Mermaid Magic Nails

If you read my most recent beauty post, you’d know that I’ve been pretty obsessed with doing my nails lately.

I purchased China Glaze in “deviantly darling” and Essie “bikini so teeny” and what I hoped to accomplish with these colours is some mermaid magic nails.

I started off with a fresh set of acrylic nails and then applied “bikini so teeny” on all of my nails except the pinky which I used the China Glaze polish for. The colours are so pretty just like this! But, they needed to be magical.

I cut a piece of a loofah, ^this is what one looks like (as you can see it has a mesh texture)

(Let’s excuse the mess on my fingers…)

Then I wrapped it around my nails and using a sponge with a bit of the China glaze polish I dabbed it onto my nail tips. The trick I found here is to pull the mesh piece tight around the nails and hold it for about 30-45 secs after dabbing the polish before removing to prevent smearing and loosing the “scale” effect. This was my first time trying this technique so it didn’t turn out as perfect as I had hoped. OH WELL! Also don’t forget to clean up the excess polish around you fingers. I just used nailpolish remover on a qtip.

Now is the fun yet more difficult and time consuming part. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the exact nail art kit online that I used but here’s one very similar…(if you click on the image it will take you to the site.)

Aaaaaaand, here’s what I got! …so far. One star on my thumb there fell off in my sleep so I will need to add more top coat to really secure them in place. These jewels are “acrylic friendly” meaning you can use the powder&liquid combo to secure them better but I’m just too lazy/impatient to do that.

Let me know what you think, if you try out something similar or any suggestions! All feedback is welcome. Thanks!

xoxo -sunny

Acrylic Obsession + Nailene Acrylic Kit Review

I have a recent obsession with doing my nails after getting them done at my grandma’s favourite nail salon for my 3rd year graduation. As most of you probably know, getting your nails done frequently can be pretty pricey… especially as a suffering university student!

Being the stubborn “I want to do everything myself” type of person, I decided to start looking into doing your own acrylic nails at home. After much research and not wanting to spend a ton of money on all the products I wasn’t sure if I’d even be good at, I settled on the Nailene Acrylic Nail Set.

This kit includes everything a beginner needs:

• nail tips
• nail glue
• acrylic liquid
• nail primer
• acrylic powder
• nail brush
• nail buff
• nail file
• wooden cuticle stick

I picked this up at my local Shoppers Drugmart for about $28, not bad!!

Since I still had my professional acrylic on that was desperately in need of a fill I thought why not try it myself as my first go. And it was a success! You need alot of patience while doing the acrylic as it requires precision so don’t be surprised if you find yourself 1-2 hours later still working! Also do watch Youtube tutorials of both professionals and amatures, they will help out a ton. I will warn you though, the acrylic smell is VERY STRONG! I highly suggest doing your nails outside/wearing a mask/be in any open space. It stunk up my whole house and it left me light headed!

So about a week later the nail tips were ready to be taken off  as I’ve now had them for about a month and I completely removed the acrylic.

Now was when I needed to put my skills to the test and do a whole new set myself.

Here we have the finished “ocean nails”!

I used various shades of blue and a sponge to create the ombre effect and a pink Revlon colour on the other 2 nails. I used the Nailene nail glue for the rhinestone I happened to have in my house and it hasn’t fallen off even a week later!

I was super proud of myself on these 🙂 It took a ton of buffing though to get the nail nice and smooth. I also still need a lot of practice with actually shaping the end of the nail, they’re always super lopsided. I ended up using a different brush for the acrylic because I did not properly clean the one that came with the set and still don’t have acetone so I won’t be using it again until I decide to finally grab a bottle of it!

Since I finally came aboard the Pinterest train I have been searching up tons of new nail art ideas. I also get bored very easily so these nails are getting a mermaid makeover.

I picked up these two new colours over the weekend. The China Glaze colour is from Sally’s Beauty Supply and the Essie from Walmart (on sale for $7!!).

Here are a few inspiration ideas for what I hope to do with the colours:

Update to come soon!

xoxo -sunny