Purple Leopard Nails

Hello everyone! Today I have a quick post with nail art. I've been doing so much swatching lately I feel like I never get in nail art. I've missed it!  

I've been wearing so much glitter lately I was craving creams. So here is what I came up with. 

For this mani I started with 2 coats of OPI Funky Dunkey. This color is so amazing, I almost couldn't stand to cover it. Once it dried I added random shaped and sized  dots in OPI Planks A Lot with my dotting tool. Then using a tiny brush I added the black detail with WetNWild Black Cream. I let it dry a while then sealed it all in with Glossy Glam. 

I love this mani. I painted it Monday night and I'm still wearing it today!!! That's like eternity for me! :) It's holding up well too thankfully. 

What do you all think? I used to dislike anything leopard print, but leopard nails are quickly becoming one of my favorites. Funny how taste changes! :) 

I hope everyone is having a great week! TGIalmostF! 

~casey

**all polishes in this post 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**

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***