Make Your Own Striping Brush

There are many kinds of brushes for nail art in the market. A striping brush is one essential in many designs. 

It is good to invest in good branded brushes and tools, but for beginners and not very avid hobbyists, making your own saves you money and you may customize it for your needs as well.

Here's how I made a striper:

I used:

• An old (almost dried out) nail polish. The good thing is that it already has a nail art type brush.
• Some acetone and cotton, or cloth for cleaning.
• A pencil.

It really is very easy to make, here's how:

Take of the cap (with brush) of this old nail polish and discard the bottle. 

Take off the cap (with brush) of this old nail polish and discard the bottle. 

Wipe it clean with a piece of cloth, so that you won't have problem pulling the brush part off.

Clean all residue left using some acetone and cotton balls.

Trim the brush if you think they're still too thick.

Finally snap it on a pencil just like you do a topper. This thing fits any standard pencil.

 

There you go! Your new striper. What's good about it is that since it's topped on a pencil, you grip on it easier than those thin brushes, allowing you to work comfortably.

Faster Way to Remove your Nail Polish

I'm dying to try a new nail art, all nail polish and tools are ready but there's just one more thing....

I'M TOO LAZY TO REMOVE MY NAIL POLISH!

They're already chipped, so there's no reason to keep them on, however, it is for me the worst part of doing my nails.

Good thing, I chanced upon a solution on how to remove them faster and save on time, cotton and acetone.

Here's how:

Get a piece of cotton ball and tear them into small pieces. Just small enough to cover a nail. Drench each piece with acetone and place on top of a finger nail.

Press them gently and leave for about 2-3 minutes for regular polish and a little longer for glittered ones. But don't keep it longer as it may dry and would be useless.

Usually, my marker is when I'm done putting the piece of cotton on my last fingernail then the first one must be ready to remove.

To remove, apply little pressure while pulling the cotton off. You'd notice that most of not all polish are wiped out easily. You may clean any residue using the same cotton.

Trust me on this, it works!

Have a great day!

Welcome to the jungle!

I gotta admit I'm into animal prints. Not being cruel but I love those fur in my finger nails or wrapped around me, the pattern at least. Of course, I couldn't bear killing a beautiful creature just so my vanity is satisfied.

Leopard:

Luckily, I have good thrift shop finds and presents that have this lovely pattern. Like this tube top which I got for my 32nd birthday.

These rockin' leopard Topshop booties are from a thrift store. 

Topshop Booties

Because I so love nail painting, one of my favorite designs is leopard since it is very easy to make. I made these in a hurry.

leopard and zebra nail art

When you see it in full color, the zebra base is actually light pink, however, the black liner is a bit sticky so, the result isn't neat, I have to take a black and white picture instead. As I was sorting my files I found a picture of me having spaghetti, I noticed that the nails are done in leopard, so I cropped it up for this post.

How the above picture looks like in color

Here's my first try on the leopard pattern and the iconic Burberry tartan.

a nails design inspired by a Burberry leopard handbag

the Burberry leopard nail art paired with leopard eyeshadow

Leopard, like other patterns can come in a wide variety of colors, our imagination is the only limit to it. Here's one in pink and purple:

pink and purple leopard nail art

perfect for parties

There's probably more of these nail designs coming up provided that I have the time and inspiration. 


Zebra:

As for the zebra pattern, I have them on some of my clothes, but not  much on nail design. Here I was wearing a mini tube dress for a glam rock event. I wore this with the pink purple leopard nails above.

Zebra mini tube dress

 Snake: 

As for the snake, I have a favorite snakeskin print jeans. My mom bought these lovelies in England, and they are my favorite pair. I don't wear jeans much so I only have a few.

NEXT snakeskin jeans

I have some handbags in this pattern too, and this one is my favorite. A present from my kumare in Australia.

Guess snakeskin handbag

I haven't done any snakeskin nail art yet but I had searched for some tutorials and I figured I might try soon.

So, that's it. The 'wild' side of my personal style. 

Robin Moses Inspired Nail Arts

My favorite nail artist Robin Moses inspired me in so many ways. But I got to admit that her nail art are out of my league. But inspiration is enough, though. At least I learn a few techniques and methods that somehow improved my craft.

Watching her YouTube videos are usually helpful, but some can be way too complex that I just watch them to amuse myself. Especially that when she does something, she makes it appear as if it's simple. She has some company as well; I guess the model and another one who takes the video, and they are all in a bright conversation while doing the nail art.

Here are some of my works that are inspired by her.

Here's the image where I got the inspiration, except that I used orange instead of pink for the big flowers. I was just so excited to use my new neon orange polish.

A girly skull with stripes for my teenage daughter.

Which was inspired by this pirate skull and stripes design:

And here's my favorite Robin Moses inspired nail art, and the one which I think resembles the closest:

Kiwi nails!

And here's the inspiration:

I might have missed a design or two, but these are just a few of those that I made. I attempted many, though. And in some of my designs I just adapted her techniques to add to my own theme.

Maleficent Nail Art

Today, I chanced upon another nail guru. It was love at first sight as I watched one of her tutorials as entry to the Ryan Seacrest poll on the best nail artist doing online tutorials. Her name is Janelle and she goes by the username elleandish on her YouTube channel and facebook accounts. She has all sort of other sites too, (twitter, instagram, pinterest, etc.) but I don't use those. I mostly use facebook and youtube. 

Anyway, I find her works amazing. They are cool and neat. Frankly, her works are simple compared to other nail art that I see on the internet. However, what makes her special are her tutorials. She's very creative in them and her instructions are precise and clear. As a result, I already tried one of them.

Here's it: Maleficent inspired nail design

So, with whatever available nailpolish at home, and my tools, I made my version of this design. I copied most of it, but modified a little.

Here are the photos:

As mentioned, I made some modifications, as I don't have all the resources available, and of course to add my personal touch to it, too.

And here's how the other hand (right) looks like. I can draw details on them too, if I want to, but the thing is I'm too lazy and too excited to post the left hand so I thought I won't bother details on the right.

Sorry if I didn't even cleanup the sides of my fingernails, I was just uber excited!

Oh, and here are the stuff I used:

for the right hand

for the left hand

As You can see, most of those I use are OMG nail polish. They are my favorite because they're inexpensive, pigmented and they don't smell bad. I also used a purple Sassy and a neutral iridescent Jocarste.

For the tools, I used dotters, a fine brush and a DIY striper.

All things beautiful

I used to keep all my post in my old blog (which is by the way still active) The Life of Janis, then I decided to make a new one which has a limited scope, unlike the other one which is everything and anything all at once.

Here are some posts from that blog which I think should have belonged in here in the first place:

One Hot Lazy Afternoon

My first post about certain products that I use/ wear. 

Lovin' My New Look

This is more like an OOTD post, but somewhat extended through the weekend.

What's Your Purple

The post should focus on comparing two purple lippies, one luminous and the other matte. But it also featured some products used to make such a big difference.

The Plastic Shoes Makeover Project

Wardrobe emergency! I need a pair of wedge shoes that would match my white dress with black details. I'm tight on budget to buy a new one, too busy to go thrift-shop hunting (lots of luck needed since my size is kinda big), and I have just 3 days left before the event I have to go to.


Here's how I transformed my old pair of plastic wedge into a sparkling color block pair, using whatever resources I have at hand and a few add-ons from local supplies stores:

What I used:

an old pair of plastic wedge sandals 
a few bottles of nail polish (white, plum, black, glittered plum, clear)
some packets of glitters (black and silver)
2 meters of black satin ribbon (1/2" thick)

blackand clear nailpolish

a tube of silver glitters, three packets of black and a bottle of crafting glue just in case, but I didn't use it.

First thing's first, decide on what you want your shoes to look like. I figured, I'd make a color block wedge because painting the whole shoe with one color is too boring, imagine the size of nail polish brush and you have to fill a large surface, especially that I'm working on a wedge.

So, the shoe will be divided into 3 major section, colored silver, plum and black.

Mark those using ballpoint pen.

I figured, nail polish sticks better to plastic than glue or any other adhesive available.And dries faster too.

First, you have to paint a coat of white polish into one small section, not too thin, though. Then sprinkle glitters onto that section while the polish is still wet.

Do that until the whole section is filled with polish and glitter. Let it dry.

Do the same for the black section.

You may want to start the plum section on the other one, just as I did.

I painted 2 coats of plum polish.

with one coat of plum nail polish

with two coats of plum polish

Then paint another coat of glittery polish on top. I used OMG Crystal Sand in OPAL

Let dry while working on the other piece.

I had figured, maybe the next time I'm changing a shoe color, I'd use nail polish and glitter top coat instead, it dries faster and clings on better than crafting glitters. Less messy too.

As mentioned above, the black parts will have the same procedure as the silver ones.

Here's how they look like minus the satin ribbons which I recycled from previous Halloween project.

Finish the new shoes by adding a pair of black satin ribbons as replacement for the plastic buckled straps.

Tips:
*You may use clear top coat to prevent the glitters from falling off.
*You can also use a hair dryer to speed up drying and shake off excess glitters.
*Use a broad sheet of paper such as brown paper bag spread out to catch excess glitters so you may use them on other uncovered parts, thus saving on materials.
*Use tape to cover some parts or to define edges and separate color sections neatly.
*1" ribbons look better

The finished product: