Recent Mani's

Hey guys! I'm here with a little update for you all. I wanted to post my recent mani's since I haven't been showing my blog much love. My main reason for this blog was to focus mostly on tutorials, and I haven't made any lately so that's why I've been M.I.A.

Onto the mani's!!

Here is a golden leopard print mani. If you'd like to see how I create leopard prints, click here. The base color is Orly- Kiss the Bride, the gold is O.P.I.- Glitzerland and the black is O.P.I.- Black Onyx. I used a dotting tool for the dots.

The top and bottom picture are of the same mani which is an ombre one. If you'd like to see how I create my ombre mani's click here. Obviously the bottom picture is a little different. All I did was I added a topcoat&color water marble over top. The top coat allows the ombre to show through, giving it a cool effect. The colors used for the ombre are China Glaze- Purple Panic, China Glaze- Rich & Famous, Pure Ice- Love, and Orly- Kiss the Bride. For my watermarble I used N.Y.C.- Matte Me Crazy and Orly- Kiss the Bride.

Here is my most recent mani that I'm still wearing. It's just a basic mani, nothing too fancy. I have on Sinful Colors- Mint Apple as my base and a couple coats of Revlon- Whimsical overtop. I've also mattified this manicure since the picture was taken and I love it 10x more. I don't know what it is with me and matte polish lately but it's getting out of hand :)

I hope you guys liked this little catch up. If you'd like to be caught up faster, follow my Instagram at aubreyhannah. I post much more frequently on my IG than I do here. Also, I have a really fun manicure planned out for this weekend, I'm hoping that it goes as planned *fingers crossed*

Happy Friday!!

Aubrey

Pink Glittery Fishtail Manicure

A couple weeks ago I was sent O.P.I.- Nothin' Mousy 'bout It from my friend Tamara (her user name is @ohtammm on Instagram). Ever since I recieved this polish I've been thinking about a manicure that I could do to feature it. This is what I came up with..

Here is a flash shot of the manicure..

Here is a micro shot of the polish..

I love love loveee this polish. The pink/gold/purple glitter is to die for, and the glitter is so fine that the finish reminds me a lot of Essie- Pure Pearlfection. The only con is that the bottle is FULL of hearts, but they are a pain to get out. You'll most likely have to do some manual placement with them.

Here are all of the polishes I used for my mani. From left to right, Pure Ice- Love (don't mind the glob of polish on it haha), China Glaze- Rich & Famous, China Glaze- Purple Panic and O.P.I.- Nothin' Mousy 'bout It.

I hope you guys enjoyed! I didn't do a tutorial today because I've already done a tutorial on the fishtail nails. You can find that tutorial here - Fishtail Manicure Tutorial. For the hearts, all I did was place them on the nail with some tweezers! As always, feel free to leave any comments/questions below!

Aubrey

Purple Ombre Nails (Tutorial)

Ombre is one of the biggest trends this year. Whether it's ombre hair, ombre clothing, ombre eyes/lips. It's everywhere, so of course it needs to be incorporated on the nails as well :)

Here are my purple ombre nails. The key to a nice ombre is to use colors that are a few shades darker/lighter from each other. You can also create ombre nails from a blue to an orange for example, but the blending process will be a little harder since the colors aren't similar.

If you'd like to see how I did this, keep reading!

What you'll need :

Here I have a matte top coat (optional), 4 different shades of purple and a makeup sponge. From left to right : NYC- Matte Me Crazy, Essie- Nice is Nice, China Glaze- Spontaneous, China Glaze- Coconut Kiss and OPI- Siberian Nights.

Step 1: You'll need to apply a white or nude color on every nail as your base, this will help the next set of colors pop. Wait for this to dry completely. This is OPI- Sweet Heart (it was not shown in the picture above.)

Step 2: Dampen your makeup sponge and wring out any excess water. This will help your polish stay on the surface and not soak so far into the sponge. Take your polishes, and apply a line for each color, going from light to dark.

Step 3: Line your sponge up on your nail and press down. If you like where all of your colors are placed, you can then blend the colors by bouncing the sponge on top of the nail. Be careful. You don't want to over-do it or the sponge will start to pull your color up instead of laying it down.

Step 4: Apply the first coat with your sponge on every nail. By the time you're finished with your last nail, your first one should be dry enough for the second coat. Apply as many coats as you see fit. Here I've applied 3 coats. You'll notice that your sponge will leave a little bit of a bumpy finish (you can see in the picture) But don't worry. Once you add your top coat, it'll even everything out.

Step 5: Clean up time! I like to pour a bit of acetone in the bottle cap and dip my cotton swab into that. It's much more convenient.

Step 6: Once your nails are all clean, you can then add a top coat. As you can see, the nail texture has evened itself out.

Step 7: You can stop there or choose to add a matte top coat like I did. It was hard for me to decide what finish I liked better, so I just ended up sticking with this one!

Hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial. It's simple and the results are pretty! What's better than that?! As always, feel free to leave any comments/questions below.

Happy sponging! ;)

Aubrey

Pink Glitter Gradient

Lately I've been getting asked a lot on Instagram if I could create a glitter gradient tutorial. I haven't made one yet because it's really so simple. But if you guys want one, then there's no reason why I can't snap a few pictures along the way.

This is my glitter gradient manicure today. If you'd like to see how I achieved this look then continue reading!

Step 1: Grab a base color and some glitters! The look I did has a nude base color, this is something that can be switched up. The nude base allows the glitter to show up a little better, but if you want to use a bright purple base or a dark colored base, you totally can. From left to right: OPI- Sweet Heart, Orly- Tiara and Revlon- Sparkling.

Step 2: Paint on however many coats of your base color that it takes to get a nice finish. This is 2 coats of OPI- Sweet Heart.

Step 3: Out of all of the glitters that you would like to use, apply the finest glitter first. This is all about a gradual gradient look. If you apply your chunky glitter first, it may not look as gradient as you would like. This is Orly- Tiara. What I did was as I removed the brush from the bottle of glitter, I swiped off most of the polish. You only want a tiny bit of glitter on your brush. Be sure to leave the bottom 4th of your nail glitter free. This will also help with the gradient effect.

Step 4: You can continue to build up your finer glitter if you prefer, but this is where I start to bring in my chunkier glitter. This is Revlon- Sparkling. Again, make sure that your brush isn't loaded with glitter. You can always go back and add more. This is where you want to place most of your second coat of glitter. Once your brush has hardly any glitter on it, you can go ahead and blend a bit.

Step 5: This is another coat of Revlon- Sparkling. I also did some glitter placement with the bigger chunks. You want to focus this coat mostly on the very tip of your nail. When there is hardly any polish left on your brush, again blend it into the rest.

Step 6: Apply a fast drying top coat to protect your polish and you're finished!


I hope you all enjoyed this tutorial! I love this manicure so much. Glitter + pink is always a great thing in my book :) If you have any questions, feel free to ask them below.


Happy polishing!
Aubrey

Purple Water Marble Tutorial

For all of you who don't know what a water marble manicure is, it's a cool way of creating designs using water with your nail polish.

I've made water marble tutorials in the past, but I've never been able to go into too much detail. So I hope this tutorial leaves everyone with all of their questions answered! haha (but of course, feel free to comment below if you do have a question on anything!)

Here are a few examples of water marble manicures..

 

 

These all have the flower water marble design.. there are many other designs that you can use, but the flower is my favorite. If you're interested in learning how to make the flower water marble, keep reading.

Step 1: Grab a shot glass and fill it with room temperature water. You don't want it too hot, or too cold.

Step 2: Grab some polishes that you'd like to make a design with. From left to right: China Glaze- Coconut Kiss, OPI- Pamplona Purple, OPI- Pompeii Purple and OPI- Lucky Lucky Lavender.

Step 3: Paint your nails one of the colors that you chose (choose the lightest shade for best results) This is OPI- Lucky Lucky Lavender.

Step 4: This is the fun part! Take your darkest shade and drop a small amount of paint into the water. It will create a circular film on the top of the water.

Step 5: Take your second darkest shade and do the same thing. Let the paint drip off of the brush and into the water.

Step 6: Repeat the same steps with every color. Once you've reached the lightest shade, start over and begin with your darkest shade until you have about 2 rings of every color.

Step 7: You'll know that you're doing it right when your polish drips start to form a bulls-eye effect in the water. Once you get your perfect bulls-eye, you can start designing.

Step 8: Here I'm using a tack to create the design, but you can use anything from a needle to a tooth pick. Anything with a fine tip. Gently glide the tack from the top of your bulls-eye towards the center.

Step 9: Repeat the same movement but this time start from the bottom of your bulls-eye and glide toward the center where your 2 lines will meet.

Step 10: Do the same steps as 8 & 9 except start from each side of your bulls-eye and gently drag inward.

Step 11: Glide your tack through the center of each petal in Step 10's picture. This will give you 8 petals (they won't always be equal width petals, anything that resembles this is great!)

Step 12: Decide where you want the center of the flower to be on your nail. Line your nail up parallel with the water and your desired design and slowly push into the water.

Step 13: It's VERY important to leave your nail submerged until the extra polish floating on the top is cleaned up. If you look at Step 12, you'll see that the film is still there. If you pull your nail up while the extra polish is at the top, it can ruin your design. To clean the film, stick your toothpick into the water and swirl around. The polish will latch onto the toothpick. Once the water is clean, slowly remove your finger from the water.

Step 14: Once you pull your nail out of the water, it'll look something like this. I opted for the center of the flower to be more towards the left side of this nail.

Step 15: Take a cotton swab dipped in acetone and clean up! Once it's clean you can move on to your next nail. When you've finished all of your nails, apply a fast drying top coat to protect your design and add a pretty shine!

This is a final result picture of my purple water marble flowers. It's a lot of fun to make! And once you get the hang of it, they don't take long at all.


I hope you all enjoyed this tutorial, and as I stated earlier, if you have any questions feel free to leave them below and I'll answer them the best I can!

Happy polishing!
Aubrey