Mint Manis for Talia Joy...

Hello everyone! I hope you’re all doing well. Things are going good here in our little world. I’m trying to get into the swing of this blogging thing, more mentally than anything else. I’m so excited to get it going, so hopefully I don’t let you all down. I’m hoping to get into a routine and start posting regularly throughout the week. I plan to post nail art and polish swatches all mixed together, because that is what I love.

Today I have some nail art for you, Mint Nails for Talia. For those of you that don’t know, Talia Joy Castellano was a 13 year old with exceptional make up and nail art talent. She had a YouTube channel with a huge following. I only learned about her a few weeks ago, but every interview I read or saw showed how much spirit this little girl had, and a never ending positive attitude. This little girl battled cancer for nearly half of her life, sadly earlier this week she passed away. To learn more about Talia and her battle you can visit the official Facebook page Angels for Talia.

Like I said before, I don’t know much about her. But I started seeing posts on the blogosphere after she passed away about doing tributes in her memory and to raise awareness to childhood cancers. Nicole from Nail Polish Wars organized “Mint Manis for Talia Joy on Friday” as a tribute. The last picture Talia posted on her Instagram was of a matching mint green cream mani she had with her mom and sister. So, joining in to the #mintmanisfortaliajoy tag, I came up with some nail art in her memory. It might seem like a silly thing to some, but the whole time I did the mani I had Talia and her family heavy on my heart and in my prayers, along with all of the other kids (and adults) battling cancer right now. I think it’s a fitting tribute for her.

This is my first leopard print mani and I couldn’t be happier with the results. I’ve never been a big fan of animal print, but in nail art I think I’ve found a new love. For this mani I used Essie Mint Candy Apple, Sally Hansen Extreme Wear Celeb City, and China Glaze Liquid Leather. Last time I wore Mint Candy Apple it stained my nails some, so I doubled up on my OPI Nail Envy Matte base coat and applied 3 coats of polish. Then using a dotting tool I applied “blobs” of Celeb City. I tried to keep them mostly circular, but not too symmetrical. Then I used a fine nail art brush and applied the black lines around the blobs with some dots and lines to fill in the blank areas. There are dozens of leopard tutorials floating around the internet, but I just pulled up some images of leopard print items and used that to help me. The best thing about this kind of nail art is that you can’t really mess it up since it’s not supposed to be perfect. After letting it dry a little I sealed everything in with Seche Vite. I posted a picture of this on my Instagram last night but wanted to do a proper blog post of it today for Talia. I was able to get a few more pictures before the sun went down tonight, enjoy!

***all products in this post were purchased by me for my own personal use***