Jack-O-Lantern Nails!

Hi everyone! Today I have a "twinsie" post that I did with Alaina from The Little Canvas. Last weekend she emailed me and asked if I wanted to do some jack-o-lantern nails for Halloween and I said sure! I don't really get excited about Halloween, or any holiday really. But I do love nail art, so I was in.

Here is our side by side pic!

And here some solo shots of my mani.

For this manicure I started with a base of Wet-n-Wild The Clock Strikes Orange. Then I added stripes with OPI A Good Man-Darin Is Hard To Find. Once that was dry I used black acrylic paint to paint on the faces. For the stems I mixed together Zoya Hunter and Wet-n-Wild Test of Lime. After everything was all dry I topped it with Glossy Glam topcoat to seal it in. 

The faces weren't easy to do, but overall I'm pretty pleased with how these turned out. The day before I painted them I broke my thumb nail, so it might be MIA for a few posts. :) 

What do you all think? Do you like doing holiday themed nail art?

Be sure to check out Alaina's version of these over on her blog and Instagram!

Happy Saturday everyone!

**All polishes that I used in this post were purchased by me for my own personal use.**

Bestie Twin Nails with Anna!

Hi everybody! I hope you're doing well today. I am so excited about today's manicure. 

A while back I met a really sweet girl named Anna on Instagram. Her first user name was omgnannerz. Truth be told her name is why I followed her, something about it made me certain I'd like her. :) Then she decided to make a "nails only" account under the name polishfrolic. Love it too. :) You really need to go check this girl out, she has got some serious talent and way too few followers. 

So, Anna and I were talking one day on kik and decided we should do some bestie twin nails. For those of you that don't know what these are, well, the name is pretty self explanatory. You get together with one of your best nail pals and come up with some coordinating manis. Everyone does these differently, but I love the way Anna and I did ours. The only rules we had were navy, roses, stripes, and some kind of glitter. The reason I like this type of twin mani is because it shows just how differently everyone interprets manis. 

So here is my mani. Last week I saw a gorgeous vintage rose mani on Instagram, kayleehazacupcakee. She did dainty little pink roses on a black background. I have no idea why I never thought to do vintage roses on a dark background, they look great! So she was my main inspiration. Her and all the new Zoya's I got last week. This mani is almost all Zoyas. Does anyone else do that? I try to use all the same brand in my manis... I don't know why, but I feel like they play better together. Plus, its Zoya. The formula is amazing... always.

Direct Sunlight

Shade

Light Box

Light Box

Light Box

Light Box Macro

First of all, I have to say I'm SUPER proud of this index finger. Anna helped me figure out how to do glitter placement from polish, and I did it! It's not perfect, but I love the way it turned out. My topcoat is so shiny it was hard to capture, but you get the idea. 

Colors Used:

Zoya - Sailor (navy blue)

Zoya - Nyx (PixieDust)

Zoya - Sooki (red)

Zoya - Yana (pink)

Zoya - Josie (dark green)

Zoya - Neely (light green)

Zoya - Blu (light blue) 

FingerPaints - Santa's Magic (glitter)

Glossy Glam topcoat

I am so in love with these nails! I used striping tape for my middle finger, dotting tools and tiny brushes for my little roses, and a tiny dotting tool and a dash of patience for my glitter framed finger. 

What do you all think? It's going to be hard for me to take this one off. I love it and I'm really proud of my work. I have a hard time with being proud of my manis, but this one I can freely admit that I did a good job and not feel like I'm being conceited. :)

Here is a pic of Anna's nails. Aren't they lovely? I love how she put her roses on top of the stripes. 

Do me a favor and go check out her Instagram here. Follow her, you won't be sorry! :) She's going to be making another appearance here on my blog very soon!

I hope you all enjoyed this post! I really enjoyed doing these nails. I need to get back into doing more nail art. I love it. 

Talk to you soon!

~casey

**All of the polishes I used for this manicure were purchased by me for my own personal use.**

PixieDust Leopard!!!

Good morning polish lovers! I hope everyone is having a good day so far! 

I have to say, I am super excited to bring you this manicure. A few weeks ago I ordered the entire Zoya Pixie Dust fall 2013 collection. Around the same time I did my first Leopard print mani... and then I realized I haven't seen anyone do an all PixieDust leopard mani! I knew I had to do it. I love Zoya, I love PixieDust polish, I love nail art... so being able to combine all three was such an exciting idea for me. I didn't mention this leopard idea to anyone, I just kind of kept it stewing in my brain. Then last weekend I was playing with my nail wheel and tried it out. It looked great to me, but I needed my good friend Alaina's opinion. (aka TheLittleCanvas) I sent her a picture, I knew she'd be honest with me if it totally sucked. She loved it too, and after we threw ideas back and forth for a bit we decided it would be a great opportunity to do some #BestieTwinNails for Instagram. Alaina is way more experienced than I am with blogging and nail art, and she's got a special gift with PixieDust nail art... so I was thrilled to do a little collab with her. Go check out Alaina's blog and Instagram as soon as you can, she's great and super sweet. Her version of these turned out fantastic! 

Here is our stitched photo for Instagram, both with topcoat. We were pretty matchy matchy huh? :)

Now for some solo shots of my version. I took pictures of this both with and without topcoat. For the textured look, you need to leave the topcoat off. But adding a topcoat gives you a totally different (and more sparkly) look. 

First I'll show you the textured look.

Full Sun, textured

Full Sun, textured

Full Sun, textured

Light Box, textured

And here it is with a couple of coats of Seche Vite. 

Full Sun, topcoated

Full Sun, topcoated

Light box, topcoated

Light Box, topcoated

For this look I used the entire Zoya Fall PixieDust Collection and Pixie Dust in Dahlia from their first PixieDust Collection.

Here are the colors and names for you:

Black - Dahlia

Gold - Tomoko

Blue - Sunshine

Green - Chita

Orange - Dhara

Purple - Carter

Pink - Arabella

I started with a base of 2 coats of Tomoko on all nails. Then using a medium size nail art brush I started painting the colored spots. Some colors required two coats (Carter needed 3 in some spots), then using a fine nail art brush I painted the lines in Dahlia. I used 2 coats of Dahlia on all nails so that it would really pop as black. I think leopard print nails are one of the absolute easiest types of nail art to do. You don't want it to be perfect, the less perfect your spots are the better. So it's pretty fail proof! 

I highly recommend Zoya's PixieDusts. They are by far my favorite of all of the textured polishes out there. They are textured but not too rough, matte but also sparkly, and the colors and formula are fantastic. 

What do you all think? Do you like this? I was very excited to do it because it's the first time that I came up with a mani that I hadn't seen before. I've seen lots of textured nail art, and it all inspires me. But I hadn't seen a full textured leopard design yet. You should give it a try! If you do let me know because I want to see! You can tag me on Instagram or send me a message on kik or email! 

Instagram & kik: caseylanelovespolish

email: caseylanelovespolish@gmail.com

Thanks for reading! 

~casey

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