a clue about what they are or where and how to use them!

  So today, I've decided to tell you and to show you some of the tools I use more often. If you don't have these tools, there's always something you can make at home to end up with the same result!

  This is a dotting tool. Each tool has two different sizes allowing you to design any sized circle. I only have one dotting tool, but with extremely caution and dealing the right amount of pressure in my nail, I can make any sized circle. This tool allows you to create unique designs and manipulate your nail at your will, this will help you a lot and it will make your work a lot easier. If you don't own a dotting tool, or you don't want to spend any money, you can always use a tooth pick or a hair clip. Of course the result won't be the same, but at least you can make everything you wish with the tools you have avaiable at home! 

  
 
      Some people think that these kind of brushes can be used with the same purpose. I don't really share the same opinion, 'cause if I use one of the tools to make a thing that stays more perfect with another tool, I won't enjoy it, and I think you won't either. With the longest brush, you will have details with more precision than maybe with a shorter brush. Per example, to make a French Nail Design I recommend to use this brush, because you only need to move your finger (that's being painted), and not the hole hand. I mostly use the shorter brusher to make small stripes, flowers, any kind of small detail that only need to stay pretty and not really very precise. If you don't own these kind of brushes, or you don't want to buy any, you can always get one from a regular painting brush. Either from a nail polish or another kind of brush. The only thing you need to do, is to cut most of the hairs of the brush, leaving only a few or more hairs, depending on the thickness of the details you want to make.

  I hope this tip has been usefull to you!

  Xoxo,

  Patrícia :)

Black nails with fancy roses

Hello everyone! :)

  This will be my second post of my own nails, made by myself. I try everytime to explain how I do them, but it's really hard to do it 'cause, beyond having portuguese as my main language, it's really really hard to write everything down word by word, there's some words I don't know how to write them, or maybe you don't understand, stuffs like that. But I always try my best. 

  For these nails I followed a tutorial I found on Youtube. I'll leave you the link below. I recommend this nails artist because she makes really beautifull designs and she is one of the girls that actually help me doing my stuff. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU2bynbe7Os

  So this is how my nails turned out to be:
      

1) Apply a base coat to protect your nail.

2) Paint with a black polish all of your nails, one or two times, depending on the polish. In my case I only had to paint one time.

  To make the roses - I chose to paint only my thumb and ring finger because I wanted something simpler than having roses on all of my nails, but if you want, you can make in every nail, just like it's shown on the video.

3) With a light pink, make a circle shape on your nail. On my thumb, I made two circles with light pink, and one with a darker pink between the other two.

4) With a darker pink and white, add some details to the circle, trying to make it more similar to a rose. 

To the leaves:
5) Do some leaves with a light green, to add more details to your nail.

6) After that, with a darker green do the rib of the leaves.

7) Last but not least, and extremely important, apply a top coat to protect your design.

  Hope you enjoyed it!

  Kisses, 

  Patrícia :)

Daily Tip - How to paint your nails?

Hello everyone! :)

  

  So today I decided to give you some daily tips that can be really usefull to when you're painting your nails.

   I'll try to give you a tip every single day. But I don't promise anything!

  Well, I found these pictures on Facebook and I think that it can be really amazing to begginers, mostly when you paint your nails and you think they don't look good at all.

  

  Kisses,

  Patrícia :)

French nails

Hello everyone! :)

  So yesterday I decided to paint my sister's nail. I painted her a simple french nails because she's young and she looked really cute with them. Here's the result:

  First I applied a light skin tone base coat to protect and to make the nail with only one color.

  Next, I applied with a thin brush (like the one in the image) the white stripe on every nail. I do it really slowly so it can be at the same size.

  After that, on both ring fingers I made a blue flower with a little thicker brush and put a little glitter on the middle of the nail to give it a personal touch.

  At last, I applied a no color top coat to protect my design.

  Hope you enjoyed.

1) Thin brush

  

2) Thick brush

  Kiss,

  Patrícia. :)

Leopard and Zebra Pattern

Hello everyone! :)

  So, this picture was taken a few weeks ago. I usually inspire myself in pictures I find online, but I always put a bit of my personality on them.

  I really like this combination of colors - blue and silver, plus the leopard and zebra pattern, it makes my nails really beautifull and fashion.

  First, I applied a blue base coat then, with a tooth pick, I painted the leopard black spots. After that, I colored the inside of my spots with silver polish. 

  On my thumb and ring finger, I applied a silver base coat, after that I used the same method I described before but only on half of my nail. Then, again with a tooth pick, I made the black Zebra stripes. 

  I applied a top coat to protect my nail art.

  Kisses,
  Patrícia. :)

Introductions first.

Hello everyone! :) 

  First of all, let me introduce myself.

  My name is Patrícia, I'm 18 years old and I'm from Portugal.

  I'm actually starting to graduate in Animal Sciences.

  I've always had a passion for Nail Art, and lately my nails turned out to be really amazing, so I decided to take a picture of my hands everytime I painted them. I'll be posting a picture of my nails, hopefully and at least, one time per week. 

  Hope you'll enjoy it.

  Kisses,

  Patrícia. :)